Photo courtesy Venturebeat.com.
Received an interesting email about a week ago.
Dear Champaign County Rifle Association,
Defense Distributed, a libertarian student partnership, is announcing a project they’re calling the Wiki Weapon. This project’s goal is to test and prove a design for a completely printable, one-use ABS plastic .22 handgun, and to take that design from CAD and port it to a .STL file that will then be freely shared across all major file-sharing platforms to the world. DefDist is anticipating a world where 3D printing becomes much more economical and ubiquitous, and the Wiki Weapon will be one step in providing political and personal leverage to the peoples of that world. The value of such a file’s existence in the future cannot be overstated.
We ask that you please share the project or its video, located at http://PrintableGun.com…, with your readers and help spread the word that there are intellectual entrepreneurs dedicated to preserving Liberty in a time of almost unopposed statist planning. We are only $1,000 away from our alternative goal- of leasing a machine for 90 days and opening up development in a worldwide contest.
Please find the attached press release for your convenience.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Cody R. Wilson
We at Guns Save Life have been following this “printable gun” story for a number of months now and it has now hit the mainstream, with a big splash in Forbes Magazine entitled, ‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home”.
‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home
Cody Wilson has a simple dream: To design the world’s first firearm that can be downloaded from the Internet and built from scratch using only a 3D printer–and then to share it with the world.
Earlier this month, Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves “Defense Distributed” launched an initiative they’ve dubbed the “ Wiki Weapon Project.” They’re seeking to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for a plastic gun anyone can create with an open-source 3D printer known as the RepRap that can be bought for less than $1,000. If all goes according to plan, the thousands of owners of those cheap 3D printers, which extrude thin threads of melted plastic into layers that add up to precisely-shaped three-dimensional objects, will be able to turn the project’s CAD designs into an operational gun capable of firing a standard .22 caliber bullet, all in the privacy of their own garage.
Is the internet going to spell the end of the road for gun control? IN the long term, probably not, but it’s certainly made the gun banners’ lives much more difficult in many ways.
For more information about 3-D printed guns: