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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-have-guns dept.

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.

M1911 pistol.

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


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:35PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:35PM (#576822)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:46PM (#577092)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @06:16PM (#577127)

      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.