Watching the documentary on the 3D Printed Gun, I felt like the debate on gun control is an exercise in futility in the United States. 3D Printing, combined with the 2nd Amendment Rights, and laws on allowing individuals to build their weapons for personal use, will allow any person who has the CAD file and the 3D printer to print out his or her own weapon, without the government able to stop such activity unless new legislation regulating 3D printing of firearms is put into place.

We are fascinated here at Popular Airsoft on the journey of Cody R. Wilson, a crypto-anarchist, on his efforts to build a 3D printed gun and that individuals should be allowed to print their own weapons without government censorship and regulation.  For us, it's a fascination borne out of practical needs and issues in airsoft, as we are determined to put up an Airsoft CAD for the sharing of airsoft designs that can be used by those with 3D printers.

The campaign of Cody of Distributed Defense and Wiki Weapon is very political given the heated debates on gun control. The ability of the print out your own firearm for personal use just made the debate a bit complicated.

There are two things to consider in the 3D Printed Gun documentary. The first one is the issue of printing a weapon and this means that regulating the firearms will be harder as proliferation of non-commercial firearms spreads. The second one is making the firearm CAD files or designs available online, that a hobbyist, revolutionary, terrorist, a street criminal, a syndicate, an arms dealer, and even a country wanting to mass produce its own firearms can download for his or her own agenda. Making firearms without a licence in other countries is illegal, but possession of files to make firearms may be legal. Thus, both issues can only be addressed by legislation, and possession of designs can be protested as censorship whilst printing a firearm is a 2nd amendment violation (if you're in the USA, but criminal in many places).

I always like the concept of open source, being a user of open source software myself. Open Source software is very crucial in the internet infrastructure as databases, web servers, PHP programming, and many of those using the internet pipes are on open source software. Open Source is also about sharing, and information to be free. Cody's Wiki Weapon embraces the Open Source concept for firearms, but in  his area, it will be subject to intense debates, as the implications can also be a matter of life and death.

For airsoft, the debate may be muted unless gun control advocates lump airsoft with real firearms. But for now, what is important is the sharing of information among airsoft players to be able to replace parts or build their own custom airsoft guns with 3D printing.

In case Distributed Defense and Wiki Weapons lose the debate in the USA, they have already achieved their objective of making firearm weapons information free. Anything that be digitized can be easily distributed online, making them last forever. Even if Wiki Weapon gets shutdown and its CAD files confiscated and erased, the files that have been downloaded can be found elsewhere in the internet. Pirate Bay proves that.

Watch the documentary below: