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The first all-plastic 3D-printed gun will be available to download in 'two weeks'

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A 3D printed gun, being tested to failure

Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, says he is just two weeks away from 3D printing an entire handgun, out of ABS plastic. Once Wilson has printed the gun and ensured that it works, the weapon's 3D model files will be uploaded to the internet and open sourced — so that you and I can print an almost-undetectable firearm.

Creating a 3D-printed gun, and contributing the model files to the public domain, is the culmination of DefDist's Wiki Weapon project. The Wiki Weapon project was created in mid-2012 by Cody Wilson, with the lofty but perhaps slightly misguided goal of fulfilling every American citizen's Second Amendment right to bear arms. Back in July 2012, DefDist produced a 3D-printed a lower receiver for an AR-15 rifle, in January of this year it 3D-printed a 30-round AR-15 magazine (video below), and then in March DefDist finally received its federal firearms license, which is required to legally make and sell guns. Now, it seems, according to an interview with Mashable, Wilson is almost ready to release an entirely 3D-printed handgun.

The Wiki Weapon will be made of 12 parts, printed out of ABS — conventional, fairly sturdy 3D-printed thermoplastic. According to Wilson, there will probably be just one metal part, the firing pin, while the rest — including the barrel — will be made out of plastic. As for whether it'll actually work, Wilson and co won't know until they actually build it, which will hopefully be in a couple of weeks. If all goes to plan, Wilson says the 3D-printed gun — which will be a custom design, rather than a reproduction of an existing pistol — will be able to fire a "few shots" before melting or breaking. After testing, the design will be uploaded to the web, so that anyone with a 3D printer can print out the handgun. You'll still need to source your own ammunition and firing pin, though.

As you can imagine, a gun made entirely out of plastic, except for the very tip of the firing pin, would be almost undetectable by security scanners — which is a problem, because there's the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988. The Act prevents DefDist from making or selling undetectable guns. "We're gonna be flirting with the edge of detectability," Wilson says. "It's possible that there is no good way for us to comply [with the Act] and that would open up a line of prosecution." While it seems almost certain that Wilson himself will break the law by making a 3D-printed weapon, it'll be interesting to see if the law also prevents him from uploading the design to the internet.

Of course, once the cat is out of the bag there isn't a whole lot that the government can do about it– except for shoehorning DRM into 3D printers, preventing them from printing "dangerous" models…