May 15, 2020 • 35 mins
How powerful is the 3D-printed gun designed by Cody Wilson? Why is the gun so controversial? Is a plastic gun really undetectable?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And it's Friday. That
means it's time for a tech Stuff classic episode. This
particular episode published originally on May twenty second, two thousand.
(00:30):
It is called printing a Gun, and it's pretty much
what it sounds like, using three D printers to use
additive manufacturing to produce firearms. Lauren Voege Obama and I
sat down to talk about this one because it was
a brand new, fresh topic and it's one that remains
relevant today, So enjoy this classic episode. Jonathan and Chris
(00:51):
did an episode on three D print ng way back
in two nine. Yeah, that was shortly after printing itself
was invented. Um before or that, we just communicated by
banging rocks together. No one was alive then, yeah, well
there's no no life. We were alive, but anyway, no, no,
no, no no no. We did an episode on three D
(01:12):
printing back in two thousand nine, which was funny because
at that point I had never actually seen one in person.
Now we have one in the office. We have one
in the office. Now, Yeah, we actually have a three
D printer here that's very very tiny and we can
only print small stuff with it. But it's mostly green
because we haven't changed out the plastic. But what three
D printers do. They print stuff in three dimensions and
(01:33):
they it's called additive manufacturing, yes, and it's this is
different from subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive would be where you take
a hunk of stuff and carve away all the stuff
you don't want. It's Michael Angelo's David exactly. Yeah, you're
you're you cut away everything that doesn't look like David. Right.
That's that's the sculpt sculpting point of view. You know,
to sculpt an elephant, you cut all the stuff away
(01:53):
that doesn't look like an elephant. But that's very wasteful.
It means that all that material you cut away you
potentially waste. By using additive manufacturing, you're printing a material.
In most cases, in consumer cases, at any rate, plastics
in very thin layers uh in in in a predetermined
design exactly. And these layers can be a micron thick
(02:14):
or thinner. If you've got very precise three D printing technology,
and you do this layer by layer by layer until
finally you have a full object. And it's doing this
with plastic and a binding agents so that the plastic
sticks together properly. Otherwise it would just fall apart and
crumble in your hands. But not so useful. Not so useful.
(02:34):
It would be very pretty until you try to pick
it up. But the but the finished product winds up
being a single piece of plastic in this case. And yeah,
and we've got other there are other types of three
D printers out there. They're not for consumers that can
print in other materials. And we expect then in the
future we're going to be able to do things like
print and metal, even to the point where we can
print circuit boards or human organs. Human organs using biological
(02:58):
material we can print it maybe lass really anything that
would allow you to print using a liquid. Uh, it
would it would all be potentially possible using this method.
If you're interested in that. We uh. In our other show,
Forward Thinking, we talked a little bit about that, So
so look that one up if you want to. Yeah,
it's a lot of fun. That was one of the
earliest episodes. I had a lot of fun talking about that. So,
(03:20):
what's the big deal with three D printing. Well, it's
it's an incredibly disruptive technology. Uh, And I don't necessarily
mean that in a negative way, but it does mean
that three D printers have the potential to really shake
up the way the world works in many ways, like
manufacturing and distribution in particular would be very much affected
(03:40):
by three D printers. If you get to the point
where a three D printer is within the purchasing range
of your average computer user, then that computer user can
go out by a three D printer, bring it home
by the materials you need to be able to build whatever,
and then you can start constructing stuff out of your home.
You could download plans from the internet and build things.
(04:00):
And those things could be furniture, it could be toys,
it could be tools. Uh. And so that means that
you've got these manufacturers out there who design and build
stuff that suddenly have to worry about, well, is there
going to even be a market for my stuff anymore?
Or do I do I change my business models? So
instead of selling stuff, I start selling plans for stuff. Right,
(04:22):
you start worrying a lot more about the intellectual copyright
of the shape of a table, which is kind of crazy, right, Like,
you're no longer thinking I need to make sure no
one shoplifts this thing. You're thinking, I need to make
sure no one builds a plan that allows them to
to print the same as this thing. So there are
a lot of intellectual property concerns that come up because
(04:43):
of three D printing, and some of them are concerns
that we never would have thought about before, like how
do you copyright a table? You know, but that's a
thing now. So one of the other questions that came
up pretty early on when three D printers were starting
to become uh, some that the general public was becoming
aware of was what happens when someone prints a weapon
(05:05):
using one of these things. And for a long time,
a lot of people were going like, oh, that's years off,
we don't need to worry about it. Yeah, maybe back
in two thousand nine Chris and I were saying that,
but two thirteen, hey, we're years off now and someone
has done that. Yeah. As of as of May four,
Star Wars Day, Star Wars Day, it was what a
(05:26):
what a bummer? Yeah, that's a nice choice of words there, Lauren.
I could see you like going through your list. What
word am I going to use? Uh? Excellent choice. I agree.
So we have a fellowed by the name of Cody
Wilson who describes himself as a co founder and chief
evangelist of a group called Defense Distributed. Very clever. Yeah,
(05:50):
it's a nonprofit organization. Yeah. And he designed a gun
that could be created using a three D printer and
a common nail, uh from a hardware store. And the
gun is has sixteen pieces total, one of those pieces
being the nail. The other fifteen are all printed by
a three D printer, a consumer grade. I think he
(06:14):
got it for eight thousand bucks on eBay. Yeah, it
was the Stratusist Dimension s ST three D printer, which
you could probably buy for a round ten thousand dollars.
He got a second hand for eight thousand. And we'll
get more into the whole story of Stratusis and and
it's involvement in this, because it's an interesting part of
the story. But we'll save that for a bit later.
(06:36):
So he printed out these fifteen pieces, He got the
nail to be the sixteenth piece. The nail acted as
the firing pin. Now, this is the part of a
gun that strikes the primer on cartridge so that it ignites,
and then the gases from the cartridge are what propel
the bullet out of the barrel of the gun. Now,
it doesn't technically need to be metal, but but the
(06:58):
kind of plastic that they use is just a little
bit too soft to to strike it without deforming. Right.
So essentially what would happen is the instead of igniting
the gas, the firing pin was just sort of bending.
So instead of using that, he decided to use a
nail uh and uh and putting it all together. He
wasn't even sure if it was going to hold together
or not, but he assembled the gun using the pieces
(07:22):
that he had designed. Um. And he strapped it up
to a pole as I recall, and an aluminum a
little bit of scaffolding I think, okay, and uh, and
he tied a string to it and instead as far
away as possible, right, and used the string to pull
the trigger uh and had a successful test. It actually
fired the bullet uh and was and it remained intact. Um.
(07:46):
That's one of the things that was a big concern
was that if you have a gun that's essentially made
out of plastic would it be able to withstand the
the forces that a gun experiences when you fire a bullet,
And in the case of this one, it seemed to
do that. And he also eventually tested it by firing
it by hand. Um, you know, it took some It
(08:08):
took some working up to get to that part, right right. Yeah.
During the initial test, I believe they had a couple
of successful firings. But um, but then it it misfired,
um due to a misalignment issue and uh yeah yeah.
Now they point out that the gun that as it's designed,
you could actually remove the barrel and replace it with
(08:29):
a new barrel. So uh, if there were parts that
were that would break down, you could actually replace those
parts just by printing out new ones. But the gun
itself wouldn't last for more than a few shots. In fact,
one expert I saw said that, in his opinion, if
you were using the best kind of plastic possible, you
might be able to get between ten and twenty shots.
(08:52):
Before it just was an unusable machine. Yeah, although, yeah,
it is designed so that you can snap parts in
and out right, so you just replace the ones that
are not working anymore, and then you could continue to
fire and it is supposed to be relatively quickly to
switch those parts out too. Uh. Well, what Wilson also
did was he ended up uploading the design to Mega,
(09:16):
which is kim dot COM's file sharing It's really like
a locker service where you can store files. They're encrypted
so that no one can see what it is that
you are doing. Um. He uploaded that and made it
freely available to anyone who wanted to get hold of this.
Within two days, ten thousand people had downloaded it, and
as of the recording of this podcast, we're recording this
(09:39):
on May nine. Forbes reported this morning that it had
been downloaded more than one hundred thousand times. Now, keep
in mind, not everyone who downloaded that has access to
a three D printer. All Right, I'm sure that a
lot of that is curiosity. There has been so much
buzz about it on the Internet that I'm sure that
a lot of people were just looking at it because
they could. Yeah, I'm sure there's a percent edge of that.
(10:00):
That's just the press that we need to have access
to this so we can take a look at it.
But uh, and if you're curious about what kind of
bullet it fired, it was a thirty eight caliber bullet.
Uh and uh he they I've read that they've designed
the gun in such a way that you could change
out the chamber and barrel, which you could fire different
(10:21):
caliber bullets depending upon which ones you were using. But
thirty eight was what they used for their tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
they're for their successful tests. According to a Forbes Andy Greenberg,
who was on the scene for some of these tests
and has a couple of really great articles that we
did drawn extensively for for this podcast. Um, they switched
the barrel out for a rifle cartridge that made the
entire thing explode into shrapnel. Now what was the name
(10:44):
of this gun? They're calling it the Liberator? Yeah, this
this might be something that history buffs recognized from World
War Two. Um. During World War Two, the Allies, specifically
the United States, I believe, Yeah, they manufactured these one
shot for fives. There were one shot pistols, meaning that
you could fire them once and then that's it. It's
(11:05):
just not designed to shoot more than one time. And
the whole the whole purpose of this was to drop
these forty five behind enemy lines and occupied territories occupied France, right,
The idea being that that the French population would suddenly
have access to weapons, but you can only fire at once.
It really wasn't a practical weapon. In fact, I don't
think that the Allies ever considered it to be something
(11:27):
that would allow a real tied to turn. It was
more of an attempt to demoralize the Access powers rather
than to actually foment some form of revolution and propaganda
was was a really interesting technology that was used in
World War Two. Yeah, so this is one of those
examples of propaganda that don't doesn't involve like a song
or a poster or a movie. It was actually an act,
(11:50):
and in this case, it was an act of distributing
uh weapons of limited use to an occupied country. And
from what I understand, it doesn't look like it doesn't
look like all of them, or even most of them
were ever actually distributed. It was. There's a little bit
of contention about whether or not they were and to
whom and when and how many, but and from why
(12:11):
I understand most of them most of them without But anyway,
Wilson apparently wanted to to take that name, and uh,
it kind of goes along with his philosophy. But his
philosophy is interesting. We will cover that in this episode,
but I think we're going to save that for the
end because it's it's pretty it's pretty dynamic. It is dynamic.
(12:36):
It's intense, is what it is. So yeah, a hundred
thousand folks around or at least a hundred thousand people
have downloaded these plans as of the recording this podcast.
By the time this publishes, I'm sure that number will
be way bigger. Ye. Yeah, well, I mean, as you
could have everyone just lose interest, but I don't think
that's going to happen with this particular product. So, uh,
(12:56):
that's that's where the actual logistics sre. That's you know
what the state of the gun is. The gun, by
the way, if you ever have if you haven't seen
a picture of it, it looks really clunky and it
has to be because that plastic has to be pretty
thick to withstand the pressures. And we'll talk more about
what those actually are in the in the next section.
But um, it's not a sleek weapon by any means.
(13:20):
It is not, no, no, And I mean you know
the kind of plastics that are that are being used
are Um, it's it's a b S which is a
krylum nitrial butt to dyeing styrene um. It's a it's
a thermoplastic blend. It's used in lots of everyday items
like like molded tool handles, electric shavers, lego bricks are
made of this stuff. So wow, And we'll talk a
(13:40):
little bit about why that causes a concern, you know,
the materials used, but before we really get into the
concerns and and you know, the philosophy of of Cody
Wilson and other elements and the response that we've seen
so far, and these are early days when we're recording this. Guys,
we're gonna take a quick break from this classic episode
(14:01):
to thank our sponsors, but we'll be right back. Okay,
getting back into the subject at hand. There are a
lot of concerns that come up with this idea of
being able to print a gun at home. Some of
these you might think of as knee jerk responses that
(14:22):
that don't take everything into account, But I think there
are some concerns that are you can't just dismiss easily.
One is that if you're talking about a plastic gun,
let's say that a plastic gun is being used in
a crime. Uh, the concern is that you wouldn't really
be able to trace that gun back. You know, guns
right now have these grooves that are in the barrels
(14:43):
so that when you fire the bullet, it makes the
bullets start to spin, giving it more stability, but it
also ends up carving uh into the specific pattern. Yeah,
and so by looking at the pattern, you can identify
depending on how what shape the bullets in, you can
identify the type of firearm that fired that bullet. If
you're talking about a smooth barreled, plastic gun, there's no
(15:07):
way of telling. And even if it had some sort
of grooves in it, you could design those in such
a way where it's unique to your gun, but without
anyone being able to tell it could be designed. It
could be literally unique to your gun. No one would
know where to even start looking for that, because if
it's all just a file on your computer, how would
how would anyone know unless they're already watching you. I'm
(15:28):
not even gonna get into that because I think that's
what fuels the whole Liberator in the first place. But
the you know, that's that's the concern is that if
it was used in a crime, it would be very
difficult if not impossible to trace back. Uh. They're also undetectable,
meaning that if you only have a tiny amount of
metal in them and you go through a metal detector,
the metal detector may not it might not pick up
(15:49):
that mail. Yeah. Now, now, in this case, Cody Wilson
was actually very careful about following um the letter, if
not at all the spirit of the law. In the
creation of this he um Uh. He took his company
to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
in order to get a federal license to manufacture and
(16:09):
distribute firearms, and furthermore, put a small metal cube at
completely non functional six ounds metal cube into the gun
to make it detectable by metal detectives. Right, because the
US Undetectable Firearms Act makes it illegal to manufacture any
sort of undetectable weapon. Because this this isn't the first
time that a potentially undetectable weapon has been made. You can.
(16:32):
They're guns that use ceramic. There are other plastic weapons
as well that have used molded plastic as opposed to
three D printed plastic. But uh, that was a big concern.
So now he followed the rules. Wilson did his his
version of the gun in fact had that metal in it,
so it was not undetectable. But here's but nothing saying
that someone who downloads that would still have the same
(16:54):
ye follow the same rules. If you download the blueprint
and printed it out yourself, you could be you could
just say, well, I'm not I'm not going to put
the metal slug in there, and therefore it is going
to be virtually undetectable by a metal detector. And however,
we should mention that that those three D scanners that
they've put in a lot of airports would pick the
gun up. It would be able to recognize it on
on your person, right. So so if if you're using
(17:15):
a three D scanner, it's still going to pick these
things up. If you are using just metal detectors, it wouldn't,
So that that's raised some security concerns obviously. Um and uh,
you know, Wilson, I think he took some perverse joy
and the fact that he was following the law while
creating something that is potentially incredibly disruptive. Absolutely, he's are
(17:40):
we getting into. But I think it's fair to say
that he took some pleasure. And they did. They did
install a metal detector or walk through metal detector in
their workshop for testing to make sure that that that
met those requirements. Uh and uh. So to get to
other concerns beyond the fact that you can't trade sit
(18:00):
you can't necessarily detect it. Um. Another concerns there's there's
no background check, right if you download those plans, there's
no control there about who gets access to that gun.
So in the United States, convicts can't you know, people
who have been convicted of a felony, they can't buy
a gun legally in the United States. I mean, they
(18:22):
could buy it illegally, but you can't go through any
legal means of buying it. Um. That's what the whole
background check thing is supposed to protect against in the
United States. So this bypasses it. If you are able,
if you have the means or the access to a
three D printer, and you have a criminal record and
you otherwise could not legally buy a firearm, you could
(18:43):
make one yourself this way. And that's something that a
lot of critics have pointed out, saying you have just
invalidated this whole part of the system. Wilson, for his part,
not a big fan of gun control, that doesn't seem
to be very concerned about that so much though that
in March he released a video of a three D
printable UM A R fifteen lower receiver, which is the
(19:05):
part that's regulated. UM. The rest of the parts you
can purchase without without all that much trouble and UM
and that hypothetically could lock into these these other purchasable
parts and UH. And thus you know, again bypassed by
passing that whole problem, or what at what he saw
as a problem. Uh. Other things that you have to
keep in mind. Remember we were talking about that plastic earlier,
(19:28):
about how how strong it was, and the type of
plastic used and the type of printer being used. UH.
Jonathan Rally, who's a three D printing expert UM said
in The Guardian that that you have to be really
careful because not everyone out there has access to the
same sort of three D printers, were the same sort
of raw materials being used. And just because one printed
(19:50):
gun was able to withstand the pressure and force that
a that this that the liberator did in the initial tests,
it doesn't mean that something that you print using a
different kind of printer could do the same thing. Um.
It may be that the material you print is weaker
than the one that that Wilson used, and Wilson Wilson
also did treat the plastics after they were printed in
(20:12):
order to make them stronger. So you could potentially end
up with a device that could explode in your hand
and cause you huge amounts of damage, if not even
kill you right out, you know, out right. In fact,
he said that it's far more likely someone will be
injured by a failing weapon before anyone is ever deliberately shot.
But so uh that that was his big concern was
(20:35):
not only is it something that could potentially, you know,
one person could potentially used to kill someone else, it's
something that someone who's just curious about it could end
up severely injuring themselves because the materials they're using just
can't hold up to the pressures and even even unit
to unit um uh you know, and any anything that
you've printed like that could be misaligned, uh, you know,
on a relatively small scale that you might not be
(20:57):
able to see from the outside of the right. Yeah,
if you if your printer does not have the same
level of precision, then that could also be a problem.
Things couldnt be things might not be in the right alignment,
because fair if just something glarps into the wrong place,
that's you know that that can be glarping is an
issue that there's also the problem that there could be
uh nylon plastic powder within the barrel itself, which can
(21:18):
be flammable and could actually cause an explosion in your hand,
because you know, you're talking about this intense heat and pressure.
In fact, let's talk about that for a second. According
to the Guardian, the pressure inside a gun typically reaches
about a thousand atmospheres and temperatures exceed two hundred degrees
celsius when you fire off a gun. So the gun
(21:39):
the bullets flying out because of the expanding gas that
is created when the primary ignites and gets the propellant
going right. So this expanding gas is what pushes that
bullet out. According again, according to the Guardian, about of
that energy from the expanded gas transfers to the bullet.
Another thirty percent of the energy transfers to the barrel
(21:59):
in the four of heat and heat tends to weaken plastic.
So if you aren't using heat treated plastic, or you're
using a weaker kind of plastic, that might be enough
for that gun to shatter in your hands or otherwise
fail in a way that could cause you some pretty
serious injury. And uh, Philip Boyce, who was an expert
with forensic scientific he's the one who said that with
(22:22):
a really good plastic gun you might get off as
many as ten to twenty shots before it failed. So
beyond that, these guns aren't necessarily that accurate. You know,
if it's a smooth barrel gun, Uh, it's not necessarily
going to guide the bullet in any way. That's yeah,
it would be one of those things where you know,
(22:43):
the closer you are, obviously are to whatever the target
is that you're aiming at, the more likely you'll hit it.
But you might wind up just being a you know,
a stormtrooper. Yeah, lots of pe pe, very little actual
and when you've only got you know, up to ten bullets,
that's not yeah. So so this has prompted many politicians
(23:04):
and law enforcement officials to come out and criticize this
whole idea of three D printed guns. It's not a
big surprise, you know. I mentioned earlier that the printer
that Wilson used was purchased the Stratusis Dimension S S
T three D printer Uh, they actually were using a
(23:24):
least one originally from the company. Yeah, they leased it
from Stratusis. But as of October, Stratusis figured out what
they were doing and seized their property back and said
no thanks. Yeah, and you might say, why would why
do they care? They care because three D printer companies,
the companies that are designing these things for consumers, Uh,
(23:45):
they don't want the government to come in and start
regulating and legislating the stuff they make because that's going
to affect their business. So it could get really expensive,
it could get to be a huge just licensing issue. Right. Uh,
you guys might not be aware of this, but three
D s are not three D scanners, but color scanners.
Color scanners have have technology built into them that will
(24:08):
prevent them from doing things like copying and reproducing currency.
It's a form of DRM. Yeah, it's really yeah, it
really kind of is. It's it's this idea of protecting
it so that, you know, counterfeiters can't just sit there
at home and scan and print money. Because once scanner's
got to be that specific, that became an issue. So
you build that into the device itself where it will
(24:29):
not uh copy and print that kind of thing, The
same sort of thing may be true with three D printers.
Politicians might say, you have to find a way to
prevent people from printing this particular type of peace, and
then suddenly they have to implement that. That drives up
production costs for the three D printer side. It drives
up the consumer costs for three D printers. That hurts
(24:50):
the whole industry. That's that's the viewpoint of the manufacturers
and why they would not be so keen on having
their own materials made to build something like a gu
Lauren and I have more to say about printing a
gun in just a moment, but first let's take another
quick break to thank our sponsors. So you had the
(25:17):
concern from the companies there as far as the politicians
and law enforcement goes. Law enforcement in the UK, the
Metropolitan Police pointed out that making or owning a gun
like this would be illegal unless you were a registered
firearms dealer with the proper credentials and quote unquote authorities.
Otherwise it would just owning a gun like this in
(25:37):
the UK would be considered illegal. Um, if you used
in in any way then that would get you a
pretty stiff penalty. UH. In the United States, there were
senators from California, Senators and congress people, i should say,
and council members in one case from California, Washington, D C.
And New York who have all expressed concern about three
(25:58):
D printing gun printed gun and UH talked about getting
coming up with legislation that can prevent it, helping helping
to revamp that Undetectable Firearms Act that we were talking
about earlier. This makes it complicated because there's really only
so much that you can do from a legal perspective,
like how do you how do you prevent something? The
cat's already out of the bag. You know, a hundred
thousand people have downloaded this as of today when we're
(26:22):
recording this, So it's you know, it's kind of hard
to say, let's stop this from happening now. It's we
all know that once something's on the Internet, it's forever.
Internet is forever. Yeah, So I did want to mention
that on the private side, there were other roadblocks to
the actual creation of this thing. UH. Wilson had his
crowdfunding campaign campaign through indie go go shut down UM
(26:43):
in August. UM also two workshop spaces that he had
been using, denied him access after learning what he was
up to, and furthermore, he originally had some of these
files up on thing verse by MakerBot and maker butt
to it down, took it down. Yeah, the three D
printing unity in general is reacting to this in very
much the same sort of way, saying that you know,
(27:05):
now you're bringing unwanted attention to our our our industry
or our hobby. Uh. You know, they've always said there's
going to be a disruptive kind of technology, but they
never thought of it in the terms of they didn't
frame it in the terms of disruptive being potentially violent,
which is not what Wilson is saying, although he also
(27:26):
really deflects any kind of criticism that even wanders towards
the violence question. Uh, to the point where, Uh, there
are times where I was reading some of his responses
when I'm thinking, like this guy took notes in the
second Matrix movie and said, how can I talk more
like the architect where I say a lot but don't
really say anything, or at least don't answer any questions.
(27:49):
I think that's fair, you know, I I've read it's
it's harsh, it's hard criticism. But but yeah, we've the
two of us both have probably read a lot of
things that that Wilson said. Well, not only that he said,
but what he wouldn't say, Like if anyone confronted him
directly with questions about, well, what about folks who uh,
you know, like convicts, are you saying that convicts should
(28:10):
have access to weapons? And instead of answering that question,
he would deflect it into something else philosophical. So he
he just refuses to answer those sort of things. Um,
so he may very well have coherent and uh and
and a good strong argument for that sort of case,
but he's not presenting it. So the recording of this
(28:33):
podcast right might maybe maybe by this afternoon he said
something that completely addresses my concerns. But he's described himself
as a cryptoanarchist, which that already should kind of raise
h alarm flags for certain people. Anarchy is a tough
position to really defend. I think it is, and and
(28:56):
that this is getting into into a personal personal philosophy
here and uh and and Jonathan and I are are
a little bit more touchy feely, We're okay. So the
way I view it is that he's taken a particular
stance where uh, he's really put a lot of value
on the individual, which I don't disagree with. I think,
(29:18):
you know, individuality is very important. Individual freedoms are very important.
And of course there's you know, all the different arguments
you can make about how if you trade liberty for
security then you don't really have either that. I've heard
all these arguments before. Um, but uh, you know, there
he seems very dismissive of the idea of governments in general,
(29:39):
so essentially saying that the system is broken, and not
only is it broken, but it cannot be fixed. That
at this point the government system is completely beholden to
special interests and corporations, it does not truly represent people,
it's doing more harm than good, it's getting more and
more intrusive in our daily lives, and and and there's
(29:59):
no way to fix it, and that therefore it must
be destroyed from the inside. Yeah, or at least at
least ignored, right, right, Really, he doesn't so much stepped
outside of and said, yeah, he's he's not necessarily condoning
that we all rise up against our tyrannical overlords, but
necessarily more like, let's just not pay attention to them anymore. Which, yeah,
(30:21):
there's there's there's a quote on the website of Defense
Distributed where it says, how do government's behave if they
must one day operate on the assumption that any and
every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through
the Internet. Let's find out? Yeah, so, I mean here,
here's here's my view. The three D printing of guns
(30:41):
was something that was going to happen. It was bound
to happen, uh, sooner or later. It just happened to
happen in uh, and there is going to have to
be a reaction to that, Like what's the right way
of handling this? The cavalier attitude of Cody Wilson seems
specifically geared to get a ry is out of people, absolutely,
(31:01):
and and you know, like and he's and he's so intelligent,
and he quotes these these really great philosophers when he's
talking about all of these the you know, he talks
about for co and how liberty is under siege from
the vast machine of the ruling class control and and
about you know, Milton and how in order to be
truly good you must be presented with the freedom to
be evil. Um right, we're getting into some clockwork orange
(31:24):
type stuff at this point, and it's and it's that
kind of thing that you know, is intellectually delightful to discuss.
But but when when you get into practical matters, uh,
some problems rise up, right, right. So, if we lived
in a storybook world where governments were the evil stepmother
and we're all the perky little protagonist who the poor orphan,
(31:47):
who's who's pure of heart and has the best of intentions,
that's one thing, right, that's of course you want the
protagonist to win. But reality is way more murky. I
wouldn't go so far as to say government is inherently evil,
nor would I go so far as to say individuals
are inherently good. There's so much shade of gray on
all sides, of sides. Yeah, And it's it's really people
(32:07):
that make up a government. Some people are good, some
people are not so good. And and that's true within
the population, where within the ruling class and some systems,
maybe they are maybe they favor the people who are
not so good over the ones that are good. And
that just means to me that you have to fix
the system. Now, to Wilson, it seems to me you
should abandoned the system altogether. I just don't understand what
(32:29):
replaces it. Uh. And one of his quotes was it
seemed very tongue in cheek to me, but it was
and I'm paraphrasing here, but he was essentially saying that
he was he would imagine a future where, uh, the
the individual citizen is making everything that they need using
things like three D printers, and meanwhile, government funded drones
(32:50):
are flying overheads searching out all the dissidents, and that
he's eager to see this future come to pass. And
I'm thinking, I don't want to live in the road
would warrior world, I look really bad in spiky shoulder paths.
I don't. I don't want to go to Bartertown. Master
Blaster scares me so anyway. But that's that's kind of
(33:15):
like his his philosophy, And UM, you know, I'm not
gonna go any further about what my own personal philosophy is.
I think it's fairly clear already from what I've said,
but I definitely, I definitely find it troubling. But I mean,
now it's a fact of life, so now we do
have to deal with it, and we were gonna have
to deal with it sometime or other. So it's not
(33:35):
like I'm not gonna get too angry at Wilson for
doing this because someone was going to right the way
he's done. It is a little more snarky than I
would have cared for, but you know, that's that's life. Um.
So it'll be interesting to see how this, how this
plays out, whether or not, uh, it ends up even
(33:56):
being a big deal. It's completely possible that this ends
up being far more fuss than what it it's worth, right,
especially for another few years, you know, before before people
have I mean, you know, right now this kind of
technology costs about ten grand to get access to. It's
way easier to go ahead and get a gun, even illegally.
That's less money. Yeah, yeah, or I'm you know, like
(34:17):
hypothetically you could make one yourself for under ten grand,
if sure. I mean, that's you know, it's a lot
of knowledge that you have to bend to that to
to you know, you know, file all the metal and
do all the everything you had machine the parts and
but but I mean, you know, people have been making
their own firearms for what four years? Yeah, and it's
even legal to make your own firearms under a very
(34:38):
specific criteria in several countries and clean United States. But
so really, when you when you look at that level,
it's not like, um, it's not like this is the
most unheard of thing in the world. It's new, which
is part of why it's a little and it's it's digital,
which which a lot of people get kind of titchy about. Right,
same sort of thing that you know, the music industry,
(35:00):
removing industry, television industry, they all got worried because it
meant that you could distribute something on a much wider
scale than before. But yeah, we're not quite to the
point where everyone's going to be printing out their own guns,
especially with ones that are going to be reliable and
not just blow up, and they're reliable enough to to
actually want to use. And that wraps up this classic
episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for future
(35:23):
tech Stuff topics, please reach out to suggest them to
me or else I won't know about it. You can
reach out on Twitter or on Facebook. I use the
same handle at both. It's Text Stuff h s W
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
(35:44):
is an I Heart radio production. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And it's Friday. That
means it's time for a tech Stuff classic episode. This
particular episode published originally on May twenty second, two thousand.
(00:30):
It is called printing a Gun, and it's pretty much
what it sounds like, using three D printers to use
additive manufacturing to produce firearms. Lauren Voege Obama and I
sat down to talk about this one because it was
a brand new, fresh topic and it's one that remains
relevant today, So enjoy this classic episode. Jonathan and Chris
(00:51):
did an episode on three D print ng way back
in two nine. Yeah, that was shortly after printing itself
was invented. Um before or that, we just communicated by
banging rocks together. No one was alive then, yeah, well
there's no no life. We were alive, but anyway, no, no,
no, no no no. We did an episode on three D
(01:12):
printing back in two thousand nine, which was funny because
at that point I had never actually seen one in person.
Now we have one in the office. We have one
in the office. Now, Yeah, we actually have a three
D printer here that's very very tiny and we can
only print small stuff with it. But it's mostly green
because we haven't changed out the plastic. But what three
D printers do. They print stuff in three dimensions and
(01:33):
they it's called additive manufacturing, yes, and it's this is
different from subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive would be where you take
a hunk of stuff and carve away all the stuff
you don't want. It's Michael Angelo's David exactly. Yeah, you're
you're you cut away everything that doesn't look like David. Right.
That's that's the sculpt sculpting point of view. You know,
to sculpt an elephant, you cut all the stuff away
(01:53):
that doesn't look like an elephant. But that's very wasteful.
It means that all that material you cut away you
potentially waste. By using additive manufacturing, you're printing a material.
In most cases, in consumer cases, at any rate, plastics
in very thin layers uh in in in a predetermined
design exactly. And these layers can be a micron thick
(02:14):
or thinner. If you've got very precise three D printing technology,
and you do this layer by layer by layer until
finally you have a full object. And it's doing this
with plastic and a binding agents so that the plastic
sticks together properly. Otherwise it would just fall apart and
crumble in your hands. But not so useful. Not so useful.
(02:34):
It would be very pretty until you try to pick
it up. But the but the finished product winds up
being a single piece of plastic in this case. And yeah,
and we've got other there are other types of three
D printers out there. They're not for consumers that can
print in other materials. And we expect then in the
future we're going to be able to do things like
print and metal, even to the point where we can
print circuit boards or human organs. Human organs using biological
(02:58):
material we can print it maybe lass really anything that
would allow you to print using a liquid. Uh, it
would it would all be potentially possible using this method.
If you're interested in that. We uh. In our other show,
Forward Thinking, we talked a little bit about that, So
so look that one up if you want to. Yeah,
it's a lot of fun. That was one of the
earliest episodes. I had a lot of fun talking about that. So,
(03:20):
what's the big deal with three D printing. Well, it's
it's an incredibly disruptive technology. Uh, And I don't necessarily
mean that in a negative way, but it does mean
that three D printers have the potential to really shake
up the way the world works in many ways, like
manufacturing and distribution in particular would be very much affected
(03:40):
by three D printers. If you get to the point
where a three D printer is within the purchasing range
of your average computer user, then that computer user can
go out by a three D printer, bring it home
by the materials you need to be able to build whatever,
and then you can start constructing stuff out of your home.
You could download plans from the internet and build things.
(04:00):
And those things could be furniture, it could be toys,
it could be tools. Uh. And so that means that
you've got these manufacturers out there who design and build
stuff that suddenly have to worry about, well, is there
going to even be a market for my stuff anymore?
Or do I do I change my business models? So
instead of selling stuff, I start selling plans for stuff. Right,
(04:22):
you start worrying a lot more about the intellectual copyright
of the shape of a table, which is kind of crazy, right, Like,
you're no longer thinking I need to make sure no
one shoplifts this thing. You're thinking, I need to make
sure no one builds a plan that allows them to
to print the same as this thing. So there are
a lot of intellectual property concerns that come up because
(04:43):
of three D printing, and some of them are concerns
that we never would have thought about before, like how
do you copyright a table? You know, but that's a
thing now. So one of the other questions that came
up pretty early on when three D printers were starting
to become uh, some that the general public was becoming
aware of was what happens when someone prints a weapon
(05:05):
using one of these things. And for a long time,
a lot of people were going like, oh, that's years off,
we don't need to worry about it. Yeah, maybe back
in two thousand nine Chris and I were saying that,
but two thirteen, hey, we're years off now and someone
has done that. Yeah. As of as of May four,
Star Wars Day, Star Wars Day, it was what a
(05:26):
what a bummer? Yeah, that's a nice choice of words there, Lauren.
I could see you like going through your list. What
word am I going to use? Uh? Excellent choice. I agree.
So we have a fellowed by the name of Cody
Wilson who describes himself as a co founder and chief
evangelist of a group called Defense Distributed. Very clever. Yeah,
(05:50):
it's a nonprofit organization. Yeah. And he designed a gun
that could be created using a three D printer and
a common nail, uh from a hardware store. And the
gun is has sixteen pieces total, one of those pieces
being the nail. The other fifteen are all printed by
a three D printer, a consumer grade. I think he
(06:14):
got it for eight thousand bucks on eBay. Yeah, it
was the Stratusist Dimension s ST three D printer, which
you could probably buy for a round ten thousand dollars.
He got a second hand for eight thousand. And we'll
get more into the whole story of Stratusis and and
it's involvement in this, because it's an interesting part of
the story. But we'll save that for a bit later.
(06:36):
So he printed out these fifteen pieces, He got the
nail to be the sixteenth piece. The nail acted as
the firing pin. Now, this is the part of a
gun that strikes the primer on cartridge so that it ignites,
and then the gases from the cartridge are what propel
the bullet out of the barrel of the gun. Now,
it doesn't technically need to be metal, but but the
(06:58):
kind of plastic that they use is just a little
bit too soft to to strike it without deforming. Right.
So essentially what would happen is the instead of igniting
the gas, the firing pin was just sort of bending.
So instead of using that, he decided to use a
nail uh and uh and putting it all together. He
wasn't even sure if it was going to hold together
or not, but he assembled the gun using the pieces
(07:22):
that he had designed. Um. And he strapped it up
to a pole as I recall, and an aluminum a
little bit of scaffolding I think, okay, and uh, and
he tied a string to it and instead as far
away as possible, right, and used the string to pull
the trigger uh and had a successful test. It actually
fired the bullet uh and was and it remained intact. Um.
(07:46):
That's one of the things that was a big concern
was that if you have a gun that's essentially made
out of plastic would it be able to withstand the
the forces that a gun experiences when you fire a bullet,
And in the case of this one, it seemed to
do that. And he also eventually tested it by firing
it by hand. Um, you know, it took some It
(08:08):
took some working up to get to that part, right right. Yeah.
During the initial test, I believe they had a couple
of successful firings. But um, but then it it misfired,
um due to a misalignment issue and uh yeah yeah.
Now they point out that the gun that as it's designed,
you could actually remove the barrel and replace it with
(08:29):
a new barrel. So uh, if there were parts that
were that would break down, you could actually replace those
parts just by printing out new ones. But the gun
itself wouldn't last for more than a few shots. In fact,
one expert I saw said that, in his opinion, if
you were using the best kind of plastic possible, you
might be able to get between ten and twenty shots.
(08:52):
Before it just was an unusable machine. Yeah, although, yeah,
it is designed so that you can snap parts in
and out right, so you just replace the ones that
are not working anymore, and then you could continue to
fire and it is supposed to be relatively quickly to
switch those parts out too. Uh. Well, what Wilson also
did was he ended up uploading the design to Mega,
(09:16):
which is kim dot COM's file sharing It's really like
a locker service where you can store files. They're encrypted
so that no one can see what it is that
you are doing. Um. He uploaded that and made it
freely available to anyone who wanted to get hold of this.
Within two days, ten thousand people had downloaded it, and
as of the recording of this podcast, we're recording this
(09:39):
on May nine. Forbes reported this morning that it had
been downloaded more than one hundred thousand times. Now, keep
in mind, not everyone who downloaded that has access to
a three D printer. All Right, I'm sure that a
lot of that is curiosity. There has been so much
buzz about it on the Internet that I'm sure that
a lot of people were just looking at it because
they could. Yeah, I'm sure there's a percent edge of that.
(10:00):
That's just the press that we need to have access
to this so we can take a look at it.
But uh, and if you're curious about what kind of
bullet it fired, it was a thirty eight caliber bullet.
Uh and uh he they I've read that they've designed
the gun in such a way that you could change
out the chamber and barrel, which you could fire different
(10:21):
caliber bullets depending upon which ones you were using. But
thirty eight was what they used for their tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
they're for their successful tests. According to a Forbes Andy Greenberg,
who was on the scene for some of these tests
and has a couple of really great articles that we
did drawn extensively for for this podcast. Um, they switched
the barrel out for a rifle cartridge that made the
entire thing explode into shrapnel. Now what was the name
(10:44):
of this gun? They're calling it the Liberator? Yeah, this
this might be something that history buffs recognized from World
War Two. Um. During World War Two, the Allies, specifically
the United States, I believe, Yeah, they manufactured these one
shot for fives. There were one shot pistols, meaning that
you could fire them once and then that's it. It's
(11:05):
just not designed to shoot more than one time. And
the whole the whole purpose of this was to drop
these forty five behind enemy lines and occupied territories occupied France, right,
The idea being that that the French population would suddenly
have access to weapons, but you can only fire at once.
It really wasn't a practical weapon. In fact, I don't
think that the Allies ever considered it to be something
(11:27):
that would allow a real tied to turn. It was
more of an attempt to demoralize the Access powers rather
than to actually foment some form of revolution and propaganda
was was a really interesting technology that was used in
World War Two. Yeah, so this is one of those
examples of propaganda that don't doesn't involve like a song
or a poster or a movie. It was actually an act,
(11:50):
and in this case, it was an act of distributing
uh weapons of limited use to an occupied country. And
from what I understand, it doesn't look like it doesn't
look like all of them, or even most of them
were ever actually distributed. It was. There's a little bit
of contention about whether or not they were and to
whom and when and how many, but and from why
(12:11):
I understand most of them most of them without But anyway,
Wilson apparently wanted to to take that name, and uh,
it kind of goes along with his philosophy. But his
philosophy is interesting. We will cover that in this episode,
but I think we're going to save that for the
end because it's it's pretty it's pretty dynamic. It is dynamic.
(12:36):
It's intense, is what it is. So yeah, a hundred
thousand folks around or at least a hundred thousand people
have downloaded these plans as of the recording this podcast.
By the time this publishes, I'm sure that number will
be way bigger. Ye. Yeah, well, I mean, as you
could have everyone just lose interest, but I don't think
that's going to happen with this particular product. So, uh,
(12:56):
that's that's where the actual logistics sre. That's you know
what the state of the gun is. The gun, by
the way, if you ever have if you haven't seen
a picture of it, it looks really clunky and it
has to be because that plastic has to be pretty
thick to withstand the pressures. And we'll talk more about
what those actually are in the in the next section.
But um, it's not a sleek weapon by any means.
(13:20):
It is not, no, no, And I mean you know
the kind of plastics that are that are being used
are Um, it's it's a b S which is a
krylum nitrial butt to dyeing styrene um. It's a it's
a thermoplastic blend. It's used in lots of everyday items
like like molded tool handles, electric shavers, lego bricks are
made of this stuff. So wow, And we'll talk a
(13:40):
little bit about why that causes a concern, you know,
the materials used, but before we really get into the
concerns and and you know, the philosophy of of Cody
Wilson and other elements and the response that we've seen
so far, and these are early days when we're recording this. Guys,
we're gonna take a quick break from this classic episode
(14:01):
to thank our sponsors, but we'll be right back. Okay,
getting back into the subject at hand. There are a
lot of concerns that come up with this idea of
being able to print a gun at home. Some of
these you might think of as knee jerk responses that
(14:22):
that don't take everything into account, But I think there
are some concerns that are you can't just dismiss easily.
One is that if you're talking about a plastic gun,
let's say that a plastic gun is being used in
a crime. Uh, the concern is that you wouldn't really
be able to trace that gun back. You know, guns
right now have these grooves that are in the barrels
(14:43):
so that when you fire the bullet, it makes the
bullets start to spin, giving it more stability, but it
also ends up carving uh into the specific pattern. Yeah,
and so by looking at the pattern, you can identify
depending on how what shape the bullets in, you can
identify the type of firearm that fired that bullet. If
you're talking about a smooth barreled, plastic gun, there's no
(15:07):
way of telling. And even if it had some sort
of grooves in it, you could design those in such
a way where it's unique to your gun, but without
anyone being able to tell it could be designed. It
could be literally unique to your gun. No one would
know where to even start looking for that, because if
it's all just a file on your computer, how would
how would anyone know unless they're already watching you. I'm
(15:28):
not even gonna get into that because I think that's
what fuels the whole Liberator in the first place. But
the you know, that's that's the concern is that if
it was used in a crime, it would be very
difficult if not impossible to trace back. Uh. They're also undetectable,
meaning that if you only have a tiny amount of
metal in them and you go through a metal detector,
the metal detector may not it might not pick up
(15:49):
that mail. Yeah. Now, now, in this case, Cody Wilson
was actually very careful about following um the letter, if
not at all the spirit of the law. In the
creation of this he um Uh. He took his company
to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
in order to get a federal license to manufacture and
(16:09):
distribute firearms, and furthermore, put a small metal cube at
completely non functional six ounds metal cube into the gun
to make it detectable by metal detectives. Right, because the
US Undetectable Firearms Act makes it illegal to manufacture any
sort of undetectable weapon. Because this this isn't the first
time that a potentially undetectable weapon has been made. You can.
(16:32):
They're guns that use ceramic. There are other plastic weapons
as well that have used molded plastic as opposed to
three D printed plastic. But uh, that was a big concern.
So now he followed the rules. Wilson did his his
version of the gun in fact had that metal in it,
so it was not undetectable. But here's but nothing saying
that someone who downloads that would still have the same
(16:54):
ye follow the same rules. If you download the blueprint
and printed it out yourself, you could be you could
just say, well, I'm not I'm not going to put
the metal slug in there, and therefore it is going
to be virtually undetectable by a metal detector. And however,
we should mention that that those three D scanners that
they've put in a lot of airports would pick the
gun up. It would be able to recognize it on
on your person, right. So so if if you're using
(17:15):
a three D scanner, it's still going to pick these
things up. If you are using just metal detectors, it wouldn't,
So that that's raised some security concerns obviously. Um and uh,
you know, Wilson, I think he took some perverse joy
and the fact that he was following the law while
creating something that is potentially incredibly disruptive. Absolutely, he's are
(17:40):
we getting into. But I think it's fair to say
that he took some pleasure. And they did. They did
install a metal detector or walk through metal detector in
their workshop for testing to make sure that that that
met those requirements. Uh and uh. So to get to
other concerns beyond the fact that you can't trade sit
(18:00):
you can't necessarily detect it. Um. Another concerns there's there's
no background check, right if you download those plans, there's
no control there about who gets access to that gun.
So in the United States, convicts can't you know, people
who have been convicted of a felony, they can't buy
a gun legally in the United States. I mean, they
(18:22):
could buy it illegally, but you can't go through any
legal means of buying it. Um. That's what the whole
background check thing is supposed to protect against in the
United States. So this bypasses it. If you are able,
if you have the means or the access to a
three D printer, and you have a criminal record and
you otherwise could not legally buy a firearm, you could
(18:43):
make one yourself this way. And that's something that a
lot of critics have pointed out, saying you have just
invalidated this whole part of the system. Wilson, for his part,
not a big fan of gun control, that doesn't seem
to be very concerned about that so much though that
in March he released a video of a three D
printable UM A R fifteen lower receiver, which is the
(19:05):
part that's regulated. UM. The rest of the parts you
can purchase without without all that much trouble and UM
and that hypothetically could lock into these these other purchasable
parts and UH. And thus you know, again bypassed by
passing that whole problem, or what at what he saw
as a problem. Uh. Other things that you have to
keep in mind. Remember we were talking about that plastic earlier,
(19:28):
about how how strong it was, and the type of
plastic used and the type of printer being used. UH.
Jonathan Rally, who's a three D printing expert UM said
in The Guardian that that you have to be really
careful because not everyone out there has access to the
same sort of three D printers, were the same sort
of raw materials being used. And just because one printed
(19:50):
gun was able to withstand the pressure and force that
a that this that the liberator did in the initial tests,
it doesn't mean that something that you print using a
different kind of printer could do the same thing. Um.
It may be that the material you print is weaker
than the one that that Wilson used, and Wilson Wilson
also did treat the plastics after they were printed in
(20:12):
order to make them stronger. So you could potentially end
up with a device that could explode in your hand
and cause you huge amounts of damage, if not even
kill you right out, you know, out right. In fact,
he said that it's far more likely someone will be
injured by a failing weapon before anyone is ever deliberately shot.
But so uh that that was his big concern was
(20:35):
not only is it something that could potentially, you know,
one person could potentially used to kill someone else, it's
something that someone who's just curious about it could end
up severely injuring themselves because the materials they're using just
can't hold up to the pressures and even even unit
to unit um uh you know, and any anything that
you've printed like that could be misaligned, uh, you know,
on a relatively small scale that you might not be
(20:57):
able to see from the outside of the right. Yeah,
if you if your printer does not have the same
level of precision, then that could also be a problem.
Things couldnt be things might not be in the right alignment,
because fair if just something glarps into the wrong place,
that's you know that that can be glarping is an
issue that there's also the problem that there could be
uh nylon plastic powder within the barrel itself, which can
(21:18):
be flammable and could actually cause an explosion in your hand,
because you know, you're talking about this intense heat and pressure.
In fact, let's talk about that for a second. According
to the Guardian, the pressure inside a gun typically reaches
about a thousand atmospheres and temperatures exceed two hundred degrees
celsius when you fire off a gun. So the gun
(21:39):
the bullets flying out because of the expanding gas that
is created when the primary ignites and gets the propellant
going right. So this expanding gas is what pushes that
bullet out. According again, according to the Guardian, about of
that energy from the expanded gas transfers to the bullet.
Another thirty percent of the energy transfers to the barrel
(21:59):
in the four of heat and heat tends to weaken plastic.
So if you aren't using heat treated plastic, or you're
using a weaker kind of plastic, that might be enough
for that gun to shatter in your hands or otherwise
fail in a way that could cause you some pretty
serious injury. And uh, Philip Boyce, who was an expert
with forensic scientific he's the one who said that with
(22:22):
a really good plastic gun you might get off as
many as ten to twenty shots before it failed. So
beyond that, these guns aren't necessarily that accurate. You know,
if it's a smooth barrel gun, Uh, it's not necessarily
going to guide the bullet in any way. That's yeah,
it would be one of those things where you know,
(22:43):
the closer you are, obviously are to whatever the target
is that you're aiming at, the more likely you'll hit it.
But you might wind up just being a you know,
a stormtrooper. Yeah, lots of pe pe, very little actual
and when you've only got you know, up to ten bullets,
that's not yeah. So so this has prompted many politicians
(23:04):
and law enforcement officials to come out and criticize this
whole idea of three D printed guns. It's not a
big surprise, you know. I mentioned earlier that the printer
that Wilson used was purchased the Stratusis Dimension S S
T three D printer Uh, they actually were using a
(23:24):
least one originally from the company. Yeah, they leased it
from Stratusis. But as of October, Stratusis figured out what
they were doing and seized their property back and said
no thanks. Yeah, and you might say, why would why
do they care? They care because three D printer companies,
the companies that are designing these things for consumers, Uh,
(23:45):
they don't want the government to come in and start
regulating and legislating the stuff they make because that's going
to affect their business. So it could get really expensive,
it could get to be a huge just licensing issue. Right. Uh,
you guys might not be aware of this, but three
D s are not three D scanners, but color scanners.
Color scanners have have technology built into them that will
(24:08):
prevent them from doing things like copying and reproducing currency.
It's a form of DRM. Yeah, it's really yeah, it
really kind of is. It's it's this idea of protecting
it so that, you know, counterfeiters can't just sit there
at home and scan and print money. Because once scanner's
got to be that specific, that became an issue. So
you build that into the device itself where it will
(24:29):
not uh copy and print that kind of thing, The
same sort of thing may be true with three D printers.
Politicians might say, you have to find a way to
prevent people from printing this particular type of peace, and
then suddenly they have to implement that. That drives up
production costs for the three D printer side. It drives
up the consumer costs for three D printers. That hurts
(24:50):
the whole industry. That's that's the viewpoint of the manufacturers
and why they would not be so keen on having
their own materials made to build something like a gu
Lauren and I have more to say about printing a
gun in just a moment, but first let's take another
quick break to thank our sponsors. So you had the
(25:17):
concern from the companies there as far as the politicians
and law enforcement goes. Law enforcement in the UK, the
Metropolitan Police pointed out that making or owning a gun
like this would be illegal unless you were a registered
firearms dealer with the proper credentials and quote unquote authorities.
Otherwise it would just owning a gun like this in
(25:37):
the UK would be considered illegal. Um, if you used
in in any way then that would get you a
pretty stiff penalty. UH. In the United States, there were
senators from California, Senators and congress people, i should say,
and council members in one case from California, Washington, D C.
And New York who have all expressed concern about three
(25:58):
D printing gun printed gun and UH talked about getting
coming up with legislation that can prevent it, helping helping
to revamp that Undetectable Firearms Act that we were talking
about earlier. This makes it complicated because there's really only
so much that you can do from a legal perspective,
like how do you how do you prevent something? The
cat's already out of the bag. You know, a hundred
thousand people have downloaded this as of today when we're
(26:22):
recording this, So it's you know, it's kind of hard
to say, let's stop this from happening now. It's we
all know that once something's on the Internet, it's forever.
Internet is forever. Yeah, So I did want to mention
that on the private side, there were other roadblocks to
the actual creation of this thing. UH. Wilson had his
crowdfunding campaign campaign through indie go go shut down UM
(26:43):
in August. UM also two workshop spaces that he had
been using, denied him access after learning what he was
up to, and furthermore, he originally had some of these
files up on thing verse by MakerBot and maker butt
to it down, took it down. Yeah, the three D
printing unity in general is reacting to this in very
much the same sort of way, saying that you know,
(27:05):
now you're bringing unwanted attention to our our our industry
or our hobby. Uh. You know, they've always said there's
going to be a disruptive kind of technology, but they
never thought of it in the terms of they didn't
frame it in the terms of disruptive being potentially violent,
which is not what Wilson is saying, although he also
(27:26):
really deflects any kind of criticism that even wanders towards
the violence question. Uh, to the point where, Uh, there
are times where I was reading some of his responses
when I'm thinking, like this guy took notes in the
second Matrix movie and said, how can I talk more
like the architect where I say a lot but don't
really say anything, or at least don't answer any questions.
(27:49):
I think that's fair, you know, I I've read it's
it's harsh, it's hard criticism. But but yeah, we've the
two of us both have probably read a lot of
things that that Wilson said. Well, not only that he said,
but what he wouldn't say, Like if anyone confronted him
directly with questions about, well, what about folks who uh,
you know, like convicts, are you saying that convicts should
(28:10):
have access to weapons? And instead of answering that question,
he would deflect it into something else philosophical. So he
he just refuses to answer those sort of things. Um,
so he may very well have coherent and uh and
and a good strong argument for that sort of case,
but he's not presenting it. So the recording of this
(28:33):
podcast right might maybe maybe by this afternoon he said
something that completely addresses my concerns. But he's described himself
as a cryptoanarchist, which that already should kind of raise
h alarm flags for certain people. Anarchy is a tough
position to really defend. I think it is, and and
(28:56):
that this is getting into into a personal personal philosophy
here and uh and and Jonathan and I are are
a little bit more touchy feely, We're okay. So the
way I view it is that he's taken a particular
stance where uh, he's really put a lot of value
on the individual, which I don't disagree with. I think,
(29:18):
you know, individuality is very important. Individual freedoms are very important.
And of course there's you know, all the different arguments
you can make about how if you trade liberty for
security then you don't really have either that. I've heard
all these arguments before. Um, but uh, you know, there
he seems very dismissive of the idea of governments in general,
(29:39):
so essentially saying that the system is broken, and not
only is it broken, but it cannot be fixed. That
at this point the government system is completely beholden to
special interests and corporations, it does not truly represent people,
it's doing more harm than good, it's getting more and
more intrusive in our daily lives, and and and there's
(29:59):
no way to fix it, and that therefore it must
be destroyed from the inside. Yeah, or at least at
least ignored, right, right, Really, he doesn't so much stepped
outside of and said, yeah, he's he's not necessarily condoning
that we all rise up against our tyrannical overlords, but
necessarily more like, let's just not pay attention to them anymore. Which, yeah,
(30:21):
there's there's there's a quote on the website of Defense
Distributed where it says, how do government's behave if they
must one day operate on the assumption that any and
every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through
the Internet. Let's find out? Yeah, so, I mean here,
here's here's my view. The three D printing of guns
(30:41):
was something that was going to happen. It was bound
to happen, uh, sooner or later. It just happened to
happen in uh, and there is going to have to
be a reaction to that, Like what's the right way
of handling this? The cavalier attitude of Cody Wilson seems
specifically geared to get a ry is out of people, absolutely,
(31:01):
and and you know, like and he's and he's so intelligent,
and he quotes these these really great philosophers when he's
talking about all of these the you know, he talks
about for co and how liberty is under siege from
the vast machine of the ruling class control and and
about you know, Milton and how in order to be
truly good you must be presented with the freedom to
be evil. Um right, we're getting into some clockwork orange
(31:24):
type stuff at this point, and it's and it's that
kind of thing that you know, is intellectually delightful to discuss.
But but when when you get into practical matters, uh,
some problems rise up, right, right. So, if we lived
in a storybook world where governments were the evil stepmother
and we're all the perky little protagonist who the poor orphan,
(31:47):
who's who's pure of heart and has the best of intentions,
that's one thing, right, that's of course you want the
protagonist to win. But reality is way more murky. I
wouldn't go so far as to say government is inherently evil,
nor would I go so far as to say individuals
are inherently good. There's so much shade of gray on
all sides, of sides. Yeah, And it's it's really people
(32:07):
that make up a government. Some people are good, some
people are not so good. And and that's true within
the population, where within the ruling class and some systems,
maybe they are maybe they favor the people who are
not so good over the ones that are good. And
that just means to me that you have to fix
the system. Now, to Wilson, it seems to me you
should abandoned the system altogether. I just don't understand what
(32:29):
replaces it. Uh. And one of his quotes was it
seemed very tongue in cheek to me, but it was
and I'm paraphrasing here, but he was essentially saying that
he was he would imagine a future where, uh, the
the individual citizen is making everything that they need using
things like three D printers, and meanwhile, government funded drones
(32:50):
are flying overheads searching out all the dissidents, and that
he's eager to see this future come to pass. And
I'm thinking, I don't want to live in the road
would warrior world, I look really bad in spiky shoulder paths.
I don't. I don't want to go to Bartertown. Master
Blaster scares me so anyway. But that's that's kind of
(33:15):
like his his philosophy, And UM, you know, I'm not
gonna go any further about what my own personal philosophy is.
I think it's fairly clear already from what I've said,
but I definitely, I definitely find it troubling. But I mean,
now it's a fact of life, so now we do
have to deal with it, and we were gonna have
to deal with it sometime or other. So it's not
(33:35):
like I'm not gonna get too angry at Wilson for
doing this because someone was going to right the way
he's done. It is a little more snarky than I
would have cared for, but you know, that's that's life. Um.
So it'll be interesting to see how this, how this
plays out, whether or not, uh, it ends up even
(33:56):
being a big deal. It's completely possible that this ends
up being far more fuss than what it it's worth, right,
especially for another few years, you know, before before people
have I mean, you know, right now this kind of
technology costs about ten grand to get access to. It's
way easier to go ahead and get a gun, even illegally.
That's less money. Yeah, yeah, or I'm you know, like
(34:17):
hypothetically you could make one yourself for under ten grand,
if sure. I mean, that's you know, it's a lot
of knowledge that you have to bend to that to
to you know, you know, file all the metal and
do all the everything you had machine the parts and
but but I mean, you know, people have been making
their own firearms for what four years? Yeah, and it's
even legal to make your own firearms under a very
(34:38):
specific criteria in several countries and clean United States. But
so really, when you when you look at that level,
it's not like, um, it's not like this is the
most unheard of thing in the world. It's new, which
is part of why it's a little and it's it's digital,
which which a lot of people get kind of titchy about. Right,
same sort of thing that you know, the music industry,
(35:00):
removing industry, television industry, they all got worried because it
meant that you could distribute something on a much wider
scale than before. But yeah, we're not quite to the
point where everyone's going to be printing out their own guns,
especially with ones that are going to be reliable and
not just blow up, and they're reliable enough to to
actually want to use. And that wraps up this classic
episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for future
(35:23):
tech Stuff topics, please reach out to suggest them to
me or else I won't know about it. You can
reach out on Twitter or on Facebook. I use the
same handle at both. It's Text Stuff h s W
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
(35:44):
is an I Heart radio production. For more podcasts from
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TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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