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When Cody Wilson revealed the world’s first fully 3-D printed gun last year, he showed that the “maker” movement has enabled anyone to create a working, lethal firearm with a click in the privacy of his or her garage. Now he’s moved on to a new form of digital DIY gunsmithing. And this time the results aren’t made of plastic.
Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, sold by Wilson’s organization known as Defense Distributed for $1,200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver.
That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it’s also the rifle’s most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles.
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/cody-wilson-ghost-gunner/
(Score: 3) by aristarchus on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:12AM
Lower receiver of an AR-15? What a sucky gun! You know, any reasonably equipped gunsmith can make a whole gun, and probably an automatic if they have sufficient reason (money!) I mean, hillbillies used to make Kentucky rifles (even though they are more correctly called Pennsylvania rifles, and OMG here we go off into another ammosexual obsessive discussion, but at LEAST it does not involve the distinction between automatic and semi-automatic. ) My point is, if you are going to produce a one-off automatic assault rifle, why not improve the design instead of copying the lowest bidder to the US military industrial complex? What low depths hacking has fallen to. First systemd , and now this!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:45AM
Wow, Aristarchus! I did not know that someone could weave a systemd rant into a post about the right to keep and arm fully automatic bears! My hat is off to you, Kudos, sir!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:09AM
https://ghostgunner.net/ [ghostgunner.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 02 2014, @10:45AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @11:07AM
/me hides his fully automatic assault cattle prod
(Score: 1) by infodragon on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:53PM
If looks define what is an assault weapon then we are in a whole heap of trouble! An AR-15 is not an assault weapon, a 7mm rifle or a 3006 are both hunting rifles with a lot more lethal effect. The energy behind these are significant compared to the AR, in the event a bullet proof vest is used there will be tremendous impact damage compared to the AR. Not to mention the good quality 7mm mag and 3006 are more accurate than a good quality AR. Accuracy = more lethal.
You may say the AR is semi-automatic. Both of these hunting rifles can be found in semi-auto variants. You may say the AR has larger magazines, same can be said for these others. In fact anything that can be done to an AR to make it "more evil" can be done to any other rifle, however other rifles have longer range, better accuracy and more energy behind the projectile. If the debate were rational typical hunting rifles would be demonized. In fact if the debate were truly rational we would be talking about what guns are used to kill people, tiny handguns. But the debate isn't rational, it's about "really scary and military looking weapons."
What makes a weapon an ASSAULT WEAPON is an arbitrary definition, "In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." Almost any gun can be this! I wish we could all have a rational discussion but instead we have scary boogy monsters killing people with flash suppressors, bayonet lugs and disguised with black paint!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday October 02 2014, @10:57PM
The AR-15 can be significantly improved with a commonly available has piston system.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek