Unimpressive 3D Printed Zip Gun Drives Internet Insane

I’ve got to admit that I’m not nearly as impressed with crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson, his Defense Distributed organization, or its 3D printable handgun, the Liberator, as the rest of the internet seems to be. Most everywhere I’ve looked for the last several days I’ve seen headline after overwrought headline claiming that this new handgun design is a radical game changer in the argument over gun ownership. On one end of the spectrum, people are panicking, apparently certain that because you can now download files with printable gun parts on them that this is it for civilization and we might as well go back to the trees, chew leaves, and seriously consider going the extra mile to make a return to the ocean. On the other hand, others are proudly declaring (with flags majestically flying behind them) that liberty and personal freedom are now safe for all eternity and this time we’re certain because after all, what stops a tyrannical government that’s waiting to crush the innocent and weak better than a gun downloaded from the internet? The problem with both arguments is that the gun in question, the Lulz Liberator, is a barely functional and sad excuse for a weapon that doesn’t hold a candle to some of the most rudimentary of improvised handguns used by revolutionaries and minor street gangs around the world.

In the rush to produce its design, Defense Distributed seems to have been more interested in being first than in actually building a functional weapon. The single shot Lulz Liberator in the video below fires nine times. However, as Andy Greenberg, Defense Distributed’s primary cheerleader in the press, was forced to admit in Forbes, the weapon suffered numerous misfires during the course of the Liberator’s testing, was forced to replace the metal screws holding the body together, and most damming of all, needed to have the metal firing pin that makes the entire unit work replaced. Meanwhile, pressure and heat from firing expanded the ammo cartridge to the point where it required hammering into position after each shot. While this version held together, there has been a real tendency for earlier versions of the Liberator to explode when firing, destroying the gun and leaving whoever is firing open to severe injury. Throw in the melting barrel and you end up with a gun that’s a statement, but not much more. With the screws, firing pin, and bullet added, there’s enough metal in this “plastic” gun to likely set off a metal detector, even if you don’t add the weighted piece of metal required by law to make the gun detectable by a scanner.

What makes the Lulz Liberator so sexy, to both its fans and detractors, is that the majority of its parts are produced on a 3D printer. This gives the story a nice Buck Rogers, “Look, kids, we can make guns on our printer and isn’t the future swell?” feel to it. The truth is that if you want to build a single shot gun that doesn’t set off detectors there are several easier designs available for making a gun with a nail, a bullet, a rubber band, and a bamboo tube that works as well and doesn’t blow up in your hands or require you to purchase a printer that averages several thousand dollars, with materials. On top of that, if you aren’t worried about concealment and are only looking into the actual production of a gun, all you truly need are a few tubes, a nail, and duct tape. If you’re feeling really creative, there are easily found plans available for the homemade sten gun that the British made such good use of during World War II.

Homemade British Sten Gun

On Defense Distributed’s website, under the heading of Manifesto, there is a link to a copy of John Milton’s Areopagitica. In this speech, Milton makes a powerful argument that the free exchange of ideas cannot be contained and that the then recent invention of the movable type printing press made that free expression inevitable despite any attempts otherwise to suppress them. Technology makes things happen, no matter what we might like otherwise. In that vein and despite his self-promotional manner, Cody Wilson is right. Technology makes change inevitable, and the genie doesn’t go back into the bottle (or the bullet back into the gun, in this case). However, the Lulz Liberator is much ado about nothing. We should be far more concerned about people using 3D printers to build the small parts needed to convert semi-automatic weapons to full load. We should possibly worry about the use of 3D printers to produce high-capacity magazines capable of holding a staggering numbers of bullets. And finally yes, we should be concerned that eventually somebody is going to come up with a functional gun that can be produced from a 3D printer. At some point, the polymers will get hard enough, the printing thickness will be correct, and the heat resistance can rise. At some point, this weapon might happen and that’ll be reason to become concerned, but this half-assed zip gun isn’t it.