When Tech Kills Gun Control

[Purveyor]

Jun 5, 2015 9:35 AM EDT
By Francis Wilkinson

The biggest challenge for those seeking to regulate firearms isn't the gulf between robust public support and anemic legislative support for background checks. It's not the National Rifle Association's lobbying machine or the hypocrisy of lawmakers who legalize guns in bars but prohibit them from the state capitol. It's not the conservative Supreme Court majority that divined an individual right to bear arms in a constitutional penumbra.

The biggest challenge -- threat, really -- may just be Andy Greenberg.

Greenberg writes for Wired about the Ghost Gunner, a $1,500 computer-numerical-controlled mill marketed by Defense Distributed. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because a couple years back Defense Distributed produced "the Liberator," a 3-D-printed pistol.

Here's Greenberg:

I have virtually no technical understanding of firearms and a Cro-Magnon man’s mastery of power tools. Still, I made a fully metal, functional, and accurate AR-15. To be specific, I made the rifle’s lower receiver; that’s the body of the gun, the only part that US law defines and regulates as a “firearm.” All I needed for my entirely legal DIY gunsmithing project was about six hours, a 12-year-old’s understanding of computer software, an $80 chunk of aluminum, and a nearly featureless black 1-cubic-foot desktop milling machine called the Ghost Gunner.

No technical skill. No background check. No identifying serial number. And -- no problem -- a brand new AR-15.

It actually wasn’t that easy. Greenberg is no gunsmith, and he ran into technical trouble (and a need for parts and assistance). But before long, the march of technology will make it that easy, and cheap too. And it will be very, very hard to regulate -- even if a polarized, dysfunctional Congress bothers to try. When guns can be manufactured at home by amateurs, what will prevent a felon, a domestic abuser subject to a restraining order, a terrorist, or anyone with cash and "a 12-year-old's understanding of computer software," from building a gun?

more...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-05/when-tech-kills-gun-control

[beevul]

1. Its a shocker for some, I know.

People can buy and assemble their own parts, construct and assemble their own firearm.

This is only the beginning.

[Shamash]

2. Not quite

It is interesting, but a trivial change in the law would make it useless or require a revision to hardware.

Also, making the lower receiver of a weapon (the licensed and regulated part) does not make you a whole weapon. It just gives you the only part with a serial number on it. You still need a whole bunch of other bits to make a functional weapon.

What is more likely to be a problem for gun control is 3D printing. Right now consumer-grade machines are still only marginally suitable for the task, being limited to plastic, but people are working on multiple-shot designs that are fairly sophisticated (link).

Upper-end machines, which presumably will only get cheaper, can fabricate entire metal weapons from scratch (link). If a machine that could do that dropped to the price of a high-end PC, anyone could make a real gun on demand.

And that is the sort of thing that your last paragraph's problems are going to be about.

[virginia mountainman]

3. They have already lost

They just choose to ignore that fact... Here is a 3d printed METAL 1911 .45 pistol..

Yes, this sort of manufacturing ability is not for the at home hobbyist ....YET....Just give it some time.

Here is the same gun, in a 500 round test...

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I wonder how the anti's propose to deal with the rapid advances in technology that is making most of their "pet" laws completely obsolete and simply overlooked as being irrelevant?

[Shamash]

4. Remember how VCR's (and later, DVD players) were supposed to have a chip to prevent piracy

(i.e. using the device in an illegal way)? And how well that worked on both a practical and legal front?

Anyone want to take a bet that something equally authoritarian, inane and unworkable will be proposed for 3D printers? With a side bet on the proposal being by someone as clueless about 3D printers as they are about guns?