Owner of 3D gun company resigns after arrest

The founder of a company that sells blueprints for making untraceable 3D printed guns has resigned from the firm after being arrested on charges of having sex with an underage girl, the company has announced.

Cody Wilson tendered his resignation to his own company on Friday to tend to “personal matters,” said Paloma Heindorff, director of development for Texas-based Defense Distributed.

The company is at the centre of a lawsuit filed by several states trying to shut down the firm.

She said she would not comment on the criminal charges against 30-year-old Wilson.

“I’m a different person,” she said during a news conference. “I’m not trying to replace him as a character.”

She said his leaving “was his own decision and we support it,” adding: “Going forward, as it stands, he has no role in the company.”

Investigators allege Wilson met the 16-year-old girl through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com.

According to an affidavit, the girl said they met in the car park of an Austin coffee shop in August and then drove to a hotel. The girl told investigators that Wilson paid her 500 dollars (£380) after they had sex and then dropped her off at a Whataburger restaurant.

He was arrested in Taiwan and taken back to the US over the weekend. He has since been freed on bail.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia had sued the Trump administration to dissolve a settlement it reached with Defense Distributed over allowing it to disseminate its designs for making a 3D-printable gun.

The lawsuit was backed mostly by Democratic state attorneys general who argued that such weapons could be used by criminals or terrorists.

Last month, a federal court in Seattle barred Wilson from posting the designs online for free.

He then began selling them for any amount of money to US customers through his website. Heindorff said there were no plans to stop doing that.

Wilson, a self-described “crypto-anarchist,” has said “governments should live in fear of their citizenry”.

Law enforcement officials worry the guns are easy to conceal and are untraceable because there is no requirement for the firearms to have serial numbers.

Gun industry experts have said the printed guns are a modern method of legally assembling a firearm at home without serial numbers.