German Police 3D Print Some Guns For Testing

People around the world have been saying that 3D printing is a national threat, not because people can craft that missing Lego brick that they really need, but because they can use it to print an untraceable, unregistered and potentially lethal weapon such as a gun. German police have taken up the challenge to test just how dangerous these weapons really are by 3D printing a range of their own.

There have been fears of 3D printed guns ever since Cody Wilson of Defence Distributed made a crude 3D printable gun and made the blueprints for the 3D model available for download. The prints were downloaded around 100,000 times before the US Office of Defence Trade Controls Compliance shut them down, although given how the internet works I doubt they’ve been able to remove them completely. What’s worse is that the gun, known as the Liberator was made using a 3D printer that cost just $8000, a price that has likely reduced since the original was created.

The German police have been busy testing how easy or hard it is to sneak the weapon through security checks and other such systems, naturally they haven’t really shared their results on that part. Yet the have told us that while the gun can fire a standard bullet 17cm into a standard firing block, the gun also has a habit of exploding when fired, it is after all just made from plastic.

Thank you Fudzilla for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of The Register.