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3D-Printed Gun Stands Up To Federal Agents' Testfiring--Except When It Explodes (Video)

This article is more than 10 years old.

It's been six months since blueprints for the world's first fully 3D-printable gun hit the Internet, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has only now released the results of its tests of that downloadable weapon. Its verdict: 3D printed guns are dangerous when they work, and they're also dangerous when they don't.

On Wednesday, the ATF posted a series of videos of its tests of the printed gun to YouTube. It tested two versions of the printed gun model known as the Liberator: one printed in the material known as Visijet, and another in the stronger plastic known as ABS. An ATF spokesman tells me that the ABS gun shot eight rounds without problems in its tests. But as its videos show, the ATF's Visijet gun immediately exploded on firing.

The exploding Visijet-printed gun clip is above. Here's the video of the ABS Liberator firing:

ATF spokesperson Tim Graden tells me that clips were released "as a sort of public service announcement" meant to warn about the perils of both functioning and exploding 3D-printed weapons, as well as the gun's potential to evade metal detectors. "One, they do work. Two, they're not reliable, and three, they're undetectable," says Graden. "And that's a safety and security issue because they can make their way into secure facilities."

The 3D-printed gun known as the Liberator, released by the non-profit group Defense Distributed in May and designed to allow anyone to print a gun in their own garage, poses a difficult question for governments attempting to control the spread of firearms without being accused of censoring information. Just days after the Liberator's release, the State Department demanded it be taken offline for possible export control violations. But the files have nonetheless spread to numerous websites including the Pirate Bay and been downloaded well over 100,000 times.

The ATF's new findings in some ways contradict earlier government tests of the 3D-printed gun. Australian police last May released a video showing that a Liberator gun it tested exploded on its second firing, and warned that the gun would could kill both its target and its holder. But the ABS gun video released by the ATF implies that the gun is more durable. "[The testers] quit after eight rounds, but there was no issue with the firearm at that point," says the ATF's Graden.

Those results match more closely with another video test of an ABS-printed Liberator last May that showed it could fire nine shots without damage. According to the gunsmiths who tested that weapon, it cost only $25 to produce on a 3D printer that cost less than $2,000.

Nonetheless, Graden warns: Don't try this at home. "Manufacturers have research and development, and they make sure products they put out have been vetted and tested," he says. "These, not so much."

But Graden also emphasized the danger that the weapons will be used and actually function--especially given that their plastic design can bypass metal detection. Although the Liberator tested by Defense Distributed in May had a metal insert to ensure that it complied with the Undetectable Firearms Act, anyone who prints the gun could leave out the metal without affecting its performance. The Undetectable Firearms Act expires in December, meaning that a fully-plastic Liberator would become legal, although anyone who created it would have to possess a license to manufacture firearms. The ATF released a legal explainer on 3D-printed weapons here.

Here are two more videos of the ATF's tests of both the Visijet and ABS weapons.

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