On 21 June 2013, the German newspaper Handelsblatt ran an article with the title “Die Waffe aus dem Hobbyraum” (“Home-Made Weapons”) on potential uses of 3D printers. The title referred to the notorious “Liberator”, a pistol which is almost completely made from plastic. Instructions for printing the weapon out were released on the internet by the company Defense Distributed of Texan law student Cody Wilson. It took only two days for the instructions to be downloaded 100,000 times. That was too much for the US authorities, which made sure that they were deleted from the net.
A plastic weapon? It seems quite unlikely that the pistol really works. Several videos on the internet show people trying to shoot with the one-shoot weapon. While it does shoot, it is not secure for the shooter, and hitting the target is strictly optional. Weiterlesen