Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed appeared on noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show and touted that they’ll have a 3D gun within a month.
Around the 07:30 mark in the interview, Wilson states, “We wanted to do this and do this in the United States… We thought how interesting would it be not to just 3D print a gun, but to open-source it and then allow anyone in the world to 3D print a gun regardless of whatever their laws have to say, perhaps that would be a socialyl significant project.”
Wilson continues, “Now that we have a license, we can do what we originally wanted to do, which is develop something like, a single shot, completely printable, plastic gun… [that is] unobservable by institutions and countries and sovereigns… and this might a be a politically important object.
Later in the interview (36:25), Wilson mentions that, “In about a month I think we’re going to have a printable gun.”
Until listening to Wilson’s interview with Alex Jones, I was fairly conflicted about the Defense Distributed project. In fact, when I first heard about the project I emailed Wilson to advise him on which software they should be using to design their components, and even pointed out a 3D printing house that I knew to do very good work.
One part of me believed that the project is just another extension of the freedom of speech. The other part of me, which didn’t show up until much later, felt uneasy with the group’s leader, Wilson. To me, his positions about the core values behind the WikiWeapons project seem to shift too quickly from “open-source experiment in liberty” to money making scheme. Maybe for Wilson the project is both. But the thing that bugs me is that if this project was about openness, why would Defense Distributed only reveal their intentions of creating a for-profit enterprise now. Why wasn’t this a part of the game plan from the beginning? Why wasn’t it announced at the projects onset? Maybe the idea of a for-profit 3D printed gun enterprise just evolved, but Wilson seems to be too savvy and smart to have not seen this play well ahead of time.
My doubts about Wilson’s intentions lead me to doubt the entire WikiWeapons
enterprise.
Watch the interview below:
Image Courtesy of Defense Distributed