Just hours before Sunday
For those unfamiliar, Defense Distributed has been publishing open-source designs for 3-D printed guns online since 2013 (though that was a plastic part). Its stated purpose is to use 3-D printing and other technologies to render any attempts to regulate or track the possession of firearms obsolete—a move its CEO and founder, Cody Wilson, sees as fundamental to the U.S. constitution's guarantee of a right to bear arms.
While a 3-D printed plastic gun may have worked for that purpose, Wilson tells Ars Technica that with the machined metal devices “you’re making the identical item that you would otherwise handle, purchase, and fire—so it feels identical."
The newly released software allows people to use the firm’s $1,500 Ghost Gunner milling machine to create the body of an M1911 handgun, which is used in the Colt 45. Defense Distributed says “no prior CNC knowledge or experience is required to manufacture [the gun bodies] in the comfort and privacy of your home.”
Metal or plastic, the technology behind Wilson’s company probably isn’t making much of an impact on gun violence in the U.S.—mainly because guns are already so cheap and easy to come by. In fact, it's far more likely that the Las Vegas shooter performed a technically-legal modification on a weapon, which for a hundred bucks can turn an AR-15 (a gun that Defense Distributed has also worked to help anonymize) into something virtually indistiguishable from a machine gun. Building a gun from scratch at home is simply more effort than it’s worth, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
