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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the gun-without-a-bang dept.

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/

 
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:59AM (#100858)
    When i was 12 i built a repeating 10 shot black powder revolver that fired bolts thru a cement block wall.
    I even had to hide it from my parents. They'd have beat my ass i bet.

    Did it look nice? No.

    Was it functional and lethal? Yes.

    If a 12 year old can make one because he's bored and stupid. Making a lethal weapon is really easy.
    Trying to regulate it. Or the machines that make them. Or the machines that make the machines...
    Is only going to get silly and stupid and a pointless waste of time and money.

    I bet we're going to go for silly and stupid tho. We always do.
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  • (Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:09AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:09AM (#100861) Homepage Journal

    ... a rubber band and a piece of copper tubing when he was a teenager.

    He took it out in the woods, tied it to a tree then fired a 0.22 round with it.

    He emphasized that I should not try it myself, as it is profoundly unsafe, however he was a military officer. Throughout my childhood we all expected I would one day join the Navy as well, so he often encouraged my interest in guns and explosives.

    I know how to make a high-explosive detonator that will detonate spontaneously, without a timer or anything. It is a chemical preparation that, after some period of time, will detonate violently. I also know how to make a whole bunch of high explosives that this will detonate. For the most part I learned how to make all these things by reading books I found in University libraries.

    Now I'm a real peaceful guy so I'm not going to blow anyone up. But if someone is not peaceful, and they know how to do literature research and they are handy with tools, there isn't a whole lot you can do to stop them.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:25AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:25AM (#100869) Journal

      Oh yeah? Well I know how to make a . . . wait, I see what you are trying to do here. I know how to make lemonade out of lemons! Yeah! That's the ticket!

      • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:45PM

        by metamonkey (3174) on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:45PM (#100939)

        Oh yeah? Well I know how to make a . . . wait, I see what you are trying to do here. I know how to make lemonade out of lemons! Yeah! That's the ticket!

        And I'm sure you have it ready to squirt in someone's eye. We're going to need to outlaw weaponized lemonade.

        --
        Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
        • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday October 02 2014, @02:23PM

          by Alfred (4006) on Thursday October 02 2014, @02:23PM (#100959) Journal
          You skipped the part with paper cuts. The lemons of greatest effect always follow paper cuts.
          • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:25PM

            by metamonkey (3174) on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:25PM (#100987)

            Yes, yes, billions of Americans each year are victimized by lemon violence. We need to enact a 3-day waiting period on lemons and a two-lemon per person limit. Assault lemons are right out. We respect the right of Americans to bear lemons, but won't you please think of the children?

            --
            Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
      • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday October 03 2014, @11:18PM

        by etherscythe (937) on Friday October 03 2014, @11:18PM (#101547) Journal

        Someone tried to burn my house down with lemons once... Still Alive.

        --
        "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
        • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday October 04 2014, @03:41AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday October 04 2014, @03:41AM (#101615) Journal

          Evidently you never faced a fully-automatic, Remotely-operated, and Highly-Lethal Lemon Gun. You have heard of spud guns? Imagine the same thing, of slightly lesser caliber for the most part, but with the projectiles filled with citric acid!!!! Especially just after you have cut yourself on some paper! And auto-reload and fire (that is what "auto" means, all you ammosexuals out there, not just a "fire once" type of thing which is good enough for most people, but that "sticking it back in and going again!" Like many times per seconds. If that happened with lemon-rounds. . .. ) That could burn your house down, especially if there was an Tequila involved.

          And I just want to say, yes, anyone could jerry-rig some kind of zip gun, single use, throw away, more likely to kill the user than the target: But that is not important now. What if ISIS gets ahold of lemons? What if it is a lot a lemons? And what if they obtain Lemonator technology? We are all doomed, I say! And this has nothing to do with systemd or Ebola breaking out in third world countries like Texas!