3D Printed Guns: Where Are We Now?

Just over a decade ago, millions of people had no idea what 3D printing was and learned about it for the first time when the headlines of international news read “3D printed guns”. Years after the first 3D printed gun was created, people and governments still discuss this topic, the opinions are divided. But how did the story of 3D printed guns begin? What 3D printing technologies are used? Why do some people believe that 3D printed firearms are more dangerous than “traditional” ones, while others disagree? We wrote a review on the subject of 3D printed guns to address these questions.

Cody Wilson Invents the 3D Printed Gun

It all started in 2012 when a man named Cody Wilson revealed his plan to make the design of firearms open-source so that everyone could print a weapon at home. A self-proclaimed crypto-anarchist, he was neither a criminal nor a deranged geek but a Law student at the University of Texas at the time. However, he left the university the next year – to commit, apparently, full-time to the development and distribution of 3D printed guns. For this purpose, he founded Defense Distributed, with its own online platform called Defcad. Wilson identifies it not as a tech business but as a “nonprofit defense organization” whose purpose is to fight against government censorship.

Cody Wilson

In 2013, the very first CAD (computer-aided design) gun file became available online, which you could download for free everywhere in the world. The digital file immediately went viral, with over 100,000 downloads in just two days. Unsurprisingly, the US Government demanded that Defense Distributed remove the file from their site.

3D Printed Guns in the US

A legal battle between Cody Wilson and the US Government followed, consisting of back-and-forth lawsuits. It lasted five years, until in 2018, the Trump administration legalized 3D printed guns. The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual assault of an underage girl and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless, the organization did not cease to exist without Cody. The 3D gun market grew to the point where it has become a serious problem both in the United States and in other parts of the globe. Stashes of unregistered 3D printed guns are discovered every week by police.

An example of a 3D printed gun design.

Interestingly enough, the 2018 legalization by the Trump administration was not the end of the story. In 2019, a federal judge in Seattle ruled the legalization illegal and thus temporarily blocked Defcad again. In response to that blockage, the Deterrence Dispensed group was formed in the same year (2019). While they share the same ideology, this network of gun activists is different from Defense Distributed in that it is entirely decentralized, which means that it would be challenging if not impossible to stop them. On their website, the activist network states: “Deterrence Dispensed has deliberately chosen not to organize formally. This ensures that nothing can affect us as a group, as occurred to Defense Distributed when the government prevented them as a company from releasing the Liberator pistol plans. (…) Since its inception, Deterrence Dispensed has released open-source firearms knowledge to the public sphere and will continue to do so indefinitely”.

3D model of a firearm.

All gun activists, including Defense Distributed and Deterrence Dispensed, refer to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, « A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.» So, the legal battle between gun activists and the US Government still goes on today. In early 2020, a coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the Trump Administration’s decision to allow sharing 3D printed gun files on the Internet. Currently, there are a number of proposed laws to address what has become an issue. One example is a proposed New York bill that promises to regulate the sale of 3D printers and thus printed guns.

The U.S. Department of Defense has allocated a substantial budget to the development of 3D-printed weaponry, recognizing the advantages of this technology. Production using 3D printing is significantly faster than traditional methods, and the manufacturing of small parts for vehicles or aircraft is more cost-effective. The United States is not the only country incorporating this technology into its military operations. However, focusing on the current developments, the mass production of these weapons is noteworthy. Notably, 3D printers are being deployed in the field, allowing soldiers on expeditions to print weapons and ammunition directly on the battlefield. This innovation represents a significant shift in military logistics and operational capabilities

Types of 3D Printed Guns

The 3D printed firearm is also known as the “ghost gun”, since it doesn’t have a commercial serial number or any other marks that could help identify the owner. The Liberator .380 was designed and released by Cody Wilson in 2013 and was the first 3D printed plastic gun. It was a single-shot pistol made with Fused Deposition Modeling on a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer. Until today, the Liberator is the closest thing to a wholly plastic gun, although it still requires a steel nail that serves as the firing pin. An essential characteristic of a plastic gun -and a reason to fear it – is that it does not trigger metal detectors. But more about it later.

The Liberator, the first 3D printed gun.

While Liberator might be the best-known 3D printed gun made from plastic, stronger and more reliable guns can be made using metal 3D printing. For example, the Solid Concepts replica of the Browning 1911 handgun was the first 3D-printed metal gun. Solid Concepts was an AM company based in California, but Stratasys acquired it in 2014. Their 3D printed metal handgun was built using Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DLMS) technology and could fire more than 600 bullets without damaging the gun. It is believed to be the most reliable metal 3D printed gun.

However, while metal guns are much more reliable than plastic ones, they are also quite out of reach for the average person. The metal printer used to create the Solid Concepts 1911 weapon cost between $500,000 and $1 million when it was created (November 2013), and the gun itself was being sold for $11,900 a piece.

The first 3D printed metal gun by Solid Concepts.

An illustrative example of the implications of 3D-printed plastic weapons occurred in Iceland, where four men armed with plastic automatic pistols created through additive manufacturing were arrested while preparing to attack state institutions. This incident highlights a growing concern: an increasing number of individuals are finding STL files for such weapons on obscure parts of the internet and attempting to use these homemade firearms to commit crimes.

Focusing on weapons created through metal 3D printing, the technology and models have significantly evolved since 2013 when Solid Concepts first introduced its 3D-printed firearm. Today, it is possible to print fully functional assault rifles, light machine guns, sniper rifles, and their corresponding accessories using a metal 3D printer. This process is not only relatively inexpensive but also highly effective, making these weapons fully operational.

It is worth mentioning that a small percentage of the owners of these weapons use them responsibly. This has come to light since the first shooting contest has been organized in the United States in which the only regulation weapons were 3D printed ones. The participants, proud of their creations, showed them off while demonstrating what their guns were capable of.

Military-grade weapon 3D printed in metal. (Photo Credit: ElDebate)

The Technology Behind 3D Printed Guns

When discussing the actual process of 3D printing a firearm, it is essential to note that a 3D printer cannot create a complex mechanism like a functional gun all in one piece. Thus, the individual elements are all printed separately and later assembled manually. It is a rather lengthy process, and not an easy one either.

As for the materials, to manufacture a gun with an FDM 3D printer, one can choose between several types of thermoplastics. However, either PLA or ABS is usually used for this purpose. But even these thermoplastics are not perfect for fabricating a functional gun. PLA is softer, so apart from it typically deforms very quickly. ABS is more complex, but it only means it will crack and break rather than deform. Therefore, the user can usually only fire one bullet before a thermoplastic part breaks – the explosive force of firing a bullet is too powerful. For example, in 2013, a police department in Australia tested out a 3D printed gun: they could fire a 17 centimeters bullet, but the plastic immediately exploded once the bullet was discharged.

The Liberator before being assembled.

Debate and Controversy

Naturally, there is a conflict between gun activists and those who passionately denounce gun violence. In the United States, most of the time, the debate about 3D printed guns represents a broader debate about guns and gun violence.

Yet, some people fear 3D printed guns in particular, much more than they do “conventional” ones, and they have their arguments. Firstly, they fear the untraceable nature of this weapon since it makes it rather challenging to identify the shooter. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, as the makers and owners of 3D printed guns are not subject to background checks, a person can 3D print a firearm even if they are mentally ill, felon, or underage.

In addition, plastic guns do not trigger metal detectors, which is a solid reason to ban this type of firearm. Even if a thermoplastic rifle is prone to break after a single shot, it can still kill or injure one person. For instance, in 2013, three Mail on Sunday reporters 3D printed a Liberator pistol on a 3D printer that cost less than $2,000 and boarded a Eurostar train with it. Since the gun was plastic, metal detectors weren’t set off, and the men smuggled the disassembled gun by putting parts in each of their pockets. The Liberator was then reassembled in the train toilet cabin. This experiment proves how easy it is to smuggle deadly weapons, even to places with relatively high security, such as airports and train stations.

A Sunday Mail reporter is holding the 3D printed gun in Eurostar train. (Photo Credit: Mail on Sunday)

On the other hand, there are just as many people who believe that it is unreasonable to fear 3D printed guns more than traditional ones. According to them, 3D printed guns can’t even function well enough to become widely used – most of the time the gun just explodes in the user’s hands, breaks, or deforms.

Overall, it is true that the present state of desktop 3D printing doesn’t quite allow high-quality guns to be produced at home; it is a slow and complicated process. However, it is not unlikely that this will change as technology advances. The future might indeed be alarming since AM technologies are evolving rapidly, with a wide variety of new materials being constantly developed and released. For example, metal 3D printing is 10-100 times faster – and relatively cheaper – than it used to be when 3D printed guns first emerged. Therefore, some believe that 3D printed firearms will pose a threat in the future. The question is, how distant is that future?

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