3D-Printed Guns: The World’s Most Dangerous Art?

Cody Wilson's 3D-printed pistol "The Liberator," downloaded over 100,000 times. Photo: Vvzvlad/Wikimedia Commons.

In this article for the CFR, I examined how the current debate over 3D-printed guns can be framed as an art controversy. This is an issue that has been in the news a lot lately. On August 27, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik extended the restraining order against the distribution of blueprints for 3D-printed weapons; yet, Cody Wilson, the face of the movement to make this data universally available, has long guarded himself against regulation by framing his blueprints as protected free speech. This raised a few questions for me. One, does this make 3D-printed firearms art? And two, could this be a new way to approach gun control (something I am staunchly in favor of), in which we consider how artists, the government, and the public navigate other art controversies? An excerpt is below, and you can read the full article here.

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“Whether and how to regulate 3D-printed guns is one of America’s thorniest new dilemmas. With the sophistication of today’s 3D printers, it is now possible for anyone with such a device to make their own guns simply by downloading them from the internet — no background checks or serial numbers required. The technology to create these untraceable firearms has existed for several years; crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson, founder of the nonprofit Defense Distributed, created the first working prototype (named “The Liberator”) in 2012…

Guns have long been deeply embedded in our art. Are guns themselves art? Yes, it turns out. Not long after Wilson printed his first gun five years ago, London’s Victoria and Albert museum, one of the world’s leading institutions of art and design, acquired two of his original prototypes and included them in an exhibition. ‘I don’t see it as an art project,’ Wilson told Forbes at the time, ‘but it has an artistic sensibility about it. It’s a kind of demonstration, proof of the direction of our technical future.’ He openly frames his data sharing as speech protected by the First Amendment — a legal loophole that has heavily worked in his favor. In other words, even if his 3D-printed guns were not originally thought of as art, they are now.”