But with its new search business, Defense Distributed goes beyond provocation to seek profit, too.
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Wilson says he founded Defense Distributed as a non-profit and posted the documents in the public domain.
In fact, Guslick says he fired over 200 rounds with his partly-3D-printed semi-automatic, many more than Defense Distributed managed.
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The letter also said that Defense Distributed likely didn't get the proper approval to release the technical data it had posted online.
Despite that worldview, Defense Distributed applied for, and in March received, a federal firearm license which makes it a legal gun manufacturer.
In October of last year, Stratasys seized a printer it had rented to Defense Distributed after the company learned how its machine was being used.
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Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas in Austin, says that Defense Distributed will in fact take down its files until the State Department has completed its review.
Defense Distributed should review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any other data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.
That didn't take long -- just days after its first test fire, the Liberator, a 3D-printed pistol designed by Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson, has caught the attention of the federal government.
He says Defense Distributed is excluded from the ITAR regulations under an exemption for non-profit public domain releases of technical files designed to create a safe harbor for research and other public interest activities.
The 3-D printer maker Stratasys went so far as to seize a 3-D printer it had rented to the gunsmiths at Defense Distributed when it found out how they were planning it use it.
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But Defense Distributed has much greater ambitions.
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Police have distributed a quarter of a million self-defense folders to members of the public.
When the grid goes down, distributed power is often the last line of defense for mission-critical first responder facilities.
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Also 230, 000 doses of iodine have been distributed to evacuation centers as a first line of defense against airborne radioactive poisoning of the thyroid, a common concern in these situations.
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