GHOST GUNS OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

It’s never been easier to print an unregulated, untraceable deadly weapon.

- BY ANDY GREENBERG | 3D RENDERS BY DEFCAD

TEN YEARS AGO this summer, in a quiet back room of WIRED’s headquarters, I made an AR-15 “ghost gun”: an untraceable, semiautomatic rifle with no serial number, created in near-total privacy, fully outside of America’s system of gun control. More specifically, I made the gun’s lower receiver, the body of that rifle and the only part of it that’s treated as an actual firearm under US law. Fabricate that one relatively simple piece yourself with a power drill, a 3D printer, or a CNC milling machine—I tried all three—order the rest of the components online, and you’ve built your own very deadly weapon without encountering any regulation whatsoever.