I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

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.<p>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.<p>Relevant previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019586" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019586</a>

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.<p>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.<p>He did not build that.<p>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.<p>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.<p>--edit--<p>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.

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.<p><a href="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" rel="nofollow">https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...</a>

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.

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.

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

One more reason why guns laws won't do anything without more information on what exactly they hope to achieve by passing them.<p><i>I</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.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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 - <a href="http://www.brianlane.com/build-an-ar-15-rifle.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.brianlane.com/build-an-ar-15-rifle.html</a>

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

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?<p>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.

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

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.<p>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.

Thankfully this <i>is</i> illegal and will remain so in most of the rest of the world.<p>3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they expecting an invasion?

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

Does anyone know how much these kits costs?