3D-printed gun maker now has federal firearms license to manufacture, deal guns

Cody Wilson has applied for an "add-on" to sell an even wider range of guns.

by Cyrus Farivar - Mar 17 2013, 9:00am EDT

• Media Innovation

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/3d-printed-gunmaker-now-has-federal-firearms-license-to-manufacture-deal-guns/

On Saturday, Cody Wilson, of Defense Distributed, became an federal firearm licensee.

Defense Distributed

On Saturday, Defense Distributed—America’s best-known group of 3D gunsmiths—announced on Facebook that its founder, Cody Wilson, now has a federal license to be a gun manufacturer and dealer. The group published a picture of the Type 7 federal firearms license (FFL) to prove it.
“The big thing it allows me to do is that it makes me manufacture under the law—everything that manufactures are allowed to do,” he told Ars. “I can sell some of the pieces that we've been making. I can do firearms transactions and transport.”
Wilson and his colleagues have been making prototypes of guns for months now—most recently, the group demonstrated an AR-15 semi-automatic—which are allowed under American law without a license. The legal difference is that now Wilson can distribute the guns that he makes and sell them, too.
Earlier this month Wilson told Ars that he had submitted the application to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (a division of the Department of Justice) back in October 2012. The process can take as little as 60 days, but in this case, it took around six months.
For now though, Wilson said he will not actually start manufacturing and selling guns until he receives an “add-on” to his FFL, known as a Class 2 Special Occupational Taxpayer (SOT), as licensed under federal law (PDF), which would allow him manufacture and deal a broader range of firearms under the National Firearms Act. The Class 2 SOT would allow him to manufacture, for example, a fully-automatic rifle. Wilson applied for the SOT on Saturday and expects to receive approval within a few weeks.
As a gun dealer, Wilson will also be required to keep records on all the guns he makes and sells. While the group already takes in thousands of dollars monthly in donations, Wilson said that with the SOT, the group can begin selling some guns to offset some of the group’s costs for printers and materials.
“In a way it's like we're just beginning—I'm not going to begin until we have that SOT,” he said. “[We’re going to] sell some of the stuff we've already made, we’ll probably make some stuff to sell and that will be a better way of covering the prototyping.”