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3D printed gun project halted when company seizes equipment

3D printer company Stratasys has seized one of their machines from a U.S. man who is seeking to distribute plans for free on how private citizens can print their own guns.

Cody Wilson, a second-year law student at the University of Texas at Austin, is director of a group that calls themselves Defense Distributed. The group was working on Wiki Weapon, a crowd-funded project that aimed to develop a 3D printed pistol, and eventually free schematics that anyone could use to create a weapon with their personal 3D printer.

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You can watch Wilson's impassioned explanation of the project in this video:

Wilson and Defense Distributed raised $20,000 USD through Bitcoin earlier in September to fund their project. They leased the printer from Stratasys to begin printing a fully 3D printed pistol for the first time, Wired.co.uk reports. There have been similar projects with partially printed parts in the past, but the Wiki Weapon would have been the first of its kind, even if it was likely to melt after being fired once.

But less than a week after getting the printer, Stratasys sent an email to Wilson asking for the printer to be returned. Despite Wilson's response stating that he would not be breaking federal laws in relation to making weapons at home, Stratasys' legal team was adamant that they would not allow for their product to be used for "illegal purposes."

The next day, Stratasys sent out a team to seize the printer from Wilson's apartment.

"They came for it straight up," Wilson said to Wired.com. "I didn't even have it out of the box."

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The precise laws that Wilson and the Defense Distributed group are breaking isn't exactly clear, because the manufacture of weapons in a private home is a bit of a grey area. Wired says in the U.S. there are laws that prohibit the manufacture of machine guns or sawed-off shotguns without a license, or a law that subjects any weapons other than pistols and revolvers that are capable of being concealed to review by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The other possible issue with the Wiki Weapon is what it's made of: an entirely plastic gun means that it would be invisible to metal detectors and the Undetectable Firearms Act makes the printed plastic weapon illegal.

Wilson says that he is in the process of trying to get the project together, including paying a visit to ATF to ask about the legal issues surrounding his project. Wilson went to their office, but the ATF took him in for questioning and planned to search his apartment later that day, Wired reports.

"Of course I'm scrambling now," said Wilson. "I'm trying to figure out, well, how I can rent an object from another party or a capital group? In the meantime, I'm doing everything else. It's just added stress."

This is the second time the Wiki Weapons project has been stopped. Previously, the group attempted a fundraiser on IndieGoGo to get the necessary $20,000, but at the $2,000 mark was shut down by the fundraising site, saying that it violated their policy on raising funds for the sale of firearms.