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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey, summer intern Bree. It's me. It's Sean, the host of Today Explained. I think you're just outside at the desks, and I'm here in the studio. And I wanted to call you just maybe one last time to tell you that Uber is moving forward. They've got a bunch of new features in their app to prove it. And you can learn more about them at uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I hope I can catch you by the middle of the show. Andy Greenberg from Wired knows a lot about 3D guns. I started writing about 3D printed guns in 2012 before they even existed.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I'm told that you have a 3D gun. Is that true?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, I don't have one. I did. I made a, I wouldn't say it's a 3D printed gun. Some people call it a ghost gun. I made the lower receiver of an AR-15, which is the only part of an AR-15 that's regulated. And then you buy all the other parts and you have essentially an unregulated, untraceable, semi-automatic, fully metal firearm.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: It is a weird feeling to build a semi-automatic rifle in the you know the back room of Wired's office and nobody really knows what I'm doing I'm not interacting with with any government or regulatory people at all I'm not you know showing id to anyone there are no background checks nothing.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And then I end up with this, you know, very lethal and powerful rifle. It's, you know, kind of a finicky process if you've never done it before, but it's not that hard to figure out. And you've got a, you know, a ghost gun, as they call it.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Did you shoot your ghost gun?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure. You know, we had to test it. And I think we put, I don't know, at least 100 rounds through it just to test it and it worked fine.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I'm not like a technically skilled person. I'm not like a shop class kind of guy at all. And I, you know, I don't know if a 10 year old could do it, but certainly somebody who's as unskilled as me can. And probably there are miners who are fully capable of this kind of thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today was supposed to be a big day for people who want to print their own guns. But last night, a federal judge in Seattle blocked a guy named Cody Wilson from sharing his 3D gun blueprints with the world.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But to be clear, we were asking for a nationwide temporary restraining order, putting a halt to this outrageous decision by the federal government to allow these 3D downloadable guns to be available around our country and around the world.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But this one guy, Cody Wilson, is fighting for the right to print guns. He's fighting for it in courts all across the country right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andy, how did the whole 3D gun thing start?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: So in 2012, I saw that this guy named Cody Wilson had declared that his group, which he called Defense Distributed, was going to make the world's first fully 3D printed gun.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I expected when we started what we did that everything that could be said would be said about us from, you know, sociopathic, dangerous, you know, homicidal maniacs.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But we thought, well, there's just enough of a chance that it is possible and worth doing and that it could really be some game changing level stuff that I went for it.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And that struck me as like a kind of brilliantly devious idea, like this idea that if you can make anything, what if you can make a lethal weapon?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I'm a security writer, so I thought about the dangerous implications of that and followed that project until May of 2013, when Defense Distributed succeeded at creating the world's first fully 3D printed gun.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And I was there when they test fired it in Texas. We've come to this firing range in a rural backwater just south of Austin, and the gun is over here. It's been assembled now and is going to be tested for the first time.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And what did it look like? Well, it's this little one-shot pistol called the Liberator. I'm sure most listeners have actually seen it by now. It's become almost kind of iconic, and it's been in museums. It's been downloaded more than 100,000 times in just its first days online.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: It's kind of this blocky, plastic, one-shot pistol. And were people immediately being able to print this thing everywhere If you had a 3D printer you could essentially download this file Actually it a collection of files for every part of the gun from the barrel to the handle to the frame and the hammer and trigger and everything
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And then bit by bit, create this gun and assemble it at home with no oversight or regulation at all.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Did people see these first 3D plastic guns as a toy or a joke?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: There were a lot of people who dismissed the Liberator, the first fully 3D printed gun, because it was made of plastic. And that scares some people because it's untraceable. But other people kind of laughed it off because a plastic gun isn't very durable. They did sometimes explode. And police, in several instances, released videos of 3D printed plastic guns exploding when you fire them.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: In part, I think, to scare people off from trying very reasonably. The catastrophic failure of that firearm comes about because there are no standards around the manufacture of these weapons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cody Wilson is the founder of this group, Defense Distributed, which is a kind of gun access advocacy group.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Cody is a former law student at the University of Texas in Austin. And he's really devoted to this cause of trying to allow anyone anywhere to have access to a gun or to make their own gun. Even he would call himself a, I don't know, a radical libertarian or even an anarchist.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: He doesn't hide the fact that he is an extremist on these issues.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is the firearm in commerce. None of this is serialized. You know, you can order this right through the mail. You know, if you're 12 years old, you can buy it online. You know, which I think is a thing of beauty.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: At a time where the United States government was thinking about banning assault weapons and further restricting the ownership of firearms in society, we thought, you know what, we can be more effective than politicians in a certain degree. We can even blunt the paradigm by publishing the plans to an infinitely replicable gun on the internet.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And so we thought, okay, instead of becoming a politician or voting or doing the traditional forms of political action, we could just attack.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: He does absolutely see crippling gun control as an end in itself. That's one of his big goals. But he also sees that, I think, as a kind of important demonstration of a new era where technology trumps law and politics and the government becomes kind of obsolete.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: That's kind of just one demonstration of the anarchist utopia or dystopia that he's trying to usher in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it the end of gun control? Like, I think it is in an essential sense.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And how's that going, this crusade he's on to get everyone a gun, to get everyone the liberator?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: So when he posted the file for the first 3D printable gun that he invented in 2013, the State Department very soon after sent him a letter threatening him with prosecution for violating export control laws.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: They were saying it was as if he had shipped his gun physically to another country by putting the digital files for it on the internet, which reaches all over the world.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And because he had ostensibly violated export controls, he faced big fines and even maybe jail time. And he complied with their order to take down the gun files.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But then he quickly, a couple of years later, answered with his own lawsuits against the State Department and the federal government. Claiming a violation of his right of free expression and saying that similar plans have long been available on the web.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: As long as you have the right to keep and bear arms, you have the right to make them. And arguing that they had violated his First Amendment's right to share whatever code essentially he wants to share.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he took what seemed like a Second Amendment issue and made it a First Amendment issue.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Right. And I think that, you know, that's what they essentially argued in their lawsuit was that by trying to control people's access to these files, it wasn't just a violation of Americans' right to bear arms, but a violation of their free speech that they should be allowed to share this data because, as they say, code is speech.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when he had to take his blueprints down for the Liberator, did that actually do anything?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: When someone tries to pull a YouTube video down, it just echoes and pops up in 50 different places, right?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I think that probably did happen to some degree with the Liberator but it also really did function as a blockade of defense distributed projects because they wanted to create and post other gun files and actually build a whole library of other printable and gun files that you could download and fabricate at home
--:-- Andy Greenberg: And they were not able to because they were being threatened with these export control violations
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The lawsuit started under the Obama State Department, and this was now the Trump State Department.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: The State Department gave up and settled the case, paid back even $40,000 of Defense Distributed's legal fees, and gave them pretty much everything they wanted.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Allowing the company to publish digital schematics for 3D printed guns. His website promises instructions by Wednesday, but some are up already for all kinds of firearms, from handguns to assault style rifles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So why did the government capitulate to Cody and his lawyers?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: You know, we don't really know. I asked them for a comment in fact in 2013 when they first threatened defense distributed with export controls and they've never wanted to talk about this and then I asked the Trump State Department why they capitulated just in the last couple of months and they also didn't want to talk about it
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The State Department doesn't want to talk about printing 3D guns. And Cody Wilson doesn't really want to talk about it either.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I reached out and asked him for an interview last night. He wrote back and said, Bad news for Cody, the courts do want to talk about this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's next on Today Explained. The call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. At the tone, please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bree, what's the deal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wanted to call you again to see if you'd maybe pick up your phone this time so I can tell you that Uber is moving forward. They've got a bunch of new features on their app so you can take the stress out of your pickup situations. One of them is called Pickup Notes. You could be like, hey, I'm the person on the sidewalk who never picks up her phone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you can learn more at uber.com slash moving forward. And I also wanted to ask you if you had any tattoos. And I don't know what you were going to say, but I would volunteer that like I have two and I don't really know why I have them other than like the people closest to me in my life have a habit of peer pressuring me into things that I don't want to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that the latest episode of Vox's new Netflix show Explained is all about tattoos and the rich history of them and how all of these different cultures and traditions are sort of merging right now. And the whole world is just covering itself in tattoos. and I can't wait to watch it and I hope you enjoy it too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyway, I'll try again at the end of the show. Bye.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today was supposed to be a big day for people who wanted to print their own guns. Today was supposed to be a big day for Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed. They were going to be able to start freely sharing all sorts of different 3D gun blueprints with the world again. But a federal judge in Seattle blocked them late last night, and a bunch of states are fighting them too.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Yeah, just in the last few days, New Jersey and Pennsylvania did sue Defense Distributed with the intent of blocking the website with this library of digital gun files. And I'm not sure how effective that is, you know, just to block the website in a state or two when anyone can use a VPN to get around those blocks.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But it is, I think, these sort of state level lawmakers and attorney generals last attempts to block this change from happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So where does this stand now? I mean, Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed can't share a bunch of 3D gun blueprint files on their site. But if you really wanted to find the files to print his original gun, the Liberator, it probably wouldn't be that hard, right? Because courts and lawmakers who worry about this can't keep up with the Internet.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Well, there's no question that lawmakers were way behind on this issue. And then, you know, even in 2013, when they did exist, it was really hard to find any lawmakers who really knew what to do about this or took it seriously.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Chuck Schumer and Steve Israel in New York did talk about trying to control 3D printed guns. A terrorist someone who mentally ill a spousal abuser a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage And eventually they renewed the Undetectable Firearms Act
--:-- Andy Greenberg: But that was not really the issue It true that fully 3D printed guns are made of plastic and that undetectable But it's more about the fact that you can make them in the privacy of your garage and that they're unregulated entirely and untraceable.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: That is the issue. And the fact that they can go through a metal detector is just one aspect of them. And the fact that AR-15s, the only part of them that's regulated is this lower receiver that can easily be 3D printed. That's something that only a few lawmakers have started to really think about.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: When you make that lower receiver and then just assemble the rest of the gun from other sources and have this untraceable weapon, people call that a ghost gun. And there are ghost gun control laws in California. People are talking about one in Connecticut, in New Jersey, that would make it illegal to own essentially a gun without a serial number. And that seems like more of a threat to the 3D printing gun crowd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How isn't this a bigger deal right now that a kid at a school with a 3D printer could potentially make a gun in the library? or make one at home and bring it in?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Well, certainly. I mean, I do think that, you know, minors are one group that we should think about in terms of the danger of home fabrication of guns, but also the mentally ill and felons and essentially everyone who can't buy a gun.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: I mean, to be clear, it's pretty easy to buy a gun in America unless you're in one of those categories. So those are the categories for which this matters most for gun control advocates, that those exact categories of people who can't easily just go out and buy a gun today.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: Cody Wilson, when you ask him about that, he basically says if it does happen, it just doesn't bother him enough to stop him from this project of trying to cripple all gun control and win this battle against gun control advocates.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: 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. Like, there are people from all over the world downloading our files, and we say good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There have been mass shootings with homemade weapons now, in some cases by emotionally disturbed people. In California last year, Kevin Jansen Neal used a homemade metal assault rifle to kill his wife and four others, getting around a court order meant to block his access to a firearm.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: So it's not an entirely hypothetical or zero probability or even low probability thing that these homemade weapons could be used for awful kinds of violence.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: People have been able to make weapons forever. That's a dumb way of saying that. No, that's true. But it's true, right?
--:-- Andy Greenberg: So, I mean, people can make pipe bombs. They can make Molotov cocktails. They can make all sorts of destructive things. What makes this different? Well, I think that it's not fundamentally different.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: People have made guns at home for a long time. People have made ghost guns. They've made their own lower receivers of AR-15s at home for a long time. It's just getting easier, and the process is getting cheaper.
--:-- Andy Greenberg: We're moving in this direction where, you know, this kind of science fictional and rather scary future where anyone can make a gun at home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andy Greenberg is a reporter for Wired. I'm Sean Rameswaram from Today Explained. I'm going to try, Bree.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. At the tone, please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may hang up or press 1 for more options.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bree, I hope you don't listen to your voicemails because they're all going to say the same thing, and that is that Uber is moving forward, and you can find out more at uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, I'll just leave it there. You're a heck of an intern. And thanks for all you do. Bye.
