[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> ill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period

Besides the 6 months it takes to learn to make one that won't blow up in your face when you pull the trigger?

Alarmist drivel.

[RyJones]

I agree the article is alarmist drivel, but you greatly overestimate the difficulty of assembling a lower. Furthermore, there is pretty much no way to misassemble one in a way that would cause an explosion.

[ctdonath]

It's not that hard to finish assembly, but to your intent: it DOES take enough knowledge & effort to acquire & assemble all the parts that anyone intending to use the finished product for criminal purposes will just buy one (black market most likely).

"OMG someone can make an unregistered gun and kill someone with it!" is hyperventilating drivel. Far, far easier to just buy/steal one. Anyone interested in making one won't be interested in throwing their lives away (arrest/incarceration/execution) by abusing it. Anyone who IS willing to throw their lives away by abusing one won't find any advantage/interest in making one from scratch.

[hga]

While I haven't learned this in detail (I loathe the AR10/AR15 design), I gather it's quite a bit easier than that, e.g. http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/lid=11004/learn/ Maybe six months if you're busy with a lot of other things. And of course a fair amount of mechanical aptitude is required, if you're learning that from scratch or nearly so (not the case for many of us in flyover country), it could indeed take quite a while. And more than a few ruined parts.

[molecules]

I was able to put together a stripped lower receiver with the lower parts kit in one hour. My background in firearms is from owning a pistol and a 22 magnum bolt action rifle.

It is trivial to put together a lower receiver. You can do it with a hammer and a roll pin punch (and you really don't need the punch).

There are numerous vids on how to assemble a lower receiver and how to mill out an 80%. You could even buy a polymer and carve it out with a knife, if you felt so inclined to do so.

[beachstartup]

it doesn't take 6 months of gunsmithing experience to put together an ar-15 from parts, it takes about an hour for a complete novice. it's not difficult or dangerous. it's just not. especially with youtube.

before i owned one, i had the notion that it was dangerous. but it's a real-world (i.e. you literally bet your life on it) modular weapons system - you don't make the modules (barrel, etc.), you just snap or screw them together. the gun was designed to be taken apart and reassembled in the field by people without a high school education, much less any kind of gunsmithing ability.

i know it sounds hard to believe when you don't know anything about it (i was the same way), but it's true. when you start researching, it's incredibly confusing for about 20 minutes but then it just clicks in your head. it's a very basic weapon.

[shiftpgdn]

More like an afternoon on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiHdV5slQps

[viggity]

If you were making the barrel from scratch as opposed to buying off the shelf, yeah, it might blow up in your face. But that is the part prone to catastrophic failure. People have been making lowers out of HDPE (plastic) and it works just fine, it doesn't need to contain combustion, just hold all the parts together.

[krapp]

Yeah... it's not as if proper guns are hard to come by in the US. If it were possible, guns would be sold in vending machines.