Given the current debate over gun control, now might not be the best time to release blueprints for the first entirely 3D-printable handgun. But that’s just what a 25-year-old law student plans to do.

Cody Wilson, University of Texas student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, intends to release early next week the 3D-printable CAD files for a working gun.

Forbes managed to snag an inside look(Opens in a new window) at the gun creation process, which includes 16 pieces of what Wilson calls “the Liberator,” all printed in ABS plastic. The gun’s only non-printed components are a single nail used as a firing pin, and a six-ounce piece of steel inserted into the body of the device to make it visible in a metal detector — as required by the Undetectable Firearms Act.

As Forbes pointed out, however, others may not play by the same rules. Once the file is uploaded online, anyone can download and print the gun, sans serial number, background check, and other regulatory requirements.

That’s what has Rep. Steve Israel worried. The New York Democrat issued a statement(Opens in a new window) today, renewing his call for an extension of the ban on plastic firearms, including homemade magazines and receivers.

“Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” Israel said. “When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban [on] plastic firearms.”

The Undetectable Firearms Act outlaws the manufacture, import, selling, shipment, delivery, possession, transfer, or reception of any firearm that is not detectable by walk-through metal detectors, or has major components that do not generate an accurate image by airport X-ray machines.

The greatest concern, according to the congressman, is that people will follow the Defense Distributed blueprint to build a plastic gun that forgoes the extraneous metal, then smuggle firearms onto planes and into high-security areas.

“You can print a lethal device,” Wilson told Forbes last year. “It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show.”

Defense Distributed launched in August with the goal of providing schematics for a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer (which, with the help of Staples, could soon be a lot of people). The group raised the necessary $20,000 in a grassroots online campaign, but before Wilson could even unbox the Stratasys uPrint SE unit he’d leased, the company showed up at his house to pick it up.

Building guns isn’t all Wilson is interested in, though. In March, he revealed an “open search engine for all 3D printable parts,” or Defcad(Opens in a new window). Dubbed The Pirate Bay for 3D printing, Defcad aims to provide unfettered access to 3D printable firearms, as well as other designs that can be used to print things like household tools and pharmaceuticals.

The site has not launched yet, but according to its landing page, Defcad’s fundraiser earned more than $75,000 in six weeks.