London School of Economics and Political Science From the SelectedWorks of Gert A van Vugt MSc November, 2013 The Killer Idea: How Some Gunslinging Anarchists Held Freedom of Speech at Gunpoint Gert A van Vugt, MSc,London School of Economics and Political Science Available at:https://works.bepress.com/gert_vanvugt/1/ The killer idea [[66]] The killer idea: How some gunslinging anarchists held freedom of speech at gunpoint Gert van Vugt 1. Introduction In May 2013, a video was released of a man >ring a single shot. Save one nail, his gun was fully produced on a 3D printer. Several days later, the digital designs of the gun were released online, and were downloaded over 100,000 times before the United States’ authorities could close the of>cial website down. This constituted the culmination of a series of events that started almost two years earlier, with the promise of using 3D printer tech- nology to manufacture deadly weapons outside of regular (and regulated) industrial channels. As these events played out, debates surrounding this viol- ent technology Mared up in a vast array of news media, both in and outside of the United States. The events surrounding the 3D printed gun have not crystallized yet, and the story of distributed weapons manufacturing has only just begun. However, considering the profound impact the 3D printed gun has already had – and will continue to have – on theoretical, regulatory and ideological debates concerning new media and internet culture, this case requires our attention sooner rather than later. As the events are unfolding still, we are considering a ‘moving target’. This disquali>es a strong reliance on estab- lished sociological categories and their causal relations within this case, and 108 Gert van Vugt as such, a ‘depth model’ (see Savage, 2009) is explicitly avoided. Instead, this case requires working on the surface, following recent calls for a more ‘descriptive sociology’ (Savage and Burrows, 2007; Savage, 2009). In particular, the following analysis involves elements of ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1994), using a wide variety of new media sources, including blog posts, forum comments, YouTube videos and so forth, to develop a rich ac- count of the events leading up to the printable gun. Moreover, the paper fol- lows recent developments in the social study of science and technology (STS), and shares its conviction that the origins and historical trajectory of a technology greatly impact how it is shaped and understood (e.g. Bijker & Law, 1992; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). Furthermore, in presenting a ‘Mat analysis’, the tracing of associations and the following of actors is emphas- ized (Latour, 1987; 2005). In constructing a detailed description of the development of the print- able gun, this paper builds on a wealth of somewhat unconventional sources. From its earliest articulations to its ongoing development, the printable gun has been discussed openly and extensively in online communities, fora, and in the comment sections of various repositories. A similar commitment to openness was – unsurprisingly – found within the 3D printing and maker/hacker community. Given the extensive online deliberations concern- ing our topic and their easy and open access, this research has been able to employ a tremendous number of invaluable comments, contributions, im- ages, and video data that in different contexts would not be digitized, stored and indexed. By considering these sources as valuable discourse, this broad and semi-structured tracing method offers a means to follow the develop- ment of ideas in real-time, giving unprecedented possibilities in the tracing of stories, making it possible to trace a story with more accuracy than hitherto possible. 2. The creation of a narrative: the printable gun The following description is structured loosely around the chronologic- al development of the printable gun. Firstly, the paper offers a brief descrip- tion of the gun’s background in the amateur gunsmithing community (sec- tion 2.1.), and secondly, it elaborates on how the idea was >rst taken up to use 3D printers to produce regulated gun components (section 2.2.). Thirdly, it elucidates the transformation of the principal narrative in the in- creasing media coverage from circumventing arms regulation to defending free speech, highlighting the role of Defence Distributed and their strategic framing of the printable gun (section 2.3.). Lastly, the uptake of the latter 109 The killer idea narrative by early popular and scholarly contributions is discussed (section 2.4.). 2.1.DIY gunsmithing In late 2011, several designs were uploaded to the Thingiverse reposit- ory (the principal website for sharing and downloading 3D images that can be used on a 3D printer) that stood out from the thousands of designs for toys and jewellery added every day. On September 17, a user named ‘crank’ uploaded an ammunition magazine compatible with the AR-15 riMe platform; a notorious yet popular weapon in the United States. As a comment on the design, a user replies: “Oh, boy. A slippery slope. A slippery slope! How long will it be until we’re printing fully functional weapons from home? 5 years?” (Watson, 2013). Three days later, ‘KingLudd’ uploaded the design for a lower receiver for the same type of riMe. Much more than the magazine, this upload caused a stir. King Ludd him/herself explains why in the description of the >le: “The Lower Receiver is the frame that holds together all the other pieces of the >rearm. In the States, all the other pieces can be purchased without a permit – over the counter or through the post. The Lower Receiver is the only part which requires a background check or any other kind of paperwork before purchase.” (Doctorow, 2011)1 The statement accurately captures the essence of current federal state gun regulations in effect in the United States. It suggests that given the right equipment and skill, these regulations can be circumvented completely. 1 The uploaded >le was deleted from the Thingiverse database before I could obtain it. The supposed description and picture were taken from http://boingboing.net/2011/09/20/3d- printed-ar-15-parts-challenge->rearm-regulation.html. 110 Gert van Vugt Illustration 1: King Ludd’s design of the AR-15 lower re- ceiver, uploaded on Thingiverse.com. Producing weapons at home is not new. Both professional and amateur gunsmiths have long manufactured, repaired, customized and embellished arms or their parts. In fact, the very same lower receiver has been pro- duced manually many times over, using a variety of materials including wood and HDPE plastic (Frontpage, 2008). Even the use of computer aided tech- niques in the production of these parts is not novel. The website ‘CNC Gun- smithing’ (2013) is dedicated to sharing different types of >rearms that can be manufactured using Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) ma- chinery. After obtaining the solid model – the digital image or computer-aided design (CAD) >le – the website’s administrator, Justin Howard, successfully programmed a CNC machine to produce an aluminium version in 2002. Both the software containing the design and the production programming are available for free on his website. Despite the fact that manufacturing designs and software for a homemade, unregistered AR-15 lower receiver had thus been within reach for close to a decade before it was uploaded on Thingiverse, it seems to have received no media attention outside the gunsmithing community. This presents an interesting question, as both technologies offer a way to pro- duce the very same design at home. Why, then, does the CNC fabrication method go unnoticed, while the 3D printer is heralded as the next revolu- tionary, disruptive technology? 111 The killer idea 2.2.Printing gun parts The answer to this question starts with amateur gunsmith and engineer Michael Guslick, also known as ‘HaveBlue’. On September 21, 2011, Guslick uploaded his own modi>ed designs for the AR-15 lower receiver on the on- line 3D-design repository Thingiverse. Several weeks earlier, he had asked the Thingiverse community for clari>cation on their terms of service regarding the policy on uploading weapons. This turned out to be a ‘kick in the hor- net’s nest’; a tremendous debate ensued on the Thingiverse mailinglist, re- garding the ethical dimensions of printing guns, legal and moral liability, the identity of the Thingiverse community, and the semantics of what to count as a weapon. Eventually, Chief Product Of>cer and co-founder Zach ‘Hoeken’ Smith weighed in for the >nal judgement: “While we @ MakerBot (the founders and proprieters of Thingiverse) are saddened to see weapons posted on Thingi- verse, we want to try and respect the free exchange of ideas that we’ve created.” (Smith, 2011) Similarly, Makerbot and Thingiverse co-founder Bre Pettis stated else- where around this time that: “We’ve already been through a few Mame wars around what a weapon is. Our take is that we’d rather you not upload weapons, but we’re not going to regulate it… Unless it’s illegal. Which it isn’t.” (Pettis, quoted in Biggs, 2011) Despite this clari>cation of both Thingiverse founders, the terms of use were altered in February 2012 to exclude any user content that “contributes to the creation of weapons, illegal materials or is otherwise objectionable” (Thingi- verse Terms of Use, 2012). Up to this point the discussions about using a 3D printer to produce the only regulated part of an AR-15 had been hypothetical. This changed in July 2012, when after several test prints, Michael Guslick successfully printed his own (somewhat modi>ed) design using a Stratasys, industrial-grade rapid prototyping printer. In his blog, he provided a detailed description of prepar- ing, assembling, and even shooting it: “Everything ran just as it should, magazine after magazine. To be 112 Gert van Vugt honest, it was acting more reliably than a number of other .22 pistols I’ve shot. I ran close to 100 rounds through the gun before getting annoyed with not actually being able to aim at anything, and decided to call the experiment an overwhelming success” (Guslick, 2012). Illustration 2: Michael Guslick’s scaled and full-scale proto- types of an AR-15 compatible lower receiver. Photo by Guslick Illustration 3: Michael Guslick’s printed AR-15 Lower Re- ceiver, assembled. Photo by Guslick. Guslick’s success was broadly discussed in the gunsmith and maker community, and received some popular press coverage that suggested the potential “End of Gun Control” (Gibbs, 2012). However, while recognizing the fact that circumventing >rearms regulation by printing your own parts is 113 The killer idea now a tried and tested possibility, the emphasis in these debates remained on the ease with which to produce these parts tomorrow rather than today. Rather than as a problem now, it was seen as potential problem in the future, when ceramics and metal parts can be fabricated in lower-end print- ers, thus allowing printing a gun whole instead of merely its regulated com- ponent. Although it put a lot of minds to work, Guslick’s accomplishment was only modestly covered in popular media, and the lower receiver itself was not considered here to pose a radical challenge to regulatory efforts. Media coverage about the printable gun up to and including Guslick’s accomplishments had thus revolved primarily around the technical aspects of gun printing only and slightly touched upon some regulatory challenges for limiting personal armament. In successive debates, however, the emphasis shif- ted towards issues surrounding freedom of speech and free or open informa- tion. The coming section will further elucidate this transition in narrative. 2.3.Transforming the narrative In the summer of 2012, a group of friends started a collective under the name ‘Defense Distributed’ (DD). The motivations of this group are voiced solely through their spokesperson Cody Wilson, and embody quite a con- sistent political project: the group aims to dismantle what they consider the reactionary, ‘control-oriented state government’ by completely circumvent- ing its control nexus. Using a variety of technological innovations such as strong cryptography, distributed production processes like 3D printing, and crypto currencies like Bitcoin, Wilson and DD eventually strive to circumvent and hollow out the large bureaucratic regulatory institutions (Steele, 2013). The group employed a remarkable, two-sided strategy to this aim. Firstly, by repeatedly responding to current news events in a highly provoc- ative fashion, DD managed to mobilise the global news media almost without interruption over the course of a full year. Secondly, the legion of journalists and reporters found in Wilson a very willing spokesperson to continuously frame the event by stating ‘what it is about’, through framing the designs of the printable weapon and their proliferation as sharing speech rather than guns. Further, by appealing to internet- and cyberculture through a rhetoric of openness and freedom, the group attempted to mobilize ‘the internet’ that had massively rallied in early 2012 against several controversial proposals for tighter internet regulation (on these protests, see e.g. Croeser, 2012; Yetgin et al., 2012). This strategy of both framing the event by provoking the media, and provoking the media and the public by framing the event, can be found in virtually all of Defense Distributed’s appearances and 114 Gert van Vugt activities. This notion will be further explored in the remainder of this sec- tion. In the summer of 2012, the United States were struck by the shooting tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. This traumatic event (re-)ignited debates about the regulation of semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15, in particular given the fact that an earlier federal bill banning such assault riMes had expired in 2004 without being renewed (Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, 1994, p. 202-3). Supposedly, if it had been renewed, the shooter would not have had (easy) access to the weapons used in the mas- sacre. Where calls for stronger background checks and regulation resur- faced, it was remarked by some that the possibility of printing a receiver might complicate these efforts. Within a week of the Aurora shooting, DD launched a campaign on the online crowdfunding platform ‘Indiegogo’ to manufacture a fully printable handgun under the name the Wiki Weapon. The group released a video (DXLiberty, 2012)2, in which Cody Wilson introduces the idea: “Consider this: a CAD >le containing the information for a 3D printable weapon system. If that >le was seeded by 30 people, let’s say, as long as there’s a free internet, that >le is available to anyone, at any time, all over the world. Now, our gun could be anywhere. Any bullet is now a weapon. But DD’s goal isn’t really personal armament; it’s more about the liberation of informa- tion. It’s about living in a world where you just download the >le for the thing you want to make in this life”. (Wilson, in DXLiberty, 2012) According to Wilson, the aim is to use a Stratasys industrial grade print- er before porting down the design to function on consumer grade desktop printers, with an emphasis on the self-replicating, open source, RepRap print- er. Regarding the software, Wilson follows the spirit of information open- ness in committing to only use “open source software for the design and con- version of these CAD Bles” (Ibid.). On his own interpretation of the project, Wilson states: “Defence distributed as a project I think is about the preserva- tion of human dignity in a world of accelerating inhumanity. It’s 2 The original Indiegogo campaign page has been removed; the video is still available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6Q3BfbVBU. 115 The killer idea about collapsing the distinction between digital information and material goods. And ultimately, it may be about that original salvi>c promise of the free internet” (Ibid.). From the very >rst introduction of DD’s concept of the printable gun in the Wiki Weapon, the gun is thus presented as both a material, personal de- fense system and as a weapon in the >ght for free and open access to in- formation. In fact, the latter is immediately emphasised as the group’s ulti- mate objective. In the immediate reactions to the campaign, DD and Wilson receive ample opportunity to steer the interpretation of the project by journalists, through offering a range of catchy sound bites and a manifesto section on the website that includes John Milton’s 1644 complete speech on the right to unlicensed use of the printing press. Forbes writer Andy Green- berg reiterated one of DD’s catchy slogans that “defense systems and opposi- tion to tyranny may be but a click away” (Greenberg, 2012b). Vice magazine also emphasizes the First Amendment and that according to them, “this mis- sion is all about freedom of information” (Estes, 2012). When Indiegogo shut down the campaign less than a month later due to illegitimate use of the service for activities related to the sale of >rearms or weapons, DD made news again. Some of these articles include Wilson’s dis- pute that “the exchange with contributors was for the creation of digital informa- tion”; “the exchange was for speech” (Martinez, 2012). In September 2012, DD still manages to raise enough money using crypto-currency Bitcoin and on- line payment system Paypal. In October, the leased Stratasys industrial 3D printer that the group used for experimentation is seized by Stratasys, stat- ing as their reason a violation of the terms of service due to manufacturing arms without the supposedly required >rearms manufacturing licence, which received further press (Beckhusen, 2012; Coldewey, 2012). One Tech Crunch writer condemned this course of action by Stratasys, stating: “As Hall wrote of Voltaire, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. Replace ‘say’ with ‘build’ and we have an answer to this seemingly unsolvable conundrum” (Biggs, 2012). While DD was awaiting the formal manufacturing licence, they pro- duced their >rst own AR-15 lower receiver in early December, making headlines again (Greenberg, 2012a). Within a week of the >rst tests with DD’s printed lower receiver, the project is mentioned by name in a highly publicised call by Congressman Steve Israel to renew the Undetectable Fire- 116