Gun control

Homemade Guns Are a Much Bigger Threat Than 3D-Printed Firearms

The long-simmering debate over 3D-printed guns boiled over again this week, but it’s been clear for a while that something was going to happen. In June, 3D-gun-printing pioneer Cody Wilson and his organization Defense Distributed settled a yearslong legal case with the State Department about whether sharing the plans for 3D printing a gun violated export control laws. With that case out of the way, Wilson was free to go back to what he was doing in 2013, when his organization published the plans for the “Liberator,” the first 3D-printed handgun in the world. When those plans were first published, they were reportedly downloaded more than 100,000 times in just two days, at which time the feds ordered Wilson to take them down. But after Wilson followed directions, the plans quickly popped up elsewhere online. The government’s desire to keep the gun-printing plans off the internet backfired.