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Making an AR-15 In the Wired San Francisco Office
An anonymous reader writes: Wired's writer Andy Greenberg writes about his experience fabricating an AR-15 lower receiver with the Ghost Gunner CNC mill. (That's the same device that was demoed in a Slashdot video earlier this year.) Greenberg points out that CNC millng isn't new, but reports nonetheless: "Aside from a single brief hardware hiccup, it worked remarkably well. In fact, the Ghost Gunner worked so well that it may signal a new era in the gun control debate, one where the barrier to legally building an untraceable, durable, and deadly semiautomatic rifle has reached an unprecedented low point in cost and skill."
The whole discussion about making your own guns, sort of reminds me of the day I realized how easy it was to make beer. So easy that any 14 year old can walk into any random supermarket and buy everything they need to make a couple gallons of beer for less than it costs to actually buy the beer (as it should be!).
So all these prohibitions against selling alcohol to people under 21 are all pretty pointless, even kids without friends older than 21 can get their hands on unlimited supplies of the stuff with just a little thought and effort.
So the latest hopla about making guns is sort of a resurgence of the zip gun culture. Only the results are probably more accurate on the whole.
You can make a damn effective single-shot shotgun with plumbing parts from the hardware store for about $12.
Making the world a more dangerous place for the rest of us.
Well done.
See, I get that the gun advocates want to prove a point here. I do. But the government is not ever going to say "Oh, you know what, you're right. That's silly. Go ahead and make all the guns you want". I realize that this is the libertarian fantasy, but it's just that: Libertarians masturbating.
Instead, what's going to happen is the government is going to start regulating CNC mills (or something equally absurd) in order to control the problem. Yes, that's a stupid thing to do. What, you don't think the government is capable of doing cutting off its nose to spite its face? I think if anyone should realize that the government is capable of doing stupid shit, it's Libertarians. It's all they ever talk about.
So thanks, guys. As someone who likes gcode and cutting metal, you're now going to ruin it for the rest of us just to prove your fucking point.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Especially surreal when my wife learned to shoot same weapons in PRC at 12 years of age as part of the school curriculum, when around here we'd probably try to bring someone up on charges for doing that. Sometimes the gun control side sounds like the "abstinence only" education argument. Both seem to think lack of knowledge and superficial fixes will solve unrelated problems (i.e. sociopaths running amok).
Ghost Gunner...may signal a new era in the gun control debate
Presumably he means a "new era" of debate in which gun-rights advocates are not resoundingly winning that debate. This week's news is that the Texas legislature approved campus carry and both houses of the Maine legislature approved constitutional carry. And those immediately followed the Federal Courts rollback of carry restrictions in DC. And last year Illinois legalized concealed carry.
I don't see how Andy Greenburg using a "Ghost Gunner" is going to reverse that trend.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Whoever thinks that making guns cheap and easy to fabricate without skills is a good idea, is nuts.
It doesn't matter if it's a good idea or a bad idea. It's the world we live in now.
It was probably not a good idea to let murderous dictators and their regimes know about the equation E=MC^2. We would definitely be better off if crazy people lacked the information to make nuclear weapons. But that's not even a question worth considering, because that information is already out there. We live in a world where the knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon can be found on wikipedia.
There is no good way to keep bad people from owning cars, cell phones, computers, kitchen knives, baseball bats, etc. Now guns are in this category as well. It is just a fact that in the 21st century, making a precise replica of a simple physical object is no longer hard nor expensive. Arguing whether it should be is pointless.
Interestingly enough, none of the guns you linked to were selective fire (which is part of the definition of "assault rifle"). What they are is rifles that look evil, but are functionally identical to a Mini-14, which was on the EXEMPT list of the "assault weapon ban"....
Even more interesting is that they're all "peashooters". Sorry, .223 isn't really much of a rifle round. Not even legal for hunting deer most places. Unlike my .30-06 single shot....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
When I was in high school, small town...4,000 population, middle of the country. If you saw a pickup truck in the school parking lot, including teachers, 99% of the time, there would be 1 or two guns in a gun rack, on the rear window. One being a shotgun the other being a rifle. Also, if it was hot outside, the windows would be down, if it was raining, the doors wouldn't be locked. Guys ran around with a skoal can in the hip pocket & a buck knife on their belt. Not one incident of "gun related crimes" EVER happened in schools. You had a beef with someone, you took it across the street AFTER school, duked it out for a while, declared someone the winner, someone the loser. Few days later you'd be hanging out in town having a beer with the same guy. Try that now, they'd toss you in jail and throw away the key. So, that begs the question...WHAT has changed? Perhaps single parent families, everyone living in a sub division with privacy fences, who have no idea who their neighbors are, schools/federal government removing any mention of God from every day life, the increase of violent video games, children growing up with a lack of respect for their elders, or anyone else. SOMETHING has changed since the days I attended high school in the 70's, and NOT for the better.