14 DAY TRIAL // The hornet's nest kicked up by the entire 3D printed gun issue was a mean kettle of fish, and whatever other metaphor or pun you can think of. Now, though, NABIS has taken a different approach in its campaign to discredit the things.
So far, most of the misgivings in regard to 3D printed firearms came from how anyone could get their hands on a model.
That changed, and a US state even outlawed the ownership of the weapons. More recently, Australian officials are lobbying for a full ban as well. Not just on the weapons themselves, but on the distribution of the 3D models via the Internet.
Nonetheless, throughout it all, the arguments brought to bear against the 3D printed firearms, whether it was the Liberator or some other gun, were security related.
In the sense that it was too easy to abuse the ease of production and distribution, thus making it a simple matter for would-be terrorists or other unsavory elements of human society to acquire them.
NABIS (National Ballistics Intelligence Service), the firearms department of English police, has come forth with a new set of arguments.
And this time, it's not potential victims that are being used to point out the dangers, but the wielders of the guns themselves.
A video released by the BBC shows NABIS experts shooting Cody Wilson's Liberator 3D printed pistol in a safe environment.
A slow-motion camera displays the way the barrels explode and the pieces of plastic scattering all over the place. Bits of the gun even got stuck in the ceiling.
This isn't the only such study conducted on the Liberator. The ATF (U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) also ran such tests.
However, Cody Wilson, the inventor of the Liberator, says it's all propaganda, as the tests used springs that the Liberator isn't even designed to use. And which wouldn't work with the weaker materials that would make the gun explode.
He does admit that the guns tend to fail entirely after 8 or 10 shots, so it's not like the Liberator is all that practical for criminal bodies. But the tests, like the ones in the video below, are what he considers highly inaccurate.
NABIS still holds that it's dangerous for owners to actually use 3D printed firearms, just in case the illegality of producing such a gun isn't enough of a deterrent (though unlike the UK, Japan seems to already be cracking down on its citizens for that alone).
