In recent news, Cody Wilson has caused quite a stir with his company’s, Defense Distributed, production of functional partial, and complete 3D printed firearms. However, it would seem that Wilson’s productions are only the start of a trend. Despite removal of the plans for the Liberator (Defense Distrubuted’s 3D printed pistol) from his site, defcad.org, a new and improved 3D printed pistol design has emerged. The engineer behind the “Lulz Liberator” has developed a functioning pistol using a cheaper and stronger plastic material (that can be printed with a more consumer grade printer than Defense Distributed uses). The resulting design is more wear resistant than Wilson’s single shot Liberator. It includes a bit more metal (the Lulz Liberator includes a few hardware store screws instead of printed pins) and functions for multiple shots. Although this new 3D printed pistol design seems to be an improvement upon Wilson’s design, with the recent backlash Defense Distributed experienced with the Federal government, the Lulz Liberator’s designer has been more cautious with sharing information about his work. To protect his anonymity, and his project, he has withheld his name from the press (identifying himself only as “Joe”) and has yet to make any plans for his 3D printed pistol designs available to the online public.
Where will 3D printed firearms technology go from here?
H/T to Ashley Feinberg from Gizmodo.com
