Owner of 3D-Printed Gun Company Defies Court, Begins Selling Anyway
The Liberator pistol isn’t pretty. It can take days to produce with a 3D printer. It can’t shoot very far, and the first bullet is often enough to break the gun forever. Despite these setbacks, the Liberator has a supreme quality that sets it apart in the firearms world.
If you ever need a Liberator, you can print one at home.
A court order earlier this August sought to stop that, barring inventor and Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson from sharing the blueprints online.
This Tuesday, Wilson ignored the court and uploaded plans for the Liberator. ‘Anyone who wants to get these files is going to get them,’ he said after uploading them to DEFCAD.com.
DEFCAD is Wilson’s website, where he hosts files needed for a 3D printer to produce Liberator pistols and parts for an AR-15.
The plans aren’t blueprints for a gun you can simply assemble in your garage.
Requiring industry materials and printers ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, any of these can be downloaded and produced. If you know enough, these files could possibly even be altered to fit different calibers.
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik sees a problem in letting these files permeate the internet. He previously sided with the states fighting to keep the Liberator suppressed, saying the ease of spreading these files will ‘not only impact national security but have domestic repercussions as well.’
The states argue that easy access to the printing files would cause trouble due to the plastic pieces of the gun being invisible to a metal detector, allowing a terrorist to slip through undetected.
But terrorists can, and have, slipped through with things much deadlier than a plastic pistol. Anyone with an internet connection can whip up some mild explosives with a trip to Home Depot, and nothing short of bomb dogs will ever find them.
Why then are we not required to present a license when buying home chemicals?
Explosives have much greater terror potential than a single-shot Liberator, especially since some intrepid Finnish people found that ‘once fired, the barrel of the gun split in half. The cartridge case cracked and the gun’s frame fell apart.’
This gun is starting to sound like a piece of junk.
I cannot stress this enough: the Liberator honestly is a piece of junk. No gun owner in their right mind would invest in something that can break the first time you fire it. It isn’t economically practical considering a $100 shotgun can defend your home better than a one-shot pistol from a $300 machine. The shotgun won’t maim your hand from plastic shrapnel, and can fire a follow-up shot if the first one doesn’t do the trick.
So why are they fighting this fragile, weak pistol so feverishly? I think it has something to do with its unique quality, the only thing capable of making a government scared when they hear it go bump in the night. A quality more deadly in the hands of a citizen than range, power, and toughness.
If you need a Liberator, you can print one at home.
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