Making an Untraceable AR-15 ‘Ghost Gun’ | Hacker News Reader

Making an Untraceable AR-15 ‘Ghost Gun’

wired.com

82 pointsuptown46 comments

As others have mentioned this isn't particularly newsworthy, you've been able to make guns at home since forever. Its a rifle of course, and rifle ammunition you can't make at home, but as others have mentioned you can make black powder weapons in a completely untraceable way (from making your own black powder, to casting your own lead ball shot) but we're not worried about a bunch of home hobbiests fielding a Napoleonic infantry. They don't mention how you can make a gun out of a stuff you can buy past security at an airport [1].

Its just click bate. Next up, 'I made an untraceable battle tank at home with some steel pipe and an arc welder!'

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsem22DkIjw

You can definitely reload rifle ammunition at home very easily. You just need to collect the brass cases after you've shot store-bought rounds or just go to an outdoor range and collect buckets of brass cases since most people just leave them.

The one time I "reloaded" rifle ammo, it was to work up a small-medium game load for a sporterized Springfield 03A3 .30-06 I ended up with as a teen. By then my father and his hunting friend were no longer using that round, so we started with a box or two of new brass like this: http://www.cabelas.com/category/Reloading-Brass/112555980.ut...

The author actually makes that same point in the article.

What I think elevates this article above the level of clickbait is that beyond any firearms related issues, it is a really interesting point of comparison for different "maker" related technologies: traditional machining, 3d Printing and desktop CNC.

It sounds like he used a purpose-made CNC machine, rather than a general-purpose CNC machine, though.

It's like comparing a stand-up toaster to toasting bread in a toaster oven -- one of these is more flexible, and one of them is "point and shoot".

> and rifle ammunition you can't make at home

You can absolutely make rifle ammunition at home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handloading

You can assemble shell, bullet, powder, and primer.

You'll be hard-pressed to make any of those components yourself. Shell? could be milled (stamping unlikely in your garage) but relatively very expensive and probably imprecise. Bullet? swaging is possible, but possible != precise & accurate; milling is possible but relatively expensive. Powder? probably not to the precise quality needed (just shape of the grains can be an issue, as found in the Vietnam War). Primer? gets well into chemical manufacturing & toxicity issues you don't want to deal with.

Yes, it can be done - but you won't be turning out sniper-grade rounds for $1 each.

I was focused more on the 'making' rather than the assembling. I've reloaded shotgun shells for a long time for example, and pistol rounds. However I've always purchased the powder, balls (bullet ends), and primers.

Of the three, primers are particularly challenging (certainly for reliability) but making a good, high performance, smokeless gunpowder is not just a simple "mix and hope its good" kind of thing.

It should not be surprising that developing the capability to make high performance weapons "off grid" as it were is fairly actively tracked (which I discovered when ordering chemicals from Aldritch one time and getting a call back from them to fill out some government paperwork before it could proceed)

From reading about how Lake City does it, I got the strong impression that making reliable, military grade primers was pretty easy, albeit with access to the right chemicals. And there are several generations of chemicals that can be used, e.g. from corrosive to the newest lead free formulations.

On the other hand, I'll point out that single base smokeless powder is made from nitrocellulose (the explosive also known as guncotton), and double base adds nitroglycerin to the fun.

My editor, Joe Brown, who came into the room to watch the machine at work, remains convinced the machine was programmed to play a piece of composed music.

A bit off topic, but there exists a program [0] which generates instructions from a MIDI file to play music with a CNC/3Dprinters steppers. Here's a 3d printer playing the Ressikan Flute song from TNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81WLqN3q7M0

[0] https://github.com/michthom/MIDI-to-CNC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4OV2UofPFg

Aperture Science logo being laser cut at periods and frequencies that play the Still Alive end song.

Nothing illegal about making your own gun. You cannot pay someone else to do the work for you, it has to be done by you. You can never sell the gun since only licensed guns are allowed to be sold.

Actually, while it might not work for a gun that's already been made, obviously one can make and sell guns after jumping through the various hoops the BATFE et. al. require (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License), adding a serial number to it, etc.

I wonder what the law is for making them part of your estate.

You could sell every part except the lower receiver.

Actually, that's not exactly true.

You cannot legally manufacture a firearm intended for sale without having an appropriate FFL (and ITAR certification, etc.)

You can absolutely manufacture a firearm for your own use, and then at a later date, sell that firearm.

Small clarification - I don't think you can sell it to an FFL or through an FFL. I think you'd be able to sell it directly to another person, but there's no mechanism to have it go through the NICS system (which requires a manufacturer and serial number).

Guns made before the serial number requirement can still be sold through FFLs, I see no reason why this would be different as long as everything else is legally up-to-snuff.

As always, it depends on the state, but it's not true that you can never sell a gun that you've made. You can't make them with the intent of selling them without the proper paperwork, but you could make one for yourself, then later decide to sell it. Check the ATF FAQs for more info.

To remain a "Ghost Gun" you would have to never serialize it or register it. You have to do those things to sell it. The point of making these specific types of guns is that "the man" cannot take what he does not know you have.

In reality, there is little reason to do this. In many states you do not need to retain documentation of the re-sale (private sale) of a firearm, so you can always tell "the man" that you sold that gun years ago when they want to take all your guns.

I find that statement misleading: one doesn't need to serialize or "register" (whatever that's supposed to mean) an AR lower made for personal use that, later, one decides to sell. Again, YMMV, depending on the state.

It's hardly untraceable. There are only 1000 ghost gunner mills in the country. It is feasible that they are all being tracked by the USPS. Fedex and UPS refuse to mail them... That means the government likely knows where each was sent, and has a name too to go with the location.

There is a paper trail associated with being able to receive such a heavy thing in the mail ( you'd have to send it to a location you control / own / rent etc )

Suppose you buy the machine, build your own gun, use it for some bad purpose. If the gun was ever found, it could likely be traced back to you. How many people have guns created with the ghost gunner machine? Not many. Can you tell a ghost gunner cut lower from other methods? Yes.

The whole thing is just a publicity stunt. When there is a local shop in a major city where I can go in and rent a ghost gunner machine for a day, in cash, providing nothing but a large deposit to guarantee I bring it back, then and only then can such things really be untraceable.

> When there is a local shop in a major city where I can go in and rent a ghost gunner machine for a day, in cash, providing nothing but a large deposit to guarantee I bring it back, then and only then can such things really be untraceable.

Wired has the machine, they could start running such a service tomorrow if they wanted to. I don't see any substantial barriers to it.

Seems kind of doubtful they would be willing. The way his description reads it's like he is nervous that he created a gun. Why not keep it? He owned it... just lock it up?

Plus that is in San Francisco. I live on the opposite coast. I won't be over there for a while.

I was searching online to see if renting one of these things is legal. I found at least one person stating that it has been said officially by the feds that renting one of these would be considering "manufacturing". I can't see how, but that is what was said.

I doubt Wired wants to get into the middle of that. Perhaps the NRA might, or the ACLU, but not Wired.

Really both the NRA and ACLU should both buy like 50 of these things and rent them out. That would be interesting.

Calling the company kind of ruins the symmetry of the experiment. If he'd been willing to call a makerbot expert - or someone who passed high-school shop class - who's to say his other two efforts couldn't've been made into something usable?

Or just practice with one of these first: http://www.80percentarms.com/products/0-billet-ar-15-lower-r... ^_^ ("0% BILLET AR-15 LOWER RECEIVER").

Or scrap aluminum, this sort of thing really isn't that hard if you've got some manual dexterity, but, well, that's why the classic first wood shop project is something like a bread board.

Maybe I'm too "linuxy" but I think if there's a method to do it yourself by learning a skill then that should be the preferred way to do it. Having a machine instead of a skill is a way for lazy people (my subjective opinion) and never works as well as having acquired the corresponding skill.

edit: And the gun wasn't made in his office. Only one part was made there. The assembly of the gun was done in a shop of a professional gunsmith.

"I'm too "linuxy"" .. "Having a machine instead of a skill is a way for lazy people"

There's a good balance between skill and technology, otherwise I might tell you to just throw away your computer. And for the record, operating a CNC mill still takes a good bit of skill.

You mean the machine to manually carve holes into that metal? Yes, that needs skill. But I mean the machine that does the carving for you. As far as I've understood you put that 80% thing into it and then it does the job for you while you eat a sandwich. That's where people start to think that they don't have a problem instead of learning to handle it.

Never shirk in learning skills. But there's just too much to learn. http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Do you make your own furniture? Grow your own food? Learning skills is great, but there's a place for buying things off the shelf.

And that's the point of this machine: it's intended to be equivalent to buying a gun off the shelf, just while avoiding the registration requirements that would go with actually buying one off the shelf.

Guns need bullets.

I really can't see the controversy with 3d printed, or untraceable guns. Just regulate, and mark with ID, the bullets. Or if that starts being circumvented with diy bullets, control the propellant, and mark it with isotopes or whatever.

Very few people have a legitimate use for explosives, it should be easy to control, along with the obvious "possesion of unregistered firearm, or of an unlicensed design, or using homebrew propellant" laws.

Not counting imports and maybe not counting the production from the Lake City, MO military plant that is sold to civilians (a convenient arrangement for all parties when e.g. the sealant in a lot isn't up to snuff, or the DoD wants to cancel an order), the US produces upwards of 15 billion rounds a year.

Imagine trying to make all of that traceable in one way or another, from the factory to the range. Just not practical, and one reason the 1968? restriction on buying ammo by mail order was lifted quite some time ago. Not to mention that actually legislatively succeeding in such a thing would spark a hot civil war the anti-gun side would lose very badly, seeing as how my side actually owns the vast bulk of guns and ammo in the country.

With the amount of ammo being produced, and then horded within this country, even if they found a way to make the new stuff traceable it would still probably be decades before old supplies dried up for everyone.

It would create an immediate black market for current ammunition.

I would be an overnight millionaire.

Regular hunting, self defense and target shooting could be done with the new stuff and the old ammunition without taggants would be reserved for any questionable activities. Thus, it could be sold at a premium.

Bullets are easily cast from lead (many reloaders do this). Gun powder is easily obtained and has a shelf life of years (if not decades) when stored properly. Empty cartridges (to reload) are very plentiful and easy to come by. Primers can be purchased by the thousands for very little money.

If gunpowder and primers become overly restricted, some would likely switch to blackpowder (which reloaders can make themselves).

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to put the genie back in the bottle.

There's also the 2nd Amendment to deal with.

For smokeless powder, decades, my father is still reloading shotgun shells with paper casks of Hercules (now Alliant) gunpowder that were bought before WWII he thinks (if not, right after, the trade dress looks maybe too modern for pre-WWII, unfortunately the codes they are stamped with aren't easily decoded). And ammo made during WWII is still good, albeit normally made with corrosive primers.

When I bought my M1 Garand (a lend-lease giveback from Greece, made in February of '45) the case of ammo I bought with it is older than I am.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/sets/72157616506699264

Bullets are much, much easier to make than guns, even if you have a ghost gunner machine. Gunpowder is also pretty simple to make from scratch if you have a few completely unregulated and mostly innocuous ingredients on hand.

When I went to summer camp as a kid and went skeet-shooting with the other 12 year olds, we had to make our own shotgun shells to keep costs down. It took maybe 30 seconds to learn how to use the shell maker.

Politics on this issue aside, think this through for a moment.

Would you care to share how you'd like to individually code the more than 10,000,000,000 rounds of ammunition in manufactured each year in the US, in a manner not easily defeated, on a surface that is launched at ~1,000 feet per second and is literally designed to deform as much as possible upon impact?

Sadly, individually coding things that shouldn't be individually coded no matter how foolish is not out of the realm possibility for our government. I point you to labeling of biodiesel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Identification_Number

I do agree with you, it is impractical and non-effective.

Yea, my initial read was that he suggested individually marking each casing. Which is no doubt quite difficult, but certainly more feasible than the bullet.

Or maybe we could require armor-piercing rounds.

The enthusiast, survivalist, and cheapskate community have been refilling their own cartridges for decades. Police your brass and clean and refill. It's not quite as easy as I'm making out, but it's not rocket science.

> Just regulate, and mark with ID, the bullets. Or if that starts being circumvented with diy bullets, control the propellant, and mark it with isotopes or whatever.

Gunpowder, primer and bullet. The latter is relatively easy, you could make your own. Good luck successfully regulating that.

As for the powder and primer, you can bet your bottom dollar that homebrew solutions for those would improve rapidly and drastically if the need should arise.

The current ghost gun setup hasn't formed in a vacuum. It's been fashioned around what's available. Change the climate and things will evolve in a different direction.

Perhaps if things do go "your" way, we'll see 3D-printed caseless ammunition with CNC's bullets in an actively-cooled electronic firing rifle. The 3D-printed propellant produced by custom-made yeasts or something.

It wouldn't be overnight, but it might be unstoppable.

You are not well versed enough on the technology or the culture to opine intelligently.

Let me illustrate where you went wrong.

----Just regulate, and mark with ID, the bullets.

You have no way of dealing with the billions of bullets that are already out there.

As long as it's stored properly, ammunition doesn't go bad. I have ammunition that was made back in the 1950s and it still shoots just fine.

How will you have the bullets marked that will prevent someone from removing the mark if they have criminal intent?

----Or if that starts being circumvented with diy bullets, control the propellant, and mark it with isotopes or whatever.

What do you do about the millions of pounds of propellent that's already out there today?

What do you do about the fact that those millions of pounds of currently existing propellent do not have any kind of "isotopes or whatever" tags in them?

Gunpowder taggants have several mundane problems. Namely, they they can't prove who fired a shot more effectively than the currently used GSR testing,(witnesses, bystanders and first responders will be covered with taggants), they have not been proven to be safe and the 800 pound gorilla of the fact that they're only useful for driving up the costs of ammunition(the real point).

Just like when people were advocating microstamping, it was demonstrated that in 30 seconds the microstamping could be disabled with a $3.00 file. Add $100 to the cost of a firearm and anyone with criminal intent can bypass it with a $3.00 file.

----Very few people have a legitimate use for explosives

Some do.

----it should be easy to control, along with the obvious "possesion of unregistered firearm, or of an unlicensed design, or using homebrew propellant" laws.

"Should be easy to control" is not the same thing as "Is easy to control". Every Home Depot has the raw materials to build an ANFO bomb that could level a building. It's not regulation of those materials that has prevented that from happening everywhere, it's the fact that most people aren't psychopaths or career criminals.

In places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, it's already illegal to possess an unlicensed firearm. Has that eliminated violent crime?

Your solution to the problem of currently existent crime is to pass more laws that are even more difficult to enforce that will be immediately ignored by the people who are willing to break the current laws against homicide?

>Very few people have a legitimate use for explosives,

That's still a lot of people.

>it should be easy to control, along with the obvious "possesion of unregistered firearm, or of an unlicensed design, or using homebrew propellant" laws.

Similar efforts have been made with the goal of stopping the illicit manufacture of controlled substances. These efforts have mostly failed, and have had the side effect of inconveniencing and endangering many small businesses and hobbyists. Manufacturing drugs is much more difficult than manufacturing explosives. Please please please educate yourself about basic chemistry and then reevaluate this opinion.

Has there been any success in 3D-printing a template lower receiver and turning it into a mold for casting metal receivers? To me, that seems like the next logical step here.

Lost-PLA casting could probably be pretty feasible with the geometry of an AR lower.

Pretty neat stuff.

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