SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Ghost Gunner has been updated to allow the CNC milling of a much more popular and accessible form of firearm: a handgun:
For the past five years, Cody Wilson has applied every possible advance in digital manufacturing technology to the mission of undermining government attempts at gun control. First he created the world's first 3-D printed gun, a deadly plastic weapon anyone could print at home with a download and a few clicks. Then he started selling a computer-controlled milling machine designed to let anyone automatically carve out the body of an untraceable AR-15 from a semifinished chunk of aluminum, upgrading his provocations from plastic to metal. Now his latest advance in home firearm fabrication allows anyone to make an object designed to defy the most basic essence of gun control: A concealable, untraceable, and entirely unregulated metal handgun.
On Sunday, Wilson's gun rights advocacy group, Defense Distributed, announced a new release of software for his computer-controlled milling machine known as the Ghost Gunner. The new code allows the 1-foot-cubed tabletop machine—which uses a spinning bit to carve three-dimensional shapes with minute precision—to not only produce untraceable bodies of AR-15s but to carve out the aluminum frame of an M1911 handgun, the popular class of semiautomatic pistols that includes the Colt 45 and similar weapons. Wilson says he plans to follow up soon with software for producing regulation-free Glocks and other handgun models to follow.
Wilson's goal now, he says, is to do for small arms what Defense Distributed did for AR-15s when it first released the $1,500 Ghost Gunner milling machine exactly three years ago to the day: Give people the ability to make a lethal weapon at home with no regulation whatsoever.
This story came out before the mass shooting in Las Vegas, on the third anniversary of the initial release of the Ghost Gunner, just in case you were wondering.
Also at Ars Technica:
"It's a certain type of person who builds and enjoys an AR-15—that's a lot of gun, and most people don't feel the need to have a big ol' battle rifle," Wilson says. "But we believe lots of people are interested in the conversation about an untraceable, concealable handgun. It's been on the roadmap the whole time for this project. It's just always been a question of how we get there, and it ended up being very, very difficult—kinda like the brass ring of the project, if you will."
Previously: FedEx Refuses to Ship Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner CNC Mill
Man Who Used CNC Mill to Manufacture AR-15 "Lowers" Sentenced to 41 Months
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:58PM (2 children)
You can spot a moron by how they attempt to use jargon without understanding it.
AR-15s are small arms.*
(Of course, you can also spot them by noting that they write for Wired, a well-known circus specializing in trained morons. Like a bear trained to dance, the impressive thing isn't how well they write, but that they do it at all.)
*Well, almost all of them are. Of course, given people's tendency to make a crappy version of damn near any weapon with an AR-15 receiver serving as fire-control group, I'm sure somebody's got a belt-fed "AR-15" in .50 BMG on a tripod. But then again, you could do the same thing with a 1911 frame.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:32PM (1 child)
A belt-fed 1911 would be problematic because of the slide, but there are many people who have done this for revolvers. There's even a mass produced pistol [thefirearmblog.com] with a belt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:14PM
No, no slide. You would build a whole hammer-fired beltfed upper receiver, with the bolt at the bottom (gas piston at 9 or 3 o'clock, instead of usual 6 o'clock), and slot in the bottom of it shaped like the bottom of a 1911 slide. It slides onto the 1911 frame to mount it, but it's the bolt or bolt carrier that interacts with the hammer and disconnector as it shuttles back and forth, while the upper receiver actually mounted to the slide rails is static, locked in place with a catch, or possibly bolted through the 1911's mag well. Something like the old Pachmayr Dominator kit, but belt-fed semi-auto instead of single-shot bolt-action.
As for belt-fed pistols shooting pistol cartridges, those are still small arms; depending on whose definition we're going with, even rifle-caliber machine guns may be included.