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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:46PM (10 children)
You haven't been paying attention, then. Gun people understand that. In fact they understand that in detail. It constantly comes up in these debates, and their concerns can usually be summarised as the abiding belief that the people writing the regulations will define them as the people who shouldn't have guns. And, looking at them, and the typical author of regulations, it's hard to say that they're really wrong. They usually get shouted down with a combination of sneering remarks about "slippery slope argument" and various insinuations about crazy militia members, sexual relations with close blood relatives, and commentary on the civil war, but that doesn't actually invalidate their concerns. If anything, given the people usually doing the shouting down, it tends to support them.
Part of the problem (and this is a perennial difficulty in public policy) is to differentiate those who have a good reason to have guns from those who do not, and what constitutes a good reason, and even that is fraught because often the good reason, from the perspective of regulators is: "Member of the police in good standing. Maybe. Sometimes." while from the gun person's standpoint is: "Because I want one. Discussion closed." If you don't believe me, consider some of the may issue/shall issue legislation winding through the courts now, along with the arguments advanced on either side.
Honestly, the two sides have what a relationship counsellor might call "irreconcilable differences". There is no way for both sides to get what they want simultaneously, and any middle ground is regarded as fundamentally unacceptable on both sides. For a rather net.famous illustration of the difficulty, consider https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Illustrated-Guide-To-Gun-Control.png [everydaynodaysoff.com]
Hope this helps you craft your next proposal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:52PM (8 children)
Indeed. Anyone who lacks 100% faith in their government has a good reason to own and practice with military grade firearms. That is the sole purpose of the 2nd Amendment; it never had anything to do with hunting or sport shooting.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:10PM (4 children)
And yet even those without 100% faith in their government have an interest in keeping guns out of the hands of the incompetent, the deranged, the criminal, and the irresponsible.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:35PM (2 children)
Sure, and if the regulations could somehow be kept strictly to those categories, with objective standards and no reasonable prospect of overreach, that might overcome the scepticism of the pro-gun side.
The problem is their contention that the regulations will be subverted, over-extended, and used to favour in-groups at the expense of the out-groups. Given pretty much all of the history of political science, they show every sign of having a strong point.
Bear in mind that this isn't a gun-specific problem. It applies just as well to control over medications, food production and energy. Just ask any back-to-the-land style hippy freak how they feel about the government telling them what they can and can't grow, how and why, or how they are or aren't allowed to do with water falling on their land. But bring a chair, you might be listening for a while.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)
Easy to fix. get money out of politics. Can't bribe for exceptions and market cornering if you can't bribe at all. As it is now we have legalized political bribery.
That, our militarized and out of control police forces, and our pay-to-play medical system baffles the civilized world as to how we are not rated as a third world nation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @06:16PM
Getting money out of politics: impossible by definition because they are two pillars of power in society. (The third is ideological support, in general political economic analysis.)
I agree with you about the police forces needing reining in.
Pay-to-play medical system - uh, not so much. The USA has a HUGE welfare budget, much of which goes on various single-payer schemes. The private medical system (inasmuch as it is a system) is regulated to insanity, and flagrantly coupled with rent-seeking behaviour courtesy of things like the favoured position of the AMA.
It's not what it seems, you should probably look into it, and follow the money.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:02PM
"the incompetent, the deranged, the criminal, and the irresponsible"
You mean the government?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:17PM (2 children)
Well, at least since the 1970s when the NRA dumped millions of dollars into lobbying and enodowing the "right" kind of law school chairs. Interestingly, for the 200 years before that, the 2nd was never taken to mean that and was cited only once or twice in all court decisions. This new interpretation is even referred to as "new scholarship" that came about in the 80s. There are many interesting [yale.edu] reads [brennancenter.org] on this topic, but don't fool yourself to claim your interpretation as 10 Commandments-like written in stone. It is currently viewed that way because the NRA drove it that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:19AM
Not actually true.
Go read the supreme court decision on the Heller case. It goes back to colonial days, and follows a train of legal logic that covers the legal texts of the time as well as the federalist papers, building a substantial backdrop of modern as well as original analysis.
Likelier explanation: until people started hyperventilating about firearms, it was pretty much taken as self-evident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:24AM
So you're saying it previously was understood, rightly or wrongly, to be about hunting or sport shooting? That it was understood to be unrelated to the American Revolution, where militias armed with military-grade weapons fought the regular army of a government they deemed oppressive, and eventually won independence from that government? That it wasn't believed to be related to documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights:
(Or maybe that was understood to be about hunting and sport shooting too?)
Sorry, no. Reasonable people can and have argued about whether the Second Amendment protects an unlimited right (protecting, for instance, those guns only useful for hunting, or as range toys, as well as those useful for combat), or whether it's limited only to such arms, and such methods of keeping and bearing them, as actually serve a militia interest. But holding it to not be part of the Founders' anti-army, pro-militia tendency, and to instead be about hunting or sport shooting, is and always has been profoundly unreasonable.
You say until the federal government infringed the right of the people to keep and bear arms (for perspective, the 1970s came right after the Gun Control Act of 1968, the second of two major federal gun control laws), nobody much worried about the rule keeping them from doing so? How shocking!
One of those "once or twice", by the way, would be United States v. Miller in 1939, concerning the then-recent National Firearms Act of 1934 (the first major federal gun control law). Check out this bit from the decision: (Note that neither Miller nor his lawyer appeared before the Supreme Court, thus the Court was unable to take notice of facts that the judges themselves may have been aware of personally, and that the defense would surely have raised, such as the US Army's use of short-barreled shotguns in World War I.)
Oh no, the Supreme Court appears to have misunderstood the 2nd Amendment! They keep referencing the militia and military equipment, when they should have been talking about hunting and sport shooting equipment! The 1970s NRA must have got to them... perhaps with a time machine?
Or maybe, just maybe, you're full of it.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday October 04 2017, @07:25PM
Folks, this is not the time to be talking about gun control. I am in Las Vegas to pay my respects with @FLOTUS Melania. Everyone remains in our thoughts and prayers. 🇺🇸