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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: 2) by Spook brat on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:09PM

    by Spook brat (775) on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:09PM (#101030) Journal

    Any gun you can make by folding metal is really not worth making.

    The maker of the Shovel AK [northeastshooters.com] disagrees with you.

    Not only does he find the shovel's handle to be of comparable comfort to a conventional stock, its accuracy rivals those of many commercially built guns. From his write-up:

    Shit shovel: $2
    Romy sans-barrel AK kit: $200
    Barrel blank: $30
    Compliance parts: free from Martha Coakley . . .

    The look on your competitor's face with an expensive AR when he finds out that he have been outshot by a $2 shit-shovel .... priceless!

    There's your statement of worth, I couldn't have said it better myself.

    Ultimately, the worth of a firearm is its ability to reliably put rounds accurately on the point of aim. If the folded-metal firearm fulfills that purpose then the build was definitely worth it.

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