Beyond Cuckoo

Ghost Guns

Recent news stories about vetoed “Ghost Gun” legislation and the security breach at the White House has gotten me more nervous than usual.

Ghost Gun is a term applied to Cody Wilson’s “Defense Distributed” organization’s first fully 3-D printed gun. This “maker” movement has enabled anyone to create a working, lethal firearm with a click in the privacy of his or her garage. He has now 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, which sells for $1200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver, the body of the gun—remaining parts can be ordered from online gun shops. It is now easy to create a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number or required background check. It’s illegal to re-sell your monster creation, but there’s no law against making one.

Wilson (as a self-proclaimed anarchist and anti-government rebel) makes every effort to undermine governmental regulatory control over most things, but especially firearms. If you connect the two news stories, you can’t help but wonder about the Obama family’s safety, and our own.

In addition Wilson’s releasing his creation on the heels of a debate in California over a state law that would ban the manufacture of all guns without serial numbers. The bill, widely known as the “Ghost Gun ban” and introduced by Los Angeles state senator Kevin de Leόn was designed to criminalize either 3-D printing or finishing an 80 percent lower without a government-assigned serial number in California. The legislation passed California’s senate and assembly, but was vetoed Tuesday by the state’s governor Jerry Brown, who wrote that he “can’t see how adding a serial number to a homemade gun would significantly advance public safety.”

I’m a huge supporter of Governor Brown, but I do wonder if in this case, his decision is Beyond Cuckoo.