The ongoing saga of having the world's first DIY gun that's made via 3D printing now achieved its major milestone. The first such gun, called "Liberator" has successfully been fired by Cody Williams, with the designs put up at DEFCAD.org for everyone to download. Whilst information about the gun is still posted, the designs have been removed the Department of Defense to prevent further download  by netizens.

While you cannot download the Liberator designs anymore, it can be found elsewhere in the internet if you look around hard enough. Prior to being shut-down, the Liberator zip file has been downloaded over 100,000 times and must have been shared further on, turning this into a nightmarish game of Whack-A-Mole if the DOD is hell-bent in removing the file from the internet.

The Liberator doesn't really resemble any existing firearm, and it looks more toyish but the looks of it. Since it's mainly made of plastic parts, it is said that it can go through Customs without a problem as long as the carrier knows what  to do. Even if it can only fire one bullet, sometimes just one bullet fired at close proximity at the right spot would do job, if one really intends to kill. This reminds me of the Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich movie "In the Line of Fire."

It's still a big debate if firearms designs should be freely available online with the advent of affordable 3D printing. For US citizens, the debate can hit both the First and Second Amendments which are the dearest Amendments in the US Constitution. For a lot of people, even here at Popular Airsoft, we always believe that "information should be free" and even if such designs are available, the responsibility will always be with the user if the information. Humanity is about doing the right or wrong things in the course of history.

DEFCAD.org is repository of open source designs for 3D printing of firearms and accessories. The DOD was more after full gun blueprints and left the non-lethal products freely available. So if you have a 3D printer and interested in printing out some of the shared files there, you're free to do so. But if in case you get the Liberator file, you will be on your own to how you want to do with it, and you must be aware of local laws before proceeding to make one.

I'm really looking forward to the first fully 3D-printed airsoft gun.