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State Department Shuts Down 3D Printed Gun

Well that didn’t take long. Remember the 3D printed gun (named the Liberator) we told you about a few days ago? Well the State Department heard about it too, and ordered Defense Distributed to take down the files, saying that the online dissemination of the files could violate restrictions on exporting guns covered by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The following is from the DEFCAD website.

DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls.

Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.

But like all good stories, it doesn’t end there.

Pirate Bay

Enter The Pirate Bay, a website that provides torrent files to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. Pirate Bay, which is not a US-based website, predictably is now hosting the banned files, which have no doubt been distributed to thousands of people by now.

The Future of 3D Printed Guns?

In forcing DEFCAD to take down the files, the State Department has ironically ensured the very thing it seeks to prevent: 3D printed guns will live on. All that will happen is that an underground market will rise up around the prohibited item (see Pirate Bay).

Remember alcohol prohibition, the so-called dry movement? It was a complete failure. The War on Drugs? Same thing. Prohibiting the distribution of these files will be no different. The government, however, does not easily learn from past mistakes, and because of that this issue is far from resolved. Mark my words, there will be laws passed to regulate 3D printing and restrict its uses. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the government do what it always does and enact a licensing program around 3D printing.

All of which will of course be a compete failure, because prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges, like the exchanging of information, is always doomed to failure.

Read more here.

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10 Responses to State Department Shuts Down 3D Printed Gun

  1. Greg Toal May 11, 2013 at 4:04 pm #

    Here we go ” BAN 3D PRINTERS” & “3D PRINTERS ARE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION” ! I can’t wait to see & hear the liberal screamers go nuts over this! Of course, the FACTS that everything involved is still INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE don’t enter the “Reality” of Liberals

  2. Uncle Kenny May 11, 2013 at 4:05 pm #

    Chris Muir over at the Day by Day cartoon site posted the Pirate Bay address on Thursday night, so I went on over there to see about it. http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/10/#006943

    I dumped all the torrent readers from my machine a couple years ago and now I had a good reason to have one. Well, I downloaded the BitLord reader that was recommended on the PirateBay site and it worked great to get the zip file with the CAD plans.

    The problem is that BitLord is one of those installs that gives you little checkboxes that you must disable so that it doesn’t download a bunch of other programs that you don’t want. Sadly, I wasn’t careful enough and wound up with two of BitLord’s “friends” that it took me several hours to get rid of. I also got rid of BitLord double quick, as well. One of the friends was the notorious Delta malware/search engine. The other was a malware version of BrowserProtect. Neither of these things is particularly dangerous, but they nuisances.

    Getting rid of them is not easy, especially if you don’t do this kind of thing for a living. It was touch and go for a while and I had a non-functioning network for part of the time. Be careful. (I used to use BitComet, but I can’t recommend any of the torrent products now. I just don’t know enough about them.)

    My advice … unless you really, really know what you’re doing, don’t mess with torrent readers. Find a friend to give you the file on a CD … it’s only about 2MB.

    • Mitch May 19, 2013 at 10:01 pm #

      Utorrent does the same thing, but you are safe as long as you make sure you don’t install the bloatware that comes with it.

  3. Rich Disney May 11, 2013 at 6:39 pm #

    The U.S. market for Glock guns boomed in the late 1980’s in part because of politicians (some of the same who are calling for banning 3D guns today) wanted to ban the “plastic Glock guns that could pass through metal detectors”. Hollywood perpetuated the meme when in “Die Hard” Bruce Willis as McClain talked about the new plastic and ceramic that cost 3 times his salary.

    Once again the ignorance of anti-gun politicians will flood the market with exactly what they are against. The single shot 3D guns are about as effective as zip guns that don’t last as long but they will be snapped up and made just because they are the latest “forbidden fruit”.

    Hell there are full CAD plans for virtually every pistol and rifle on the market today that can be 3D carved from a block of metal by very expensive automated drill presses. There are published plans for every deadly weapon and death trap imaginable on the internet. How long can the Govt suppress the plans for somewhat crappy 3D plastic gun? Not long at all.

    Great article!

  4. Hillbilly Bob May 11, 2013 at 9:34 pm #

    What next, a $200 tax stamp on 3D printers haaaa
    This shit will ever end

  5. Hillbilly Bob May 11, 2013 at 9:40 pm #

    Oh wait, he will put drunk and crazy “Uncle Joe” in charge of a task force to figure out the new WMD made on a 3D printer
    The very few libtards I know are frothing at the mouth over these new “Machineguns” made at home

  6. stoxrox May 11, 2013 at 10:00 pm #

    Uncle Kenny, use uTorrent. I works well and doesn’t try to dump extraneous crap onto your computer. It is a small file and works great.

  7. TK May 11, 2013 at 10:23 pm #

    Next up they will regulate the internet take make certain downloads/websites illegal.

  8. 97blacksmoke May 12, 2013 at 12:35 pm #

    Well they now put a hole through the 2nd amendment and the 1st at the same time. Man, are they good or what?

  9. APBTFan May 12, 2013 at 2:58 pm #

    The surefire way to ensure people want something, even something they never considered getting, is to tell then they can’t have it especially by trying to muzzle the internet.