10 May 2013 Last updated at 10:18
US government orders removal of Defcad 3D-gun designs
The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun’s designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company’s Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available. The Pirate Bay has also publicised its links to the files via social news site Reddit suggesting many more people will get hold of the blueprints.
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Analysis: 3D printing’s Wild West
Earlier this week, I saw Cody Wilson fire his gun for the first time.
Small, white and made from plastic, the firearm looked like a toy. But as the shot rang, you could feel the force of this weapon.
Hours later, and the blueprints had been placed online.
Mr Wilson describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, and his belief is that everyone has a right to a gun.
Through this project he aimed to export this idea to the rest of the world – whether the rest of the world wanted it or not.
However a week is a long time in the Wild West of 3D printing, and now Mr Wilson has been ordered to remove the plans.
But with more than 100,000 downloads already, the designs have already been widely circulated, and there is now little that can be done to halt their spread.
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The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance wrote to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson demanding the designs be “removed from public access” until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
Explosive force“We have to comply,” Mr Wilson told news magazine Forbes in an interview.
But he added the State Department’s fears were ungrounded, as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from the arms-control regulations.
He welcomed the US government’s intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.
Unlike conventional weapons, the printed gun – called the Liberator by its creators – is made out of plastic on a printer. Many engineering firms and manufacturers use these machines to test prototypes before starting large-scale production.
While desktop 3D printers are becoming more popular, Defense Distributed used an industrial 3D printer that cost more than £5,000 to produce its gun. This was able to use high-density plastic that could withstand and channel the explosive force involved in firing a bullet.
To make the Liberator, Mr Wilson had to get a licence to make and sell the weapon from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Bureau told the BBC that any American could make a gun for their own use, even on a 3D printer, but selling it required a licence.
Mr Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said the project to create a printed gun and make it widely available was all “about liberty”.
Carrying on this topic from an earlier thread; of course they don’t want cheap and easy to acquire pistols falling into the hands of the people whose savings they’ll soon have to sieze. They’ll create any number of laws to stop it. Is anyone the least bit surprised by this news?
Still shipping free and much more effective guns overseas though… and in greater numbers. Obviously trust the people over there more than we here.
No problem at all for the average American. When he deciphers the writing on the wall there’s always gun fairs to hand – buy and have shipped whatever you fancy. Some spout twelve hundred rounds a minute. Add a machine pistol for the wife if you think it might help.
British lambs being slaughtered mustn’t think about fighting back. Thinking lambs are dangerous, they’re best controlled.
Well the that shrinks predictions hughes are correct, he said some years agao society would be taken over by them, and refered to the takeover as the takeover of the lambs, at that time I thought he was delusional, but obviously I was wrong it seems the tories did indeed have a long term master plan after all, total control over democracy, by police, doctors and statists. Who by point of fact are becomming very. very, rich, indeed, by stealing your money. As I said it’s going to be a prison camp island in the North sea, where people will be lucky if they feed on toast, already we are seeing beggars everywhere, bankrupted victims of our courts and judicial con men, massivie increase in people being refered to mental health, no wandering round the streets to keep them quite, and the naughty ones, Anna Dougdale, the NHS shes been handing those leaflets out again, information of “Pre-frontal labotomies” now there’s away to silence your political victims, Iwonder how many are falling victim to this, must be a lot, in view of the boxes of information for patients booklets I witnessed. We need an F.I.O leak on this one.
Yes, I agree, there’s appears to be a big increase in those drugged by the
NHS now they are all wandering round the city like Zombies, pumped
full of drugs by those migrants who can’t read or write english at that
helesdon hospital most from India, yes they are gving those leaflets out
by I thought only to suspect republicans, they gave me one booklet I
still have it, it’s part of the Tory Terror campaign to silence democracy,
F- they’re PFB. F their threats of sections or broadmore, F their forged
medical records. They the worst corrupted dictatorship England has
ever witnessed.
These things used to depress me with their blatant tyranny. Now, however, I laugh. It shows just how scared and stupid the scum of the state really are.
It’s getting worse, scum committ murder, we should get rid of the criminal
bastards, I have no problem with a hungry person stealing food, but someone on 2 grand a week, hang them. They are just greedy crims nothing more nothing less.
It always amuses me how people try and put a genie back into a bottle. Do they really think that after 100,000 downloads (already) they are going to control this file, or prevent other people from re-designing the file and uploading a new one altogether? They are dreaming. They cannot wait to control the internet and I suppose this kind of thing will be the next reason given for doing so.
Yes the could do that now, they can do anything with the new epidemic
of state crime, it’s horrific just what they can and do indeed do.
Can we have fewer fanciful names in this thread? Bear in mind that I do see all IP addresses. Too much of this, and I may feel obliged to reveal the addresses.
They don’t need to “uninvent it”. That isn’t how the law works. I am constantly amazed at the optimistic idea that somehow the State can be overwhelmed by an inability to prevent. The law does not work by prevention. (Some progressives would like it to, of course, but it does not).
The law has no means to prevent you buggering children, stabbing your husband, growing marijuana, or driving at 100mph. It works by arresting you if you do. In some crimes, it only arrests a minority; for instance marijuana smokers. The point of the law is that if you are caught smoking marijuana, you go to jail. It makes doing whatever the damned thing is risky. That is how it works.
If you make one of these guns, and are caught with it, you will go to jail. If you try to use it to kill the police trying to arrest you for owning it, you will go to jail and thence to a place of execution. If you make one and do not license it, and use it to defend yourself from a burglar or rapist, you will go to jail. If you hope to start an insurrection with citizens armed with these plastic guns, the State will apply whatever force is necessary to kill you, or apprehend you and then kill you.
Having the means does not grant the right. Every crime starts with the means. When you use that means, or are even just discovered, in the case of prohibited goods, with the means, that activates the machinery of the State against you.
Plus, it has to be said, if you want an illegal firearm, much better ones can be purchased in particular drinking establishments for a very reasonable price, apparently.
“We oppose the right to keep and bear arms – but we support freedom of speech, especially internet freedom of speech”.
So say the left – and the actions of their beloved Obama Administration show that they LIE.
They only support freedom of speech when it is speech they like.
In the 1940s petty offenders were regularly sentenced to years of Preventative Detention (PD). That suggests to me that the law itself does recognise it, of itself, prevents crime. The would-be criminal is intimidated by the thought of being punished or further punished, thereby dissuaded (psychologically prevented) from carrying out whatever crime he fancies doing.
Of course some people with a cause to fight, or suffering from a range of mental issues, maybe there is little that laws of themselves can do. But for most of us, I would suggest that we are prevented (dissuaded) from braking the law by the threat of some degree of punishment. I agree that that doesn’t always stop us though.
But what do you suggest peaceful people do when the State goes berserk? Seriously now, should (and this has happened in Greece. Obama plans for it to happen in the States) they take control of your bank account/s (assuming a healthy balance exists of course) then dictate how much you may withdraw and how often, and if mobs are allowed to ransack your home looking to steal food and medicines (because allowing it to run unchecked temporarily takes the heat off politicians) how will you react – how do you intend to hanging on to the things owned for family use? Bearing in mind that there is likely to be, by that time, scenes of chaos on the streets.
The Greek tragedy is much worse than the BBC will ever show – dreams of a fully united continent are always uppermost in their minds. I’m assured by friends living in Greece that it’s truly been hell at times with genuine fear for life and limb. Losing access to their cash became the least thing on their minds.
You seem an intelligent sort Ian and I’m seriously wanting to know. What’s your thoughts, will you man the barricades or follow the law? Will you risk printing off a gun and maybe using it in order to prevent injustice? Will you rely upon the plans you’ve already put in place to protect family and friends? Will you be prepared to use violence upon anyone attempting to ruin those plans?
Those questions seem realistic places to start.
IanB:
No one man can beat the state sure–enough people have to be willing to take them on and sell it at a price they can’t afford to pay–but what happens when the state decides you don’t have to do anything at all to merit the execution you put forward as their ultimate sanction. If every adult Jew (or every victim of the Gulags/purges) had used such a weapon to kill just one German that would have been a larger number than Hitler’s entire military could field. If you must die–and we all must anyway- do so as a man of courage not a helpless sheep.
I stand with the law – the real law (not the whims of Legal Positivism),
Real life is a made up of messy alternatives – a choice of evils
In Europe the choice may be between States who take half of private property – and rioting Communists (and “anarchists”) who want ALL of it.
In other places that may not be the choice.
For example the State of Texas has demanded the return of its gold, and important voices (such as the Governor and the leaders of the State Legislature and State Supreme Court) increasingly say there are limits (Tenth Amendment limits) on what the Federal government may order ordinary people to do.
“We have heard that talk before”.
Yes – but it was not real before.
The fighting of 1861-1865 was not really over big government in Washington (the Federal government was tiny in 1860 – actually it was tiny in 1880 or later).
The fighting really was over slavery (and it had started in “Bleeding Kansas” years before 1860) – that is not just my anti Rothbardian opinion. It was also the opinon of Governor Houston of Texas (one of the reasons he refused to support secession – and everyone around him had to pretend he was not there).
Things are different now.
The difference of opinion (to put the matter mildly) is over big government in Washington – which actually does exist now.
And the Southern States are led by people who are hard to paint as KKK types.
True Rick Perry is white (although he is actually part Indian – look at his profile), but the Governors of South Carolina and Louisana are not white. And nor are many conservative Senators and Congressmen.
Also population is different.
Places like Texas were almost empty in 1861 – now they have vast populations.
And that “standing army” that people are so concerned by?
It is mosty Southern – indeed one quarter of it comes from one State.
Texas.