Last week FedEx told firearm-access nonprofit Defense Distributed that the company refuses to ship the group’s new tool, a computer controlled (CNC) mill known as the Ghost Gunner. Defense Distributed has marketed its one-foot-cubed $1,500 machine, which allows anyone to automatically carve aluminum objects from digital designs, as an affordable, private way to make an AR-15 rifle body without a serial number. Add in off-the-shelf parts that can be ordered online, and the Ghost Gunner would allow anyone to create one of the DIY, untraceable, semi-automatic firearms sometimes known as “ghost guns.”
When the machine was revealed last October, Defense Distributed’s pre-orders sold out in 36 hours. But now FedEx tells WIRED it’s too wary of the legal issues around homemade gunsmithing to ship the machine to customers. “This device is capable of manufacturing firearms, and potentially by private individuals,” FedEx spokesperson Scott Fiedler wrote in a statement. “We are uncertain at this time whether this device is a regulated commodity by local, state or federal governments. As such, to ensure we comply with the applicable law and regulations, FedEx declined to ship this device until we know more about how it will be regulated.”
But buying, selling, or using the Ghost Gunner isn’t illegal, nor is owning an AR-15 without a serial number, says Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. “This is not that problematic,” he says. “Federal law does not prohibit individuals from making their own firearms at home, and that includes AR-15s.”
Defense Distributed’s founder Cody Wilson argues that rather than a legal ambiguity, FedEx is instead facing up to the political gray area of enabling the sale of new, easily accessible tools that can make anything—including deadly weapons. “They’re acting like this is legal when in fact it’s the expression of a political preference,” says Wilson. “The artifact that they’re shipping is a CNC mill. There’s nothing about it that is specifically related to firearms except the hocus pocus of the marketing.”
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/fedex-mill-untraceable-firearms/
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If you're not already familiar with it:
The Ghost Gunner is technically a multipurpose milling machine that could make a variety of metal objects. But it’s not marketed for making garden gnomes; Everything from the machine’s name to a marketing video showing it being used to make an serial-numberless AR-15 makes clear that the device’s primary purpose is manufacturing guns. “This is a way to jab at the bleeding hearts of these total statists,” Wilson told WIRED in October. “It’s about humiliating the power that wants to humiliate you.”
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