3D-Printed Guns Raise Questions About Future of Canada's Gun Laws

They're doomed

Daniel Southwick has a gun. It looks like a toy. It's not.

It seems that he's the first person in Canada to make a gun with a 3D printer. It's under lock and key at his University of Toronto lab, on the seventh floor of Robarts Library.

The gun can't shoot bullets — not yet — but only because Southwick doesn't want it to.

He made changes to its design that disarm it, but he could easily undo them.

Now the questions begin.

Can anyone make a gun whenever they want? Will police be able to trace the bullets fired from a 3D-printed gun? Can a terrorist get on a plane, and into a cockpit, with an all-plastic firearm?

As the technology of 3D printing accelerates at an extraordinary rate, Southwick and his colleagues at the University of Toronto's Critical Making Lab are abruptly drawing the curtain on a new era for gun control in Canada.