A 3-D printer can now be used by anyone to make a plastic gun. Texas-based Defense Distributed has just made the blueprints available for free. The non-profit group professes to want to challenge gun laws and to make weapons available for those living in politically oppressive regimes.
In Canada, it is illegal to manufacture or possess a firearm without certain licences and registrations. The national police force, the RCMP, is monitoring developments in 3-D printing to make guns, according to a spokesman.
For the first time Defense Distributed has posted a video of a successful test firing of what it calls the Liberator pistol, made entirely of plastic except for a metal nail used as a firing pin.
The gun is made by the 3-D printer which deposits layers of plastic by squirting it as it scans line by line. The pieces can be then assembled. Without the pin it would be impossible to find with a metal detector and so could easily be concealed on a plane or crossing borders.
It’s not likely these guns will be widely printed now, since the printers are big and cost about $8,000. But that is going to change.
“The big shift that’s happening now is that three dimensional printers are becoming smaller and cheaper and more easily accessible,” said David Gerhard, associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan province. “People have been very excited because you can print anything you might need in your house…But suddenly people are using this 3-D printer for things that might not be as exciting and forward-looking and utopian.”
Canadian gun control could be useless
Canada has relatively strict laws to control guns. For now only a simple gun that fires one shot can be printed. But if the technology progresses and more sophisticated weapons can be printed, gun control laws could become unenforceable.
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