3-D printed guns: an explainer

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took to Twitter as he does every morning. In between his usual tweets about “fake news” and “no Russian collusion,” he posted something out of the ordinary for him: a note about “3-D plastic guns.”

What the president is talking about are firearms manufactured by 3-D printers, the kind someone might buy for their home and literally print themselves a gun. 

The first thing you should know: It’s not illegal to make your own gun. Gun enthusiasts have been legally manufacturing their own pistols, handguns, rifles, and other firearms for centuries — there’s not even a requirement that they register their firearm. As long as they don’t sell, share, trade, or seek to distribute their creations, they were in the clear with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). There are some restrictions such as undetectable firearms and “other weapons,” like non-sporting rifles and shotguns made from 10 or more imported parts. But, for the most part, if you aren’t a felon and know how to navigate through certain loopholes, it’s the wild west when it comes to your more common firearms.

The issue at hand with 3-D printed guns isn’t really that people can make their own guns. It’s over the technology with which they’re doing it.

There are a number of legal grey areas 3-D printed guns fall under, and a few main issues. The ATF requires blueprints for those “other weapons,” as they’re subject to review for approval. But in the new create-a-weapon world, some argue that what exactly falls under “other weapons” can be up for debate.

A clear-cut issue with 3-D printed guns is where they’re outright breaking the law.

A clear-cut issue with 3-D printed guns is where they’re outright breaking the law. Under the Undetectable Firearms Act, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, it’s illegal for anyone to manufacture, possess, sell, or distribute a firearm of any kind if it can’t be detected by a metal detector. 3-D printed guns, which are made of plastic material, would clearly be illegal under the act. But 3-D gun printers knew of a workaround. Included in some of the earliest shared 3-D gun blueprints in 2012 are detailed instructions on how to add a metal block as part of their firearms — one that made the weapons comply with this law yet could be removed (and the firearm would still work). Efforts have been made recently to modernize the Undetectable Firearms Act to specifically deal with 3-D printed guns by updating which gun parts are required to be detectable by metal detectors.

Another major issue with 3-D printed guns — and why they got the nickname “ghost guns” — are that they’re untraceable. While it’s illegal to sell a homemade firearm in the U.S., people skirt this law by selling guns with an “unfinished” receiver or no receiver at all. A receiver is basically what makes a gun, well, a gun. It contains a number of internal components, including the actual firing mechanism, and it’s the part of the gun that is required by law to be designated with a registration number by the ATF. However, a receiver can be acquired separately or an “unfinished” receiver can be converted into a full blown firearm with a little technical know-how, thereby getting around the law.

This issue has preceded the recent 3-D printed gun conundrum, being used as a background check law workaround. In a 2014 Washington Post story about unfinished receivers, one gun parts salesman predicated he’d sell 75,000 unfinished receivers that year and estimated there were already hundreds of thousands out there. In the same Post story, they explain how one man, John Zawahri, failed a background check, acquired an unfinished receiver, and built the assault rifle he used to kill five people in Santa Monica, California in 2013.

In 2012, Cody Wilson, a 24-year-old Texas law student and gun rights activist, released a 3-D printable gun blueprint for the Liberator .380 pistol to the public via his nonprofit organization, Defense Distributed. The group was created with the purpose of developing and releasing digital firearm blueprints for 3-D printing. That first blueprint was downloaded more than 100,000 times before the federal government stepped in to block the website.

What Cody Wilson would do next earned him a spot on Wired’s list of the 15 most dangerous people in the world. Wilson’s Wiki Weapon Project sought to create the world’s first ever entirely 3-D printed firearm, only gun parts had been printed before. The  group raised $20,000 to put towards leasing the 3-D printer required to take on this endeavor. However, when Stratasys, the company Wilson originally leased the 3-D printer from, found out what it was going to be used for, they confiscated the printer from Wilson’s home. Weeks later, a private defense firm stepped in to help restart the Wiki Weapon Project and Defense Distributed purchased a 3-D printer off eBay for $8,000.

While the original test model only lasted 6 shots and wasn’t a full-printed gun, it showed off just what can be created by printing an AR-15’s lower receiver. In 2013, Defense Distributed succeeded in creating an entire Liberator pistol, minus its metal firing pin, with 3-D printed components. 

Since then, Cody Wilson has been involved in a legal battle with the federal government concerning his firearm blueprint downloadables.

All this brings us to President Trump’s seemingly random tweet. The issue was recently thrust into the spotlight due to a recent development.

Thanks to a settlement between the State Department and Defense Distributed, a trove of the downloadable 3-D gun files would be legally available for public consumption on August 1.

With the release of these 3-D gun documents just days away, a number of states appealed to a federal judge late Monday. Attorneys general from across the country filed a joint lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the impending drop of the firearm blueprint files. And just hours before the August 1 blueprint release date, a federal judge granted a nationwide temporary restraining order against the distribution of the 3-D gun blueprints. 

The federal government long argued against the release of the 3-D printed gun blueprints by citing how easy it would be for extremists and criminals to get its hands on firearms thanks to this technology. But, it was the federal government that offered the settlement which gave the opening for these 3-D gun files to be posted. 

Since the beginning of the 3-D gun legal battle, Cody Wilson has argued that this is a first amendment issue. Its within his free speech rights, he claims, to post these 3-D gun blueprints. 

Gun control activists have voiced their concerns in terms of the gun violence epidemic and school shootings. Democratic politicians have been compelled to act in the face of this new technology but so far Republicans have blocked their attempts.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, especially with an administration that’s now questioning their decision on something they essentially just cleared the way for. One thing for certain is that the technology isn’t going anywhere. With 3-D printers becoming increasingly more affordable — you can buy a printer for a couple hundred bucks — 3-D printed guns, legal or not, are now a reality society will has to face.