And then there's Defense Distributed, a.k.a. the Wiki Weapon Project, the initiative cooked up by a University of Texas Law student and some of his buddies to 3-D print a working firearm . The group's Indiegogo funding campaign was shut down in the early going and 3-D printer maker Stratasys revoked the lease on Wiki Weapon's fabricator at one point, but through Bitcoin and other technology providers they've managed to keep the project alive and funded. Last we saw the Defense Distributed boys out on the range, they were firing an AR-15 rifle with a 3-D printed lower receiver--not of their own design, but one that is already available out there on the Web. They managed to get six rounds off before the plastic component broke, but they learned a bit about recoil and stress as they pertain to 3-D printed plastic in the process. These guys seem pretty serious about bringing their own, freely distributed, publicly available printable firearm design into being relatively soon, which could make 2013 an interesting year in terms of ethics and legal infrastructure that are scrambling to keep up with accelerating 3-D fabrication technologies.