CCTV News:3D printing, this is already a familiar technology.
Whether it is building a house, making clothes, designing creative dishes, or applying in other fields, 3D printing products are gradually entering and changing our lives.
However, have you ever imagined printing guns in 3D?
In June this year, the US government unexpectedly decided to allow gun-holding organizations "distributed defense" to publish drawings of 3D printing guns online from August 1st.
This decision immediately caused great controversy, and people were asking, has the era of lethal weapon DIY arrived?
This is a 3D printing gun based on the AR-15 rifle.
This kind of gun has appeared in many shootings in the United States.
According to the latest decision of the U.S. government, from August 1 this year, everyone can download drawings from a website called "distributed defense" and print out such a gun.
Cody Wilson, the founder of the gun-holding organization "Distributed Defense", is also the initiator of the 3D printing gun. He claimed to be an anarchist and believed that everyone should have the right to get guns.
On December 14th, 2012, a shooting incident occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, USA, which killed 28 people, including gunmen, including 20 children. The case shocked the whole country.
After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, then President Obama promulgated 23 administrative measures to strengthen gun control, including strengthening background checks on gun buyers, prohibiting the sale of offensive guns and high-capacity magazines.
These measures were strongly resisted by the "gun-owning faction", who launched a series of demonstrations.
Cody Wilson also spoke out against Obama’s gun control measures, threatening to use 3D printing technology to end the dispute over gun control.
On May 5, 2013, Wilson showed the first pistol "Liberator" that he used a 3D printer to the outside world, and posted the drawings and documents of pistol production on the Internet.
The way to get the "liberator" is very simple. You don’t need background check, age certificate or gun license. You just need to download a computer-aided design drawing file of the pistol, a 3D printer and a thermoplastic ABS plastic used to make Lego bricks, and wait patiently for 12 hours or a day to make this pistol yourself.
Forbes magazine reported that after Wilson uploaded the drawings of the Liberator pistol, the number of downloads had exceeded 100,000 times in just two days, but most of the downloads were not from the United States, but from abroad.
The "liberator" made Wilson famous overnight and attracted a lot of media attention.
Two British "Daily Mail" reporters spent 1,700 pounds to buy a 3D printer and printed out 16 pistol parts. Because they used synthetic materials, the X-ray machine could not detect pistols. The reporters successfully passed the security check at London Railway Station and took these parts to the train.
After that, they assembled pistols in the bathroom of the carriage and took pictures with guns in the aisle of the carriage. During the whole process, no one came to stop them.
Several Australian policemen heard of Wilson’s invention and decided to try to make it themselves to see how powerful the 3D printed pistol was.
It took them only 27 hours to make all the parts of the pistol, and it took them 1 minute to assemble and start testing.
When the police pulled the traction rope tied to the trigger of the pistol, the disturbing result happened.
The bullet made a hole in this thick gelatin, but due to the huge recoil, the pistol split instantly while shooting.
The results of many tests show that owning such a 3D printed pistol is difficult to track, which may hurt others and threaten yourself.
To this end, some politicians and anti-gun groups in the United States have called for the adoption of new laws and regulations to make it a criminal offence to print guns and weapons privately. People are more worried that terrorists may use this technology to make weapons quietly.
On May 8, 2013, Wilson received a letter from the the State Council Defense Trade Control Bureau, accusing him of putting the printed drawings of guns on the website so that people outside the United States could download them, which violated the relevant laws and regulations on arms export in the Regulations on International Arms Trade and ordered him to immediately delete the gun-making drawings on the website.
Wilson obeyed and removed the drawings, but he claimed that he did not violate the law, because in the United States, it is legal for citizens to make their own guns for personal use.
Two years later, in 2015, the "decentralized defense" he founded filed a lawsuit against the US federal government.
After three years of judicial contest, the two sides reached a settlement in June this year.
The Trump administration allowed the organization to publish 3D printing gun drawings online from August 1st.
However, the organization put the drawing online on July 27th five days in advance, and within three days, more than 1,000 people downloaded it.
On July 30th, eight American states and Washington, D.C. collectively sued the federal government, demanding a nationwide temporary injunction to prevent 3D printing gun drawings from appearing on the Internet.
On July 31st, Robert Lasnik, a federal judge in Seattle, Washington, approved a motion, agreeing to issue a nationwide temporary injunction to stop the online sharing plan of 3D printed gun-making drawings, and announced that a hearing on the case would be held on August 10th.
On the same day, Trump also made an ambiguous statement on this matter: I am investigating the 3D plastic guns sold to the public. At present, I have talked about this matter with the National Rifle Association of the United States. It seems that it does not make much sense!
Due to historical reasons, Americans’ disputes about gun ownership often revolve around the issue of individual rights.
However, the emergence and legalization of 3D printing guns has brought about thinking even beyond the controversy about the legalization of guns.
Because the change of science and technology actually challenges the state’s control over weapons, this decentralized manufacturing and production may pose an unprecedented challenge to government authority and social order.