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Episode 817: The Gun Man

Noel King/NPR

Cody Wilson makes gun-making machines. Depending whom you ask, he's either one of the most dangerous people in the world, or a hero of the first amendment.

Cody's never sold a gun. He's never killed anyone. And, to his knowledge, none of the guns he's made have ever killed anyone. So, how did Cody Wilson end up on the frontline of the debate over gun control? He ended up there, not by selling guns, but by creating ways for anyone to make their own gun.

Cody's game-changing tool? 3D printers.

In the world he's made, guns don't need to move from person to person across a counter. Instead, they're hacked together using blueprints that Cody has helped distribute.

Today on the show, we follow a man who wants a world with many guns, no regulations, and a somewhat scary amount of freedom.

Music: "Old Oak" and "No Warning." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook / Instagram

Subscribe to our show onApple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Elizabeth Kulas is a producer on Planet Money. Before that, she produced shows at WNYC, Gimlet and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2016, she was part of the NPR team that reported on the Wells Fargo banking scandal. That reporting won a George Foster Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Before falling in love with making audio, she studied Art History and German, with a focus on life in the former East Germany. She graduated from The University of Melbourne in her native Australia, with stints at Barnard College, New York and Berlin's Free University. Right now, she's entirely obsessed with space.
Noel King is a host of Morning Edition and Up First.