Company creates software that they say stops the 3D printing of Guns

The company Create It Real has created software that enables a printer to disallow printing guns.

According to their press release they say:

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 cheap 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.”