Last year, Wired included him in its list of the deadliest people on the planet, alongside Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran's special forces, and the former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, though Wilson's notoriety is not to do with human rights abuses and killing. It's for uploading a bit of software. A bit of software that could unleash a whole new world: one in which anyone can download a set of blueprints and print their own gun at home.
Wilson made news when he unveiled plans for the Liberator in 2012, but in May last year, he went one step further: he successfully fired it, and uploaded the plans on to his website, Defense Distributed. Two days later, the US state department removed them, but by that time they had been downloaded 100,000 times. This is a cat that is well and truly out of the bag. The 3D gun is with us whether we like it or not.
Mostly not, I would say. It's a gun. It works. And any nut with access to a 3D printer can print one in the privacy of their bedroom and then … well, you get the picture. The plans include a metal shank so that it'll show up in an x-ray scanner, but it is the work of moments to remove it. And while it is an argument that has a different resonance in the US, where any aforesaid nut can simply go out and buy a gun in a shop, and the rights of nuts to go and buy such guns is enshrined in the constitution, even there, it has caused shock waves. In Britain, where we hope our robbers carry nothing more than a big stick and arm our police officers accordingly, it's a potential societal revolution that none of us asked for.
But then, that's generally the way with societal revolutions. Listening to the radio, just before setting off to meet Wilson, I hear a bulletin that includes the news that the Home Office has updated its firearms rules to make it clear it is illegal to manufacture, sell, purchase or possess 3D printed guns.
