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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) by khallow on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:16PM (4 children)
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)
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
As were many of the examples I mentioned.
Then maybe you ought to stop doing that? Right after you stop beating your wife and threatening Algeria with nuclear destruction.
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)
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
He's referring to firearms per capita, not murders per capita.