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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, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:40PM (16 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:40PM (#576765)

    The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with this...for now. Because the primary purpose of gun control in the US is not to prevent people from having guns. The purpose of gun control to make it really difficult to own a gun in order to deter people who have no good reason to.

    In an ideal system (i.e. not necessarily practical), owning a firearm would require someone to prove basic proficiency in its use, pass a fair psychological screening, pass a criminal background check, and prove in some way a responsibility for and a connection to the good functioning of one's community. Gun control in the US has long aspired to this model, up to and including the assault weapons ban which adds financial requirements.

    The goal is to keep guns from falling into:

    1. Idiots who will shoot themselves or others by accident;
    2. Unhinged persons who will shoot themselves or others on purpose for unpredictable reasons;
    3. Criminally-motivated persons who will shoot others on purpose for selfish gain;
    4. Irresponsible persons who will lose their gun and allow it to fall into the hands of a person in one of the other categories.

    This person, and anybody else with access to and inclination to learn to use the required equipment, does not strike me as within these categories (though the straw-man version of me that I expect you are hearing in your head might call him "unhinged"). The only significant risk of this increased availability is organized crime, including terrorist organizations. However, I would argue these groups have other ways to obtain black market weapons, and their ownership of weapons isn't their primary threat anyway.

    This can change, however, if the equipment to create these weapons is commoditized. It should not be simple or easy to produce that much destructive force. But as long as the road to firearm ownership is difficult, it need not be impossible.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:58PM (#576771)

    pass a criminal background check

    So felons should be banned from owning guns for life? [felonyrestrictions.com]

    It will only hurt reformed felons.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:46PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:46PM (#576796)

    The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with this...for now. Because the primary purpose of gun control in the US is not to prevent people from having guns. The purpose of gun control to make it really difficult to own a gun in order to deter people who have no good reason to.

    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)

      by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:52PM (#576803)

      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)

        by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:10PM (#576811)

        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)

          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.

          • (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.

        • (Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:02PM

          by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:02PM (#576839)

          "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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:17PM (#577190)

        That is the sole purpose of the 2nd Amendment; it never had anything to do with hunting or sport shooting.

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:19AM (#577247)

          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

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:24AM (#577248)

          That is the sole purpose of the 2nd Amendment; it never had anything to do with hunting or sport shooting.

          Well, at least since the 1970s when the NRA dumped millions of dollars into lobbying and enodowing the "right" kind of law school chairs.

          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:

          Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

          (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.

          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.

          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.)

          The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.

          In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

          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

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @07:25PM (#577143) Journal

      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. 🇺🇸

  • (Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:20PM (2 children)

    by slinches (5049) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:20PM (#576817)

    The problem is that regulations which would be effective in preventing gun ownership by those four groups would be easily subverted to prevent all citizens from owning them. See California for a good example. The state forbids open carry and some local municipalities (cities, counties, etc.) have exceptionally high standards for granting concealed carry permits. This means no ordinary citizen is allowed to carry a pistol in large portions of the state.

    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday October 04 2017, @01:11AM (1 child)

      by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @01:11AM (#576878)

      Who cares where you can carry your pistol? If you own it and know how to use it, you are prepared for the revolution. Gang banging the streets of LA won't help.

      Outside of city limits, though, I am sympathetic. But as far as I know there are no carry restrictions statewide. Just permitting requirements.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday October 04 2017, @05:16PM

        by slinches (5049) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @05:16PM (#577106)

        There are carry restrictions, which are relatively complicated, dependant on gun type and location and the subjective interpretation of local law enforcement.

        See here for a decent summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:55PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:55PM (#576833) Journal

    Because the primary purpose of gun control in the US is not to prevent people from having guns. The purpose of gun control to make it really difficult to own a gun in order to deter people who have no good reason to.

    Who gets to decide who has a "good reason"? It's peculiar to see this authoritarian impulse. You wouldn't trust the government to do a variety of things (like making war), but somehow they're not going to fuck this up.

    Let's give a hypothetical example. Suppose Trump decrees at some later date that all the neo-Nazis have good reason to own firearms because they are a persecuted minority and deliberately ignores all those gun control schemes you have bouncing in your head. Maybe he even personally buys them a few billion dollars of fire arms to get started. Then one political faction has an enormous amount of firepower and everyone else has to play by these very hard rules. This is the sort of thing that happens when you introduce sensible gun control. The state ends up in control of who gets fire arms, and it's always the political factions with the best connections to the state who have the best access.