Firearm Detected! You cannot print this gun.

3d printing gun disallowed

Oh, great. A Danish 3D printer company, Create it REAL, wants to take away the freedom that 3D printers give us: the ability to create whatever we want for our own personal use. I figured the government would be the first to somehow monitor if we were using a 3D printer to make a gun, but here’s a 3D printer company bragging about the ability to censor what’s printed.

In a press release, the company said that they have developed “smart software” that will be able to detect if the model has the characteristics of a firearm. If it does, it will not print. I don’t know if that includes squirt guns.

I don’t even have the energy to comment on yet another group of people freaking out about 3D printing guns, except to say this: hurray for people in countries with strict gun control laws to finally have a chance to be able to get a hold of a gun so they can protect themselves in their own homes, and against potentially tyrannical governments (if you haven’t noticed they are on the rise). The criminals have guns, the governments have guns, so good for any otherwise law-abiding citizen being able to arm themselves as well.

Next up, background checks and 10-day waiting periods before buying a 3D printer.

Here’s the press release from Create it REAL:

Gun printing: new software prevents 3D printing of guns

The Danish 3D printer company Create it REAL has developed a smart software which recognizes if the user wants to 3D print a firearm and can hereby prevent printing of guns. 3D printing has recently hit the news as a young American was able to create a working firearm by using a 3D printer to build the lower receiver, the only part of a gun which cannot easily be purchased. Only a few months later, 3D models of an entirely printable gun appeared on the Internet. As proven by the Australian police, those homemade firearms are highly dangerous and, in many countries, illegal. Now new software developed by a 3D printer company will prevent 3D printing of guns.

There have been debates in the media on how to stop people from printing guns on their 3D printers. Banning the technology would mean a huge regression towards what The Economist called the “third industrial revolution”. Banning the files which contain the 3D information of a gun does not seem to be possible in the times of digital file sharing.

The Danish company Create it REAL, however, has found a solution to this issue. Upon opening a 3D file, the smart software scans the model and tries to match its characteristics with the characteristics of a firearm. If certain features align, the software will not allow the user to view and print the model. For safety reasons, there are no models of firearms stored on the user’s computer but rather a list of its characteristics.

Create it REAL’s CEO Jérémie Pierre Gay assured that “printing other, non-firearm models is of course still possible.”

h/t: 3D Future

  • EldRitch

    Why on earth would anyone ever use this software when Open Source tools are available without these absurd restrictions?

  • Liz Stewart

    Who recalls that squirt guns had to be colored *orange* so not to be mistaken for real guns? One more oppt’y for a dumba** human to screw something up.

  • Perpetual-Tech

    I’m not going to buy a printer from create it REAL. not with those outrageous restrictions

  • Gentry Harms

    Why is this news and why does it matter. A gun is a mechanical device, something a 3D printer is incapable of creating. You’d have to make it in parts anyways, so just make the several parts that snap together and voila.