The world’s first gun made from a 3-D printer has been fired and instructions on how to make it released online by U.S. activists today.
Instructions for making The Liberator were issued online by Defense Distributed, a group in Texas that aims to make ‘Wikiweapons” to overcome any American government attempt to control gun sales following the slaughter of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
The group says the gun can be reproduced with a $1,000 3-D printer that churns out gun pieces in plastic rather than on paper. There is only a tiny metal part in the gun – a firing pin that appears too small to set off metal detectors. The gun fires .380 caliber bullets and is produced by printing out 15 different components.
Cody Wilson, 25, leader of Defense Distributed said he had added a metal component to the gun to ensure it adhered to American laws that made weapons that are undetectable by airport metal detectors, illegal.
Mr Wilson said his company was a ‘public interest software company’.
