This is a Colt 1911.

As you notice, there's no numbers on it.

[Andy] Cody Wilson has a vision of a future

without gun control.

Oh, so this is a PRI Mark 12.

[Andy] Where anyone can 3D print a pistol at home

or privately build their own semi-automatic rifle,

lethal, untraceable, unregulated weapons.

(gun fires)

And now that vision is one step closer to reality.

After years of fighting the US government in court,

Wilson just won the right to publish downloadable schematics

for just about any commercially available firearm online.

This is the direct material and digital expansion

of the right to keep and bear arms.

[Andy] Five years ago, Wilson's organization,

Defense Distributed, released plans

for the world's first 3D printable gun.

They called it the Liberator.

(gun fires)

But just days after the group posted those files,

the State Department demanded that they be removed

for violating weapons export controls.

Defense Distributed complied but

then filed a lawsuit claiming its right

to publish gun files was a form of protected free speech.

We said, No, we're Americans.

Americans have a right to access this data unquestionably,

and that the internet is now the commons,

in a way that libraries and things were in the past.

[Andy] Now, the group has essentially won its case.

Its settlement with the State Department will allow it

to once again upload gun files designed for DIY gunsmiths,

and promises to open the door for others to do the same.

Is it the end of gun control?

Like I think it is in an essential sense.

[Andy] It's not quite that simple for now.

Homemade weapons have been involved in

at least two mass shootings in the last five years,

but they represent just a fraction

of the wider gun control debate in America.

When criminals and dangerous people are able

to create their own guns in their homes,

it will become an issue in the near future.

[Andy] Wilson sees his projects as a trump card

against the gun control movement that's intensified

in the wake of February's Parkland School shooting

that left 17 people dead.

[Crowd] Never again, never again.

[Andy] Defense Distributed is using its legal win

to launch what it hopes will become the internet's

most comprehensive repository of digital gun files.

And as digital fabrication tools like 3D printers,

and computer-controlled milling machines become cheaper

and more advanced, Defense Distributed hopes

to unlock a new generation of DIY gunsmithing

beyond all regulation.

You cannot regulate the digital material of guns anymore.

It's out there, the flood's there.

Everyone's got it.

We translated our culture into the 21st century.

It's here, it's going to grow.

[Andy] The group already makes themselves

its own milling machine called the Ghost Gunner

that can produce frames for AR-15s and 1911 handguns.

Three years ago, I tried out that machine

and easily built a working AR-15 in Wired's office.

(gun fires)

It's untraceable.

I didn't have to go through a background check

or any sort of waiting period to get it.

The government has no knowledge of its existence.

Wilson recently gave me a tour

of Defense Distributed's Austin headquarters.

Ghost Gunner is a desktop milling machine.

People have such demands to make private rifles,

or private firearms for themselves, guns with no numbers,

that we built an application purpose-made

to help you do that.

[Andy] Neither the State Department

nor the Department of Justice would comment

on the settlement, but Wilson sees it

as the next chapter in his anarchist,

opensource firearms playbook.

It's almost like we're creating a platform

for a new propulsive force in our movement.

[Andy] The company is digitizing as many guns

as possible by taking analog measurements of weapon parts

with gauges and a massive 30-year-old machine

called an Optical Comparator.

The device projects an object's image

onto a screen where it's magnified up to 100 times.

That allows the operator to map out points

across a component like this AR-9 frame,

and calculates the geometry

of every tiny feature of the gun.

It's all a lot of handwork.

We come over here and we put the dimensions

into a CAD model.

We're going to do a lot of starting

from scratch as we build.

[Andy] And now, they can legally publish

those materials online.

Of course, the database will also make

those blueprints available to people

who can't legally buy guns today,

minors, felons, and the mentally ill,

who might now be able to make them at home.

Wilson argues that's unlikely to happen,

but says the possibility won't stop him from doing his work.

I'm resolved that because of my political principles

and because of my belief in like what's driving the project,

that you have to accept that obviously people

will do bad things.

This is not in any way justification

for wholesale, class-based prohibition

on access to the right to keep and bear arms.

[Andy] Wilson sees a digital library

of weapons material his group is building

as a way to undermine any future efforts

to control the weapons he believes everyone

should have access to.

As Wilson admits, it's a dangerous vision.

I think almost without exception that people

have a right to this kind of data regarding anything.

[Andy] And now, it has the legal approval

of the US government.