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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, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:10PM
the founding fathers anticipated a government using fear excuses to ban weapons and included the 2nd amendment...
it is a turning point in history that the 1st amendment requires the 2nd to be effective...
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:38PM
Amen and amen.
They lived under something oppressive, replaced it with something better and could not have done so without firearms and mortal force.
They wanted this option available in the future for when their then better system went the way all governments go.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday October 03 2014, @01:31AM
And the beauty of printable weapon files that they wrap the 2nd amendment in the 1st, so that the 1st amendment protects the 2nd amendment which protects the 1st amendment which... well, you get the idea.