Seems somewhat hypocritical since they seem to have no problems shipping illegal hard drugs to people they know are dealers (officially no, in practice yes). Heroin’s fine, but a milling machine isn’t?
Private business is refusing to do work for company it does not morally support - conservatives joyous!
Government regulations interfering with free interstate trade - conservatives aghast!
Tool company not able to sell its products because some people somewhere might do something dangerous (aka FUD) - liberals infuriated!
Gun nuts thwarted from making untraceable weapons at home - liberals vindicated!
Not sure where I stand anymore…
I’m more interested in learning about a decent digital mill that will handle aluminum – and at a $1500 price point! A Shapeoko 3 is $1000, and isn’t really capable of serious aluminum milling. Even the Nomad at $2500 wouldn’t be a good candidate for cutting the kind and size of material that would be needed for making guns (even if just the stock).
So is this really the machine many Makers have been looking for?
it is odd, as one can buy an 80% lower on eBay - http://www.ebay.com/itm/80-Lower-Paperweight-223-556-300-7-62x39-/221699075112
and Amazon only recently stopped selling them…
once you have an 80% lower, and make it 100%? you still have an incredible amount of work and parts to turn it into a functional weapon.
yay Fedex! save us from ourselves?
This is probably the longest, most expensive and convoluted route to gun ownership for the average criminal. People who get in a twist about things like this are pretty disconnected from the way crime actually works.
Something like 6% of all crime involving guns is committed with a rifle. Of that tiny fraction, how many of those criminals give a thought to traceability of their firearm? And of that tinier fraction, how many will simply buy a stolen gun (or steal one themselves), vs. buying a machine that costs more than an AR-15, a bunch of aluminum stock, and then somehow sourcing the working parts?
Or do we imagine some kind of underworld machinist making untraceable AR-15s in a hidden basement workshop? Maybe he would advertise on Craigslist?
FedEx is willing to ship a silicon carbide crucible that’s totally suitable for melting down beer cans and casting gun parts in the kid’s sandbox (just dump some used motor oil in there to make it clingy), but I guess that’s OK, since you can’t count on it arriving intact.
It’s best to just get angry at everything. I’m off to yell at a cloud.
It does seem to be a large company CYA exercise. If they’d just said Milling machinery/industrial tools/Generic sounding description when asked, then I doubt there would be a problem.
Of course expecting a complex and fragile machine to actually arrive in a condition that could mill a gun, that’s another matter.
It’s a hit or miss.
A machine with robust-enough frame usable for milling metal should however withstand quite some abuse during shipping, if the tool head is properly fixed to the frame; the actuator screws and the slides don’t have enough mass to deform with a mere drop. (The head, which carries a lot of mass and therefore inertia, must be at the side-most position and attached to the frame.) So more likely a hit.
Heh. I’ve found shipping companies can break pretty much anything. US residents should be thankful they don’t have to deal with Yodel.
I wonder how FedEx feels about shipping machines that make parts for machines that make guns…
Or machines that make parts for machines that make parts for machines that make guns…
(try singing it to “I was looking back to see.” I can’t)
I know right!?! fuck those clouds, always hanging round, not working.
If anything it is the perfect solution to gun control. If guns were banned but people could still buy the milling machine to make gun, most people would be too lazy to make a gun to go shoot whoever they were mad at to begin with.
Just imagine someone threatening with this:
YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF… IN 1-2 WEEKS (PROBABLY LONGER BECAUSE I WILL SCREW IT UP A BUNCH OF TIMES) AFTER MILLING A GUN IMA SHOOT YOU (BUT PROBABLY NOT BECAUSE THE RIFLING IN A HOMEMADE GUN IS BULLSHIT.)!
Or with my local post office.
Geez – I have a lathe, milling machine, welders, access to an engineer who makes things that go “kerpow”; and let’s face it, a handful of today’s desktop computers would have shortened the last world war by years.
Am I going to be put on a list?
We are all on The List.
Our only salvation is that the list is too long to be practical in any way.
Only the most sinister villains mill their own weapons.
Once they go through my bookmarks and find the link to your site, I’ll be moved up a couple of spaces.
The key is to stay on the nice list, and stay off the naughty list. Or attempt a move from the naughty to the nice list between the first and second checking of the list.
