Defense Distributed, Cody Wilson’s enterprise that proves the fallacy of gun control, released the Ghost Gunner, a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine that specializes in milling AR-15 lower receivers, to the chagrin of gun control advocates. The Ghost Gunner made it simple for individuals with relatively little skill to manufacture an AR-15 lower receiver, the part of the gun that is serialized and therefore regulated. Now Defense Distributed has entered the handgun market:
Today, that scope widens: Wilson and Defense Distributed are now in the handgun business, too.
Defense Distributed will offer two of the most common handgun “80 percent” receivers—for Glocks and single-stack M1911s—for interested customers to complete using the Ghost Gunner. “What we’ve done for ARs we’re going to do for handguns now,” Wilson tells Ars. Defense Distributed’s store now carries new fixtures, frames, and tooling to create these two handguns, in addition to its previously offered AR-15 lower receivers and jig sets.
Building a firearm isn’t rocket science. Anybody with basic machining knowledge and competency in firearm design can do it. This fact has always made gun control a pipe dream. But as technology improves so does the ease of manufacturing. CNC machines reduced the machining knowledge necessary to manufacture a great many goods, which made controlling those goods even less feasible.
I’m sure gun control advocates will demand that the Ghost Gunner be prohibited but it’s nothing more than a specialized CNC machine and there is no way gun control advocates are going to get CNC machines banned. Likewise, CNC machines will continue to drop in price and increase in capabilities. In a few years it will be easy to pick up a general CNC machines that is as affordable as the Ghost Gunner and even more capable.
Gun control is effectively dead. Technology killed it just as it ultimately kills all restrictions.