New tech is exciting or terrifying—it just depends on where you land.
By Magadelene Taylor
Writer
‘Death Athletic,’ a new documentary, follows eight years of the ghost gun industry and its most controversial creator, Cody Wilson.
While people have long had the federal right to build their own firearm in the United States, that’s historically required buying parts from manufacturers and a good deal of assembly. In some states, it’s perfectly legal to build your own untraceable AK-47 with just a few hours of effort, a sandblaster, and some drills. But you’d nevertheless still need to purchase the individual parts and the know-how to put it all together. Or, with a 3D printer and some downloaded code, you can make all the parts at home.
Be they 3D-printed or not, the number of homemade “ghost guns” in the U.S. has risen 1000 percent since 2017, per the Department of Justice. This increase in DIY gun creation has been hotly debated among both pro-gun advocates—some of whom believe all guns should be registered with the state or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—and anti-gun advocates, some of whom simply want fewer guns in circulation.
Adding to the controversy of 3D-printed guns are some of the people involved. A lot of the early attention was thanks to Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, an open-source software organization that creates and distributes 3D-printed gun designs. In 2013, the U.S. government banned Defense Distributed from sharing files for their Liberator gun; in 2015, Wilson sued them over it; and in 2018, the case was settled, allowing them to continue operating. Later that year, Wilson pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault against a minor. He’d met a 16-year-old girl off a sugar daddy dating site and paid her for sex (he says she claimed to be of legal age), and was sentenced to seven years probation and required to register as a sex offender during this period. In November 2022, Wilson completed his probation, and his case was dismissed.
