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Cody Wilson Wants To Help You Make a Gun
An anonymous reader writes In 2013 Cody Wilson posted online the design files needed to 3D print weapons. The files were downloaded at least 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department ordered him to take them down. Last fall he reemerged with a new project, the Ghost Gunner--a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine that could easily manufacture the lower receiver of an AR-15. It was a different approach toward the same goal of multiplying the number of firearms in the world. But are we really facing a world where backyard bunker-builders are manufacturing their own gun components? Reporter Andrew Zaleski visited Wilson to check on the status of his project. What he found was a man in the throes of small-business hell. As Wilson puts it, "It's like the nightmare of a startup with the added complication that no one will allow you to do it anyway."
And as a Canadian, I won't let him. I'd gladly take a free CNC, though.
but I am looking forward to more affordable, good quality CNC mills.
Somehow, I doubt Wilson has a full-auto rifle he hands to journalists. And he's not doing anything that you're not allowed to do in your own garage.
The critical shortage of cheap firearms is a real problem desperately in need of solving. But at least now they can be homebuilt and thus untraceable. Hooray for technology!
Doesn't the 1st Amendment allow him to post those blueprints?
He's taking a machine capable of making just about anything, and using it to make the one thing that just might make people want to regulate it. He's deliberately drumming up fear over something that people should be celebrating it's existence. I wish he would just use a lathe to make his gun parts rather than 3d printers or cnc milling machines. I'd make a thousand, a hundred thousand useful things with this cnc machine before I ever considered making a gun. It's like newspaper was just invented and he's running up to the palace and pointing out to the king that how this new thing can be used to draw pictures of the queen naked..
I don't want an AR 15... but I'd print a nice looking metal handgun.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
While I would much like legislators to understand that no matter what laws they make that guns will always be available, I feel this approach is doomed to fail. Guns are old technology, so as long as humans have the means to combine propellant with a projectile and an ignition source in a tube of sufficient strength, guns will be available in society. That said, please stop making homemade unserialized weapons. All that is going to result from that is that they will make new laws and those laws may be written so poorly as to put controls not only on serialized parts considered to be the "firearm", but on many common components. The spread of unserialized weapons may also cause more states to require gun registration. Cody, your actions will have harmful unintended consequences for gun owners. I'm sure you mean well, but it is a flawed strategy.
If the Government won't let me have guns (I'm not in the USA, obviously) then the criminals must have them in spades. Let them have so many that citizens are scared of *not* owning a gun and demand their freedom.
I'd rather it be done a safer way, but liberalism has destroyed that. The unsafe way it must be. Freedom has no price.
While I would much like legislators to understand that no matter what laws they make that guns will always be available, I feel this approach is doomed to fail
All over the U.S., gun restrictions are generally faltering. You can concealed carry in more places than ever now, and every new gun control effort is faltering (like the ATF backing off on the recent ammo re-classification they were considering).
Now is not the time to fall back. Now is the time to move forward decisively and show that the people with an irrational fear of guns were always a a small minority, and rightfully scorned.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nothing he's doing is illegal. Why all the attention? People have been making guns with machine tools for decades.
Enough with the fearmongering.
He is exploiting a loop hole in the law. If it was not for NRA main is running wild it would get closed and those with multiple barrels for their rifles would be pissed.
I have large CNC machine shop. Anyone else I know with a CNC machine shop in their garage of any size has probably made guns. Some of them have made full auto versions. Some have made mortar launchers and artillery cannons and other stuff. This has been going on for many decades...and yet it is barely even visible. No end of the world. No crime wave. The difference here is volume, not principle.
Guns are not even interesting after growing up with them. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with them...but then again, I don't know why Pharrell's "Blurred Lines" was even a blip on the music scene. But I have to admit the fetishization of firearms gives me the willies...it is a disturbingly reliable indicator of a state of mind I am wary of, avoid, and consider pitiable.
Nonetheless, I feel compelled to defend the right to make and use firearms because once I declare the 2nd amendment is worthless, their state of mind could easily compel them to decide that any of the freedoms I enjoy are equally worthless. Heck- a majority of Americans already do. I tend to place the majority of persons around where I live who openly carry in the same category as some of the unfortunate homeless ranks who suffer to spew collections of epithets at passersby. It is generally harmless, certainly within their rights, although somewhat disturbing. To feel they are that much under threat by the world around them is a lousy way to get through a day. To outlaw that sort of thing would also be a crime.
Build guns. I don't care.It is the least of any imagined problems that Americans have, and to ban the information or even their manufacture literally on a par with banning books or ideas in my mind.
Are you referring to the poster who Grammar Nazis people while simultaneously being unable to figure out what an ellipsis is or how to use it?
Even facebook and Obama haven't been on the front page of slashdot as many times in the past two weeks as he has.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
What is the URL?
You can already finish an 80% AR-15 lower receiver with hand tools and a metal jig. There are companies selling the "paper weights" made from aluminum and some make them from plastic. I don't see what all the fuss is about.
That said, the machine appears to be a well made and sturdy. I'd be much more inclined to use it to make auto parts for my car projects. Hope his hand waving doesn't get him into trouble and that we'll be able to buy the machines.
But are we really facing a world where backyard bunker-builders are manufacturing their own gun components?
That world already exists in the USA. building a gun yourself from scratch is legal and requires no registration. of course you can't sell that gun. unless you take it to a gun buy back. a few people recently hosed gun buy backs for thousands of dollars with parts bought at a hardware store.
lose != loose
Do yourself a favor and look up an extended radio interview with this guy.
I'd suggest some here but I'm sure someone from across the political
or Aspergers spectrum would find fault with the source regardless of what
that source was.
If you are hoping for some sort of deep philosophical strength as is found
in the writing of the constitutional founders, I'm sorry, you're going to
find a shallow young republican frat boy troll who likes attention instead.
I'd hoped for a lot more.
I understand the paperwork isn't bad. But then there's the fee and waiting to get approved. Someone told me it took a long time to get the approval.
It's far beyond that. You DON'T want to get the BATF annoyed with you. (And few things annoy them more than trying to get around their regulations.)
They have a track record of boobytrapping the paperwork and geting people jailed for typos and minor slipups. Honest errors, misunderstanding of details of what you're supposed to do, missing a deadline, etc. Also stuff where THEY made the error but YOU can't prove it.
They'll also just keep grinding you in court, even if you actually are legal, once they start in on you. They'll keep it up until you're broke and have to fold. They have a conviction percentage rate in the high 90s.
Long felony sentences in federal prisons (and NOT the "country club" kind). They love to do things like giving you a count per round of ammunition or whatever, and run them consectutive, too. The federal prisons have no "time off for X" or probation: You serve the whole sentence. If you survive to get out, much of a lifetime later, you have lost your civil rights, including voting and owning or even handling guns (and you jepoardize any gun-owning friends or relatives by living with them or just being in their presence).
Look it up on the web. Lots of horror stories out there. The number of people in federal prison for gun paperwork "crimes" is staggering.
If you want to do this, keep it legal and keep a low profile. Really build it in your state. Really never take it out of state. Really never sell it. (I shudder to think how one handles inheritance of such a gun ...) To do otherwise is to open the giant economy can of worms.
Making your own AR-15 and trying find a way to sell, give, or trade it is an effective way to find yourself "living in interesting times and coming to the attention of people in high places".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's exactly a paperweight until the remaining 20% is milled.
It's exactly a paperweight until you MAKE THE FIRST CUT. Then it's over 80% and legally "a gun" for BATF purposes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Although the lower receiver seems to be the most regulated part of a gun, it doesn't look that hard to machine (given that you have a mill -- CNC or manual). What parts (if any) are harder to make (at least with off-the-shelf equipment)? The barrel?
Doesn't the 1st Amendment allow him to post those blueprints?
Not according to the BATF and federal prosecutors.
One of the things F-troop has been doing is sending people into gun shows to ask gun-smithly people what the internal differences are between a semi- and full-auto models of various gun designs, such as the M-16 (select-fire) and AR-15 (semi-auto only).
If they reply with information, they are then busted for conspiracy to convert a gun to full auto in violation of federal laws and regulations.
Lots of people are in jail for that, now.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I do not want a single gun in existence.
Do any of you really expect the $12 billion a year firearms industry to just let you make your own guns, when they have about a third of congress on speed dial? Just watch, this guy is going to get it from both sides.
They need to use their guns.
Or burn alive any F-Troop encountered.
> the same goal of multiplying the number of firearms in the world
Multiplying? He is either lying or has absolutely no idea how many firearms are already there in THE WORLD. For example, AK-47 production figure estimates are growing retro-actively every year, once it was 80 million total, now more like 125 million, considering all those unlicenced asian copycats and the realization WARPAC satellite countries, on soviet urging, produced ~1.5x as many AK47 as they ever admitted. Just my little Hungary of 10 million ppl manufactured over 500.000 extra during Cold War, of which 90% went to crates immediately, waiting for the "heroic" days of a WW3 that luckily never happened.
There are literally Great Pyramids of stacked firearms stored all over the world, complete with entire mountains built of unopened ammunition crates. CNC milling of M-16 cannot make a drop of difference there, because mass production uses sheet-metal pressing machinery. The only reason early A-K47 batches were milled, because all presses were needed to make large skin panels for the MiG fighter jets and there wasn't enough soviet capacity for both at the same time. Milling is insanely wasteful, pressed receiver making lines are 4-5x more productive.
Anyhow, does THE WOLD really need more firearms or armaments of any kind? For example, in the Urals there are several huge russian tank depots, containing several thousands of T-34, T-55, T-62 at EACH site. Their presence can be detected by geodesic satellites, as the sheer weight depresses the surface...
Did the presence of so many weapons made this world a better place? Will even more armaments mke the world a better place? He should get a girl and multiply the number of kids instead of firearms, that's what I recommend!
But I thought guns made people safe from government overstepping its authority...
https://ghostgunner.net/faq.html
Machinable dimensions: 175 x 75 x 60mm (~6.75 x 2.95 x 2.35")
Maximum part dimensions: 230 x 90 x 100mm (~9.05 x 3.50 x 3.90")
Overall footprint: 330 x 280mm (~13 x 11")
Weight: 20kg (~45 pounds)
Spindle Speed: 10,000+ RPM (Final Value TBD)
* Single piece powder coated 1018 steel exoskeleton to improve rigidity per unit weight
*Reinforced A36 steel end plates to further improve rigidity
*A new open source GrBLDC brushless motor controller shield for Arduino.
*Oversized 125W NEMA 23 BLDC motor, electronically throttled to 72W.
*Spindle incorporation of industry standard ER11 collet system, supporting tools up to 5/16”
The entire machine is Open Source. For other Open Source designs, Defense Distributed developed a custom spindle that exceeds the quality, accuracy, and cutting capabilities of any sub-$400 spindle we've tested. We also developed a custom signal conditioning PCB called GrbIO that reduces RF noise generated by the several stepper motors used on the machine. GrbIO includes screw-posts for easy wiring, including separate analog, digital, power supply and chassis grounds, which internally isolate noisy components from sensitive ground planes. The plug-and-play PCB connects between existing Arduino and gshield boards, requires zero software changes, and should resolve many headaches on other derivative designs. Their machine can likely to be scaled up to make larger parts.
Look forward to seeing Carbon fiber 3d printed guns being developed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L9mHtL1HTs
FYI- Cody purchased a Mark 1 within a day after posting the bounty.
"a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine that could easily manufacture the lower receiver of an AR-15"
How about:
"a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine" STOP.
I love how media likes to paint something as evil if it can be remotely associated with the subject of their agenda.
It's a milling machine. Just like a hammer is a hammer.
Or a chew toy. Or a switchblade. Or a baby pacifier.
Who cares?
The only thing that keeps us safe from bad people is a lack of bad people that want to do us harm. Anyone anywhere can make or procure the necessary materials to kill, maim, or otherwise harm someone else or commit mass murder. Legislating common tools like a mill or a hammer is an affirmation by a sponsoring legislator that they might not be particularly intelligent and that only the most reactionary fear based rhetoric can move legislation in modern America.
As.for this scheister...he is no revolutionary hand model. He might as well be screeching, "F=ma....F=ma!!!". The only reason he is getting attention in the first place is because he is obsessively calling attention to simple truths that cross people's preconceived notions about security, government sanctions, rights, etc.
I'm always surprised how basic discussions of these things become embroiled in frothy emotional Turret's outbursts on every side of an issue.
Doesn't the 1st Amendment allow him to post those blueprints?
Not according to the BATF and federal prosecutors.
One of the things F-troop has been doing is sending people into gun shows to ask gun-smithly people what the internal differences are between a semi- and full-auto models of various gun designs, such as the M-16 (select-fire) and AR-15 (semi-auto only).
If they reply with information, they are then busted for conspiracy to convert a gun to full auto in violation of federal laws and regulations.
Lots of people are in jail for that, now.
I can't help thinking that being a gun-smith doesn't require much in the way of common sense if they're caught that easily.
Mind you, I also can't believe that someone could be convicted on federal conspiracy charges with such flimsy evidence. Are you sure that the Feds didn't subsequently find something like a cache of actually converted weapons?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Please, define assault rifle. None of the politicians have been able to say more than "I'll know it when I see it".
Now, if you mean automatic weapons, those can be legally obtained. You can buy tanks too, perfectly legal. If you are concerned about people making their own guns, you should be terrified by the legal tank business out there.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Why would the CDC being studying an issue that would fall under the Health and Human Services department?
"Safe" is not the correct word. Anyone with half a brain knows that "completely safe" is a theoretical ideal that does not exist in this place. It is more like owning deadly weapons potentially increases the cost of abusing you, which causes some would-be abusers to reconsider.
done read the weapon shops of isher too many times.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"He should get a girl and multiply the number of kids instead of firearms, that's what I recommend!"
Girls are illegal in feminist america. You go to jail for pedophillia.
It is fine in the Old Testament law of the God of the book of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 22 28-29 in hebrew).
This project is beyond sick! The more firearms there are the more damage they do. If Mr. Wilson had just one speck of responsibility, moral, and ethic in his body he would build a machine that effectively destroys guns. But maybe that is the plan? The 3D printed guns did not hold up well in the tests and are more likely to harm the shooter than anyone else.