Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, And today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about a kind of controversial subject, something that
Speaker 1: hit the news in early May of the idea of
Speaker 1: using three D printers to print handguns, because someone's gone
Speaker 1: and done that crazy thing, and to talk about what
Speaker 1: the ramifications are, what the what, what was actually the gun?
Speaker 1: And uh? And why are people concerned? And what are
Speaker 1: the various things we need to take into account. But
Speaker 1: before we get into all of that, I think it
Speaker 1: benefits us to talk a little bit about three D
Speaker 1: printing in general, just in case you aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: the concept. Right and now, Jonathan and Chris did an
Speaker 1: episode on three D printing way back in two thou nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was shortly after printing itself was invented. Um before that,
Speaker 1: we just communicated by banging rocks together. No one was
Speaker 1: alive then, yeah, well there was no no life. We
Speaker 1: were alive, but anyway, no, no, no, no, no. We
Speaker 1: did an episode on three D printing back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, which was funny because at that point I
Speaker 1: had never actually seen one in person. Now we have
Speaker 1: one in the ophant, we have one in the office. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually have a three D printer here that's very
Speaker 1: very tiny and we can only print small stuff with it.
Speaker 1: But it's mostly green because we haven't changed out the plastic.
Speaker 1: But what three D printers do. They print stuff in
Speaker 1: three dimensions and they it's called additive manufacturing, yes, and
Speaker 1: it's this is different from subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive would be
Speaker 1: where you take a hunk of stuff and carve away
Speaker 1: all the stuff you don't want. It's Michael Angelo's David exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're 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 editor of manufacturing, you're printing 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 not so useful. 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. 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 the future
Speaker 1: we're going to be able to do things like print
Speaker 1: and metal, even to the point where we can print
Speaker 1: circuit boards or human organs. Human organs using biological material
Speaker 1: we can print it maybe glass, anything that would allow
Speaker 1: you to print using a liquid. Uh, it would it
Speaker 1: would all be potentially possible using this method. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in that. We uh. In our other show, Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about that, So so look
Speaker 1: that one up if you want to. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. That was one of the earliest episodes
Speaker 1: 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 of the shape of a table, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy, right, Like, you're no longer thinking I need
Speaker 1: to make sure no one shoplifts this thing. You're thinking,
Speaker 1: I need to make sure no one builds a plan
Speaker 1: that allows them to to print the same as this thing. Right. So,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of intellectual property concerns that come
Speaker 1: up because of three D printing, and some of them
Speaker 1: are concerns that we never would have thought about before,
Speaker 1: like how do you copyright a table? You know, but
Speaker 1: that's a thing now. So one of the other questions
Speaker 1: that came up pretty early on when three D printers
Speaker 1: were starting to become uh, something that the general public
Speaker 1: was becoming aware of was what happens when someone prints
Speaker 1: a weapon using one of these things. And for a
Speaker 1: long time, a lot of people are going like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's years off, we don't need to worry about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe back in two thousand nine Chris and I were
Speaker 1: saying that, but two thirteen, hey, we're years off now
Speaker 1: and someone has done that. Ye as of as of
Speaker 1: May four, Star Wars Day, Star Wars Day, it was
Speaker 1: what a what a bummer? Yeah, that's a nice choice
Speaker 1: of words. There, Lauren, I could see you like going
Speaker 1: through your list. What word am I going to use? Uh?
Speaker 1: Excellent choice. I agree. So we have a fellow by
Speaker 1: the name of Cody Wilson who describes himself as a
Speaker 1: co founder and chief evangelist of a group called Defense Distributed.
Speaker 1: Very clever. Yeah, it's a nonprofit organization. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: he designed a gun that could be created using a
Speaker 1: three D printer and a common naw uh from a
Speaker 1: hardware store. And the gun is has sixteen pieces total,
Speaker 1: one of those pieces being the nail. The other fifteen
Speaker 1: are all printed by a three D printer, a consumer grade.
Speaker 1: I think he got it for eight thousand bucks on eBay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the Stratusist Dimension s ST three D printer,
Speaker 1: which you could probably buy for a round ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He got a secondhand for eight thousand. And we'll get
Speaker 1: more into the whole story of Stratisis and and it's
Speaker 1: involvement in this, because it's an interesting part of the story,
Speaker 1: but we'll save that for a bit later. So he
Speaker 1: printed out these fifteen pieces. He got the nail to
Speaker 1: be the sixteenth piece. The nail acted as the firing pin.
Speaker 1: Now this is the part of a gun that strikes
Speaker 1: the primer on cartridge so that it ignites, and then
Speaker 1: the gases from the cartridge are what propelled the bullet
Speaker 1: out of the barrel of the gun. Now it doesn't
Speaker 1: technically need to be metal but um, but the kind
Speaker 1: of plastic that they use is just a little bit
Speaker 1: too off to to strike it without deforming. Right. So
Speaker 1: essentially what would happen is the instead of igniting the gas,
Speaker 1: the firing pin was just sort of bending. So instead
Speaker 1: of using that, he decided to use a nail uh
Speaker 1: and uh and putting it all together. He wasn't even
Speaker 1: sure if it was going to hold together or not,
Speaker 1: but he assembled the gun using the pieces that he
Speaker 1: had designed um. And he strapped it up to a
Speaker 1: pole as I recall, and an aluminum a little bit
Speaker 1: of scaffolding I think, okay, and uh, And he tied
Speaker 1: a string to it and instead as far away as possible, right,
Speaker 1: and used the string to pull the trigger uh and
Speaker 1: had a successful test. It actually fired the bullet uh
Speaker 1: and was and it remained intact. Um. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that was a big concern was that if
Speaker 1: you have a gun that's essentially made out of plastic,
Speaker 1: would it be able to withstand the the forces that
Speaker 1: a gun experiences when you fire a bullet, And in
Speaker 1: the case of this one, it seemed to do that.
Speaker 1: And he also eventually tested it by firing it by hand. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it took some took some working up to
Speaker 1: get to that part, right right. Yeah, during the initial test,
Speaker 1: I believe they had a couple of successful firings. But um,
Speaker 1: but then it it misfired, um, due to a misalignment issue.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah yeah. Now they point out that the
Speaker 1: gun that as it's designed, you could actually remove the
Speaker 1: barrel and replace it with a new barrel. So uh,
Speaker 1: if there were parts that were that would break down,
Speaker 1: you could actually replace those parts just by printing out
Speaker 1: new ones. But the gun itself wouldn't last for more
Speaker 1: than a few shots. In fact, one expert I saw
Speaker 1: said that, in his opinion, if you were using the
Speaker 1: best kind of plastic possible, you might be able to
Speaker 1: get between ten and twenty shots. Before it just was
Speaker 1: an unusable machine. Yeah, although, yeah, it is designed so
Speaker 1: that you can snap parts in and out right, so
Speaker 1: you just replace the ones that are not working anymore,
Speaker 1: and then you could continue to fire, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be relatively quickly to switch those parts out too. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: what Wilson also did was he ended up uploading the
Speaker 1: design to Mega, which is kim dot COM's file sharing
Speaker 1: It's really like a locker service where you can store files.
Speaker 1: They're encrypted so that no one can see what it
Speaker 1: is that you are doing. Um. He uploaded that and
Speaker 1: made it freely available to anyone who wanted to get
Speaker 1: hold of this. Within two days, ten thousand people had
Speaker 1: downloaded it, and as of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: we're recording this on May nine. Forbes reported this morning
Speaker 1: that it had been downloaded more than one hundred thousand times. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, not everyone who downloaded that has access
Speaker 1: to a three D printer. All Right, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: a lot of that is curiosity. There has been so
Speaker 1: much buzz about it on the Internet that I'm sure
Speaker 1: that a lot of people were just looking at it
Speaker 1: because they could. Yeah, I'm sure there's a percentage 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 trapnel. 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 forty five. 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,
Speaker 1: right the idea being that that the French population would
Speaker 1: suddenly have access to weapons, but you can only fire
Speaker 1: at once. It really wasn't a practical weapon. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the Allies ever considered it to
Speaker 1: be something that would allow a real tied to turn.
Speaker 1: It was more of an attempt to demoralize the Access
Speaker 1: powers rather than to actually foment some form of revolution.
Speaker 1: And propaganda was was a really interesting technology that was
Speaker 1: used in World War Two. Yeah, so this is one
Speaker 1: of those examples of propaganda that don't doesn't involve like
Speaker 1: a song or a poster or a movie. It was
Speaker 1: actually an act, and in this case, it was an
Speaker 1: act of distributing uh, weapons of limited use to an
Speaker 1: occupied country. And from what I understand, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like it doesn't look like all of them or
Speaker 1: even most of them were ever actually distributed. It was
Speaker 1: a little bit of contention about whether or not they
Speaker 1: were and to whom and when and how many, but
Speaker 1: and from why I understand most of them without every
Speaker 1: But anyway, Wilson apparently wanted to to take that name,
Speaker 1: and uh, it kind of goes along with his philosophy.
Speaker 1: But his philosophy is interesting We will cover that in
Speaker 1: this episode, but I think we're going to save that
Speaker 1: for the end because it's it's pretty it's pretty dynamic.
Speaker 1: It is dynamic. It's intense, is what it is. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand folks around or at least a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people have downloaded these plans as of the recruding
Speaker 1: this podcast. By the time this publishes, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: number will be way bigger. YEA. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's you could have everyone just lose interest, but I
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to happen with this particular product. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's where the actual logistics are. That's you know
Speaker 1: what the state of the gun is. This 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: chrylum nitrial bet 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,
Speaker 1: I think we need to take a quick break. Oh,
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. But it could be designed.
Speaker 1: It could be literally unique to your gun. No one
Speaker 1: would know where to even start looking for that, because
Speaker 1: if it's all just a file on your computer, how
Speaker 1: would how would anyone know unless they're already watching you.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna get into that because I think
Speaker 1: that's what fuels the whole Liberator in the first place.
Speaker 1: But the you know, that's that's the concerns that if
Speaker 1: it was used in a crime, it would be very difficult,
Speaker 1: 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 the letter, if not
Speaker 1: at all the spirit of the law in the creation
Speaker 1: of this he um uh. He took his company to
Speaker 1: the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in
Speaker 1: order to get a federal license to manufacture and distribute firearms,
Speaker 1: and furthermore, put a small metal cube at completely non
Speaker 1: functional six ounds metal cube into the gun to make
Speaker 1: it detectable by metal detectors. Right, because the US Undetectable
Speaker 1: Firearms Act makes it illegal to manufacture any sort of
Speaker 1: undetectable weapon. Because this this isn't the first time that
Speaker 1: a potentially undetectable weapon has been made. You can. They're
Speaker 1: guns that use ceramic. There are other plastic weapons as
Speaker 1: well that have used molded plastic as opposed to three
Speaker 1: 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 Yeah,
Speaker 1: follow the same rules. If you download the blueprint and
Speaker 1: printed it out yourself, you could be you could just say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to put the metal slug
Speaker 1: in there, and therefore it is going to be virtually
Speaker 1: undetectable by a metal detector. And however, we should mention
Speaker 1: that that those three D scanners that they've put in
Speaker 1: a lot of airports would pick the gun up. It
Speaker 1: would be able to recognize it on on your person, right,
Speaker 1: So so if if you're using a three D scanner,
Speaker 1: it's still going to pick these things up. If you
Speaker 1: are using just metal detectors, it wouldn't. So that that's
Speaker 1: raised some security concerns obviously. Um and uh, you know, Wilson,
Speaker 1: I think he took some perverse joy and the fact
Speaker 1: that he was following the law while creating something that
Speaker 1: is potentially incredibly disruptive. Absolutely, he's are we getting into.
Speaker 1: But I think it's fair to say that he took
Speaker 1: some pleasure. And they did. They did install a metal
Speaker 1: detector or walk through metal detector in their workshop for
Speaker 1: testing to make sure that that that met those requirements.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh So to get to other concerns, beyond
Speaker 1: the fact that you can't trace it, you can't necessarily
Speaker 1: detect it. Um. Another concerns there's there's no background check,
Speaker 1: right if you download those plans, there's no control there
Speaker 1: about who gets access to that gun. So in the
Speaker 1: United States, convicts can't you know, people who have been
Speaker 1: convicted of a felony, they can't buy a gun legally
Speaker 1: in the United States. I mean, they could buy it illegally,
Speaker 1: but you can't go through any legal means of buying it. Um.
Speaker 1: That's what the whole background check thing is supposed to
Speaker 1: protect against in the United States. So this bypasses it.
Speaker 1: If you are able, if you have the means or
Speaker 1: the access to a three D printer, and you have
Speaker 1: a criminal record and you otherwise could not legally buy
Speaker 1: a firearm, you could make one yourself this way. And
Speaker 1: that's something that a lot of critics have pointed out,
Speaker 1: saying you have just invalidated this whole part of the system. Wilson,
Speaker 1: for his part, not a big fan of gun control,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be very concerned about that so
Speaker 1: much though that in March he released a video of
Speaker 1: UM a three D print aple UM a R fifteen
Speaker 1: lower receiver, which is the part that's regulated. UM. The
Speaker 1: rest of the parts you can purchase without without all
Speaker 1: that much trouble and UM and that hypothetically could lock
Speaker 1: into these these other purchasable parts and uh. And thus
Speaker 1: you know, like again bypassed by passing that whole problem,
Speaker 1: or what at what he saw as a problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: Other things that you have to keep in mind. Remember
Speaker 1: we were talking about that plastic earlier, about how how
Speaker 1: strong it was, and the type of plastic used and
Speaker 1: the type of printer being used. Uh. Jonathan Rally, who's
Speaker 1: a three D printing expert UM, said in The Guardian
Speaker 1: that that you have to be really careful because not
Speaker 1: everyone out there has access to the same sort of
Speaker 1: three D printers, were the same sort of raw materials
Speaker 1: being used. And just because one printed gun was able
Speaker 1: to withstand the pressure and force that a that this
Speaker 1: that the liberator did in the initial tests, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that something that you print using a different kind
Speaker 1: of printer could do the same thing. UM. It may
Speaker 1: be that the material you print is weaker than the
Speaker 1: one that that Wilson used, and Wilson. Wilson also did
Speaker 1: treat the plastics after they were printed in order to
Speaker 1: make them stronger, So you could potentially end up with
Speaker 1: a device that could explode in your hand and cause
Speaker 1: you huge amounts of damage, if not even kill you
Speaker 1: right out, you know, out right. In fact, he said
Speaker 1: that it's far more likely someone will be injured by
Speaker 1: a failing weapon before anyone is ever deliberately shot by
Speaker 1: so uh that that was his big concern was not
Speaker 1: only is it something that could potentially, you know, one
Speaker 1: person could potentially used to kill someone else, it's something
Speaker 1: that someone who's just curious about it could end up
Speaker 1: severely injuring themselves because the materials they are 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 could not be things might not be in the
Speaker 1: right alignment because or if just something glorps into the
Speaker 1: wrong place. That's you know that that could be warping
Speaker 1: is an issue. There's also the problem that there could
Speaker 1: be uh nylon plastic powder within the barrel itself, which
Speaker 1: can be flammable and could actually cause an explosion in
Speaker 1: your hand because you know, you're talking about this intense
Speaker 1: heat and pressure. In fact, let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a second. According to the Guardian, the pressure inside a
Speaker 1: gun typically reaches about a thousand atmospheres and temperatures exceed
Speaker 1: two hundred degrees celsius when you fire off a gun.
Speaker 1: So the gun the bullets flying out because of the
Speaker 1: expanding gas that is created when the primary ignites and
Speaker 1: gets the propellant going right. So this expanding gas is
Speaker 1: what pushes that bullet out. According again, according to the Guardian,
Speaker 1: about of that energy from the expanded gas transfers to
Speaker 1: the bullet. Another thirty percent of the energy transfers to
Speaker 1: the barrel in the form of heat, and heat tends
Speaker 1: to weaken plastic. So if you aren't using heat treated plastic,
Speaker 1: or you're using a weaker kind of plastic, that might
Speaker 1: be enough for that gun to show are in your
Speaker 1: hands or otherwise fail in a way that could cause
Speaker 1: you some pretty serious injury. And uh, Philip Boyce, who
Speaker 1: was an expert with Forensic Scientific he's the one who
Speaker 1: said that with a really good plastic gun, you might
Speaker 1: get off as many as ten to twenty shots before
Speaker 1: it failed. So beyond that, these guns aren't necessarily that accurate.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a smooth barrel gun, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to guide the bullet in any way.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. It would be one of those things where
Speaker 1: you know, the closer you are, obviously are to whatever
Speaker 1: the target is the d're aiming at, the more likely
Speaker 1: you'll hit it. But you might wind up just being
Speaker 1: a you know, a stormtrooper. Yeah, lots of you pew
Speaker 1: very little actually, and when you've only got you know,
Speaker 1: up to ten bullets, that's not yeah. So so this
Speaker 1: is prompted many politicians and law enforcement officials to come
Speaker 1: out and criticize this whole idea of three D printed guns.
Speaker 1: It's not a big surprise, you know. I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that the printer that Wilson used was purchased the Stratusis
Speaker 1: Dimension S S T three D printer. Uh, they actually
Speaker 1: were using a least one originally from the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they leased it from Stratusis, but as of October Stratusis
Speaker 1: figured out what they were doing and seized their property
Speaker 1: back and said no thanks. Yeah, And you might say,
Speaker 1: why would why do they care? They care because three
Speaker 1: D printer companies, the companies that are designing these things
Speaker 1: for consumers, Uh, they don't want the government to come
Speaker 1: in and start regulating and legislating the stuff they make
Speaker 1: because that's going to affect their business. So it could
Speaker 1: get really expensive, it could get to be a huge
Speaker 1: just licensing issue. Right. Uh, you guys might not be
Speaker 1: aware of this, but three ds are not three D scanners,
Speaker 1: but color scanners. Color scanners have have technology built into
Speaker 1: them that will prevent them from doing things like copying
Speaker 1: and reproducing current. See it's a form of DRM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really yeah, it really kind of is. It's it's
Speaker 1: this idea of protecting it so that, you know, counterfeiters
Speaker 1: can't just sit there at home and scan and print
Speaker 1: money because once scanner's got to be that specific, that
Speaker 1: became an issue. So you build that into the device
Speaker 1: itself where it will not uh copy and print that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. The same sort of thing may be
Speaker 1: true with three D printers. Politicians might say, you have
Speaker 1: to find a way to prevent people from printing this
Speaker 1: particular type of peace and then suddenly they have to
Speaker 1: implement that. That drives up production costs for the three
Speaker 1: D printer side. It drives up the consumer costs for
Speaker 1: three D printers. That hurts the whole industry. That's that's
Speaker 1: the viewpoint of the manufacturers and why they would not
Speaker 1: be so keen on having their own materials made to
Speaker 1: build something like a gun. So uh, So you had
Speaker 1: the concern from the companies there as far as the
Speaker 1: politicians and law enforcement goes. Law enforcement in the UK,
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Police pointed out that making or own being
Speaker 1: a gun like this would be illegal unless you were
Speaker 1: a registered firearms dealer with the proper credentials and quote
Speaker 1: unquote authorities. Otherwise it would just owning a gun like
Speaker 1: this in the UK would be considered illegal. Um. If
Speaker 1: you used in a in any way, then that would
Speaker 1: get you a pretty stiff penalty. Uh. In the United States,
Speaker 1: there were senators from California, Senators and congress people, i
Speaker 1: should say, uh, and council members in one case from
Speaker 1: California Washington, d C. And New York who have all
Speaker 1: expressed concern about three D printing gun printed guns, and
Speaker 1: UH talked about getting coming up with legislation that can
Speaker 1: prevent it, helping helping to revamp that Undetectable Firearms Act
Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier. This makes it complicated
Speaker 1: because there's really only so much that you can do
Speaker 1: from a legal perspective, like how do you how do
Speaker 1: you prevent something that the cats already out of the bag.
Speaker 1: You know, a hundred thousand people have downloaded this as
Speaker 1: of today when we're recording this, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to say, let's stop this from
Speaker 1: happening now. It's we all know that once something's on
Speaker 1: the internet, for Internet is forever. Yeah, So I did
Speaker 1: want to mention that on the private side. Other there
Speaker 1: were other roadblocks to the actual creation of this thing. UH.
Speaker 1: Wilson had his crowdfunding campaign campaign through indie go Go
Speaker 1: shut down um in August UM also to workshop spaces
Speaker 1: that he had been using denied him access after learning
Speaker 1: what he was up to. And furthermore, he originally had
Speaker 1: some of these files up on thing verse by maker
Speaker 1: Butt and down took it down. Yeah, the three D
Speaker 1: printing community 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've read it's it's harsh,
Speaker 1: it's hard criticism that. But yeah, we've the two of
Speaker 1: us both have probably read a lot of things that
Speaker 1: that Wilson said. Well, not only that what 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 right, 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: alarm flags for certain people. Anarchy is a tough position
Speaker 1: to really defend. I think it is, and that this
Speaker 1: is getting into into a personal personal philosophy here and
Speaker 1: uh and and Jonathan and I are are a little
Speaker 1: bit more touchy feely, We're okay. So the way I
Speaker 1: view it is that he's taken a particular stance where uh,
Speaker 1: he's really put a lot of value on the individual,
Speaker 1: which I don't disagree with. I think, you know, individuality
Speaker 1: is very important. Individual freedoms are very important, and of course,
Speaker 1: there's you know, all the different arguments you can make
Speaker 1: about how if you trade liberty for security, then you
Speaker 1: don't really have either. I've heard all these arguments before. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, there he seems very dismissive of
Speaker 1: the idea of governments in general, so essentially saying that
Speaker 1: the system is broken, and not only is it broken,
Speaker 1: but it cannot be fixed. That at this point the
Speaker 1: government system is completely beholden to special interests and corporations,
Speaker 1: it does not truly represent people, it's doing more harm
Speaker 1: than good, it's getting more and more intrusive in our
Speaker 1: daily lives, and and and there's no way to fix it,
Speaker 1: and that therefore it must be destroyed from the inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least at least ignored, right right, Really, he
Speaker 1: doesn't so much stepped outside of and said, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's not necessarily condoning that we all rise up against
Speaker 1: our tyrannical overlords, but necessarily more like, let's just not
Speaker 1: pay attention to them anymore. Which, yeah, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: a quote on the website of Defense Distributed where it says,
Speaker 1: how did government's behave if they must one day operate
Speaker 1: on the assumption that any and every citizen has near
Speaker 1: instant access to a firearm through the Internet. Let's find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean here, here's here's my view. The three
Speaker 1: D printing of guns was something that was going to happen.
Speaker 1: It was bound to happen, uh, sooner or later. It
Speaker 1: just happened to happen in uh. And there is going
Speaker 1: to have to be a reaction to that, Like, what's
Speaker 1: the right way of handling this? The cavalier attitude of
Speaker 1: Cody Wilson seems specifically geared to get a rise out
Speaker 1: of people. Absolutely, and and you know, like and he's
Speaker 1: and he's so intelligently and he quotes these these really
Speaker 1: great philosophers when he's talking about all of these the
Speaker 1: you know, he talks about for co and how liberty
Speaker 1: is under siege from the vast machine of the ruling
Speaker 1: class control and and about you know, Milton and how
Speaker 1: in order to be truly good you must be presented
Speaker 1: with the freedom to be evil. Um. Right, We're getting
Speaker 1: into some clockwork orange type stuff at this point. And
Speaker 1: it's and it's that kind of thing that you know,
Speaker 1: is intellectually delightful to discuss. But but when when you
Speaker 1: get into practical matters. Uh, some problems rise up, right, right. So,
Speaker 1: if we lived in a storybook world where governments were
Speaker 1: the evil stepmother and we're all the perky little protagonist
Speaker 1: who the poor orphan, who's who's pure of heart and
Speaker 1: has the best of intentions, that's one thing, right, that's
Speaker 1: of course you want the protagonist to win. But reality
Speaker 1: is way more murky. I wouldn't go so far as
Speaker 1: to say government is inherently evil, nor would I go
Speaker 1: so far as to say individuals are inherently good. There's
Speaker 1: so much shade of gray on all sides, of sides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's really people that make up a government.
Speaker 1: Some people are good, some people are not so good.
Speaker 1: And and that's true within the population. We're within the
Speaker 1: ruling class, and some systems maybe they are Maybe they
Speaker 1: favor the people who are not so good over the
Speaker 1: ones that are good. And that just means to me
Speaker 1: that you have to fix the system. Now to Wilson,
Speaker 1: it seems to mean you should abandon the system altogether.
Speaker 1: I just don't understand what replaces it. Uh. And one
Speaker 1: of his quotes was it seemed very tongue in cheek
Speaker 1: to me, but it was and I'm paraphrasing here, but
Speaker 1: he was essentially saying that he was he would imagine
Speaker 1: a future where, uh, the the individual citizen is making
Speaker 1: everything that they need using things like three D printers,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile, government funded drones are flying overheads searching out
Speaker 1: all the dissidents, and that he's eager to see this
Speaker 1: future come to pass. And I'm thinking, I don't want
Speaker 1: to live in the road warrior world. I look really
Speaker 1: bad in spiky shoulder paths. I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to Bartertown. Master Blaster scares me so anyway.
Speaker 1: But that's that's kind of like his his philosophy, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna go any further about what
Speaker 1: my own personal philosophy is. I think it's fairly clear
Speaker 1: already from what I've said, but I only I definitely
Speaker 1: find it troubling. But I mean, now it's a fact
Speaker 1: of life, So now we do have to deal with it,
Speaker 1: and we were gonna have to deal with it sometime
Speaker 1: or other. So it's not like I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get too angry at Wilson for doing this because someone
Speaker 1: was going to right the way he's done it is
Speaker 1: a little more snarky than I would have cared for,
Speaker 1: but you know, that's that's life. Um. So it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how this, how this plays out, whether
Speaker 1: or not, uh, it ends up even being a big deal.
Speaker 1: It's completely possible that this ends up being far more
Speaker 1: fuss than what it it's worth, right, especially for another
Speaker 1: few years, you know, before before people have I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, right now, this kind of technology costs about
Speaker 1: ten grand to get access to. It's way easier to
Speaker 1: go ahead and get a gun, even illegally money. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or I'm you know, like hypothetically you could make one
Speaker 1: yourself for under ten grand if I mean, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of knowledge that you have to bend
Speaker 1: to that to you know, you know, file all the
Speaker 1: metal into all the everything, you had to machine the
Speaker 1: parts and everything. But um, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people have been making their own firearms for what four years? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's even legal to make your own
Speaker 1: firearms under a very specific criteria in several countries and
Speaker 1: clean the United States. But so really, when you when
Speaker 1: you look at that level, it's not like, um, it's
Speaker 1: not like this is the most unheard of thing in
Speaker 1: the world. It's new, which is part of why it's
Speaker 1: a little and it's it's digital, which which a lot
Speaker 1: of people get kind of titchy about, right, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing that you know, the music industry, moving industry,
Speaker 1: television industry, they all got worried because it meant that
Speaker 1: you could distribute something on a much wider scale than before.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, we're not quite to the point where
Speaker 1: everyone's going to be printing out their own guns, especially
Speaker 1: with ones that are going to be reliable and not
Speaker 1: just blow up, and the reliable enough to to actually
Speaker 1: want to use. But it's it's an interesting step, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting day, and I'm really curious to see how
Speaker 1: it turns out. Uh it's is uh something that will
Speaker 1: keep our eyes on. Well, we'll definitely, I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: do another episode related to this in the future and
Speaker 1: revisit the topic once things have really kind of shaken out,
Speaker 1: because you know, I know that it's going to be
Speaker 1: legislation proposed about this, and how that turns out we'll
Speaker 1: all depend upon, uh you know, which politicians are the
Speaker 1: ones suggesting it, and however all the different lobbies follow suit.
Speaker 1: It'll be. It'll be interesting and a little bit scary
Speaker 1: to watch. Yep, but that's the world we live in, folks,
Speaker 1: Interesting and a little bit scary. Not all rainbows and ukuleles.
Speaker 1: Well it isn't my house, but well because I've got
Speaker 1: a ukulele rainbow collection at home. So al right, guys,
Speaker 1: Well that that wraps up this discussion on tech stuff.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future topics, I
Speaker 1: recommend you get in touch with us. We have an
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