In a way that people say, wait a minute, you're being

unrealistic about printing a gun.

I think it's more unrealistic now, especially going forward,

to think you could ever control this technology.

[GUNSHOTS]

ERIN LEE CARR: 2012 was a bloody year in America, one

that saw 16 mass shootings in 15 different states.

The violence led Helen O'Neill of the Associated Press to dub

it the year of the gun.

It all came to a head on December 14 in Newtown,

Connecticut.

-Units in [INAUDIBLE].

I've got bodies here.

Let's get ambulances.

Thank you.

ERIN LEE CARR: That morning, 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered

Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 children and six

adults before taking his own life.

BARACK OBAMA: In the hard days to come, that community needs

us to be our best as Americans.

And I will do everything in my power as President to help.

ERIN LEE CARR: In the wake of the tragedy, President Obama

announced 23 executive actions meant to curb gun violence.

Included were universal background checks, as well as

bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

WAYNE LAPIERRE: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a

gun is a good guy with a gun.

ERIN LEE CARR: In defiance, the NRA and other pro-gun

activists stepped up campaigns that directly opposed any new

gun control regulations.

In the midst of this political firestorm is Cody R. Wilson, a

25-year-old graduate student and self-described

crypto-anarchist.

Cody is trying to put an end to the gun control debate with

3D printing.

As one of the key figures in the wiki weapon movement, his

goal is to produce and publish a file for a completely 3D

printed firearm, one that anyone can download and then

create with the right tools.

He does this under the banner of his Austin, Texas-based

company, Defense Distributed.

3D printing or additive

manufacturing works like this--

a computer aided design or CAD file is created.

That file is then sent to a 3D printer.

The printer then builds the object in the CAD file by

starting at the base and applying a series of layers.

At the end of the process, a 3D printed item is born.

So how will the ability to self-manufacture untraceable

firearms affect the gun control debate?

"Motherboard" traveled to Austin to get Cody Wilson's

perspective.

CODY R. WILSON: So this is my warehouse.

Basically, it's a space that we've been using since August.

We have a 3D printer on site.

When you get a federal firearms license, your

activity and the location are all tied

together with the license.

So I can't have a license and go do things somewhere else.

I have to have it at a location.

And this is the Objet Connex printer that we've been using

from the very beginning.

Our very first lower receiver was printed here.

I hooked it up to an upper and fired it.

So the project begins, and no one will listen to you.

-So this is testing the printed lower

with an AR-57 upper.

CODY R. WILSON: You fight just to be heard.

[GUNSHOTS]

CODY R. WILSON: Did you break it?

And then something changes, and then you're heard.

We hypothesized a gun control future, even when they weren't

coming for us.

ALEX JONES: You said that three or four months ago.

CODY R. WILSON: That's right.

Joe Biden?

This is no country for old men.

[GUNSHOTS]

CODY R. WILSON: We really don't think it's a stunt, man.

I think the state is now making it easier for us to

prove this point, whatever this permanent assault weapon

ban is going to be.

How's that national conversation going?

[GUNSHOTS]

-Is this guy a hero or a villain?

CODY R. WILSON: That's a good question.

By Defense Distributed in Austin, Texas.

My partner, Ben Denio, the guy who basically came up with the

idea with me, we were on the phone.

And Ben was like, we could be arms manufacturers.

That would be cool, right?

What about 3D printing?

At that point, we weren't aware that anyone had done it

or was trying to.

I said, if we could print a gun, other

people could do this.

What if we gave it away, open source style?

What would that mean?

And we realized, wow, this is really attractive.

You begin with the file.

Often, you have it in CAD.

It's parametric.

You can edit it.

But you say, well, we don't know how this works.

So you test it in software because that's cheaper.

Than you find your printer.

What material does that printer use?

And you say, OK, I'd like this material.

Let's see what this can do.

You wait 12 hours.

You wait seven hours.

You might wait a day.

OK, now we have a piece.

In the case of lower receivers, it's easy.

It's not dangerous if it failed.

ERIN LEE CARR: Defense Distributed is currently

focused on designing a durable lower receiver, which is the

mechanism that houses the trigger.

All of their lower receivers to this point have been

designed for the highly customizable AR-15, the same

type of gun used in the Sandy Hook massacre.

CODY R. WILSON: We couldn't have predicted Sandy Hook and

some of these other events.

People say, where do you think your project fits within this

greater discussion about gun control?

If we make a Second Amendment argument, it's all the way.

It's to the limit.

But I don't like to make it about the Second Amendment or

gun control at all.

It's more radical for us.

There are people from all over the world downloading our

files, and we say, good.

We say you should have access to this.

You simply should.

ERIN LEE CARR: We left the warehouse and traveled across

town to Cody's apartment, which doubles as Defense

Distributed HQ.

It is also home to his private arsenal.

CODY R. WILSON: All the magic that the ATF loves to regulate

happens right in here.

So this is the firearm in commerce.

None of this is serialized.

You can order this right through the mail.

If you're 12 years old, you can buy it online, which, I

think, is a thing of beauty.

I like fitting the clear piece to it, because you can see

everything inside.

The only problem that this piece has is it just simply

can't take some of the recoil forces.

And I think we can fix that.

So this is 1,080 rounds of corrosive 5.45x39.

What's great right now about America is, you can buy

ammunition online.

And this is post-Sandy Hook craze ammo I found--

good deal.

The question that I hear a lot is, well, why does anyone need

an ammunition clip for more than 30 rounds?

Or 30 rounds?

Why does anyone need that?

Don't you know they can do all kinds of harm with that?

Why shouldn't we limit their reload times?

But I think there's an error there.

And I can demonstrate it in other ways.

Why does anyone need two houses?

Why does anyone need to make more than $400,000?

You hear it every day.

It's just a kind of dim view of human spontaneity.

Because we are so free, everything must be prohibited.

I've only let one other crew up here, Canada Global News,

just because they're so--

just like the terrorism, like they're just so

terrified by it.

For historical purposes, this is a pre-banned semi-auto.

This is what it used to look like, kids.

But if I could do it over, if I knew that there'd be a ban

coming, I'd get into the AR, because you're never going to

find 545 laying around.

This is version three of our lower, in fact, our first

really successful step from our first test.

So this was our first piece that could take

us to like 100 rounds.

[GUNSHOTS]

CODY R. WILSON: And the design of the AR system allows this.

People have carved lowers out of wood.

We're not trying to say, here it is.

We're trying to prove a point, that look, you can print this

out of plastic.

And just to take the "New York Times" point specifically, you

can do this in your bedroom.

It's to prove this political point, that look, gun control

doesn't mean what it meant in 1994.

NICK BILTON: I'm Nick Bilton.

I'm a columnist for the "New York Times" and the lead

writer for the "New York Times Bits Blog." And I cover

technology, and privacy, and culture, and the things that

are changing in society as a result of those.

When you first see something that's printed out in three

dimensions, it kind of blows your mind a little bit.

And so I'd always tracked this technology as I had been a

reporter at the "Times." And one day, I was on Thingiverse

which is a website which allows you to upload parts for

3D printers and then download them.

And I came across a gun part.

And I was kind of blown away.

I was like, what is this thing?

The more and I started to research, the more I started

to find out that there was this very, very small group of

people that were exploring building a 3D gun.

CODY R. WILSON: Thingiverse.com, which is

known in the hobby or the maker community to be this

repository of community information for 3D printing,

it decided to take unilateral action and just remove all

these gun related files.

And it seems pretty clear it was a response to Sandy Hook.

So without even judging what they're doing, it just is an

act of censorship in my mind.

Yeah, they have a terms of service that say, well, you

can't have gun files.

But they had hosted those files, some of them for up to

over a year.

But those files immediately went down, and we recognized,

OK, people don't know, at least in the maker community,

where to go now.

So we decided to launch defcad.org and hosted all the

files that they took down.

And then since then, people have now doubled the files

that we have just sending us files.

I get files at least once a day, sometimes more.

Oh, cool, the "Blaze" article is out.

People rushing to download online blueprints--

this will only reinforce what's going on.

So it's a piece about our site, Defcad, talking more or

less about how there's a virtual rush on-- oh, yeah, I

posted this list of all of the government

visitors to our site.

There's not strong sharing or anything on it yet.

NICK BILTON: Cody Wilson had been featured in "Wired," I

believe, and then he'd also made the news as his 3D

printer had been taken away after he'd put a video online

explaining what he was going to do.

ERIN LEE CARR: On September 26, 2012, Cody was notified

that the 3D printer he had recently began leasing was

being repossessed.

The manufacturer's reasoning?

Cody's lack of a federal firearms license and his

public statements regarding the

intended use for the printer.