

I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable - fmavituna
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/ak-47-semi-automatic-rifle-building-party

======
presidentender
This has been legal for a very long time, and is the cause of approximately no
violence. Much as with the discussion of 3d printed firearms, it's not so much
that the behaviors of gun owners and gun builders has changed as it is that
the prevailing discourse in the political arena and the news is different.

The author refrains from espousing an opinion in the piece, but only just, and
frankly I disagree with him. The rifles created at build parties don't cause
crime. Violence in general is falling, and "gun crime" with it. Occasional,
prominent tragedies are emotionally shattering, but making policy based on
emotion has served us poorly for decades.

Relevant previous discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019586>

~~~
minamea
What? How is this not a disgrace? This article means that practically anyone
anywhere in the US can have an AK-47 with no licensing. How is that supposed
to make me feel safe? What if I sneak into my GF's house and her dad tries me
right then and there, and decides that the punishment for fucking his daughter
is death. Oh, and what do you know? He has an AK-47 for it so all my hopes of
running away are dashed. People shouldn't have the power to kill other people
so easily - not unless they're the police or army.

~~~
Taylorious
"People shouldn't have the power to kill other people so easily - not unless
they're the police or army."

And why should some some 18yo kid in the army have that right but not a middle
aged adult? Because some other army guy yelled at him for a few weeks and gave
him a uniform?

You mention a father could go crazy and kill you for sneaking in to screw his
daughter, but what if you were a rapist sneaking in to rape his daughter?
Might be nice to have way to defend your home in that situation. That being
said, I don't believe that assault rifles should be legal though.

~~~
minamea
What, aside from the obvious reason? Someone in the military follows orders
and serves the nation while someone with a gun will probably do whatever
he/she feels with it and nothing actually useful. How is that?

~~~
angersock
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_Shootings>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v._City_of_Oakland>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Assassination_by_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Assassination_by_Chicago_Police)

And for you fans of enterprise solutions:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_firebombing>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_hiroshima>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising>

~

Your moral reasoning needs practice, kid.

~~~
minamea
Heh, so out of the millions of policemen and militants in the world, that
protect the billions out there, you found a handful that have gone bad. Sure,
let's let anyone kill anyone then! Moral reasoning!

Heh, I'm < 25 yrs old and a coder at a top software company with a six figure
salary. And I've only been coding for a couple of years. I give _you_ advice,
kid.

~~~
rza
Heh, Because having a six-figure salary (at a top software company!)
automatically proves your superiority in all subjects.

------
MChristopherson
I scanned through the video included in the link. At the risk of sounding like
a militia-bound gun nut, the video got me a bit annoyed: "fully functional
AK-47" is tossed about rather often, when in fact the guy simply made a rather
heavy hunting rifle.

An AK-47, as used throughout the planet, is a machine gun. A fully-automatic
machine gun. You hold down the trigger, and the gun begins firing at a high
rate until you remove your finger from the trigger, or run out of ammunition.

He did not build that.

He built a semi-automatic rifle that is functionally equivalent in pretty much
every way to a hunting rifle you can buy at your local sporting goods chain
store.

This harkens back to the "assault rifle" issue, which sees a type of rifle
that is in every way equivalent to a semi-automatic hunting rifle labeled as
an "assault rifle" because it looks more bad-ass than grandpa's deer rifle.

\--edit--

I'm kind of ruefully laughing at myself here, as after three years of reading
Hacker News, this is the topic that got me to angrily dive to my keyboard to
make an account and comment. This from a total urbanite who gets nervous at
being more than three blocks from a taxi stand and a wet bar, and who would
probably need counseling if confronted by any woodland creature larger than a
mid-sized rat.

~~~
maxerickson
A gun with a limited internal magazine is materially different than a clip
ready design though.

In the U.S., the legal use of assault rifle has not been particularly confused
(it's always meant guns with automatic fire capability), just the sloppy
and/or misconstrued use of the term in media and advocacy.

Edit: Second paragraph is wrong, see link down thread.

~~~
MChristopherson
Hunting rifles with magazines are quite common. However, you do zero in on the
effective difference between supposed "assault rifles" and semi-automatic
hunting rifles: the magazine / number of rounds available.

I think this is an important point, because when you cut through the furor,
that really is the only effective distinction. And it's a heck of a lot more
minor a distinction than the more common blending of "fully automatic machine
gun" with a semi-auto rifle that merely looks bad ass, is covered with
Tactical Stuff (TM), and uses a composite stock instead of wood.

~~~
maxerickson
I guess it depends on whether a person thinks that the political process
around gun control will result from rhetoric or from honest debate. If it's an
honest debate, the exact words used to describe the eventual line that gets
drawn shouldn't really matter. A semi automatic rifle with a few 10 round
magazines is plenty scary enough when used for violence.

Also, when I looked up the number for post ban magazines, I realized that I
was wrong about assault weapons and full automatic. Wikipedia has a summary of
the federal ban:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#Cri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#Criteria_of_an_assault_weapon)

~~~
MChristopherson
I agree that an honest debate on the topic is what can lead to a reasonable
and valuable process of dealing with the issue in terms of law. And it's
because of that that the term "assault rifle" has always bugged me, because,
let me be quite honest, I've come to realize that what so many people mean
when they say that term is really "anything that looks scary and mean and
military-ish".

IE, show them this: <http://i.imgur.com/XZmPlGQ.jpg>, and the response will be
"Yeah! Ban that! Nobody should be able to own that!"

Show them this: <http://i.imgur.com/a916R.jpg>, however, and the response will
be much more muted, perhaps with a bit of "I think my Dad had one like that
for hunting or something..."

Of course they are functionally equivalent rifles, each semi-automatic. But
one looks scary/bad-ass, one looks like Dad's hunting rifle.

I don't mean this all argumentatively or semantically. I think this issue
really matters. If we are going to pass laws based on the outward appearance
of something, then that's the kind of law - and legal process - I am very wary
of. If, instead, we have an honest and reasoned debate on the issue, going
through a process of deciding if, say, semi-automatic weapons should able to
be owned by citizens; and if there should be a limit of the number of rounds
in a magazine - or if people should be able to own a rifle that accepts a
magazine; then that's the kind of process I can get on board with.

I think it's _dis_ honest to ask a voter, "should we ban assault rifles?" I
think it's much more honest to ask, in effect, a series of questions about
firearms, to get at the meat of the matter in a way that is sensible.

But I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that as it stands,
people want to ban scary looking guns, and that is the depth to which they
evaluate the entire issue.

------
jstalin
Considering that rifles are used to kill fewer people in the United States
than knives, fists, hammers, or bats, Mother Jones' attempt at scaring people
about those who build their own guns rings a little hallow. But I get it,
AK-47s look scary and so we should all be outraged.

[https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2011/...](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8)

~~~
asynchronous13
Here's a summary of the 2011 data from the linked statistics:

    
    
      8,583 - Homicides by firearms (all types)
        323 - Homicides by rifles
      1,694 - Homicides by sharp objects (knives, etc)
        496 - Homicides by blunt objects (clubs, etc)

~~~
angersock
The full table for firearms (2011) is:

    
    
      Handguns                      6220
      Rifles                         323
      Shotguns                       356
      Other guns                      97
      Firearms, type not stated     1587
    

So, er, yeah. GP is correct in their statement that rifles (indeed, it would
seem, all longarms) are less favored for homicide than sharp and blunt
objects.

~~~
Retric
Not really, type not stated just means unknown some of those are clearly going
to be Rifles. If 200 of those where Rifles then it would be more popular than
blunt objects.

~~~
hga
But with 1.5 orders of magnitude difference in the officially known enumerated
types we can be pretty sure the officially unknowns don't wildly vary from
knowns. Plus the number of rifles used is so small people who track of this
sort of thing would likely have an idea if something weird was happening.

My only caveat is bodies found without a recovered bullet; almost all
centerfire rifles have greater energies and sectional densities than normally
used handguns, so the bullet is more likely to exit. To get a handle on this
we'd need breakdowns on where they happened (e.g. city, almost certainly a
handgun, rural, a rifle is more likely, if only because of concealment
issues). Or talk to coroners, the wounds will be somewhat different.

------
jerrya
Substitute "Homebuilt PC without DRM" for AK-47, pretend it was written in
2023, not 2013, and then reread the article as well as the comments at Hacker
News.

~~~
DanBC
Your analogy fails because a homebuilt PC without DRM is currently illegal
under anti-circumvention laws.

EDIT: Obviously the problem is with circumventing the DRM - but in the context
of the post I'm responding to (people home building machines with no DRM) I
thought I was obvious.

~~~
mikeash
Say what? What part does my non-homebuilt computer contain that makes it
legal, which a DRM-free homebuilt computer would lack, making it illegal?

~~~
DanBC
Read the post I'm replying to.

 _"Homebuilt PC without DRM" [...] pretend it was written in 2023_

The implication is that the machine is built to circumvent DRM, not just to
avoid using any DRMd media. Obviously avoiding DRMd media is legal. But using
something to circumvent DRM is illegal.

To directly answer your question: Licensed software and permission from rights
holders.

~~~
mikeash
You said "is currently", as in, such a thing is illegal right now.

There's nothing illegal about not having licensed software on your computer.

------
droithomme
Is this supposed to be a problem? The government does not need to know about
our guns, not how many we have, not what sort they are, and not where we keep
them.

~~~
reader5000
Actually society would be much better off if the government tracked such
devices. A lot of people interested in gun culture have severe inefficiencies
in their cognitive abilities. Almost all mass killings are perpetrated by
individuals with severe cognitive disabilities or are on some sort of
prescription psychoactive. As a prominent role of government is to protect its
citizens from danger, the active tracking of mass-killing devices in the hands
of these individuals should be a regular role of government.

The situation is completely analogous with automobiles. The government ensures
people granted driver's licenses are cognitively capable of safe operation of
their vehicle. More importantly, the government tracks vehicles to ensure just
compensation for parties injured by the operation of a motor vehicle.

The only reason a similar institution has not been built for firearms is a)
gun culture represents a small and decreasing minority of Americans and b)
legislative capture by the munitions industry.

~~~
hysterix
Wow, where to begin with biased posts like these?

>A lot of people interested in gun culture have severe inefficiencies in their
cognitive abilities.

First off you start off insulting a large group of people, painting broad
strokes of assumption. You've already lost the majority of all your
credibility (what little you had that is) at this point.

>gun culture represents a small and decreasing minority of Americans

There are more guns in circulation and owned and in the hands of americans
than there has ever been in history prior to this date. Practically all your
opinions on gun control and gun ownership are false.

I'd tell you to go out and do some ACTUAL research on the subject, but judging
by the fact you open your opinion insulting a vast majority of americans for
no good reason at all, its falling on deaf ears.

I guess I can finish saying that for ignorant people like you, it would be
best if you said nothing at all, you are embarrassing yourself.

~~~
jacalata
The absolute number of guns may well be higher, but the percentage of
Americans who own one is presumably far below what it was during colonial
times, for instance. It is quite possible that the number of guns is rising
but either a) new gun owners are not increasing as fast as the number of
people or b) the number of gun owners is not increasing at all but existing
owners are collecting more per capita than they used to. I don't know if
that's the answer, but your argument that there are more guns than ever is a
poor rebuttal to the grandparents argument that the percentage of Americans
owning guns is going down.

~~~
hga
Errr, we're wealthier, manufactured items are a _lot_ cheaper, and it's a lot
easier to keep a gun in working condition now that we're using smokeless
powder and non-corrosive primers. Crime's a lot higher, I gather, so city folk
have a greater need to be armed.

I don't have figures, and most of academia was delighted to celebrate a fraud
who claimed very very few owned guns in colonial times
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America>) so data is probably hard to
come by, but I wouldn't presume that at all.

------
mig39
So he wears eye protection when using tools, but not when test-firing a
homemade AK-47? Idiot.

~~~
shenanigoat
To be fair, you don't know how many rounds he fired before the pic was taken.

~~~
uptown
The picture caption is "Firing my new AK. The rifles are popular because they
work—every time." ... and his finger is on the trigger, which you're trained
never to do unless you're prepared to fire ... so are you assuming he put his
glasses on after he raised it into the firing position, and put his finger on
the trigger?

------
pragone
One more reason why guns laws won't do anything without more information on
what exactly they hope to achieve by passing them.

 _I_ personally enjoy living in a city that bans knives and guns. I find it
comforting to know that it's not likely for someone I pass to have a gun. I
also can't go a single day without passing a dozen cops. However, there is
plenty of data telling us there isn't enough data to make arguments one way or
another about gun laws - no consistent, comprehensive studies exist that
clearly point to legalizing or banning guns that will make an impact in either
direction. I believe in funding studies that can give us an answer to that
very problem.

~~~
mikeash
> I believe in funding studies that can give us an answer to that very
> problem.

Sadly, the gun lobby does _not_ believe in funding such studies. That fact
alone is extremely suggestive.

~~~
hga
No, we don't believe in funding studies by people who believe that guns
are/should be "dirty, deadly and banned"
([http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/12/why-the-
cen...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/12/why-the-centers-for-
disease-control-should-not-receive-gun-research-funding/)).

If you're neutral on the subject, you shouldn't want junk science to be
funded.

~~~
mikeash
A rational approach would be to find less biased ways of carrying out the
research, not simply banning it.

~~~
hga
Less biased means not just a different institution, but a different culture,
the "public health" culture appears to be totally biased and has published a
string of self-refuting junk science papers in the most prestigious journals
like the NEJM and JAMA.

Who do you suggest?

~~~
mikeash
I don't know, but given that public health is so important, fixing it would
seem to be a top priority. If what you say is true, then the situation is
_far_ worse than just "some biased people use taxpayer money to criticize gun
ownership", and I'm certainly not going to admire anybody who simply defunded
one small portion of it to protect their pet issue while ignoring the rest.

~~~
hga
You sound as unhappy as the fund raisers for Republican politicians have been
since Newtown when I tell them I'm completely tapped out for political money
this year, call me back next year....

~~~
mikeash
Heh. You and I clearly have different approaches to politics. Anyone calls me
asking for money gets hung up on. I never give money to politicians, because
that's insane. The money would go to far better use if I give it to that
homeless guy who spends it on crack cocaine.

~~~
hga
Well, my approach to politics is in no particular order learning the issues
and people, advocating for or against the former, donating money where I think
it will do good, sometimes volunteering time, and of course voting. All of
them have paid off enough times that I see no reason not to continue, and they
hardly strike me as insane.

WRT to donations, I made 5 sets of political donations in the last year or so,
and 3 of the 5 were "successful" in that the politician or cause succeeded,
and in the case of the politicians they're doing exactly what I want ... aside
from asking me for more money this calendar year ^_^.

~~~
mikeash
Where are you finding these worthy politicians? I've never seen one who was
both worth supporting and had any chance of winning. I can't tell if I'm just
really picky, in a bad area, not paying attention, or what.

~~~
hga
As for the donations, none of them are local. On the other hand, I now live in
an area where the politicians are in general aligned with my positions. And
then there are cases where one must absolutely be fired, and the people
largely agree: <https://www.google.com/search?q=rita+hunter+jasper+county>

------
stcredzero
Laws concerning firearms have many parallels to laws involving reverse
engineering and programming. The lawmakers are about as ill informed in both
cases, and it shows in the resulting laws.

------
bcl
Note that it is not legal to transfer a receiver built like this to anyone
else. You cannot sell or give it away, it is yours forever. You are still
subject to your local laws, and cannot built a fully automatic weapon.

You can also do this with AR-15 receivers, there used to be a couple of places
that would sell you an 80% aluminum casting and you would finish the machining
yourself.

If you don't want to go to the trouble you can always buy a stripped lower
receiver from a dealer (this is the part that carries the serial # and is
considered the gun by the BATFE) and assemble the rest yourself. I wrote an
article on this back in 2000 - <http://www.brianlane.com/build-an-
ar-15-rifle.html>

------
unimpressive
Speaking of loopholes, I find it amusing that HN has found a way to post
articles that are ostensibly "interesting to hackers" which allow them to get
into heated mainstream political discussion.

As it turns out, people who don't want to follow the rules, will find a way to
not.

------
djahng
Please excuse my ignorance on this matter, but why are people so concerned
about "untraceable" guns (i.e. guns without serial numbers)? IF a gun is used
in a crime, how important is it that there's a serial number stamped on the
receiver? As opposed to, say, ballistics showing that a particular gun was
used in a crime because of the rifling marks found on the bullet fragments and
the firing pin indentation on the shell casing?

Sure a serial number will tell who the original purchaser of the firearm was,
but that in itself does not necessarily prove that the original owner is the
one who committed a crime.

~~~
garbowza
Because they can side-step background checks and be resold to anyone.

~~~
bifrost
Anyone who's not a criminal can buy a gun, thats the law. Background checks
may prevent criminals from buying guns, but they often do not because
criminals don't buy guns from legal gun dealers or other legal gun owners.
They either steal them or they buy them from an illegal dealer.

The background check issue is a red herring according to the US-NIJ studies.

------
joshguthrie
It's not untraceable, I can see his name under the article title.

------
bifrost
So the part that makes this guy a derp - he built what could have been a fully
legal weapon, except that he didn't install the magazine lock correctly. What
is a magazine lock? Its a device that lets politicians pretend that they're
"doing something" when in reality it just makes them look stupid.

Mag locks serve no purpose in crime prevention because they don't have some
sort of magic anti-criminal switch, they just annoy people trying to obey the
law and criminals ignore the law so they don't bother.

~~~
salgernon
I think they're probably more intended to keep the five year olds from
shooting their sisters.

~~~
hga
Which, like "child proof caps" on medicine, they do a very poor job of, unless
you're really rigorous in not letting them see how you get your self-defense
guns out of the push button safe or whatever.

Plus or minus that age you have to also start "gun proofing" them, teach them
how to handle guns safely, not to do it unsupervised, avoid the lure of the
forbidden fruit, etc. etc. My father started with all of us at age 3, when
he'd start taking us out for the safer types of hunting (not quail, where
you're moving around a lot, albeit that would have exhausted us way too
quickly). Don't remember when he started explicitly teaching it, but he did it
by example starting then.

------
ricardobeat
Thankfully this _is_ illegal and will remain so in most of the rest of the
world.

3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they
expecting an invasion?

~~~
jaxb
They expect their government to fail them.

~~~
terrble
It already has, repeatedly - but that's totally orthogonal. To imply that gun
owners are worried about systematic government oppression that would
necessitate an uprising is not an accurate portrayal of conventional wisdom,
it's a half-assed attempt at interpreting the Constitution and extrapolating
gun ownership rationale. But most gun owners in the US (that I know - and I
know quite a few) possess them for hunting, collecting, and sport shooting, in
that order.

~~~
lotharbot
I know quite a few who own them for self defense / home defense, as well.

------
MichaelApproved
Yes, there is some issue with untraceable weapons but the _real_ problem with
3D guns isn't that they're untraceable, it's that they're _undetectable_. An
attacker could use an all plastic weapon to get past metal detectors in a
court house, airplane, and other secure areas.

~~~
fein
Ammunition is still made of metal. A gun is kind of useless without the stuff
that goes boom.

~~~
Pinckney
Are metal detectors we care about calibrated to detect ammunition and
ammunition alone?

~~~
sarvinc
I really have no idea but I've had them pick-up my belt buckle and keys
before.

------
powertower
Does anyone know how much these kits costs?

~~~
bifrost
The piece of sheetmetal likely costs $40-50, the parts kit a couple hundred.

