Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And it's Friday. That
Speaker 1: means it's time for a tech Stuff classic episode. This
Speaker 1: particular episode published originally on May twenty second, two thousand.
Speaker 1: It is called printing a Gun, and it's pretty much
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, using three D printers to use
Speaker 1: additive manufacturing to produce firearms. Lauren Voege Obama and I
Speaker 1: sat down to talk about this one because it was
Speaker 1: a brand new, fresh topic and it's one that remains
Speaker 1: relevant today, So enjoy this classic episode. Jonathan and Chris
Speaker 1: did an episode on three D print ng way back
Speaker 1: in two nine. Yeah, that was shortly after printing itself
Speaker 1: was invented. Um before or that, we just communicated by
Speaker 1: banging rocks together. No one was alive then, yeah, well
Speaker 1: there's no no life. We were alive, but anyway, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no no. We did an episode on three D
Speaker 1: printing back in two thousand nine, which was funny because
Speaker 1: at that point I had never actually seen one in person.
Speaker 1: Now we have one in the office. We have one
Speaker 1: in the office. Now, Yeah, we actually have a three
Speaker 1: D printer here that's very very tiny and we can
Speaker 1: only print small stuff with it. But it's mostly green
Speaker 1: because we haven't changed out the plastic. But what three
Speaker 1: D printers do. They print stuff in three dimensions and
Speaker 1: they it's called additive manufacturing, yes, and it's this is
Speaker 1: different from subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive would be where you take
Speaker 1: a hunk of stuff and carve away all the stuff
Speaker 1: you don't want. It's Michael Angelo's David exactly. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're you cut away everything that doesn't look like David. Right.
Speaker 1: That's that's the sculpt sculpting point of view. You know,
Speaker 1: to sculpt an elephant, you cut all the stuff away
Speaker 1: that doesn't look like an elephant. But that's very wasteful.
Speaker 1: It means that all that material you cut away you
Speaker 1: potentially waste. By using additive manufacturing, you're printing a material.
Speaker 1: In most cases, in consumer cases, at any rate, plastics
Speaker 1: in very thin layers uh in in in a predetermined
Speaker 1: design exactly. And these layers can be a micron thick
Speaker 1: or thinner. If you've got very precise three D printing technology,
Speaker 1: and you do this layer by layer by layer until
Speaker 1: finally you have a full object. And it's doing this
Speaker 1: with plastic and a binding agents so that the plastic
Speaker 1: sticks together properly. Otherwise it would just fall apart and
Speaker 1: crumble in your hands. But not so useful. Not so useful.
Speaker 1: It would be very pretty until you try to pick
Speaker 1: it up. But the but the finished product winds up
Speaker 1: being a single piece of plastic in this case. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've got other there are other types of three
Speaker 1: D printers out there. They're not for consumers that can
Speaker 1: print in other materials. And we expect then in the
Speaker 1: future we're going to be able to do things like
Speaker 1: print and metal, even to the point where we can
Speaker 1: print circuit boards or human organs. Human organs using biological
Speaker 1: material we can print it maybe lass really anything that
Speaker 1: would allow you to print using a liquid. Uh, it
Speaker 1: would it would all be potentially possible using this method.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in that. We uh. In our other show,
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, we talked a little bit about that, So
Speaker 1: so look that one up if you want to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun. That was one of the
Speaker 1: earliest episodes. I had a lot of fun talking about that. So,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal with three D printing. Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's an incredibly disruptive technology. Uh, And I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that in a negative way, but it does mean
Speaker 1: that three D printers have the potential to really shake
Speaker 1: up the way the world works in many ways, like
Speaker 1: manufacturing and distribution in particular would be very much affected
Speaker 1: by three D printers. If you get to the point
Speaker 1: where a three D printer is within the purchasing range
Speaker 1: of your average computer user, then that computer user can
Speaker 1: go out by a three D printer, bring it home
Speaker 1: by the materials you need to be able to build whatever,
Speaker 1: and then you can start constructing stuff out of your home.
Speaker 1: You could download plans from the internet and build things.
Speaker 1: And those things could be furniture, it could be toys,
Speaker 1: it could be tools. Uh. And so that means that
Speaker 1: you've got these manufacturers out there who design and build
Speaker 1: stuff that suddenly have to worry about, well, is there
Speaker 1: going to even be a market for my stuff anymore?
Speaker 1: Or do I do I change my business models? So
Speaker 1: instead of selling stuff, I start selling plans for stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: you start worrying a lot more about the intellectual copyright
Speaker 1: of the shape of a table, which is kind of crazy, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you're no longer thinking I need to make sure no
Speaker 1: one shoplifts this thing. You're thinking, I need to make
Speaker 1: sure no one builds a plan that allows them to
Speaker 1: to print the same as this thing. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of intellectual property concerns that come up because
Speaker 1: of three D printing, and some of them are concerns
Speaker 1: that we never would have thought about before, like how
Speaker 1: do you copyright a table? You know, but that's a
Speaker 1: thing now. So one of the other questions that came
Speaker 1: up pretty early on when three D printers were starting
Speaker 1: to become uh, some that the general public was becoming
Speaker 1: aware of was what happens when someone prints a weapon
Speaker 1: using one of these things. And for a long time,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were going like, oh, that's years off,
Speaker 1: we don't need to worry about it. Yeah, maybe back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine Chris and I were saying that,
Speaker 1: but two thirteen, hey, we're years off now and someone
Speaker 1: has done that. Yeah. As of as of May four,
Speaker 1: Star Wars Day, Star Wars Day, it was what a
Speaker 1: what a bummer? Yeah, that's a nice choice of words there, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I could see you like going through your list. What
Speaker 1: word am I going to use? Uh? Excellent choice. I agree.
Speaker 1: So we have a fellowed by the name of Cody
Speaker 1: Wilson who describes himself as a co founder and chief
Speaker 1: evangelist of a group called Defense Distributed. Very clever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a nonprofit organization. Yeah. And he designed a gun
Speaker 1: that could be created using a three D printer and
Speaker 1: a common nail, uh from a hardware store. And the
Speaker 1: gun is has sixteen pieces total, one of those pieces
Speaker 1: being the nail. The other fifteen are all printed by
Speaker 1: a three D printer, a consumer grade. I think he
Speaker 1: got it for eight thousand bucks on eBay. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the Stratusist Dimension s ST three D printer, which
Speaker 1: you could probably buy for a round ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He got a second hand for eight thousand. And we'll
Speaker 1: get more into the whole story of Stratusis and and
Speaker 1: it's involvement in this, because it's an interesting part of
Speaker 1: the story. But we'll save that for a bit later.
Speaker 1: So he printed out these fifteen pieces, He got the
Speaker 1: nail to be the sixteenth piece. The nail acted as
Speaker 1: the firing pin. Now, this is the part of a
Speaker 1: gun that strikes the primer on cartridge so that it ignites,
Speaker 1: and then the gases from the cartridge are what propel
Speaker 1: the bullet out of the barrel of the gun. Now,
Speaker 1: it doesn't technically need to be metal, but but the
Speaker 1: kind of plastic that they use is just a little
Speaker 1: bit too soft to to strike it without deforming. Right.
Speaker 1: So essentially what would happen is the instead of igniting
Speaker 1: the gas, the firing pin was just sort of bending.
Speaker 1: So instead of using that, he decided to use a
Speaker 1: nail uh and uh and putting it all together. He
Speaker 1: wasn't even sure if it was going to hold together
Speaker 1: or not, but he assembled the gun using the pieces
Speaker 1: that he had designed. Um. And he strapped it up
Speaker 1: to a pole as I recall, and an aluminum a
Speaker 1: little bit of scaffolding I think, okay, and uh, and
Speaker 1: he tied a string to it and instead as far
Speaker 1: away as possible, right, and used the string to pull
Speaker 1: the trigger uh and had a successful test. It actually
Speaker 1: fired the bullet uh and was and it remained intact. Um.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that was a big concern
Speaker 1: was that if you have a gun that's essentially made
Speaker 1: out of plastic would it be able to withstand the
Speaker 1: the forces that a gun experiences when you fire a bullet,
Speaker 1: And in the case of this one, it seemed to
Speaker 1: do that. And he also eventually tested it by firing
Speaker 1: it by hand. Um, you know, it took some It
Speaker 1: took some working up to get to that part, right right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: During the initial test, I believe they had a couple
Speaker 1: of successful firings. But um, but then it it misfired,
Speaker 1: um due to a misalignment issue and uh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Now they point out that the gun that as it's designed,
Speaker 1: you could actually remove the barrel and replace it with
Speaker 1: a new barrel. So uh, if there were parts that
Speaker 1: were that would break down, you could actually replace those
Speaker 1: parts just by printing out new ones. But the gun
Speaker 1: itself wouldn't last for more than a few shots. In fact,
Speaker 1: one expert I saw said that, in his opinion, if
Speaker 1: you were using the best kind of plastic possible, you
Speaker 1: might be able to get between ten and twenty shots.
Speaker 1: Before it just was an unusable machine. Yeah, although, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is designed so that you can snap parts in
Speaker 1: and out right, so you just replace the ones that
Speaker 1: are not working anymore, and then you could continue to
Speaker 1: fire and it is supposed to be relatively quickly to
Speaker 1: switch those parts out too. Uh. Well, what Wilson also
Speaker 1: did was he ended up uploading the design to Mega,
Speaker 1: which is kim dot COM's file sharing It's really like
Speaker 1: a locker service where you can store files. They're encrypted
Speaker 1: so that no one can see what it is that
Speaker 1: you are doing. Um. He uploaded that and made it
Speaker 1: freely available to anyone who wanted to get hold of this.
Speaker 1: Within two days, ten thousand people had downloaded it, and
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, we're recording this
Speaker 1: on May nine. Forbes reported this morning that it had
Speaker 1: been downloaded more than one hundred thousand times. Now, keep
Speaker 1: in mind, not everyone who downloaded that has access to
Speaker 1: a three D printer. All Right, I'm sure that a
Speaker 1: lot of that is curiosity. There has been so much
Speaker 1: buzz about it on the Internet that I'm sure that
Speaker 1: a lot of people were just looking at it because
Speaker 1: they could. Yeah, I'm sure there's a percent edge of that.
Speaker 1: That's just the press that we need to have access
Speaker 1: to this so we can take a look at it.
Speaker 1: But uh, and if you're curious about what kind of
Speaker 1: bullet it fired, it was a thirty eight caliber bullet.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh he they I've read that they've designed
Speaker 1: the gun in such a way that you could change
Speaker 1: out the chamber and barrel, which you could fire different
Speaker 1: caliber bullets depending upon which ones you were using. But
Speaker 1: thirty eight was what they used for their tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're for their successful tests. According to a Forbes Andy Greenberg,
Speaker 1: who was on the scene for some of these tests
Speaker 1: and has a couple of really great articles that we
Speaker 1: did drawn extensively for for this podcast. Um, they switched
Speaker 1: the barrel out for a rifle cartridge that made the
Speaker 1: entire thing explode into shrapnel. Now what was the name
Speaker 1: of this gun? They're calling it the Liberator? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this might be something that history buffs recognized from World
Speaker 1: War Two. Um. During World War Two, the Allies, specifically
Speaker 1: the United States, I believe, Yeah, they manufactured these one
Speaker 1: shot for fives. There were one shot pistols, meaning that
Speaker 1: you could fire them once and then that's it. It's
Speaker 1: just not designed to shoot more than one time. And
Speaker 1: the whole the whole purpose of this was to drop
Speaker 1: these forty five behind enemy lines and occupied territories occupied France, right,
Speaker 1: The idea being that that the French population would suddenly
Speaker 1: have access to weapons, but you can only fire at once.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't a practical weapon. In fact, I don't
Speaker 1: think that the Allies ever considered it to be something
Speaker 1: that would allow a real tied to turn. It was
Speaker 1: more of an attempt to demoralize the Access powers rather
Speaker 1: than to actually foment some form of revolution and propaganda
Speaker 1: was was a really interesting technology that was used in
Speaker 1: World War Two. Yeah, so this is one of those
Speaker 1: examples of propaganda that don't doesn't involve like a song
Speaker 1: or a poster or a movie. It was actually an act,
Speaker 1: and in this case, it was an act of distributing
Speaker 1: uh weapons of limited use to an occupied country. And
Speaker 1: from what I understand, it doesn't look like it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like all of them, or even most of them
Speaker 1: were ever actually distributed. It was. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of contention about whether or not they were and to
Speaker 1: whom and when and how many, but and from why
Speaker 1: I understand most of them most of them without But anyway,
Speaker 1: Wilson apparently wanted to to take that name, and uh,
Speaker 1: it kind of goes along with his philosophy. But his
Speaker 1: philosophy is interesting. We will cover that in this episode,
Speaker 1: but I think we're going to save that for the
Speaker 1: end because it's it's pretty it's pretty dynamic. It is dynamic.
Speaker 1: It's intense, is what it is. So yeah, a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand folks around or at least a hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: have downloaded these plans as of the recording this podcast.
Speaker 1: By the time this publishes, I'm sure that number will
Speaker 1: be way bigger. Ye. Yeah, well, I mean, as you
Speaker 1: could have everyone just lose interest, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen with this particular product. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's where the actual logistics sre. That's you know
Speaker 1: what the state of the gun is. The gun, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you ever have if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: a picture of it, it looks really clunky and it
Speaker 1: has to be because that plastic has to be pretty
Speaker 1: thick to withstand the pressures. And we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: what those actually are in the in the next section.
Speaker 1: But um, it's not a sleek weapon by any means.
Speaker 1: It is not, no, no, And I mean you know
Speaker 1: the kind of plastics that are that are being used
Speaker 1: are Um, it's it's a b S which is a
Speaker 1: krylum nitrial butt to dyeing styrene um. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a thermoplastic blend. It's used in lots of everyday items
Speaker 1: like like molded tool handles, electric shavers, lego bricks are
Speaker 1: made of this stuff. So wow, And we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about why that causes a concern, you know,
Speaker 1: the materials used, but before we really get into the
Speaker 1: concerns and and you know, the philosophy of of Cody
Speaker 1: Wilson and other elements and the response that we've seen
Speaker 1: so far, and these are early days when we're recording this. Guys,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break from this classic episode
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors, but we'll be right back. Okay,
Speaker 1: getting back into the subject at hand. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of concerns that come up with this idea of
Speaker 1: being able to print a gun at home. Some of
Speaker 1: these you might think of as knee jerk responses that
Speaker 1: that don't take everything into account, But I think there
Speaker 1: are some concerns that are you can't just dismiss easily.
Speaker 1: One is that if you're talking about a plastic gun,
Speaker 1: let's say that a plastic gun is being used in
Speaker 1: a crime. Uh, the concern is that you wouldn't really
Speaker 1: be able to trace that gun back. You know, guns
Speaker 1: right now have these grooves that are in the barrels
Speaker 1: so that when you fire the bullet, it makes the
Speaker 1: bullets start to spin, giving it more stability, but it
Speaker 1: also ends up carving uh into the specific pattern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so by looking at the pattern, you can identify
Speaker 1: depending on how what shape the bullets in, you can
Speaker 1: identify the type of firearm that fired that bullet. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about a smooth barreled, plastic gun, there's no
Speaker 1: way of telling. And even if it had some sort
Speaker 1: of grooves in it, you could design those in such
Speaker 1: a way where it's unique to your gun, but without
Speaker 1: anyone being able to tell it could be designed. It
Speaker 1: could be literally unique to your gun. No one would
Speaker 1: know where to even start looking for that, because if
Speaker 1: it's all just a file on your computer, how would
Speaker 1: how would anyone know unless they're already watching you. I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna get into that because I think that's
Speaker 1: what fuels the whole Liberator in the first place. But
Speaker 1: the you know, that's that's the concern is that if
Speaker 1: it was used in a crime, it would be very
Speaker 1: difficult if not impossible to trace back. Uh. They're also undetectable,
Speaker 1: meaning that if you only have a tiny amount of
Speaker 1: metal in them and you go through a metal detector,
Speaker 1: the metal detector may not it might not pick up
Speaker 1: that mail. Yeah. Now, now, in this case, Cody Wilson
Speaker 1: was actually very careful about following um the letter, if
Speaker 1: not at all the spirit of the law. In the
Speaker 1: creation of this he um Uh. He took his company
Speaker 1: to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
Speaker 1: in order to get a federal license to manufacture and
Speaker 1: distribute firearms, and furthermore, put a small metal cube at
Speaker 1: completely non functional six ounds metal cube into the gun
Speaker 1: to make it detectable by metal detectives. Right, because the
Speaker 1: US Undetectable Firearms Act makes it illegal to manufacture any
Speaker 1: sort of undetectable weapon. Because this this isn't the first
Speaker 1: time that a potentially undetectable weapon has been made. You can.
Speaker 1: They're guns that use ceramic. There are other plastic weapons
Speaker 1: as well that have used molded plastic as opposed to
Speaker 1: three D printed plastic. But uh, that was a big concern.
Speaker 1: So now he followed the rules. Wilson did his his
Speaker 1: version of the gun in fact had that metal in it,
Speaker 1: so it was not undetectable. But here's but nothing saying
Speaker 1: that someone who downloads that would still have the same
Speaker 1: ye follow the same rules. If you download the blueprint
Speaker 1: and printed it out yourself, you could be you could
Speaker 1: just say, well, I'm not I'm not going to put
Speaker 1: the metal slug in there, and therefore it is going
Speaker 1: to be virtually undetectable by a metal detector. And however,
Speaker 1: we should mention that that those three D scanners that
Speaker 1: they've put in a lot of airports would pick the
Speaker 1: gun up. It would be able to recognize it on
Speaker 1: on your person, right. So so if if you're using
Speaker 1: a three D scanner, it's still going to pick these
Speaker 1: things up. If you are using just metal detectors, it wouldn't,
Speaker 1: So that that's raised some security concerns obviously. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Wilson, I think he took some perverse joy
Speaker 1: and the fact that he was following the law while
Speaker 1: creating something that is potentially incredibly disruptive. Absolutely, he's are
Speaker 1: we getting into. But I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that he took some pleasure. And they did. They did
Speaker 1: install a metal detector or walk through metal detector in
Speaker 1: their workshop for testing to make sure that that that
Speaker 1: met those requirements. Uh and uh. So to get to
Speaker 1: other concerns beyond the fact that you can't trade sit
Speaker 1: you can't necessarily detect it. Um. Another concerns there's there's
Speaker 1: no background check, right if you download those plans, there's
Speaker 1: no control there about who gets access to that gun.
Speaker 1: So in the United States, convicts can't you know, people
Speaker 1: who have been convicted of a felony, they can't buy
Speaker 1: a gun legally in the United States. I mean, they
Speaker 1: could buy it illegally, but you can't go through any
Speaker 1: legal means of buying it. Um. That's what the whole
Speaker 1: background check thing is supposed to protect against in the
Speaker 1: United States. So this bypasses it. If you are able,
Speaker 1: if you have the means or the access to a
Speaker 1: three D printer, and you have a criminal record and
Speaker 1: you otherwise could not legally buy a firearm, you could
Speaker 1: make one yourself this way. And that's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of critics have pointed out, saying you have just
Speaker 1: invalidated this whole part of the system. Wilson, for his part,
Speaker 1: not a big fan of gun control, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be very concerned about that so much though that
Speaker 1: in March he released a video of a three D
Speaker 1: printable UM A R fifteen lower receiver, which is the
Speaker 1: part that's regulated. UM. The rest of the parts you
Speaker 1: can purchase without without all that much trouble and UM
Speaker 1: and that hypothetically could lock into these these other purchasable
Speaker 1: parts and UH. And thus you know, again bypassed by
Speaker 1: passing that whole problem, or what at what he saw
Speaker 1: as a problem. Uh. Other things that you have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. Remember we were talking about that plastic earlier,
Speaker 1: about how how strong it was, and the type of
Speaker 1: plastic used and the type of printer being used. UH.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Rally, who's a three D printing expert UM said
Speaker 1: in The Guardian that that you have to be really
Speaker 1: careful because not everyone out there has access to the
Speaker 1: same sort of three D printers, were the same sort
Speaker 1: of raw materials being used. And just because one printed
Speaker 1: gun was able to withstand the pressure and force that
Speaker 1: a that this that the liberator did in the initial tests,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that something that you print using a
Speaker 1: different kind of printer could do the same thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It may be that the material you print is weaker
Speaker 1: than the one that that Wilson used, and Wilson Wilson
Speaker 1: also did treat the plastics after they were printed in
Speaker 1: order to make them stronger. So you could potentially end
Speaker 1: up with a device that could explode in your hand
Speaker 1: and cause you huge amounts of damage, if not even
Speaker 1: kill you right out, you know, out right. In fact,
Speaker 1: he said that it's far more likely someone will be
Speaker 1: injured by a failing weapon before anyone is ever deliberately shot.
Speaker 1: But so uh that that was his big concern was
Speaker 1: not only is it something that could potentially, you know,
Speaker 1: one person could potentially used to kill someone else, it's
Speaker 1: something that someone who's just curious about it could end
Speaker 1: up severely injuring themselves because the materials they're using just
Speaker 1: can't hold up to the pressures and even even unit
Speaker 1: to unit um uh you know, and any anything that
Speaker 1: you've printed like that could be misaligned, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: on a relatively small scale that you might not be
Speaker 1: able to see from the outside of the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if your printer does not have the same
Speaker 1: level of precision, then that could also be a problem.
Speaker 1: Things couldnt be things might not be in the right alignment,
Speaker 1: because fair if just something glarps into the wrong place,
Speaker 1: that's you know that that can be glarping is an
Speaker 1: issue that there's also the problem that there could be
Speaker 1: uh nylon plastic powder within the barrel itself, which can
Speaker 1: be flammable and could actually cause an explosion in your hand,
Speaker 1: because you know, you're talking about this intense heat and pressure.
Speaker 1: In fact, let's talk about that for a second. According
Speaker 1: to the Guardian, the pressure inside a gun typically reaches
Speaker 1: about a thousand atmospheres and temperatures exceed two hundred degrees
Speaker 1: celsius when you fire off a gun. So the gun
Speaker 1: the bullets flying out because of the expanding gas that
Speaker 1: is created when the primary ignites and gets the propellant
Speaker 1: going right. So this expanding gas is what pushes that
Speaker 1: bullet out. According again, according to the Guardian, about of
Speaker 1: that energy from the expanded gas transfers to the bullet.
Speaker 1: Another thirty percent of the energy transfers to the barrel
Speaker 1: in the four of heat and heat tends to weaken plastic.
Speaker 1: So if you aren't using heat treated plastic, or you're
Speaker 1: using a weaker kind of plastic, that might be enough
Speaker 1: for that gun to shatter in your hands or otherwise
Speaker 1: fail in a way that could cause you some pretty
Speaker 1: serious injury. And uh, Philip Boyce, who was an expert
Speaker 1: with forensic scientific he's the one who said that with
Speaker 1: a really good plastic gun you might get off as
Speaker 1: many as ten to twenty shots before it failed. So
Speaker 1: beyond that, these guns aren't necessarily that accurate. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's a smooth barrel gun, Uh, it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to guide the bullet in any way. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: the closer you are, obviously are to whatever the target
Speaker 1: is that you're aiming at, the more likely you'll hit it.
Speaker 1: But you might wind up just being a you know,
Speaker 1: a stormtrooper. Yeah, lots of pe pe, very little actual
Speaker 1: and when you've only got you know, up to ten bullets,
Speaker 1: that's not yeah. So so this has prompted many politicians
Speaker 1: and law enforcement officials to come out and criticize this
Speaker 1: whole idea of three D printed guns. It's not a
Speaker 1: big surprise, you know. I mentioned earlier that the printer
Speaker 1: that Wilson used was purchased the Stratusis Dimension S S
Speaker 1: T three D printer Uh, they actually were using a
Speaker 1: least one originally from the company. Yeah, they leased it
Speaker 1: from Stratusis. But as of October, Stratusis figured out what
Speaker 1: they were doing and seized their property back and said
Speaker 1: no thanks. Yeah, and you might say, why would why
Speaker 1: do they care? They care because three D printer companies,
Speaker 1: the companies that are designing these things for consumers, Uh,
Speaker 1: they don't want the government to come in and start
Speaker 1: regulating and legislating the stuff they make because that's going
Speaker 1: to affect their business. So it could get really expensive,
Speaker 1: it could get to be a huge just licensing issue. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys might not be aware of this, but three
Speaker 1: D s are not three D scanners, but color scanners.
Speaker 1: Color scanners have have technology built into them that will
Speaker 1: prevent them from doing things like copying and reproducing currency.
Speaker 1: It's a form of DRM. Yeah, it's really yeah, it
Speaker 1: really kind of is. It's it's this idea of protecting
Speaker 1: it so that, you know, counterfeiters can't just sit there
Speaker 1: at home and scan and print money. Because once scanner's
Speaker 1: got to be that specific, that became an issue. So
Speaker 1: you build that into the device itself where it will
Speaker 1: not uh copy and print that kind of thing, The
Speaker 1: same sort of thing may be true with three D printers.
Speaker 1: Politicians might say, you have to find a way to
Speaker 1: prevent people from printing this particular type of peace, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly they have to implement that. That drives up
Speaker 1: production costs for the three D printer side. It drives
Speaker 1: up the consumer costs for three D printers. That hurts
Speaker 1: the whole industry. That's that's the viewpoint of the manufacturers
Speaker 1: and why they would not be so keen on having
Speaker 1: their own materials made to build something like a gu
Speaker 1: Lauren and I have more to say about printing a
Speaker 1: gun in just a moment, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors. So you had the
Speaker 1: concern from the companies there as far as the politicians
Speaker 1: and law enforcement goes. Law enforcement in the UK, the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police pointed out that making or owning a gun
Speaker 1: like this would be illegal unless you were a registered
Speaker 1: firearms dealer with the proper credentials and quote unquote authorities.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it would just owning a gun like this in
Speaker 1: the UK would be considered illegal. Um, if you used
Speaker 1: in in any way then that would get you a
Speaker 1: pretty stiff penalty. UH. In the United States, there were
Speaker 1: senators from California, Senators and congress people, i should say,
Speaker 1: and council members in one case from California, Washington, D C.
Speaker 1: And New York who have all expressed concern about three
Speaker 1: D printing gun printed gun and UH talked about getting
Speaker 1: coming up with legislation that can prevent it, helping helping
Speaker 1: to revamp that Undetectable Firearms Act that we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. This makes it complicated because there's really only
Speaker 1: so much that you can do from a legal perspective,
Speaker 1: like how do you how do you prevent something? The
Speaker 1: cat's already out of the bag. You know, a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people have downloaded this as of today when we're
Speaker 1: recording this, So it's you know, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to say, let's stop this from happening now. It's we
Speaker 1: all know that once something's on the Internet, it's forever.
Speaker 1: Internet is forever. Yeah, So I did want to mention
Speaker 1: that on the private side, there were other roadblocks to
Speaker 1: the actual creation of this thing. UH. Wilson had his
Speaker 1: crowdfunding campaign campaign through indie go go shut down UM
Speaker 1: in August. UM also two workshop spaces that he had
Speaker 1: been using, denied him access after learning what he was
Speaker 1: up to, and furthermore, he originally had some of these
Speaker 1: files up on thing verse by MakerBot and maker butt
Speaker 1: to it down, took it down. Yeah, the three D
Speaker 1: printing unity in general is reacting to this in very
Speaker 1: much the same sort of way, saying that you know,
Speaker 1: now you're bringing unwanted attention to our our our industry
Speaker 1: or our hobby. Uh. You know, they've always said there's
Speaker 1: going to be a disruptive kind of technology, but they
Speaker 1: never thought of it in the terms of they didn't
Speaker 1: frame it in the terms of disruptive being potentially violent,
Speaker 1: which is not what Wilson is saying, although he also
Speaker 1: really deflects any kind of criticism that even wanders towards
Speaker 1: the violence question. Uh, to the point where, Uh, there
Speaker 1: are times where I was reading some of his responses
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking, like this guy took notes in the
Speaker 1: second Matrix movie and said, how can I talk more
Speaker 1: like the architect where I say a lot but don't
Speaker 1: really say anything, or at least don't answer any questions.
Speaker 1: I think that's fair, you know, I I've read it's
Speaker 1: it's harsh, it's hard criticism. But but yeah, we've the
Speaker 1: two of us both have probably read a lot of
Speaker 1: things that that Wilson said. Well, not only that he said,
Speaker 1: but what he wouldn't say, Like if anyone confronted him
Speaker 1: directly with questions about, well, what about folks who uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like convicts, are you saying that convicts should
Speaker 1: have access to weapons? And instead of answering that question,
Speaker 1: he would deflect it into something else philosophical. So he
Speaker 1: he just refuses to answer those sort of things. Um,
Speaker 1: so he may very well have coherent and uh and
Speaker 1: and a good strong argument for that sort of case,
Speaker 1: but he's not presenting it. So the recording of this
Speaker 1: podcast right might maybe maybe by this afternoon he said
Speaker 1: something that completely addresses my concerns. But he's described himself
Speaker 1: as a cryptoanarchist, which that already should kind of raise
Speaker 1: h alarm flags for certain people. Anarchy is a tough
Speaker 1: position to really defend. I think it is, and and
Speaker 1: that this is getting into into a personal personal philosophy
Speaker 1: here and uh and and Jonathan and I are are
Speaker 1: a little bit more touchy feely, We're okay. So the
Speaker 1: way I view it is that he's taken a particular
Speaker 1: stance where uh, he's really put a lot of value
Speaker 1: on the individual, which I don't disagree with. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, individuality is very important. Individual freedoms are very important.
Speaker 1: And of course there's you know, all the different arguments
Speaker 1: you can make about how if you trade liberty for
Speaker 1: security then you don't really have either that. I've heard
Speaker 1: all these arguments before. Um, but uh, you know, there
Speaker 1: he seems very dismissive of the idea of governments in general,
Speaker 1: so essentially saying that the system is broken, and not
Speaker 1: only is it broken, but it cannot be fixed. That
Speaker 1: at this point the government system is completely beholden to
Speaker 1: special interests and corporations, it does not truly represent people,
Speaker 1: it's doing more harm than good, it's getting more and
Speaker 1: more intrusive in our daily lives, and and and there's
Speaker 1: no way to fix it, and that therefore it must
Speaker 1: be destroyed from the inside. Yeah, or at least at
Speaker 1: least ignored, right, right, Really, he doesn't so much stepped
Speaker 1: outside of and said, yeah, he's he's not necessarily condoning
Speaker 1: that we all rise up against our tyrannical overlords, but
Speaker 1: necessarily more like, let's just not pay attention to them anymore. Which, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a quote on the website of Defense
Speaker 1: Distributed where it says, how do government's behave if they
Speaker 1: must one day operate on the assumption that any and
Speaker 1: every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through
Speaker 1: the Internet. Let's find out? Yeah, so, I mean here,
Speaker 1: here's here's my view. The three D printing of guns
Speaker 1: was something that was going to happen. It was bound
Speaker 1: to happen, uh, sooner or later. It just happened to
Speaker 1: happen in uh, and there is going to have to
Speaker 1: be a reaction to that, Like what's the right way
Speaker 1: of handling this? The cavalier attitude of Cody Wilson seems
Speaker 1: specifically geared to get a ry is out of people, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and and you know, like and he's and he's so intelligent,
Speaker 1: and he quotes these these really great philosophers when he's
Speaker 1: talking about all of these the you know, he talks
Speaker 1: about for co and how liberty is under siege from
Speaker 1: the vast machine of the ruling class control and and
Speaker 1: about you know, Milton and how in order to be
Speaker 1: truly good you must be presented with the freedom to
Speaker 1: be evil. Um right, we're getting into some clockwork orange
Speaker 1: type stuff at this point, and it's and it's that
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you know, is intellectually delightful to discuss.
Speaker 1: But but when when you get into practical matters, uh,
Speaker 1: some problems rise up, right, right. So, if we lived
Speaker 1: in a storybook world where governments were the evil stepmother
Speaker 1: and we're all the perky little protagonist who the poor orphan,
Speaker 1: who's who's pure of heart and has the best of intentions,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, right, that's of course you want the
Speaker 1: protagonist to win. But reality is way more murky. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't go so far as to say government is inherently evil,
Speaker 1: nor would I go so far as to say individuals
Speaker 1: are inherently good. There's so much shade of gray on
Speaker 1: all sides, of sides. Yeah, And it's it's really people
Speaker 1: that make up a government. Some people are good, some
Speaker 1: people are not so good. And and that's true within
Speaker 1: the population, where within the ruling class and some systems,
Speaker 1: maybe they are maybe they favor the people who are
Speaker 1: not so good over the ones that are good. And
Speaker 1: that just means to me that you have to fix
Speaker 1: the system. Now, to Wilson, it seems to me you
Speaker 1: should abandoned the system altogether. I just don't understand what
Speaker 1: replaces it. Uh. And one of his quotes was it
Speaker 1: seemed very tongue in cheek to me, but it was
Speaker 1: and I'm paraphrasing here, but he was essentially saying that
Speaker 1: he was he would imagine a future where, uh, the
Speaker 1: the individual citizen is making everything that they need using
Speaker 1: things like three D printers, and meanwhile, government funded drones
Speaker 1: are flying overheads searching out all the dissidents, and that
Speaker 1: he's eager to see this future come to pass. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I don't want to live in the road
Speaker 1: would warrior world, I look really bad in spiky shoulder paths.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to go to Bartertown. Master
Speaker 1: Blaster scares me so anyway. But that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: like his his philosophy, And UM, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna go any further about what my own personal philosophy is.
Speaker 1: I think it's fairly clear already from what I've said,
Speaker 1: but I definitely, I definitely find it troubling. But I mean,
Speaker 1: now it's a fact of life, so now we do
Speaker 1: have to deal with it, and we were gonna have
Speaker 1: to deal with it sometime or other. So it's not
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna get too angry at Wilson for
Speaker 1: doing this because someone was going to right the way
Speaker 1: he's done. It is a little more snarky than I
Speaker 1: would have cared for, but you know, that's that's life. Um.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to see how this, how this
Speaker 1: plays out, whether or not, uh, it ends up even
Speaker 1: being a big deal. It's completely possible that this ends
Speaker 1: up being far more fuss than what it it's worth, right,
Speaker 1: especially for another few years, you know, before before people
Speaker 1: have I mean, you know, right now this kind of
Speaker 1: technology costs about ten grand to get access to. It's
Speaker 1: way easier to go ahead and get a gun, even illegally.
Speaker 1: That's less money. Yeah, yeah, or I'm you know, like
Speaker 1: hypothetically you could make one yourself for under ten grand,
Speaker 1: if sure. I mean, that's you know, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of knowledge that you have to bend to that to
Speaker 1: to you know, you know, file all the metal and
Speaker 1: do all the everything you had machine the parts and
Speaker 1: but but I mean, you know, people have been making
Speaker 1: their own firearms for what four years? Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: even legal to make your own firearms under a very
Speaker 1: specific criteria in several countries and clean United States. But
Speaker 1: so really, when you when you look at that level,
Speaker 1: it's not like, um, it's not like this is the
Speaker 1: most unheard of thing in the world. It's new, which
Speaker 1: is part of why it's a little and it's it's digital,
Speaker 1: which which a lot of people get kind of titchy about. Right,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing that you know, the music industry,
Speaker 1: removing industry, television industry, they all got worried because it
Speaker 1: meant that you could distribute something on a much wider
Speaker 1: scale than before. But yeah, we're not quite to the
Speaker 1: point where everyone's going to be printing out their own guns,
Speaker 1: especially with ones that are going to be reliable and
Speaker 1: not just blow up, and they're reliable enough to to
Speaker 1: actually want to use. And that wraps up this classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: tech Stuff topics, please reach out to suggest them to
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