- Technology moves forward.
Things like 3D printers are great.
(printer whirring)
So are you ready for--
- 3D-printed guns?
- Anyone can print it, no background checks,
mental illness not a factor, virtually undetectable.
- The media are alarmed.
- This changes the safety of Americans forever.
- You shouldn't be able to make a gun in your own basement.
- Massachusetts legislator David Linsky is one
of many officials who want 3D-printed guns banned.
- No one should be allowed to make
these guns, ever, on their own?
- That is absolutely correct.
Look, we have enough guns in this country already.
(gun fires)
- But there's a bigger issue at stake,
says Defense Distributed.
The company that owns the blueprints for a 3D-printed gun.
(printer whirring)
- I think it's incredibly important
for companies like us to stand up for rights
that are being obviously infringed upon.
- [John] Not just gun rights, they say, but free speech.
- The law can treat firearms like firearms,
they can't treat the speech used to make them like firearms.
We're fighting for the constitutional rights
to share these files with the world.
- Why do you want to?
There's enough weapons out there.
- We believe in free speech.
You can't ban lawful U.S. citizens from sharing information
with lawful U.S. citizens, right,
you can't ban the sharing of the information.
- This isn't about guns,
this is about free speech on the internet.
- The federal government has a responsibility
to keep people from spreading this around the country.
- Keep people from spreading sounds like censorship.
- It's not censorship when the national security
and public safety are at stake.
- You can argue it's justified but it's censorship.
- [Reporter] Side of the Federal Building
has been blown off.
- [Reporter] Holy cow.
- After the Oklahoma City bombing,
the U.S. Congress asked the Department of Justice,
"Can we make a law that bans putting
"bomb-making instructions on the internet?"
And the DOD said, "No, you can't do that.
"You can't ban putting files on the internet."
(explosion booms)
Nuclear bomb's a little bit different
'cause it's classified information.
- What's not classified is all over the web.
Plenty of websites and books teach people
how to make deadly things.
Should "The Anarchist's Cookbook" be banned?
- No, there's no reason to ban books.
- There's some deadly recipes in there.
- The genie is out of the bottle a long,
long time ago on "The Anarchist Cookbook."
But this is a very different thing
where all you have to do is download a file,
press a button, and a printer gives you a gun.
- I don't think that's an accurate
description of the technology.
This is not just point, click, shoot.
- Bad people can go to Instagram and get an Instagun.
- People think that with a 3D-printed gun,
you press one button, click, and a gun pops out.
It's actually a very complicated process.
Might take a full day of printing,
you have to treat the plastic with chemicals so that they're
strong enough and then odds are the gun's pretty crappy.
- [John] America does have a long tradition
of people making their own guns.
- If we had a ban on home manufacture of weapons
in the time of the American Revolution,
we would probably still be under the King's rule.
- Well, it was a very different society.
Now we have AR-15s and semi-automatic weapons.
- Rights were enshrined in the Constitution for permanence,
they're not put there for transitory fleeting references,
they're there for the long haul.
- But the Constitution also says,
"Provide for the common defense."
Politicians call printable guns a windfall for terrorists.
- A direct threat to our national security.
- Terrorists have access to far more
dangerous weapons than 3D-printed guns.
The notion that, you know, ISIS is having a factory
with 3D printers and making these stupid little plastic guns
that can fire one shot at a time,
it really strains credulity.
- [John] But couldn't 3D-printed plastic guns
sneak through airport security?
- Bullets are made out of metal.
- They'll just use plastic bullets.
- You can buy plastic bullets, or rubber bullets,
today in a store, they're not very effective.
- [John] Six years ago, when Blackman's client first posted
the blueprints, the State Department
forced them to pull the files.
- We took our files down but thousands of other places
on the internet ended up hosting them, it's true.
(screen popping)
- [John] The legislator hadn't realized that.
- Is that an active website right now?
- Download now, anybody can do it.
- I understand that some people might think
that the genie is out of the bottle but let's put as much
of that genie back into the bottle as we possibly can.
- You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
One of the reasons why these efforts
to regulate the internet is kind of silly
is you can't shut down information.
If anything, banning the information creates interest,
right, when you ban something, people say,
"Oh, I wanna get that."
And it makes people wanna download it even more.
- For now, the information's out there and politicians
and TV anchors will try to scare you to death.
- Tomorrow morning, the sun will be shining,
the birds will be singing, and anyone will be able
to legally download instructions to 3D print
their own fully functional plastic gun.
- That happened.
The world's the same, the birds are still singing,
the sun's still rising, and people are just fear-mongering.
- There will be a new wave of gun violence.
- We believe in free speech, this is an important principle,
and the state can't take us down.
(gentle music)