They started by printing their own gun parts and magazines. Now the internet gunsmiths at Defense Distributed have produced the world's first fully 3-D printed gun. It's been tested, and it works.

In a video uploaded to the web early Monday, the group's founder Cody Wilson is seen firing one round from the weapon, which Wilson named the Liberator. After pulling the trigger, the printable handgun recoils backwards as a single .380 caliber bullet blasts out with a loud bang. Wilson does a little macho pose. Then there's epic-sounding music, footage of bomber aircraft and images of what the weapon looks like disassembled: the largest pieces are the pistol grip and receiver device, seen surrounded by a number of smaller internal components, including the hammer's springs.

When it's all put together, the firearm resembles a snub-nosed glue gun. On Monday, the blueprints were also made available for download.

The weapon is crude and can potentially explode, and it's still a work in progress, Wilson tells Danger Room at a small workshop in Austin, Texas – the inside mostly taken up by a used $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3-D printer, which produced the gun. "The design is based on two to three features that worked first. We had been testing barrels for almost two months, and we used the barrels and ABS that worked," he says, referring to the type of thermoplastic material used by the machine. "We used 60 to 70 different springs, not all separate designs, but just trial and error. We cannibalized a spring off a toy on Thingiverse, a wind-up car toy."

Wilson only tested the Liberator with one shot in .380 caliber – enough to demonstrate that it worked – with repeated tests. But he plans to release barrels capable of firing nine-millimeter and .22 caliber bullets. "I think a barrel like this can do five to six rounds," he says. "It's very important you get a central strike on the primer cap, or you'll get a misfire. We had a number of misfires in .380." Though Wilson is critical of his gun – he calls it overbuilt, and too big, but says it's easy to fire. There's no safety. At one point during testing in recent weeks, one of the barrels exploded. But the design does work.

"It's the first thing that worked," he says.

There's another question whether Wilson's gun is legal – or how long it will be. On Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York became the most prominent lawmaker to call for banning 3-D printed handguns. "Guns are made out of plastic, so they would not be detectable by a metal detector at any airport or sporting event," Schumer told reporters on Sunday. "Only metal part of the gun is the little firing pin and that is too small to be detected by metal detectors, for instance, when you go through an airport."

The senator also proposed updating the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 – which bans guns that can defeat airport security metal detectors – to include printable gun magazines. Defense Distributed has a federal firearms manufacturers license, which Wilson sought after being questioned by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 2012. That was shortly after a 3-D printer Wilson had rented was seized by its manufacturer over worries he'd violate the Undetectable Firearms Act. The law, which is set to expire this year, exempts licensed manufacturers to produce plastic guns for use as a models and prototypes.

"There's no reason for a rifle receiver or a magazine to be, quote unquote, detectable," Wilson says. "And to make this even worse, they'll say: we'll it's okay for manufacturers to make an undetectable receiver, but it's just not okay for you to make it. It's an attempt to regulate some gun parts under the guise of security."

But this printable gun (aside from a metal firing pin) is still another leap for the group, whose founder espouses crypto-anarchist views and who entered a national debate over gun control last year through his printable AR-15 lower receiver and plastic, downloadable 30-round magazines – which Defense Distributed freely shares online through its Defcad.org clearing house.

"The software ethos is early and often, right? If you've got something, release it. But this can explode. But I think it's a good compromise and we're going to keep working on it." The question now, he says, is how it can be improved.