Computer files to create a handgun almost entirely from parts made with a 3D printer went online on Monday, alarming US gun control advocates after it was successfully test-fired by its inventor.
The single-shot .380 caliber Liberator bears a vague resemblance to its namesake, the FP-45 Liberator pistol that the US developed during World War II to be airdropped to French Resistance fighters.
Computer-aided design (CAD) files for the Liberator appeared on the Web site of Defense Distributed, a non-profit group that promotes the open-source development of firearms using 3D printers.
“We’ll build the trigger first ... Next, we’ll build the hammer subassembly ... Next, drop the hammer into the frame...,” reads the accompanying set of instructions, which come in English and Chinese.
“Slide the grip on the frame and insert the grip pin. Your Liberator is now ready to go,” it says.
For the Liberator to conform with US firearms law, the instructions call for an inch-thick chunk of steel to be sealed with epoxy glue in front of the trigger guard, so that the weapon can be spotted by metal detectors.
Business magazine Forbes posted a video of the Liberator being remotely test-fired outside Austin, Texas, last week, with a yellow string tied to the trigger of the toy-like white-and-blue handgun.
“The verdict: It worked,” Forbes reported, adding that the Liberator exploded “sending shards of white ABS plastic flying into the weeds” when its inventor, Cody Wilson, attempted a second test using a rifle cartridge.
“I feel no sense of achievement,” the 25-year-old University of Texas law student told Forbes. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
CAD files for gun parts have been available on the Internet for some time, but the Liberator is apparently the first entire weapon ever to be fabricated almost exclusively with parts created with 3D printing technology.
Supporters of tougher gun laws in the US — where there are nearly as many guns (an estimated 300 million) as there are people (about 315 million) and more than 30,000 gun-related deaths a year — expressed alarm.
“Stomach-churning,” US Senator Charles Schumer said. “Now anyone — a terrorist, someone who is mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon — can essentially open a gun factory in their garage. It must be stopped.”
In the US House of Representatives, Congressman Steve Israel, also from New York, is sponsoring an Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act to outlaw plastic homemade guns.
“Security checkpoints, background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” he said in a statement.
No longer prohibitively expensive, 3D printers can now be bought for about the same price as a top-end laptop computer.
Brooklyn-based MakerBot, for instance, markets its desktop Replicator 2 for US$2,199 with delivery in a week.
After the massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December last year, MakerBot took down CAD files for semi-automatic rifle parts that gun enthusiasts had posted on its open-source 3D printing library.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.