CODY R. WILSON: Gun control, for us is a fantasy.
In a way that people say, wait a minute, you're being
unrealistic about printing a gun.
I think it's more unrealistic now, especially going forward,
to think you could ever control this technology.
[GUNSHOTS]
ERIN LEE CARR: 2012 was a bloody year in America, one
that saw 16 mass shootings in 15 different states.
The violence led Helen O'Neill of the Associated Press to dub
it the year of the gun.
It all came to a head on December 14 in Newtown,
Connecticut.
-Units in [INAUDIBLE].
I've got bodies here.
Let's get ambulances.
Thank you.
ERIN LEE CARR: That morning, 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered
Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 children and six
adults before taking his own life.
BARACK OBAMA: In the hard days to come, that community needs
us to be our best as Americans.
And I will do everything in my power as President to help.
ERIN LEE CARR: In the wake of the tragedy, President Obama
announced 23 executive actions meant to curb gun violence.
Included were universal background checks, as well as
bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
WAYNE LAPIERRE: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a
gun is a good guy with a gun.
ERIN LEE CARR: In defiance, the NRA and other pro-gun
activists stepped up campaigns that directly opposed any new
gun control regulations.
In the midst of this political firestorm is Cody R. Wilson, a
25-year-old graduate student and self-described
crypto-anarchist.
Cody is trying to put an end to the gun control debate with
3D printing.
As one of the key figures in the wiki weapon movement, his
goal is to produce and publish a file for a completely 3D
printed firearm, one that anyone can download and then
create with the right tools.
He does this under the banner of his Austin, Texas-based
company, Defense Distributed.
3D printing or additive
manufacturing works like this--
a computer aided design or CAD file is created.
That file is then sent to a 3D printer.
The printer then builds the object in the CAD file by
starting at the base and applying a series of layers.
At the end of the process, a 3D printed item is born.
So how will the ability to self-manufacture untraceable
firearms affect the gun control debate?
"Motherboard" traveled to Austin to get Cody Wilson's
perspective.
CODY R. WILSON: So this is my warehouse.
Basically, it's a space that we've been using since August.
We have a 3D printer on site.
When you get a federal firearms license, your
activity and the location are all tied
together with the license.
So I can't have a license and go do things somewhere else.
I have to have it at a location.
And this is the Objet Connex printer that we've been using
from the very beginning.
Our very first lower receiver was printed here.
I hooked it up to an upper and fired it.
So the project begins, and no one will listen to you.
-So this is testing the printed lower
with an AR-57 upper.
CODY R. WILSON: You fight just to be heard.
[GUNSHOTS]
CODY R. WILSON: Did you break it?
And then something changes, and then you're heard.
We hypothesized a gun control future, even when they weren't
coming for us.
ALEX JONES: You said that three or four months ago.
CODY R. WILSON: That's right.
Joe Biden?
This is no country for old men.
[GUNSHOTS]
CODY R. WILSON: We really don't think it's a stunt, man.
I think the state is now making it easier for us to
prove this point, whatever this permanent assault weapon
ban is going to be.
How's that national conversation going?
[GUNSHOTS]
-Is this guy a hero or a villain?
CODY R. WILSON: That's a good question.
By Defense Distributed in Austin, Texas.
My partner, Ben Denio, the guy who basically came up with the
idea with me, we were on the phone.
And Ben was like, we could be arms manufacturers.
That would be cool, right?
What about 3D printing?
At that point, we weren't aware that anyone had done it
or was trying to.
I said, if we could print a gun, other
people could do this.
What if we gave it away, open source style?
What would that mean?
And we realized, wow, this is really attractive.
You begin with the file.
Often, you have it in CAD.
It's parametric.
You can edit it.
But you say, well, we don't know how this works.
So you test it in software because that's cheaper.
Than you find your printer.
What material does that printer use?
And you say, OK, I'd like this material.
Let's see what this can do.
You wait 12 hours.
You wait seven hours.
You might wait a day.
OK, now we have a piece.
In the case of lower receivers, it's easy.
It's not dangerous if it failed.
ERIN LEE CARR: Defense Distributed is currently
focused on designing a durable lower receiver, which is the
mechanism that houses the trigger.
All of their lower receivers to this point have been
designed for the highly customizable AR-15, the same
type of gun used in the Sandy Hook massacre.
CODY R. WILSON: We couldn't have predicted Sandy Hook and
some of these other events.
People say, where do you think your project fits within this
greater discussion about gun control?
If we make a Second Amendment argument, it's all the way.
It's to the limit.
But I don't like to make it about the Second Amendment or
gun control at all.
It's more radical for us.
There are people from all over the world downloading our
files, and we say, good.
We say you should have access to this.
You simply should.
ERIN LEE CARR: We left the warehouse and traveled across
town to Cody's apartment, which doubles as Defense
Distributed HQ.
It is also home to his private arsenal.
CODY R. WILSON: All the magic that the ATF loves to regulate
happens right in here.
So this is the firearm in commerce.
None of this is serialized.
You can order this right through the mail.
If you're 12 years old, you can buy it online, which, I
think, is a thing of beauty.
I like fitting the clear piece to it, because you can see
everything inside.
The only problem that this piece has is it just simply
can't take some of the recoil forces.
And I think we can fix that.
So this is 1,080 rounds of corrosive 5.45x39.
What's great right now about America is, you can buy
ammunition online.
And this is post-Sandy Hook craze ammo I found--
good deal.
The question that I hear a lot is, well, why does anyone need
an ammunition clip for more than 30 rounds?
Or 30 rounds?
Why does anyone need that?
Don't you know they can do all kinds of harm with that?
Why shouldn't we limit their reload times?
But I think there's an error there.
And I can demonstrate it in other ways.
Why does anyone need two houses?
Why does anyone need to make more than $400,000?
You hear it every day.
It's just a kind of dim view of human spontaneity.
Because we are so free, everything must be prohibited.
I've only let one other crew up here, Canada Global News,
just because they're so--
just like the terrorism, like they're just so
terrified by it.
For historical purposes, this is a pre-banned semi-auto.
This is what it used to look like, kids.
But if I could do it over, if I knew that there'd be a ban
coming, I'd get into the AR, because you're never going to
find 545 laying around.
This is version three of our lower, in fact, our first
really successful step from our first test.
So this was our first piece that could take
us to like 100 rounds.
[GUNSHOTS]
CODY R. WILSON: And the design of the AR system allows this.
People have carved lowers out of wood.
We're not trying to say, here it is.
We're trying to prove a point, that look, you can print this
out of plastic.
And just to take the "New York Times" point specifically, you
can do this in your bedroom.
It's to prove this political point, that look, gun control
doesn't mean what it meant in 1994.
NICK BILTON: I'm Nick Bilton.
I'm a columnist for the "New York Times" and the lead
writer for the "New York Times Bits Blog." And I cover
technology, and privacy, and culture, and the things that
are changing in society as a result of those.
When you first see something that's printed out in three
dimensions, it kind of blows your mind a little bit.
And so I'd always tracked this technology as I had been a
reporter at the "Times." And one day, I was on Thingiverse
which is a website which allows you to upload parts for
3D printers and then download them.
And I came across a gun part.
And I was kind of blown away.
I was like, what is this thing?
The more and I started to research, the more I started
to find out that there was this very, very small group of
people that were exploring building a 3D gun.
CODY R. WILSON: Thingiverse.com, which is
known in the hobby or the maker community to be this
repository of community information for 3D printing,
it decided to take unilateral action and just remove all
these gun related files.
And it seems pretty clear it was a response to Sandy Hook.
So without even judging what they're doing, it just is an
act of censorship in my mind.
Yeah, they have a terms of service that say, well, you
can't have gun files.
But they had hosted those files, some of them for up to
over a year.
But those files immediately went down, and we recognized,
OK, people don't know, at least in the maker community,
where to go now.
So we decided to launch defcad.org and hosted all the
files that they took down.
And then since then, people have now doubled the files
that we have just sending us files.
I get files at least once a day, sometimes more.
Oh, cool, the "Blaze" article is out.
People rushing to download online blueprints--
this will only reinforce what's going on.
So it's a piece about our site, Defcad, talking more or
less about how there's a virtual rush on-- oh, yeah, I
posted this list of all of the government
visitors to our site.
There's not strong sharing or anything on it yet.
NICK BILTON: Cody Wilson had been featured in "Wired," I
believe, and then he'd also made the news as his 3D
printer had been taken away after he'd put a video online
explaining what he was going to do.
ERIN LEE CARR: On September 26, 2012, Cody was notified
that the 3D printer he had recently began leasing was
being repossessed.
The manufacturer's reasoning?
Cody's lack of a federal firearms license and his
public statements regarding the
intended use for the printer.
CODY R. WILSON: Well, these boxes are the
uPrint SE Plus printer.
This is as far as I had gotten.
So just wondering, did they tell you guys why you were
taking this.
-No.
CODY R. WILSON: They didn't say anything about it?
-No.
CODY R. WILSON: So for the record, I was trying to print
guns with that printer.
And they took it away because I was trying to print guns
with it, just to let you know.
-Oh, that's cool.
NICK BILTON: When I called him up and we spoke, he just left
the ATF's offices.
They'd actually been discussing what is legal and
what is not.
This was an entirely new thing.
They knew that it was illegal to own this part for a gun
without having it registered and so on.
But when you could make the part for the gun, that changes
the whole course of the conversation.
CODY R. WILSON: OK, that's the best way to talk about it.
This whole piece begins from an [INAUDIBLE] file that can
be CNC milled into a metal receiver.
It's just not built for being in plastic.
So when we had fired our first one, we noticed a lot of give
in the back of the piece.
It was bouncing.
It was flexing.
And then the recoil of the gun tore right
through this buffer tower.
So we doubled the thickness all the way around.
And we thought, even marginally, that improves the
strength, especially in the Objet material we were using.
I'm out here with only two or three
people helping in Austin.
We concentrate our efforts on lowers.
And I'm just now starting with magazines.
In fact, the whole operation has pivoted.
I've got four or five guys-- really all the people that I
know that are talented in SolidWorks working on high
capacity magazines.
It proves the point much better than the
low receiver does.
You can't ban a box and a spring.
This is a Colt M-16 and a printed
high capacity magazine.
[GUNSHOTS]
CODY R. WILSON: We come out and we say, yeah, we're
willing to look like idiots.
But the interest is in preserving firearms on the
internet, and people like that message.
Despite this whole idea of Democratic consensus, there's
a lot of people who are interested.
So they do whatever they can.
We get donations every day.
NICK BILTON: Cody's 24 years old.
When I was 24 years old, I was reading books about Israel and
Gaza and believed that was this kind of
conspiracy and that.
And it's part of who we are.
It's part of what we do.
It just happens that Cody has decided to stick with guns as
his thing that he's going to fight for.
CODY R. WILSON: There's this Fukuyamaist idea that history
had ended after the Cold War and that if we could just
tweak neoliberal democracy, everything's going to be fine
forever, that somehow, this is like the final political form.
This is ridiculous.
And you can see it.
There's no evidence of a political program
anymore in the world.
In America, there aren't genuine politics.
There's the media telling you Barack Obama versus Mitt
Romney, is the epic clash of ideology when we both know
they're globalist neoliberals.
They both exist to preserve the interests of this
relatively autonomous class of Goldman Sachs bankers.
NICK BILTON: He believes that he's doing the right thing and
that he is perpetuating this kind of technology and looking
at what it will be.
But I also think that there is definitely a part of what he's
doing for attention.
The reader email I got on that gun piece was phenomenal.
And a large majority of it was, why are you giving this
kid attention?
It's clear that this is why he's doing it.
CODY R. WILSON: I don't remember a lot about my
exchange with Nick.
But it was like very matter of fact.
He was like, why?
We believe it's worth doing.
The piece disappointed me a little bit.
He's like, now felons, and children, and the insane--
OK, blah, blah, blah.
This man wants children to have guns.
I was like, all right, fine.
Take the easy road, fine.
But at least he was saying it's intentionally disruptive.
That's true.
NICK BILTON: A "New York Times" reporter
sensationalizing something?
No, I'm just kidding.
It's really interesting.
As someone who's been covering 3D printers since they were
essentially coming into the mainstream a little bit, I
have seen that the people that are
interested in them are teenagers.
And so my thought when I heard about what Cody was up to was
the fact that the first people that are probably going to use
these are going to be kids.
The reality is, he could be the canary in the coal mine
that is showing us what the future may be.
CODY R. WILSON: So we're at one of the service bureaus
that helps us out, basically, one of our
printers north of Austin.
We come here to prototype a lot of our designs.
This particular printer is good, because we can hop on
this almost any time we want.
The volume of the machine is such that we can just come in
with other pieces that are being printed.
NICK BILTON: I truly do believe that in the next
decade, the majority of Americans will have a 3D
printer in their home.
I truly believe that.
They will be printing out cups and plates and furniture and
all these different things.
And some of those people will be printing out
weapons with that.
And I think that that's something that we should be
talking about now, not waiting until it happens
a decade from now.
The science fiction writers that we all grew up--
they imagined worlds where technology solves problems.
They don't imagine worlds where it creates problems and
kills people.
When Bre and Makerbot and those guys developed these 3D
printers, they imagined people making clothes hooks and baby
pins and all these wonderful things that make the world a
better place.
They had no concept--
none of us had any concept--
that these things would be used to create weapons that
would kill people.
You have people like Cody that come along and look at
something that you think is a cute little kitten and realize
that he can program it to kill people.
BRE PETTIS: Other people can stand on our shoulders and
learn from what we've done and take it farther.
ERIN LEE CARR: We reached out to Bre Pettis, who is CEO of
Makerbot and co-founder of Thingiverse, but he refused to
comment on this story.
NICK BILTON: Technology always moves quicker than the law.
It was six years before Facebook was actually held
accountable for all the privacy things that they'd
done by the FTC.
Six years and a billion users before the FTC actually caught
up to the things that they had done.
And this is happening now with 3D printers and guns.
CODY R. WILSON: I've read a lot of the criticisms, the
back and forth in the maker community and the tech
community about, well, 3D printing is
like desktop printing.
No, it's not.
It's nothing like it at all.
It's not going to be the same.
Who can know?
I do see how there's materials like carbonmorph coming out.
There's complex materials coming out, even for cheap
printers in unexpected ways.
And I think if complex materials can keep being
developed for 3D printing, it is going to be what some
people are saying about it, a real step forward.
Some people are willing to run all the way with it.
Maybe we're some of them.
We're like, oh, whole guns.
But it's a vision of something.
Thank you, man.
That's good.
So here's the piece we picked up.
So this, I think, revision, was it three?
-Yeah.
CODY R. WILSON: Do you remember the file?
Yeah.
It's stained and everything?
-Yeah, this is a black coating on it.
CODY R. WILSON: It's badass.
It's not threaded?
-No.
CODY R. WILSON: We've got this.
I got my tap wrench to work finally after the other day.
We're printing two magazines today.
They're both 30-round.
And the point is just a demonstration.
So one is a USGI mag.
It probably won't work very long.
But one of these shells I think really will.
But anything over ten at this point proves a point.
The only things recognized and promulgated in this business
culture are irreversible things--
progress, growth.
To have a symbolic gift, like the printable gun does so much
ideological damage and violence to these ideas.
You these progressives talk all the time about the wrong
side of history.
Somehow we're going to get to some result.
And it's all going to be a whole and good.
And we say, no.
Here's an element of reversibility.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
It's like the intelligence and transparency of evil itself.
It can't be ignored.
ERIN LEE CARR: A supporter of Defense Distributed joined us
for the field test.
He asked that we not use his real name.
CODY R. WILSON: You know, Feinstein's bill would
regulate semi-autos harsher than fully automatic weapons,
if it was to be passed today as it was proposed.
You think it's all right?
See that hammer spring in there on the right?
-Firearms are so demonized as something that's
going to hurt somebody.
But what a firearm actually is, is a tool.
And it depends on how you would like to utilize it.
And you can't really ban something based upon the
individual intent.
With all these mass killings going on, it was their intent
to do that.
If they really wanted to do it, they
wouldn't need a firearm.
They would do whatever it takes to do what
they want to do.
CODY R. WILSON: Don't tell me we're going to get all the way
out here and this isn't going to work.
-We'll make it work.
CODY R. WILSON: Well, we're going to need a hammer.
ERIN LEE CARR: As Cody and his associate began fitting the
lower receiver to the AR-15, they ran into
an unexpected problem.
The black dye that the manufacturer applied to the
piece make it slightly too thick to fit with
the rest of the gun.
CODY R. WILSON: We've never worked with
a dyed piece before.
Let's try it.
Last time, I just used the hammer and got it through,
regardless.
Just fine.
Maybe this paint will give it like a 0.01% strength
improvement, and we'll break 100 rounds today.
-Sounds good.
[GUNSHOTS]
CODY R. WILSON: Empty?
-Done.
CODY R. WILSON: Oh, we broke it?
OK.
I thought it would do well.
How many rounds was that?
-Well, I've got a mag.
CODY R. WILSON: At this point, this is like, what, gen three?
We know how this one is going to break.
So it's just like we told you, right through the--
-27 rounds.
CODY R. WILSON: We know that we're already in a better
place than this.
But I'm happy to demonstrate 30 rounds for you today.
-Definitely.
[GUNSHOTS]
ERIN LEE CARR: Shortly after we wrapped filming, Defense
Distributed posted this video on their YouTube page.
It shows the latest version of their lower receiver firing
over 600 rounds without failure.
When we reached out to the ATF for a comment on this story, a
representative told us that there are currently no
restrictions on an individual manufacturing firearms for
personal use.
They then directed us towards their FAQ.
Then on March 16, Defense Distributed announced that the
ATF had approved Cody Wilson's application for a federal
firearms license.
Cody is now able to sell the 3D printed lower receivers.
But he won't.
CODY R. WILSON: I don't think we're utopians.
I think the real utopia is the idea that we can go back to
the 1990s, and everything will be perfect forever.
All we're saying is, no, you can't.
Now there's the Internet.