Law Student Creates World's First Fully 3D-Printed Gun

We've heard plenty of stories about 3D-printed guns in the past, but a 25-year-old law student has just created what is the world's first fully 3D-printed gun. It's certainly nothing fantastic to look at (it looks like a squirt gun), but the creator of the gun, Cody Wilson, calls it "the Liberator," so it must be pretty intimidating.

The gun is made up of 16 different pieces that were 3D-printed separately using ABS plastic. Every part of the gun is 3D-printed except for the firing pin, which is needed to be metal due to the amount of force it handles. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, and it uses interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition.

Wilson plans to soon release the CAD files for the gun on the Defcad.org website, which is a database full of CAD files for 3D-printers of different guns that you can make. As for the Liberator, it can fire a traditional round without a problem, but in order to comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act, Wilson put a chunk of steel in the body so that metal detectors can detect it.

Of course, 3D-printed weapons have been a controversial topic lately, since anyone with a 3D printer can make a gun without ever going through background checks or any other kind of verification system. Users can even obtain CAD files for high-capacity automatic rifles like the AR-15 and AK-47, which are illegal in the first place in many states.

[via Forbes]