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3D-Printed Gun
(Image Credit: http://www.cnet.com)
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The files of
the 3D-printed gun, the Liberator, were removed from Defcad, the file-sharing
site of Defense Distributed, following an order by the State Department.
Defense Distributed is the group established by Coy Wilson, who was able to
successfully test-fire the weapon.
Wilson was
not surprised by the move of the State Department although he thought that the
site was allowed to post the files under exemptions of the International
Traffic in Arms Regulations for dissemination in a public domain. But it
appears that another site is more than willing to host the blueprints for the
weapon, The Pirate Bay.
Although the
files were removed from Defcad, they were posted within one day on the network
of The Pirate Bay. The peer-to-peer network has a number of versions of the files
for the first 3D-printed gun. Some files were already uploaded before the
demand of the State Department came out.
In addition
to the action by the State Department, Democratic Senator Leland Yee introduced
a bill in the state of California that effectively prohibited similar weapons.
Last year, US Representative Steve Israel introduced a bill that increased restrictions
on these weapons.
Despite the
increasing need to limit gun ownership across the different branches of the
government, some sectors think that apprehensions on 3D-printed guns are exaggerated.
Although these weapons are not easy to detect and basically anyone can make it,
it still requires a specialized, high-end printer before any 3D-printed gun can
be made.
