Experts worried as American users rush to download 3D-printed gun plans

American gun enthusiasts are rushing to download online models for 3D-printed guns, prompting warnings from authorities and firearm experts about a new wave of violence caused by “ghost guns.”

The newly-found trend has seen over 1000 people already download plans to make AR-15 semi-automatic rifles at the comfort of their homes using commercially-available 3D printers, the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro warned Monday.

The extraordinary number of downloads, given the relatively new nature of 3D-printing, came despite a court agreement that had banned the digital firearms company Defense Distributed from promoting the product until at least Wednesday.

“Defense Distributed, had promised that on August 1, ‘the age of the downloadable gun formally begins,'” said Shapiro’s office.

“Today, the defendants claimed in court that they began distributing gun files even earlier — on Friday. By Sunday, 1,000 people had already downloaded 3D plans for AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles,” the press release added.

The company announced Friday that it was going to make the plans available for download. However, it refused to reveal how long did it take for the downloads to cross the 1,000 mark.

Josh Blackman, a lawyer for the company, defended the move, saying the court agreement was only for the state of Pennsylvania and did not apply to other states.

“This is a free speech case. This isn’t a gun case,” he told CNN. “One state cannot censor the speech of a citizen in another state.”

A similar request by anti-gun groups to ban the downloads in Texas had failed in June after the judge questioned the claimants’ legal standings.

The company claims its 3D plans had been already downloaded 400,000 times before they were taken down in 2013.

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A strong majority of Americans support banning the kind of semi-automatic rifle that was used in the February 14 mass shooting that left 17 people dead.

The 3D blueprints include all the necessary details to produce a fully functional AR-15 rifle, the gun that has gained notoriety for being used in a several high-profile mass shootings across the US over the past years.

The new technology allows people who are unable to legally purchase weapons due to their criminal backgrounds, secretly develop so-called “ghost funs” that are not registered anywhere.

Speaking to the media earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned about the spread of such weapons.

“The danger that could happen can be enormous,” he said at a press briefing on July 22. “To have crazy people have easy access, to have terrorists have easy access to this kind of website and allow them to make plastic AR 15s undetected — so-called ghost guns — justifies the imagination.”

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