For a mere $1,200.00 Ammosexuals can now make their own AR-15s at home with no government oversight, or regulation whatsoever. Oh, that's not a good thing.

California State Senator Kevin de Leon holding what he calls a "ghost gun."

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A gun rights advocate has invented a 3-D printer that will allow amateur gunsmiths to create AR-15 assault rifles without serial numbers or the hassle of a background check, WIRED reports. 

Earlier this year, Cody Wilson demonstrated that anyone could use a 3-D printer to print a gun. 

“If 3-D printing means anything, if the digital revolution and 3-D printing revolution have any interesting terminus, it’s because we will all have access to greater means of production — just like these cameras and computers that we have enable us to become cultural producers outside of the monopoly schemes of the legacy players, so too with material things, and that must, of course, include guns,” Wilson told We Are Change. 

“To not think that it included guns, to be surprised by that, means that you’re just kind of drinking the Kool-Aid,” he added. 

According to Wired, his new project in DIY gunsmithing is even more ambitious — now, he is using a PC-connected milling machine, dubbed “the Ghost Gunner,” to print the component of an AR-15 rifle called the “lower receiver.” 

The lower receiver is the most heavily regulated component of the AR-15, as it is the body of the gun that connects all of the assault rifle’s other parts. For $1,200, Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, will sell anyone a computer-numerically-controlled mill that will allow them to print the lower receiver. 

They can then purchase the other, less relegated elements of the AR-15 — such as the stock, magazine, and barrel — from online gun shops and create a fully functional automatic weapon that contains no serial number and required no background check. Such weapons are sometimes referred to as “ghost guns” — hence, the name of Wilson’s mill.

So essentially this technology allows individuals who really do not want anybody to know which weapons they have, or how many, to simply manufacture them on their own.

And gee which sort of individual might find that idea REALLY attractive?

Honest, upstanding citizens who only want to take the weapons to the firing range on Sundays to express their God given 2nd Amendment rights?

Or perhaps nefarious individuals who would like access to weapons that cannot be traced forensically back to a buyer, gun shop, or manufacturer?

Yeah, I am going to guess the latter.

New South Wales Police issue warning that 3D printed guns may explode when fired.

Courtesy of Tech World: 

New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione today issued a warning on the potential for 3D printed guns to be used in serious crimes in the state. 

The NSW Police revealed that the force has created and tested two 3D-printed firearms. The police used the Liberator pistol blueprints produced by US-firm Defense Distributed. The original plans for the gun were downloaded more than 100,000 times before the company pulled them from its site under pressure from the US State Department. 

Police believe that despite this, the files are still circulating. 

The commissioner said that a Liberator pistol had experienced a catastrophic misfire during testing. The failure would have been capable of seriously injuring the person using the firearm, the police chief said. 

One of the motivations for holding today's press conference was to warn of danger to the user if someone attempts to print, assemble and fire a Liberator out of curiosity. 

As with other firearms, possession of a Liberator is prohibited unless the owner has an appropriate licence. It's an "offence to make one, possess one, use one," Scipione said. 

"Not only are they illegal, they are enormously dangerous," Scipione said.

The Commissioner went on to say that they had managed to get one of these guns to work properly and they would indeed prove lethal if fired at a human being, which meant that the gun poses a danger to both the one using the weapons but also anybody at whom the weapon is pointed.

They are also completely untraceable, impervious to metal detectors. and have changed the debate about guns in a fundamental and frightening manner.

Despite the dangers of the weapon disintegrating when used it will no doubt be downloaded, printed, and assembled thousands of times in the nest year or so,

This version of the gun does not appear to have much use as a method for self defense as it only holds and fires one bullet at a time. However its viability as a weapon for use in assassinations is chilling.

Personally I think it is only a matter of time before we see the first attempt to take out a political leader or high ranking official with one of these guns. My only hope is that it fails for them as spectacularly as it did for the South Wales police department.

100,000 blueprints of the 3D gun downloaded in two days. Does anybody want to bet that not ALL of these represent a "good guy with a gun?"

Courtesy of Forbes:  

If gun control advocates hoped to prevent blueprints for the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun from spreading online, that horse has now left the barn about a hundred thousand times. 

That’s the number of downloads of the 3D-printable file for the so-called “Liberator” gun that the high-tech gunsmithing group Defense Distributed has seen in just the last two days, a member of the group tells me. The gun’s CAD files have been ten times more popular than any component the group has previously made available, parts that have included the body of an AR-15 and the magazine for an AK-47.”This has definitely been our most well-received download,” says Haroon Khalid, a developer working with Defense Distributed. “I don’t think any of us predicted it would be this much.”

Apparently the State Department has now demanded that the 3D gun files be removed from the site:

On Thursday, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received a letter from the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanding that he take down the online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that his group released Monday, along with nine other 3D-printable firearms components hosted on the group’s website Defcad.org. The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

Of course that is a 100,000 downloads too late.

I don't know what this means to the gun debate, but if this technology continues without any ability to control access, I have to wonder just what ELSE might show up to be 3D printed in the not too distant future?

I think marks the first time in a long time that I have been less than enthusiastic about new technological breakthroughs.