The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home
wired.com
wired.com
> "zip guns"
This helps people make a fully automatic machine gun, an AR-15, not a single-shot gun.
But if you want to be concerned, look at how utterly simple a full auto (simpler that way, e.g. firing pin is a bump in the bolt face) 9mm Sten gun is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten
(A semi-auto AR15 is a much more capable weapon, BTW.)
ADDED: per the NRA's page on California gun laws, in theory its even legal to have and transport one, although evidently the permits to do so are never granted (well, I assume except for Hollywood...).
2 known illegal uses of legal machine guns in private hands in the US ... one by a cop....
http://stevespages.com/pdf/sten_mk2_complete_machine_instruc...
Really don't need much of a machine shop to knock one of them out.
It's true this device alone doesn't make an automatic weapon, but it certainly catalyzes the process of making an untraceable automatic weapon.
Once you have made an untraceable semi-auto AR-15 with this device, you can then make it untraceable auto with numerous ways.
And, no, it doesn't catalyze this, or at least no more than allowing the sale of millions of finished AR-15s. Those are a lot closer than a 80% receiver and a pile of parts, "Some assembly required".
The metric is absurd. As one gunsmith noted, he could turn a VW Bug (car) into a machine-gun well within the BATF metric.
ITYM millions of traceable AR-15s.
If someone wants an untraceable machine gun, they can buy this device and perform mods.
∴ This device catalyzes making untraceable machine guns.
If you really want this you have probably either watched too much TV or want to score political points and harass gun stores, distributors and/or manufacturers. See Fast and Furious for the most notorious example of this.
Because you and others have been hostile toward me, claiming this device doesn't catalyze untraceable weapons.
Now you're moving the goalposts, claiming tracing doesn't actually matter.
You might interpret your own hostility as an attempt to extort confirmation in the face of invalidating evidence. You will feel much better when you admit you were wrong and go back and undo your down votes.
> It very seldom solves crimes
1. So, by your own admission, it does solve crimes, at least sometimes. So that's one reason to give a damn about the production of untraceable machine guns there. Mind you, I'm using your own words to prove my point.
2. It prevents crimes from happening. That's a second reason to give a damn about the production of untraceable machine guns.
So, where do you feel like moving the goalposts to next? Or do you want to just concede you acted to rashly and misspoke? It's a small point really and you'll feel much better if you just admit what your own words have demonstrated - this machine catalyzes the production of untraceable machine guns.
I say this as a non-gun-owner who was taught to shoot the old fashion way, by a 12 year old friend who got a rifle for Christmas when I was 11, and have subsequently taken enough firearms training, including in the armed forces, to understand firearms well enough to be terrified of the huge number of ignorant clowns who own them, no matter how well-informed and responsible the majority of gun owners are most of the time.
It is also worth pointing out that since the point of firearms is to make it really easy to kill things it would be disingenuous and stupid to claim anything other than "a gun owner only needs to fail in their understanding or self control for a moment to kill someone", and anyone who believes of their fellow gun-owners, "we never make mistakes"... well, people like that have good company in murderous tyrants the world over.
Everyone makes mistakes now and then. When people with guns make mistakes, other people die. Because the purpose of guns is to make killing really easy, and when you have a technology that makes something really easy you get more of it. To claim otherwise is to claim that intercontinental travel was as common before steamships as after, which is false.
Guns are a tool to solve a problem: killing things. Gun advocates in the US claim that this tool, and this tool alone, can be applied to the unrelated problem of personal safety. I say this is an unrelated problem because it is: in every other developed nation it has been solved more effectively than it has been solved in the US, without substantial reference to guns.
Let me say this again: the problem of personal safety has been solved better (people are safer) in every other developed nation without ubiquitous firearms. This is just a fact. Murder rates in Canada are lower than in the US. Murder rates in England, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland (where firearms are all inaccessible, remember), etc are all lower than in the US. People in those countries are safer than in the US, despite the freedom of all Americans to carry firearms and the overwhelming victory of the gun lobby in the US in the past couple of decades.
So anyone who advocates firearms as a good solution to the problem of personal safety is like someone advocating bloodletting for personal health. It is a solution that has been tried and failed. It's time to move on to something else, like civilization and the rule of law.
That said, yeah, many gun owners don't really understand guns in the technical sense, and have very silly biases (consumer preferences, really) about what is a valid arm to possess. A lot of older hunters I've met, for example, get grumpy if they see you with any rifle that isn't a bolt-action.
I tentatively disagree with the problem of personal safety being solved in those other countries: you've stuck with the metric of "murdered", whereas there are additional ones still of note to the average citizen such as "assaulted" and "robbed". Also, we can trot out the tired refrains about diversity and whatnot and argue that those populations don't map onto ours, but let's save space.
I might agree that the firearms are not a good solution to the problem of personal safety, but they are a solution and one that has worked. I think that the problem that they help prevent is creating an irreversible monopoly in force and ensuing tyranny, which is what happens once you disarm your populace. As a veteran, surely you appreciate that.
EDIT: Changed qualifier on "one that has worked well" to "one that has worked"...don't want to blow my reply quota picking nits on the difference between "well" and "good".
Also, forgot to mention: parent's point about letting people who don't understand something regulate it is correct--if you can't even articulate the different sorts of firearms and differences thereof, why should you be allowed to restrict anyone's access to them? It's just as annoying as legislation about computer stuff.
In case you don't know the meaning of the word shroud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_shroud
Imagine some legislator wanting to regulate Internet usage (say, to prohibit pseudonym use) but when asked "what's a 'user ID'?" replied "it's a finger thing that goes South" - you'd say the person had absolutely no business being near a computer, much less recommending incarceration for people who chose their own unique login name. Insofar as there are a great many people who likewise have absolutely no competency regarding network usage, it would be safe to say such people should in no way be allowed to enact legislation regarding computer networks enforceable by substantial fines & imprisonment.
...there isn't a substantial problem therewith. Not zero, of course, but by your line of reasoning cars should be outlawed immediately because of the actual accidental & unintentional harm rates therewith ... and the same issue with guns being orders of magnitude less.
The problem isn't accidental casualties (those are in fact quite rare). The problem is people willing to cause grave harm to others, a group which does not include a vast number of people who are not willing to cause grave harm to others save for stopping the former from doing so - but whom you are quick to lump together. Break down US murder rates, and you'll find the bulk of the problem firmly within certain subgroups; disarming other US subgroups (as you advocate) won't solve the problem, as up-arming those groups has decreased murder rates in their areas.
Cars have lots of valuable uses. The valuable uses of guns are a lot fewer.
Per the rhetoric I regularly encounter, the value of cars should be irrelevant to the discussion due to the loss of life thereto.
With stakes that great, a well armed citizenry is cheap insurance.
I know what I want if I have to take care of my safety and security. It's the same weapons the police carry.
https://www.gunowners.org/sk0802htm.htm
Articles, anecdotes and statistics:
Whether or not this is true, "guns" != fun toys like the AR-15 or the M&P15, the ownership of which is touted by pro-gun activists as some kind of an inalienable right.
Which recognizes the unalienable right of self-defense ... and a bit more.
If you think not, you're welcome to try to take them away from us.
Sorry, but I'm not going to play into your macho fantasies.
And I'll leave the issue of firearm regulation to the several decades of Supreme Court interpretation, which have consistently upheld the legitimate interest of federal and local governments in regulating the ownership and display of weapon types not reasonably related to self-defense.
Don't these countries have lower murder rates than the US has non-gun-related murder rates? As in, even if you removed every gun in the US, and even if all the crimes that would otherwise be committed with guns now just don't happen, the US still would have a higher murder rate than these countries.
(This is off the top of my head, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
In which case, it seems unlikely that the US' murder rate can be attributed to guns. You don't explicitly blame guns yourself, but I think this is worth noting. (And "civilization and the rule of law" isn't a solution, it's an applause light.)
What do the statistics imply? Per gun-owning capita is the rate of accidental discharge higher, lower, or within the median compared to other populaces around the world?
However, I am very excited to see how this technology will be used in Canada, or if it will even make a blip on the crime radar.
Or just buy a drone, strap something light and sharp to it, and just nodedive it into the target.
For $1,200 you could set up as a company making little things for others, earn enough to pay for the machine and then benefit from it yourself.
What I would do with such a machine is to solve the problem of bike accessories and mounts. i.e. every light has a different mount, as do GPS devices, and cameras, and bag attachments. Yet you could manufacture some common clamp, and then adaptors for each thing. Perhaps standardise around something like the GoPro bracket for an even wider market (it would allow flashes and other accessories to be mounted using existing GoPro segments).
There's so many things you can do.
And they make a gun! Who cares about guns! It's all the other stuff that make this awesome.
If you read the whole article, this is specifically designed to mill and drill the lower receivers of AR15, from a piece of aluminum stock called the "80 percent stock", which is a non-functional metal part that is only missing a few holes.
If you have grand ideas about bike accessories and other metal objects, you can buy a proper CNC mill which is a bit more expensive than this. Or pay for CNC machining service at your local machine shop. It's not super expensive.
It is a tiny cnc mill. I have one and I love it. I mostly make wooden arty thinks, but I did successfully mill an aluminum car part for some friends.
I learned openscad from the tutorials. I use meshcam to generate tool paths. Mostly I use python to generate the source art and just cut that out.
I'm also probably on some weird list now for visiting a site to see about home made guns.
Much like bike accessories we're always buying things like phone holders, fan holders, or CB radio handset holders. But these things never attach to the dashboard well because they depend on suction cups or clips to the vent grate (which aren't standard anyway).
All car dashboards should come with a 1/4-20 inch screw thread. Maybe two, one of the driver's side and a second for the front passenger. Then to accessorize your car, you just buy a simple cellphone clip which screws in.
The nice part about 1/4-20 is that it is already used for a ton of stuff (i.e. anything tripod compatible), so there are already accessories on the market for that screw size.
You can't just sell them, you first have to license every patented clamp and mount. And I guarantee you, 99% of them are patented.
The pressure-bearing parts, like the barrel or the bolt, are much harder to manufacture, at least for rifles. Most European countries will therefore regulate these, but they won't necessarily regulate ancillary parts like receivers or stocks. AFAIK, a full-auto AR receiver, which is highly regulated in the US, is treated as nothing more than a chunk of metal under UK law (as long as you don't illegally assemble it with a barrel and other parts).
[I was wrong; according to the 9th report of the Firearms Consultative Comity, Annex D, receivers are controlled as "component parts"]
So for example, a farmer (without a firearm licence) tired of people stealing created a trap, a thick cardboard tube, hung on a string pointed at the doorway, set to ignite and shoot shrapnel when the door was opened.
The farmer winds up forgetting about his trap and sets it off injuring himself. He was charged with having an illegal firearm because even though it was something he built himself, it was still similar enough to a gun to be considered one.
Funny, that. The US has a similar on the books with regard to drugs - the Federal Analog Act -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act - if some compound is "chemically similar" to a schedule I or II drug, then it can be treated as if it were also on those schedules.
In the 18th century, relatively low-cost and reliable rifles became available, and this fundamentally changed the balance between established governments and small armed groups. This changed contributed to the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the downfall of the Mughal Empire (where small regional rebellions suddenly became more viable and central control began to break down).
This period eventually ended in the 19th century, when is debatable, but once you had a gatling gun, a professional heavily armed force could mow down lightly armed forces without large casualties.
Chances are this development will be the final word (and certainly it has not had a huge impact yet, so maybe my speculation is premature), eventually there will become some expensive but exceptionally effective weapon only large governments can afford or supply, but 3-D printers making guns could have serious effects on the course of politics and warfare within the next few decades.
As the old curse goes, may you live in interesting times...
It is my understanding that the important part of arming a group of people is quality/reliability of the weapons. I was watching an interesting History channel episode of some series (back when they were good) about the horrible gun that was the Chauchat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauchat Basically these guns didn't have interchangeable parts and would often jam. The narrator said that the Americans who received this gun would basically throw it away once they encountered an enemy gun.
Instead, the real key can be found in the words "well regulated" in the US 2nd Amendment.[1]
"[t]he adjective 'well-regulated' implies nothing
more than the imposition of proper discipline and
training."
The professionals will win even if they aren't "heavily armed". Because they are trained and they're not simply a disorganized mob.
In the USA, most of these professionals can be found in "a well regulated militia", which nowadays we tend to call by a slightly different name, the National Guard. [2] Every state has one, they're full of veterans of the Gulf Wars and of Afghanistan, and they're not simply "weekend warriors".
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_%28United_States...
This already exists. Ubiquitous air presence via unmanned drones armed with air-to-ground rockets, missiles, or guided bombs.
Sometimes I feel like libertarians and NRA types seriously believe that they (a bunch of angry right-wing hunters or whatever) could actually throw off what they feel are the chains of oppression emanating from Washington, if only they could be sufficiently organized and motivated to rise up together.
Any serious armed rebellion in the United States would be deftly crushed. I'm not convinced that a peaceful/political rebellion would not be crushed also.
The System exists to perpetuate itself.
Your other comments aside, this actually isn't too far outside the realm of possibility for sufficiently motivated and skilled independent manufacturers. What militaries really have a monopoly on is superior supply chains and logistics. The advanced weaponry is icing on the cake.
For the Drone Menace, well, the people who make, maintain, supply, operate and fly them have to sleep somewhere, sometime. The US has never fought a war where it didn't have a safe and secure far rear area, modulo the Civil War at times, and for the South at the end. No drone can detect someone carrying a concealed firearm, or a small anti-personal IED.
For more, check out this book written after the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution by a Swiss officer at the behest of the nation's Non-commissioned Officer's Association : http://www.amazon.com/Total-Resistance-H-Von-Dach/dp/0873640...
If our betters try this sort of stunt, they'll experience Total Resistance, alright.
Either way, I'm glad Defense Distributed is moving the ball forward on this issue.
Edit to add: This company makes plastic ones that a drill, chisel, and Dremel are enough to finish, no CNC machine necessary. http://www.ammoland.com/2014/02/ep80-ar15-rifle-lower-at-hom...
Besides the 6 months it takes to learn to make one that won't blow up in your face when you pull the trigger?
Alarmist drivel.
"OMG someone can make an unregistered gun and kill someone with it!" is hyperventilating drivel. Far, far easier to just buy/steal one. Anyone interested in making one won't be interested in throwing their lives away (arrest/incarceration/execution) by abusing it. Anyone who IS willing to throw their lives away by abusing one won't find any advantage/interest in making one from scratch.
It is trivial to put together a lower receiver. You can do it with a hammer and a roll pin punch (and you really don't need the punch).
There are numerous vids on how to assemble a lower receiver and how to mill out an 80%. You could even buy a polymer and carve it out with a knife, if you felt so inclined to do so.
before i owned one, i had the notion that it was dangerous. but it's a real-world (i.e. you literally bet your life on it) modular weapons system - you don't make the modules (barrel, etc.), you just snap or screw them together. the gun was designed to be taken apart and reassembled in the field by people without a high school education, much less any kind of gunsmithing ability.
i know it sounds hard to believe when you don't know anything about it (i was the same way), but it's true. when you start researching, it's incredibly confusing for about 20 minutes but then it just clicks in your head. it's a very basic weapon.
This thing could be really nice for hobby projects (not gun related, that is).
It might be adaptable something else but it wasn't designed for that.
"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."
CNCs use drill bits for drilling, but not cutting. They use a carbide router bit. Look like a drill bit, but isn't. His machine might use a drill bit, but it's not the norm and "any CNC" doesn't.
CNC routers, or mills, divide into those that cut steel and those that cut everything else, not "polymer, wood or aluminum". From this article, I can't tell nearly as much as I'd like to about this machine, and I do this for a living.
Craftsmanship, experience and raw materials only are needed.
http://www.80percentarms.com/products/0-billet-ar-15-lower-r...
One with a serial number, but there it is.
You can't sell all the ingredients, tools and instructions to build a meth lab ("Breaking Bad in a Box"!) so what's so different with a gun?
People have been building 80% lowers for years, without any background check, as the ATF does not consider it to be a weapon. All one needs is a drill press. Should we outlaw drill presses because they can be used to make a gun less then 1% of the time. Despite all of the other uses of a drill press?
Also the difference between a gun and your meth example is that meth manufacturing is illegal in all capacities. The private manufacturing of a firearm is not considered illegal, as long as you do not sell that firearm that you have created.
Owning and/or making your own "AR15 lower" is legal (your local jurisdiction may vary, but for point of discussion...). Meth 100% isn't.
The legal nuance addressed by this machine is: if you (as private individual, or as industry manufacturer) make an "AR15 lower" for sale, you must register the manufactured part with the government ... but if you make it for your own use (to wit: not for sale), you don't have to register it.
Those wanting "unregistered guns" could make an "AR15 lower" out of a block of steel, at home, for personal use, and be completely legal. YES, you can sell a CNC machine, block of steel[1], tools, and instructions to build a gun.
Surprise: guns are legal in the USA, and you're allowed to make one for yourself without registering it (some jurisdictional limitations may apply, but the general point is absolutely true).
[1] - Hobbyists strained the limits of what constitutes "make" and "block of steel" (what if it's cut to the exact outer dimensions? what if I drill a hole? how close to the final shape constitutes "not made"?); the government ruled that doing 80% of the work required to convert a block of steel into an "AR15 lower" was as far as you could go and the object still not legally considered an "AR15 lower" (any farther and it may be incomplete but close enough to be considered a gun). This machine takes an "80% AR15 lower" and finishes the work.
Meth should be legal and sold out of liquor stores to anyone 21 or older anyway. And while I don't condone tweakers cooking it in the trailer park, I see no reason why one shouldn't be allowed to do that chemistry if they're careful and take proper precautions.
I don't know if this is actually true. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the second amendment, but its a bit of a stretch to say that includes manufacturing of arms.
Nope, that's not how it works.
I'm not aware of a 2A case on point regarding firearm manufacturing (others may know more), perhaps because the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act offered sufficient protection. I am aware of a case on point regarding selling firearms. Earlier this year, Chicago's ban on selling firearms was ruled unconstitutional: http://www.volokh.com/2014/01/06/firearm-may-sold-acquired-o...
This makes sense if you think about it. The First Amendment right to freedom of the press wouldn't mean much if the Feds can levy a 10,000% tax on newsprint. Which is why the Supreme Court has held that such taxes violate the First Amendment: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...
It's not like Wired has never talked about general purpose CNC mills before.
It's nothing like that. This specifically designed to drill holes in gun parts and do only that.
CNC mills and metal 3d printers do exist but they are quite a bit more expensive than this.
Why aren't we limiting the sale of bullets (explosives)?
edit: Chris Rock said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db0Y4qIZ4PA
Except for some "slave states" as I've taken to calling them, you can buy ammo mail order, often with a statement of age or perhaps a photocopy of your drivers license. Powder, bullets, cases and primers by mail, although there may be limits to the amount of powder you can hold before the BATF wants a license, safe(r) storage, etc. And similarly your local fire department prefers or may demand limits.
And this stuff is stable, lasts a long time. My father has several 25 pound casks of powder he or his father bought before or after WWII that he's still reloading from, and ammo manufactured in WWII is still being used (although a lot of it has corrosive primers, requiring much more thorough cleaning).
~ 10% is fine (although those of us who don't hunt want more ranges built with this money, which is happening).
Amount that are clearly so much they're intended to hamper access are unconstitutional. Ones that are structured differently have been held unconstitutional: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...
When I grew up in Australia where there is basically no guns. I used to walk on streets even on a drunken Friday / Saturday night without fear.
I moved to the US a few years ago and since then every corner I turn, I see people and I worry.
I don't worry about getting robbed. No. I worry about a gun fight somewhere and a stray bullet hits me. I worry that someone drunk might hold me at gunpoint and at a moment of misjudgement he/she shoots me.
It is pretty hard to get killed by being punched. On the other hand, it is pretty easy to lose your mind for a second and shoot someone
I hate this project, because now the barrier to entry of owning a unregistered gun is so much lower
You vastly over exaggerate the issue here, this level or paranoia needs medical assistance.
Gun laws will not make people safer, making an already illegal act; using a gun against someone/something; even more illegal solves nothing.
We have a major problem with drugs. There is too much money in this because of the illegal nature of it. From the use and sale of drugs to prosecution, treatment, and imprisonment. The establishment has too much to lose to give it up and those in that system have too little to lose to not resort to violence.
Fix the drug laws, find good work for those who have too much idle time, and then we can work on the culture of violence that pervades many inner cities.
As a simple supporting point, home invasions while the tenants are currently at home is much higher in Canada where firearms are significantly less common. In America, burglars make sure noone is home before breaking into it. This has been correlated to gun ownership and castle doctrines.
Take a look at a state like New Jersey. Guns are illegal there for all intents and purposes. Does nothing to keep cities like Camden off the most dangerous cities in America list though.
As it turns out, criminals don't really care where they can legally bring guns and will happily walk past a "NO GUNS ALLOWED HERE!" sign.
When gun grabbing legislation is passed, it only hurts law-abiding people, not criminals. Criminals will still get and use guns whenever they'd like.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Pages/DEPUTIES...
And I think you're missing the point. Absent a total ban on citizens of good standing possessing guns inside (including administrators in this case, or, say an arms locker in the teacher's lounge), the duo wouldn't have had free reign as the police cowered outside (experience shows teachers and administrators are a lot more serious and brave about protecting their charges than the local police were that day).
To take another example, the Colorado theater shooter could have gone to closer or bigger ones, but just happened to pick the one that was so ... severe about being "gun free" it insisted off duty police hired as security guards go unarmed. It was gun free, alright, until he showed up.
One correction to this pattern: the Arizona Congresswoman shooting, where an armed citizen showed up as the shooter was being restrained by people there, but one of them in the line could have been legally armed.
Gun advocates pushing the line "school shootings wouldn't happen if there were armed people on campus" sounds suspiciously similar to the joke about selling elephant repellent. Keep in mind, I'm providing you with examples of things that actually happened while your view of gun-provided safety exists in the hypothetical. I am happy living in an area where gun ownership is scarce and shootings (especially accidental) are scarcer.
[1]http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jun/22/joseph-wilcox-be...
Heck, the Columbine incident is very rare in having two shooters. Per Wikipedia and my memory this only happens every few decades in the US and no other time at a school, and it's equally rare in the rest of the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(Ameri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(schoo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(workp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#Religi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_familicides_in_the_Uni...
Whereas we know of tens of incidents stopped, or so we suspect since a spree killer/mass murderer who's stopped early by definition doesn't succeed in killing lots of people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_and_Andrew_Gol...
Here's your third: #59 in your first link. Here's your fourth: #67 in your first link.
We know of the incidents stopped, but so many of those in your links ended by the killers' own hand. In almost all of the cases, however, these are mass murderers with guns.