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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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:07PM (17 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:07PM (#576669)

    I see things a bit differently.

      - "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

    In modern times I think our approach towards security is incredibly flawed. The TSA has turned flying into a nightmare, has had hundreds of agents arrested for abusing their position, and has caught exactly 0 terrorists. We're constantly sacrificing our personal privileges and freedoms in society for the sake of staving off threats that are not only rare, but in reality practically unstoppable. Consequently, I think it's time we start looking at things differently. Guns are terrifying. How absurd is it that a single man was able to murder 50 and injure hundreds from hundreds of feet away? But on the other hand that could have been an even bigger disaster had he used explosives, or a vehicle, or any of a countless number of other methods of harming people in mass.

    Even though I'm not much of a gun person, I see turning guns into something that cannot be controlled is something that ideally may help us, as a society, begin to look at things differently. The reason mass shootings happen is not because of guns but because there are ever more people ready and willing to kill each other in mass. Why is this? America has had widespread access to guns for centuries. In fact they used to be vastly more readily available. Yet mass shootings are a contemporary thing. What is driving people to do these things? I'm fairly certain Mr. Paddock was not big Marilyn Manson or first person shooter fan. What has changed so much in our society and caused such divisiveness among people? This should be the question on everybody's mind. But we're like the fool seeing a man pointing to the stars while we stare at the hand.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:40PM (5 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:40PM (#576691)

    > America has had widespread access to guns for centuries. In fact they used to be vastly more readily available.
    > Yet mass shootings are a contemporary thing.

    We ran out of Indians and Black to shoot unnoticed.

    It's only been a century and a half since we invented reliable repeating guns/rifles. before that, it was hard to do mass shootings without people running away too fast or fighting back during reload. The market popularity of high-capacity semi-auto is a much more recent improvement on random losers' ability to mow down people.
    And God, dads and small-town neighbors stopped preventing people from doing dumb things.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:34PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:34PM (#576722)

      Again, is it really appropriate to blame the weapon? Killers like John Allen Muhammed [wikipedia.org] drove around with his accomplice and killed people with a single rifle aimed out a nook in the trunk. They killed 17 people. Back 'in the day' this would have been far easier as sophisticated forensics, air surveillance, infrared technology, radio communication, etc simply did not exist. Rifles capable of killing people from far away certainly did though. In spite of this, crimes of this sort did not exist. What has changed so much?

      • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:01PM (3 children)

        by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:01PM (#576734) Journal

        The first mass shooting happened in 1949. Search for "Walk of Death" perpetrated by Howard Unruh. He walked around Camden NJ and killed 13 people, most were targets he planned to kill for over a year.

        • (Score: 4, Touché) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:21PM (2 children)

          by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:21PM (#576784)
          --
          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, @03:59AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @03:59AM (#576913)

            I think the motivations there are crystal clear. It's like comparing these attacks to Israel/Palestine. They are in no way comparable. In one the motivation and purpose is generally very clear. In this, people seem increasingly happy to just kill other people mostly at random.

          • (Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:42AM

            by ewk (5923) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:42AM (#576949)

            Not really executed (no pun intended) by one individual, are they?

            Next on the list of moving goal posts: Buchenwald & Auschwitz ?

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:37PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:37PM (#576724) Journal

    You can go down in history on social media and CNN!!!

    --
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:03PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:03PM (#576735)

    deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

    Especially the "safety" part, if they are manufacturing an M1911 entirely in aluminum. More of a toy than an actual firearm.

    When did this idea that gunsmiths only did modifications and repairs, rather than building entire guns, start?

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:07PM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:07PM (#576737) Journal

      Better aluminum than plastic.

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    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:48PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:48PM (#576747)

      They're not -- they're making the frame out of aluminum, but the slide, barrel, and all the small parts are purchased separately, and presumably steel.

      And an aluminum-framed 1911 is probably not as durable as a steel-frame, but it's far from the exploding toy an all-aluminum one would be.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:31AM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:31AM (#576896) Journal

        That IS a question in my mind: Just how durable IS an aluminum framed 1911? Initially, it kinda scared me. But, when you think about it, it's a lot less scary. It's going to work, until the machining starts to wear, then it going to start jamming, and the jamming will get progressively worse. But, with all the innards made of steel, the thing isn't going to just blow up in your face, even when it's completely worn out. I suppose you could MAKE it blow up, but then, you can MAKE the genuine article blow up if that's what you want.

        • (Score: 1) by Chrontius on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:05AM

          by Chrontius (5246) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:05AM (#576966)

          Alloy-framed 1911s are not hard to find. Handled one by Kimber a few months ago.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:16PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:16PM (#576814) Journal

    Yet mass shootings are a contemporary thing.

    They aren't. For example, there were a number of mass shootings leading up to the US Civil War between pro-slavery and abolitionist sides throughout the US, but concentrated in the Midwest where conditions encouraged such conflicts (following the Compromise of 1850 and further policies along the same lines). And any shooting incident where four or more people are injured or killed indiscriminately is informally considered a mass shooting (there's plenty of tales in the US of such violence over the centuries, from crime, ideological or ethnic conflict, clan feuds, corruption, riots, etc).

    What has changed in recent times is both an increase in the ability of people to kill others with fire arms, higher populations, and much more prominent reporting and visibility of such events. For example, prior to 1865, the US had less than a tenth the population of the current US. That means that even at current rates of mass shootings per capita, they would have them a tenth as often or less. For example, it is claimed [cnn.com] that through the first half of the year, there were 136 mass shootings of this sort. A similar rate in the US prior to the Civil War in 1861 would be far lower, around a dozen incidents for the entire country.

    The reporting of such incidents would be severely diminished since one would be unlikely to hear of such a shooting incident, unless they happened to be close by or the tale were particularly sordid and spread to newspapers in major cities via messenger or telegraph. For example, the Mountain Meadows massacre [wikipedia.org] which was a mass shooting attack by a large party of Mormons and local Indians killed 120-140 men, women, and children in 1857. No one attempted to punish anyone for the attack until around 1874.

    That incidentally would be a greater mass shooting that any modern one.

    Finally, there's the matter of technology and population density. To get the situation of the Las Vegas shootings one would need hand-carried automatic weaponry (already pushing forward the date that this could happen to the early 20th Century) and a large public crowd with enough background noise to cover up gunfire (pretty much the latter half of the 20th Century onward for the venue that the shooting happened at).

    To summarize, I don't think there's anything actually special about current times when it comes to mass shootings. It's more feasible technologically, and there's more people overall than the past. And in the US, the past has often been quite violent.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:16AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:16AM (#576918)

      Again, I don't think you are seeing the point. This was not a conflict between Indians and Settlers, Abolitionists and Slavers, or anything of the sort. Things like that would be comparable to, for instance, the current Israel-Palestine situation. This is civilians killing other civilians mostly at random with no apparent goal or purpose.

      Many countries in the world have relatively high gun ownership. These include Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Iceland, Germany, and so on. Their per capita rates do not compare to the US but that's largely just because in the US we have a culture of gun owners tending to own many guns, which is something relatively unique. Anyhow, the point being these countries are obviously not exactly plagued by the sort of random gun violence that the US faces.

      And using CNN as a source is about as logical as using FoxNews, Breitbart, or MSNBC as sources.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:48AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:48AM (#576977) Journal

        This is civilians killing other civilians mostly at random with no apparent goal or purpose.

        As were many of the examples I mentioned.

        And using CNN as a source is about as logical as using FoxNews, Breitbart, or MSNBC as sources.

        Then maybe you ought to stop doing that? Right after you stop beating your wife and threatening Algeria with nuclear destruction.

        Many countries in the world have relatively high gun ownership. These include Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Iceland, Germany, and so on. Their per capita rates do not compare to the US but that's largely just because in the US we have a culture of gun owners tending to own many guns, which is something relatively unique. Anyhow, the point being these countries are obviously not exactly plagued by the sort of random gun violence that the US faces.

        If someone is interested in talking about that, I'm willing to as well. My take however is that the number one way to reduce so-called "random gun violence" is to legalize most recreational drugs and non-victim crimes (like prostitution), not knee-jerk a reduction of freedom every time something bad happens.

      • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:59AM (1 child)

        by Wootery (2341) on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:59AM (#577412)

        Their per capita rates do not compare to the US but that's largely just because in the US we have a culture of gun owners tending to own many guns, which is something relatively unique.

        Your explanation for the USA's high murder rate is that too many people own several guns rather than just one?

        The fact that virtually no civilians in Europe own handguns seems more salient, no?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:49PM (#577460)

          He's referring to firearms per capita, not murders per capita.