The $1,200 DIY Gunsmithing Machine

An anonymous reader writes: You may recall Cody Wilson as the man behind the world's first 3D-printed gun. He built a company behind the ideals of DIY gun-making, and now he's come back with another device: the "Ghost Gunner," a CNC mill designed to create the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle. "That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it's also the rifle's most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles. Some gun control advocates call it a "ghost gun." Selling that untraceable gun body is illegal, but no law prevents you from making one." Wilson's goal is still to render government gun regulation useless, even as debate rages on banning this kind of manufacturing.

Comments

the solution:

[therealkevinkretz]

Ban "Assault Lathes"!

Re:the solution:

[pla]

But in the mind of libertarian nutball Cody Wilson, lawmakers will just say "Welp, he beat us, time to pack up and go home, I'll see if I can charter an APC for us since it's gonna be like Somalia out there. This is the worst day since the basic theoretical disproof and repeated cracks of DRM made us give up on digital copyright issues."

Not quite - He knows perfectly well that the haplophobes won't just pack it in and go home, just as the anti-DRM crowd know that Sony won't just give up and release everything without adding in-house developed viruses to them.

More importantly, he does what he does to point out absurdity. CA's legislators will pass a band-aid over this particular reality-hack, and Wilson will find a way to mercilessly mock that, as well. The cycle can pretty much continue indefinitely; but most importantly, at each step, they look like fools and he has yet again made his point.

Re:the solution:

[CrimsonAvenger]

laws intended to keep weapons designed to kill a large number of people out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable.

If the laws you speak of were meant to do what you claim, then the AR-15 would be joined by the Mini-14 on the list of "evil assault weapons".

Alas, the Mini-14 is on the Exempt List of each of the Assault Weapon Bans.

Of course, the Mini-14 is exempt because it is a self-loading rifle firing 5.56mm (.223 for you non-metric types) rounds using magazines ranging from 5 to 35 rounds capacity, as opposed to the AR-15, which is a self-loading rifle firing 5.56mm (.223 for you non-metric types) rounds using magazines ranging from 5 to 35 rounds capacity....

If it isn't obvious from the above descriptions, there are two essentially identical rifles - one an evil assault weapon, the other a perfectly fine sporting rifle out there in the wild. If the various bans on things like the AR-15 lower receiver (or the AR-15 itself) were actually about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, there would be no distinction made between the Mini-14 and AR-15.

What the Bans actually are is a ban on Scary Looking Rifles. And that's all they've ever been - a feel-good measure that accomplishes nothing....

Re:the solution:

[gfxguy]

Frankly, it doesn't matter what you should think. "Arms" doesn't mean "hunting rifles." It means "arms." It's a very broad term covering things like swords.

Is it silly to think people should be able to walk around with swords? Maybe... but then we need an ammendment to the constitution limiting what "arms" means, you can't just arbitrarily think it should mean something to everybody... and any laws that ban keeping and bearing swords violate the 2nd ammendment just as much as bans on firearms.

Re:the solution:

[Malizar]

And there were amendments made to the Constitution to eliminate slavery and give women the right to vote. Amendments are how the Constitution is a "Living" document. Just ignoring the parts you don't agree with is not how it is done. The right to bear arms was put in place to make sure the people never fell under the boot of the government, which means it was intended for us to have arms capable of standing up for our rights. You may be naive enough to trust the government, that does not mean others are.

Re:the solution:

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If only the British kept those blades away from Patrick Henry and his "nutball" cohorts!

If the British would have had,
the NSA,
there never would have been,
a USA

Burma Shave

Re: the solution:

[luis_a_espinal]

If you're black. White people can bring semi auto rifles into Walmart and the police don't give a fuck.

It's not about race, it's about attitude. If you are friendly and polite people assume you are there to help them. If you are dour and moody, people assume you are there to hurt them.

No. It is about race, in a significant number of cases. Just look at the statistics of people open carrying (or people getting shot at). Hell, just look at the statistics of how people are treated by "the law" per race where some groups *get harsher* penalties for the same goddamned crime.

And since we are on John Crawford's case (RIP), let's look at the Walmart video just released:

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/breaking-video-finally-released-cops-shooting-man-toy-gun-wal-mart/

In the specific case of John Crawford (RIP), the poor guy that got shot down while carrying a toy gun to the cash register, he didn't do anything of the above in bold. Nothing in his fucking attitude indicated he was a treat.

The, OTH, you have white militia pointing rifles at federal agents at the Cliven Bundy stand-off on April 2014, with photographs clearly identifying those threatening federal agents with deadly force, and have you seen any one of them arrested?

Crawford might or might not have been shot at the way was due to his race, but there is a clear distinction in attitude and partial/subjective enforcement of the law that still crosses racial lines (Militia at the Bundy's ranch for example.)

This device is not new or interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a small CNC and with a few tool changes and some time i've been making 1911s and ar15s for years...

this isn't new or exciting this is the way ar-15's and 1911s are made

cast rough shape machine to precise specs...

I'm not sure why this is a big deal, its still REALLY hard to build a barrel and chamber so you still need to buy them, honestly making the receiver the registered part is silly most people could build a receiver with time and effort few people could make a decent barrel or precise chamber.

is the only thing he did to make this special is provide the right tooling in the box? and a pre-installed set of gcode big fucking deal it takes 2 seconds to get the gcode for an ar of the net

Re:This device is not new or interesting

[Maznafein]

Or just get a shovel.

http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/179192-DIY-Shovel-AK-photo-tsunami-warning!

Re:This device is not new or interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The Genie is already out of the bottle. In fact it has been for centuries. Manufacturing firearms has been been possible for your average person for about as long as blacksmithing has been a vocation. There are parts of modern weapons which require tooling and equipment that is generally beyond the average garage hobbyist, but none of this technology is all that hard or expensive to obtain or duplicate. All the steps are decidedly low tech.

What keeps most from doing all this is that you have to have an uncommon level of understanding of the processes required as well as how to run the equipment needed to produce the necessary parts and it takes a LONG time to run though them all. There are a lot of steps needed to produce properly tempered parts of the correct shapes and sizes. None of the steps are beyond the guy in the garage, there are just a lot of steps. So many that it's a whole lot easier to just buy a ready made weapon, especially when you consider how much your time is worth.

Honestly, rifles are not the problem

[gurps_npc]

I am liberal and in favor of gun control. But long guns are not the problem. They

1) Are too big to easily hide, attracting the attention of cops. So crooks don't like to carry them.

2) Are too big to easily commit suicide with.

3) Are too big for young children to easily play with.

As a direct result of this, long guns kill less than 500 people a year.

Pistols, however, are used by criminals, by people committing suicide, and by kids playing around with them. As a direct result, over 30,000 people die every year after being shot with a pistol.

critical point from the article

[nimbius]

Wilsons goal of enabling anyone to privately fabricate an untraceable gun is part of a larger anarchist mission: To show how technology can render the entire notion of government obsolete. Hes spent the last two years developing firearms designed to be printed as easily as ink on a page, neutering attempts at gun control. 'This is a way to jab at the bleeding hearts of these total statists' Wilson says. 'Its about humiliating the power that wants to humiliate you,' he says.

I'm all on board the maker train (I own a makerbot at home) but Jesus tap-dancing Christ...Anarchy? You dont need to make "ghost" guns to skirt gun control. After 4 major shootings in the US in 2 years, lawmakers themselves refuse to enact any sort of gun control. Hell, getting a gun in america is as easy as filling out a form. the biggest hurtle is the waiting period and even that is only a sometimes kind of thing. We cant even use serialized guns to independently track homicide rates in our country unless we get a FoIA from the ATF, which incidentally hasnt had a full time director in years. News reports routinely redact the make and model of firearms used in shootings out of fearfulness they'll incur a defamation lawsuit from the NRA. if you really want to "humiliate the power" and "jab at hearts" you leak confidential information. Hell, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are national treasures and they did it without a gun.

my prediction is the homemade printable gun will be outlawed not from some evil 'obama gunna take muh gunz" scheme but by lobbying pressure from the NRA, who represent weapons manufacturers profit margins (not you.)