5/31/2013
5/30/2013
Introducing the WarFairy P-15 3D-Printed AR Stock
Introducing the WarFairy P-15 3D-Printed AR Stock
The 3D printed Liberator pistol may be gone, but it is not forgotten. Even with the Department of State bringing down the banhammer on Defense Distributed’s distribution of the plans online, there can be no stopping the continued development of this new branch of firearms technology, by Cody Wilson or anyone else.
The new WarFairy P-15 AR-15 stock by “Shanrilivan” is proof of that. Part AR-15, part FN P90 the P-15 stock is a modular design that allows you to put together a full-size stock with a custom length of pull even on small, non-commercial 3D printers.
One of the primary limitations on hobby-level 3D printing is object scale. While some inexpensive 3D printers like the LulzBot TAZ can print relatively large objects, many non-commercial 3D printers are limited to much smaller print jobs.
The P-15 gets around scale limitations by being composed of smaller stock parts that are later glued together to make the complete stock. The stock compliments a 3D-printed lower receiver but would work with any standard AR.
Another difference between this stock and most other AR stock designs is that it sports an integrated buffer tube; the stock is the buffer tube, including an extension that passes through a lower receiver’s buffer tower.
It’s a thumbhole stock that connects the pistol grip to the buffer tube. This is a particularly well thought-out design that reinforces the buffer extension, the weakest spot of an AR lower receiver and an especially vulnerable part of a 3D-printed lower.
The first DefDist/Wiki Weapon 3D-printed “firearm” was a 3D-printed lower receiver paired with an AR-57 upper receiver. The lower withstood five direct-blowback impacts before breaking apart on the sixth,right at the buffer tower.
Later on, Defense Distributed developed an improved 3D-printed lower receiver that would withstand sustained fire and rigorous use. While this stock is a far cry from a complete rifle, it’s clear that in the future only a small number of manufactured parts will be necessary to complete an AR-15 rifle.
On the one hand, this is just a 3D-printed stock. On the other, however, is something more important. 3D printing has its limitations, material properties that cannot be improved on without a major shift in the underlying technology. This stock accepts those limitation and works around them, highlighting the fact that you can quiet an individual but not the whole 3D printing community.
This technology is freely available and will continue to adapt and improve. If you want to try out the P-15 stock, you can download it at Github. Shanrilivan has stated that a P-15 handguard is also in the works as well as a single-piece P-90-style AR-15 lower receiver/stock unit called the Charon.
5/25/2013
5/24/2013
NSW Police issues warning on 3D printed guns
NSW Police issues warning on 3D printed guns
Commissioner said Liberator pistol suffered "catastrophic misfire" during testing
- 24 May, 2013 11:19
- Comments1
A 'Liberator' pistol 3D printed by the police. Image credit: Police NSW.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione today issued a warning on the potential for 3D printed guns to be used in serious crimes in the state.
The NSW Police revealed that the force has created and tested two 3D-printed firearms. The police used the Liberator pistol blueprints produced by US-firm Defense Distributed. The original plans for the gun were downloaded more than 100,000 times before the company pulled them from its site under pressure from the US State Department.
Police believe that despite this, the files are still circulating.
The commissioner said that a Liberator pistol had experienced a catastrophic misfire during testing. The failure would have been capable of seriously injuring the person using the firearm, the police chief said.
One of the motivations for holding today's press conference was to warn of danger to the user if someone attempts to print, assemble and fire a Liberator out of curiosity.
As with other firearms, possession of a Liberator is prohibited unless the owner has an appropriate licence. It's an "offence to make one, possess one, use one," Scipione said.
"Not only are they illegal, they are enormously dangerous," Scipione said.
When the pistol successfully fired, it propelled a bullet with sufficient force to kill a target, the police revealed. When tested using a block of so-called ballistic soap – a block of gelatine used for firearms testing – the shot penetrated 17cm, which could be a fatal wound, the police said.
The passage of a bullet fired from the pistol through a block of 'ballistic soap'. Image credit: Police NSW.
"This is now becoming a problem the world over," Scipione said.
The police spent $35 on materials to create a Liberator and used a $1700 desktop 3D printer. The only metal parts used in the pistol's construction where the firing pin, created with a nail, and a .380 ACP calibre pistol cartridge. The all-plastic body means that the pistol is hard for security forces to detect.
Inspector Wayne Hoffman said the creation of a pistol took the police around 27 hours. Assembling the pistol's 17 parts took around a minute. Hoffman said that the police had exactly followed the original instructions for creating the Liberator, with a number of modified versions of the file currently in circulation.
"We think it's only a matter of time before we see one of these weapons used in a serious crime in NSW," Scipione said. The commissioner said that it is "incredibly difficult" to stop distribution of the files, drawing an analogy with the illegal downloading of software, movies and music.
The Liberator is "truly undetectable, untraceable, cheap and easy to make".
Results of the 'catastrophic' failure experienced during firing. Image credit: Police NSW.
The government will have to consider whether regulating CAD files used to create 3D-printed firearms needs to be regulated, the commissioner said, but added he is "not sure that we're well placed globally to deal with he transfer and downloading of thee files" and that he doubts that regulations would be able to stop the files being shared and downloaded.
File sharing service Mega last week removed plans for the one-bullet plastic gun because of confusion over the legality of distributing the blueprints.
5/18/2013
Gun cameras and Anti-gun hypocrisy
It's 2013 and we have no national consensus on monitoring the constabulary. Some police departments have cameras on their uniformed officers, others just record sound alone, and even one or two have cameras mounted on their service weapons. Why gun cameras in particular have not become universal for law enforcement remains a puzzle to me. I have heard it is because of "budget restraints" but this is hard to believe considering that funds and asset forfeiture from drug busts provides many billions of dollars to law enforcement in this country annually (a conflict of interest to be sure as narcotic sales support law enforcement the latter of which can and do become dependent on that revenue stream). It seems to me if the police have money for guns, they can shell out money for gun cameras.
I for one think gun cameras for police service weapons is just common sense. If society is to grant the police broad powers of arrest, even power over life and death, then it seems only reasonable that they should be held to account every time a weapon is fired. What possible objections could there be to this arrangement? Yet when the citizens go to the police to inquire about implementing this technology regime, they are rebuffed. In other words, the people who even the anti-gun crowd thinks should have guns flat out refuse to be monitored in the use of said guns. How does an anti-gun Brady Kampf mouseketeer reconcile the unwillingness of the authority to accept oversight given their insistence that all "dangerous forms" be regulated for maximum safety and responsibility?
I have included pictures to show that gun cameras are pre-digital in the implementation and so it is not a question of technology or cost. Also I have included a pick of a VieVu wearable digital camera that I believe is the future of individual public AND private liability protection.
While I would not go so far as to mandate that all Concealed Carry citizens mount a gun camera or other recording device on their firearms or person, I would highly recommend it. When the technology becomes more affordable, I believe most concealed carry permit holders will migrate to this technology to protect themselves from liability. Imagine how the George Zimmerman Trayvon Martin case would play out with actual footage, for example.
But again, I am perhaps speaking to the wrong audience. The great divide between the private citizen who owns and bears arms and those citizens who wish to see all civilian arms confiscated, curtailed, etc. comes down to this: the anti-gun crowd doesn't object to violence, or firearms use/misuse so long as the ones doing the mis-using are wearing uniforms. State sponsored violence is never questioned, while an individual who inflicts violence is cause for national (and hypocritical) outrage. Case in point, where was the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the US army killed 9 children in Afghanistan?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html
Or when ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/asia/afghanistan-civilians-killed-american-soldier-held.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
...and so on.
The fact that the ant-gun quarter is energized when white, middle class children hit the floor but not the brown, poverty stricken children of the third world is just more evidence that 1. anti-gunners are racists, imperialist chauvinists who approve of bombing the third world into bone meal if it will usher in neo-liberal Mcworld, and 2. are hard core authoritarian bootlicks who worship the state and oppose individual rights over a hive-mind and completely amoral collective.
If 1. and 2. were not the case then where is your outrage and calls to confiscate or severely curtail or monitor and hold accountable for the means and manner in which the military, and the local police operate? It's non-existent. And that hypocrisy and mendacious servility is why this NRA member will never, ever ever trust an anti-gun hypocrite.
Obama: NO gunz for whitey, lots of guns for terrorists...
NOTE: The M-1 Garand on the left. Obama doesn't want WHITE AMERICAN MALES to own firearms, but he sure loves giving GUNS to NARCO-CARTELS and Al-qaeda.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/01/obama-administration-reverses-course-forbids-sale-antique-m-rifles/
Technology to Destroy Liberalism and Feminism.
Technology like this will defeat feminism and liberalism. Once ubiquitous and persistent 24-7 monitoring of domestic relations becomes affordable, record numbers of protected-status individuals will be ground up in the gears meant for the male gender. If you are co-habitating with an intimate partner you should consider recording devices to protect your rights, your property, and your children from the court system. Only CCTV can protect you from the heresay and false accusations that will drop when your relationship fails (and it will, because you both suck). Just as dash cams are now increasingly common for automobile liability purposes, so too will the filming of domestic life become common place. The feminists and liberals will have to build even more prisons to house their own vermin-kind. And everyone will embrace this. A car crash can raise your rates but a relationship crash can disenfranchise you for life. Why take the risk? Do you wear a seat belt? You should wear a camera around loved ones, because in the end it's that intimate other who isgoing to take you to court and ruin your life.
5/16/2013
Why the U.S. Government Deep-Sixed Defcad's Liberator | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns
Why the U.S. Government Deep-Sixed Defcad's Liberator | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns:
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Why the U.S. Government Deep-Sixed Defcad’s Liberator
A key fact’s getting lost in the kerfuffle surrounding Cody Wilson’s 3D Liberator pistol: it’s all about China. Well duh. The United States of America is awash in handguns. American citizens can buy a box-fresh revolver for under $200. For less than a Benjamin you can buy a ”pre-owned” pistol. It won’t be pretty but it’ll be a lot more reliable, accurate and durable than anything you can crank out on a $10k 3D printer. That’s us sorted. Meanwhile, in China, the fate of a billion-and-a-half people may well depend on what the United States government does about one Cody Wilson. Which is why they’ve shut him down. Let’s start with this . . .
China is a fascist state. Fascist states don’t allow civilian firearms ownership. Why would they? The desire for freedom—of speech, religion, assembly, economic activity, political affiliation, etc.—is a natural human instinct. There’s only one way to suppress this innate desire: force. If civilians own firearms in any significant number, the state cannot impose its will on the people.
As Chairman Mao said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. As NRA Veep Wayne LaPierre said, he who owns the guns makes the rules. If the brutally repressed Chinese people own guns, the Chinese fascist state will fall. It’s as simple as that.
For Chinese “activists,” 3D printable guns have a distinct advantage over their metallic counterpart. Once the printer and materials are secured, fabricators can produce hundreds of thousands if not millions of plastic guns with relative stealth (e.g., fabrication noise) and ease (e.g., no metal working).
If the Chinese populace was armed, it’s entirely possible, indeed probable, that the country’s centralized government, a.k.a., the world’s biggest police state, would topple. In that sense, Cody Wilson’s downloadable DIY gun could well be the Liberator he claims. As far as the American Powers That Be are concerned, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Whenever a political system crumbles and/or collapses, its death throes create a period of economic, social and political chaos. The system becomes destabilized. At the risk of going all Alex Jones on you, the United States Department of Defense and State Department don’t want a destabilized People’s Republic of China any more than does the People’s Republic of China.
Nuclear/military worries aside, the economic implications of a violent political upheaval in China are mind-boggling. The PRC owns more than a trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds. In 2011, the U.S. imported $200b worth of stuff. We need them as much as they need us. At some point, more.
Connecting the dots, could a plastic gun lead to a popular uprising, lead to the end of the Chinese government, lead to a major disruption of the world economic system? Like I said, Alex Jones-land. But . . . the U.S. government shut down Cody Wilson. At the request of the PRC? Or off its own back?
Either way, it makes sense to me. But then I’m not an oppressed resident of the People’s Republic of China. Or any other country.
DHS Wants Defense Distributed's Plastic Gun | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns
DHS Wants Defense Distributed's Plastic Gun | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns:
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DHS Wants Defense Distributed’s Plastic Gun
RF and Nick did their best to keep Austin weird last night by schmoozing dining with Defense Distributed’s main brain, Cody Wilson. Among the interesting tidbits they pried out of him thanks to the liberal application of great food and French wine is that Big Sis wants one of his guns. That’s right, DHS wants to give a Liberator the full going over, no doubt to see how well the TSA’s blue-gloved gropers who man airport security operations can ID a printed plastic handgun. Here’s their email exchange . . .
On May 7, 2013 12:58 PM, “Levine, Bob” wrote:
Cody
We are contractors for a government agency and hold an FFL license for them. We have been instructed find out what the cost to purchase this gun would be along with time frame for delivery.
We are contractors for a government agency and hold an FFL license for them. We have been instructed find out what the cost to purchase this gun would be along with time frame for delivery.
Hopefully you can respond asap as we have a presentation to give
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Bob Levine
SRA International
Senior Director
SRA International
Senior Director
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
From: Cody Wilson
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Levine, Bob
Subject: Re: liberator- TSA requirement
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Levine, Bob
Subject: Re: liberator- TSA requirement
Bob,
The gun is not for sale. It is an experimental prototype. I’ll lend or make you one of you like, but better to put them in contact with me.
The gun is not for sale. It is an experimental prototype. I’ll lend or make you one of you like, but better to put them in contact with me.
From: “Levine, Bob”
Date: May 7, 2013 1:24 PM
Subject: RE: liberator- TSA requirement
To: “Cody Wilson”
Cc:
Date: May 7, 2013 1:24 PM
Subject: RE: liberator- TSA requirement
To: “Cody Wilson”
Cc:
Cody
Thank you for the quick response.
Thank you for the quick response.
Have forwarded your response to the PM- will let you know if there is anything we will need
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Bob Levine
SRA International
Senior Director
SRA International
Senior Director
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos) - Forbes
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos) - Forbes:
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Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff
Covering the worlds of data security, privacy and hacker culture.
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5/14/2013 @ 11:02AM |14,808 views
DIY Firearms Makers Are Already Replicating And Remixing The 3D-Printed Gun (Photos)
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A photo of a 3D-printed Liberator pistol posted on Twitter by the New Hampshire group the Free State Project.
Just a week after the release of blueprints for the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun, the firearm known as the Liberator is already reproducing–and evolving.
Photos floating around Twitter and sent to me by readers show the DIY weapon created by the high-tech gunsmithing group Defense Distributed beginning to fulfill its promise: To allow anyone to create a handgun at home with an Internet connection and a 3D printer, potentially circumventing all gun control laws. And the State Department’s legal move late last week to remove those blueprints from Defense Distributed’s website, Defcad.org, may have only made the group’s fans more eager to print their own plastic gun in defiance of the government’s takedown.
A version of the gun printed by Maryland software engineer Travis Lerol with a printed barrel. He says he's also experimenting with metal-reinforced and epoxy-cast barrels as well as different calibers of ammunition. (Click to enlarge.)
Travis Lerol, a 30-year-old former military software engineer in Glen Burnie, Maryland, printed his Liberator (shown at right) within days of its appearing online. Unlike the original printed gun, he says he’s altered his to have a rifled barrel, a move designed to avoid the National Firearms Act, which regulates improvised and altered weapons and has a provision covering “smooth-bored” pistols. He’s also built another version of the barrel for .22 ammunition that uses a metal insert for reinforcement, instead of the entirely-plastic barrel for .380 rounds used in Defense Distributed’s original. And he’s cast versions of the Liberator’s barrel in epoxy that take .380 and .45 ammunition, a design he argues will be more durable than the pure ABS plastic Defense Distributed tested.
“When the Liberator came out, I was pretty curious and also surprised that the barrel hadn’t exploded when they fired it,” says Lerol. “I want to progress it from the entry level it’s at now to something more advanced, and then put that information back up to share.”
A Liberator printed on a $1,725 Lulzbot 3D printer. (Click to enlarge.)
Another DIY gunsmith and engineer, who asked that I call him only “Joe” to protect his anonymity, printed his version of the Liberator (shown at right) over the last weekend on a $1,725 Lulzbot AO-101, a 3D-printer that costs a small fraction of the industrial Stratasys Dimension SST printer that Defense Distributed bought for $8,000 secondhand and used to create its prototype. Joe, who also rifled and extended the gun’s barrel, added metal hardware to hold his gun together rather than the plastic printed pins in the original.
He hasn’t tested his more affordable version of the weapon yet, but he says he’s confident it can fire a .380 round just as well as the gun Defense Distributed printed on its higher-end printer. “I’m an avid gunsmith, and I’m about one hundred percent sure it’s going to work,” he says.
And why print his own gun? Partly defiance of the State Department’s attempt to suppress the gun’s blueprint and partly “just for the hell of it,” he says. “I’m a big believer that information should be free. You can’t ban things outright just because they scare some people,” he says. “Also, it’s a neat concept that hasn’t been done before, and I have the perfect skills to make it happen.”
By all appearances, the State Department’s efforts to take the CAD file for the Liberator offline for possible export control violations have done more to generate interest in the printable gun than to prevent its spread. In just the two days before the government’s takedown letter to Defense Distributed, the gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. It’s also been uploaded at least a dozen times to the Pirate Bay, and more than four thousand users are now making the file available on their computers for download via bittorrent, compared with just a handful early last week.
The Liberator printed on a Stratasys 3D printer by Michael Guslick. (Click to enlarge.)
Downloading the gun’s blueprints has become a kind of “Streisand effect” says Michael Guslick, a hobbyist gunsmith and one of the first engineers to write about his experiments in printing and testing 3D-printable firearm components. Guslick printed his own Liberator using a printer similar to Defense Distributed’s (shown above) and has been searching for others who have printed the gun over the last week.
He says he’s found that only a small fraction of those who download the gun’s blueprints are actually putting them to use. But he compares the weapon’s CAD file to the encryption program PGP, the first strong cryptographic software available to non-government users, which like the Liberator became the target of a State Department investigation for export control violations after it was released online in 1993. “ A lot of people downloaded [PGP's] source code, but very few compiled it,” says Guslick. “It became an act of passive rebellion.”
By the time the State Department decided not to indict PGP’s creator Philip Zimmermann, three years later, his tool had already spread around the world and helped to inspire a cypherpunk movement that created everything from WikiLeaks to Bitcoin. If the backlash against the Liberator’s takedown follows a similar path, the evolution of the 3D-printed gun may be just beginning.
My Dinner with Cody Wilson: "I'm Looking Forward to Jail" | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns
My Dinner with Cody Wilson: "I'm Looking Forward to Jail" | The Truth About GunsThe Truth About Guns:
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Earlier this week I had the pleasure of taking Cody Wilson, mastermind behindDefense Distributed and the Liberator firearm, out to dinner. Well, technically Robert took him out to dinner and I tagged along. But since Robert is otherwise occupied and can’t post at the moment, I get to write the story the way I want. Anyway, while we’ve already interviewed Cody Wilson about the nature of his work and his beliefs (we liked him before he was cool) it was nice to get an update on how he’s doing since he became one of the most feared and hated people to gun control advocates. And let me say that anyone who can make Chuck Schumer brown his pants is a friend in my book . . .
The first thing we wanted to know is if he’s worried about a possible stretch as a guest of the the federal government in one of their high security greybar hotels. Cody’s response: “I’m looking forward to it. It’ll give me time to catch up on my reading.”
As far as he’s concerned, the government might get him on any number of technicalities. Cody started listing the ways that Uncle Sam could justify putting him away, almost as if they were badges of honor — thumbing his nose at their attempts to control the proliferation of firearms. It fits well with the “crypto-anarchist” persona that he’s developed as his efforts with 3D printing have progressed.
Robert was concerned that Cody didn’t have a lawyer already on speed dial in the event of his arrest. We started spit-balling lawyers that might be interested in taking his case, and Cody wasn’t too impressed with any of them. Alan Gottleib was definitely a no-go. “Didn’t he support that Toomey-Manchin background check bill? No, f*** him.”
As the appetizers were being served we started talking about the gun itself, the Liberator, and its technical specifications. At the moment, the only working model is a smoothbore .380 caliber version that technically falls under the “Any Other Weapon” category of U.S. firearms law. Cody says there’s an alternate version available with rifling, but that the rifling would either not survive the first shot or the added pressure would split the barrel. He says he hasn’t tried yet, but based on his experience it won’t be effective. Translation: it won’t work with rifling.
We asked about shotgun shells, and apparently they’ve already tried — and failed. “There’s something about the rapidly expanding cartridge” that Cody says splits the barrel whenever they fire it. Either that, or the plastic wadding gets caught on the side of the barrel and obstructs it.
But the gun isn’t what the members of the mainstream media he’s talked to are most interested in discussing. They want to hear about the implications of the technology, and Cody says that’s exactly the way he wants it. “They all accept the premise,” he says, “that now that the gun is out there nothing can take it back. And that’s the way he wants it portrayed, as if it’s an unstoppable force that governments can’t control. That it has happened, and all there is to do now is watch the aftermath. Can’t stop the signal . . .
“I’ve talked to people who have walked into hacker spaces and seen a row of printers all printing Liberator parts,” Cody said as his roasted chicken dish was being placed in front of him. Hacker spaces are collaborative locations where exceedingly nerdy people get together, pool their money to buy equipment and space and experiment with technology, usually including 3D printers. Hacker spaces have popped up in cities across the world, including New York, Washington, D.C., London, Helsinki and Lisbon.
Cody says that there are even Liberators being printed in China right now, which is the reason that there’s a Simplified Chinese version of the “readme” (instruction) file in the download package. “I’m actually meeting a girl later tonight to translate it better.”
“The next big thing is getting a picture of one of these things printed out in another country,” Cody says. He says that he isn’t actively enticing people to break the law in other countries, but according to him a picture of a fully assembled Liberator in the middle of London isn’t far off. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a picture leaks out after he finishes his final exams this weekend.
As for his own future, Cody says that he’ll keep refining the design, but doesn’t want to stay in the limelight. Robert kept offering suggestions as to how to increase his profile and get more publicity for the project, but Cody says that he’s happy to melt back into the background once the furor dies down. But while the spotlight is still on him and his plastic fantastic, he seems to be having tons of fun debating the talking heads. Well, most of them. “I still have to decide if I want to go on Colbert,” he mentioned with some trepidation.
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