In recent years, digital fabrication has been making leaps and bounds of progress, and with that comes a series of concerning use cases. No matter what your thoughts on the 2nd Amendment and Gun Control, there’s a significant problem that threatens both sides.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution details that as Americans, we have the right to arm ourselves. I find no interest in doing so and believe heavily in gun control, but that’s purely from my standpoint and experiences. If you paid attention to tech news in 2013, you probably heard about “The Liberator,” a 3D model created by Cody Wilson. It’s a single-use firearm that can print in an afternoon and made to circumvent specifically The Undetectable Firearms Act. Naturally, it picked up much traction and gained significant media coverage. Wilson, with this rise in popularity, moved to take his experience from The Liberator and create DefCad, the first open-source library of “small arms technical data.”
The Liberator falls under the term “Ghost Gun,” a weapon that is finished by an individual, so it is not required to be registered. Ghost Guns work because of how the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) classifies a firearm. In 27 C.F.R. 478.11 they define it as “any weapon which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” Considering the anatomy of a weapon, this only requires the Upper & Lower Reciever to be present while the rest are deemed unnecessary. So technically speaking, you were to buy a gun that in some way had a chunk of the work not completed, they did not have to register their weapons. The term “80% Lower” was later coined by the industry as an answer to avoid registration.
An 80% Lower Receiver is often jokingly referred to as a paperweight, as it is missing a cavity required to operate. By not machining the Fire Control Group Cavity, it loses all notability as a weapon, or that’s at least what they’d like to tell the government. Because it’s considered a hunk of metal, any private company can CNC these lower receivers with peace of mind. How does this work? Because of the ATF’s ruling on who needs a license in the gun manufacturing process. Traditionally, the manufacturer and importer need approval for any production of firearms. But because of the government looking at these lowers as nonfunctional, they’re not legally required to obtain a license. Companies now sell weapon kits, most including the required lower, a custom made jig, and the required drill bits, but some go as far as sending you all the necessary parts to make a weapon.
As Cody Wilson would advance in his career, he would create Defense Distributed, a company devoted to exercising their right to produce paperweights. So much so that they created the “Ghost Gunner”, a CNC Mill made entirely to turn these “hunks of aluminum” into weapons. They recently teased the Ghost Gunner 3 with a rather uncharacteristic trailer uploaded to their YouTube.
Now with the ease of access to finish the lowers just as they are to create them, these activists have been playing a game of cat and mouse to see what they can and can’t get away with, and they aren’t keen on letting their technicalities fall through the cracks.