Inventor Of 3D-Printed Guns Scoffs As Biden Vows Crackdown

While President Joe Biden vowed to stem the growing market in “ghost guns,” the man who invented untraceable 3D printable weapons said he’s selling as many as 55 a week. 

“I expect that to keep going,” said Cody Wilson, 34, the former law student and registered sex offender whose exploits once earned him the title of one of the most dangerous people on the internet.

Biden wants to expand the definition of a firearm to include a “weapon parts kit that is designed to or may readily be assembled, completed, converted, or restored to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” The president, speaking during an event Thursday with New York Mayor Eric Adams, promised federal backup in the battle against the weapons. “If you commit a crime” with a ghost gun, the president said, “not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well.” 

Ghost guns are a small, dark corner of the market for weapons in a country with more firearms than any in the world. The appetite for them, however, is going gangbusters. From 2016 to 2020, the number of “suspected” ghost guns that state and local law enforcement have reported each year has jumped to 8,712 from 1,750, with a total of more than 23,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Biden’s threat comes as a Justice Department white paper outlines a new strategy that would include an ATF “ghost-gun coordinator” in every field division.

For nearly a decade, Wilson has pioneered 3D-printed guns and weapons made with computer numerical control milling, or CNC, a machining process that produces a custom-designed product. For $2,500, Wilson sells a CNC-milling kit aptly named Ghost Gunner 3, with an update that allows for a 12-ounce block of aluminum, or a “zero percenter,” to be made into a functional weapon. Wilson also sells the raw aluminum, for $25.

If certain guns are banned, “the only way you can keep going is through 3D printing or zeros,” Wilson told Forbes on Thursday, referring to his own zero-percent product. “And you know the guy who invented both of those.”

Wilson said that sales of the Ghost Gunner 3 are humming along. “We’re shipping 50 to 55 a week,” he said.

Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at the nonprofit gun-control group Brady United, said the Biden administration’s plan would train a “cadre of prosecutors on enforcement issues, specifically around the use of ghost guns and crimes.” The ATF is close to finalizing the rule, he said.

Legal experts say that Wilson, who has continued to operate largely unabated, may finally hit a dead end if the plan is enacted.

Paul Helmke, a professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, a former Brady Center president and a former Republican mayor, said that Wilson’s legal analysis — that this new rule would not affect the milling of “zeros” — may be flawed.

“If Smith & Wesson decided this is how they are going to manufacture guns, the rule would certainly be written in such a way that it would apply to Smith & Wesson,” Helmke said.

“Just because [Wilson] is doing this as an individual or making them available to open source doesn’t change the intent of the regulations or the intent of the law. If his argument held true, then Smith & Wesson could say that ‘we don’t have to follow any of the regulations because we will do it this way,’ and that’s not going to happen.”