Cody Wilson, creator of a set of blueprints for making a single-shot 3D printed gun made out of plastic, said Tuesday that he’s selling his “Liberator” designs online in defiance of a court order.
According to the AP, Wilson, who owns the Texas-based company Defense Distributed, told the media he’s already begun selling the blueprints through his website, despite a federal judge in Seattle banning him from posting the plans online. The order was put into place Monday after 19 states and Washington, D.C. filed an injunction against the federal government after the feds reached a settlement with Wilson allowing him to release his blueprints.
“Cody Wilson said at a news conference that he’ll make the plans available to anyone who wants them at any price. He said sales started Tuesday morning and that he’d already gotten nearly 400 orders,” the AP reports.
Wilson said he doesn't care about the money and that anyone can buy his blueprints for whatever price they want, since he's now barred from posting the plans openly online.
"Everyone in America who wants these files will get them. They're allowed to name their own price at our website," Wilson said at the press conference. "Making the money isn't important to me. I'm happy now to become the iTunes of downloadable guns, if I can't be the Napster."
Wilson has been at the center of a much-publicized (yet largely misconstrued) debate over 3D-printed guns – “firearms” which are made almost entirely of plastic, contain a single shot, and are notoriously expensive and unreliable. Gun control proponents, apparently unaware that ATF rules have allowed people to make their own guns at home for….well, pretty much forever, have argued Wilson’s blueprints for a totally DIY firearm undermine public safety. The threat is so deadly, in fact, that online retailer Amazon pulled a bookcontaining blueprints for Wilson’s 3D printed gun from their virtual shelves last week, saying it “violat[ed]our content guidelines.”
Since criminals are apparently likely to make their own expensive guns out of plastic that probably won’t work and, if they do, will fire only a single bullet.
As for Wilson, he says he’s raising money for his legal defense and plans to continue challenging the court order.