The digital blueprints for the first open-source, and working, 3D-printed gun was pulled offline on Thursday by its provider, Defense Distributed, at the request of the U.S. State Department. The State Department claims Defense Distributed may have violated a set of export control laws called International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The files to print the gun, referred to as "the Liberator," were released on Monday on DEFCAD.org, a non-profit website dedicated to hosting 3D printer designs for weapons, and could be downloaded anywhere in the world. They were, and the State Department acted.
The site's founder, Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old Texas law student pushing for the free availability of 3D-printable weapons, has made headlines in recent months for push to create the first 3D-printable gun. Wilson confirmed to Forbes that he received a letter from the State Department requesting the removal of the designs.
"Defcad files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Control," a notice posted to the top of DEFCAD.org reads. The files were downloaded over 100,000 times over a period of two days from the site.
But there may be no stopping the spread of the files, now being hosted by websites like The Pirate Bay and Mega, which reside outside U.S. jurisdiction.
The furor over 3D printed guns has attracted the attention of politicians in high places. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) have both spoken out against 3D-printable guns, saying they pose a threat to the public at large because they wouldn't be detectable by metal detectors and could fall into the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable.
But the 3D printers used to create the gun aren't freely available to the general public. The Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer used to print the first Liberator costs $8,000 alone, according to The Guardian. A low-end 3D printer on the general market cannot print the plastic in a dense enough fashion to withstand the forces of firing a single .380 caliber bullet (the single-shot Liberator only survived a few test rounds).
Many companies who own printers capable of laying dense enough plastics have also refused to print the gun.
The State Department's censorship, however, doesn't bother Wilson, who said he wanted to make a point with the Liberator: that a 3D-printable gun cannot be regulated out of existence in the Internet era.
"This is the conversation I want," Wilson told Forbes. "Is this a workable regulatory regime? Can there be defense trade control in the era of the Internet and 3D printing?"
