Ghost Guns: Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution

With thorough analysis and balanced reporting, Ghost Guns: Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution is an essential resource for readers seeking to understand the rise of homemade firearms and future options for managing them.

For more than a century, strict gun control was possible because firearms were produced in centralized industrial factories. Today, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, combining old and new technologies, threatens to upend this arrangement. An increasing number of hobbyists, "makers," technology provocateurs, and sophisticated criminals are proving that you don't need a factory to make guns anymore.

The security challenges of this transformation are increasingly apparent, but the technologies behind it hold tremendous potential, and while ignoring the security implications would entail risks, the costs of new policies also must be evaluated. "Do-it-yourself," or DIY, weapons will bring significant ramifications for First and Second Amendment law, international and homeland security, crime control, technology, privacy, innovation, and the character of open source culture itself. How can a liberal society adjust to technologies that make it easier to produce weapons and contraband?

Informative and thought-provoking, Ghost Guns: Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution carefully analyzes the technical, legal, social, political, and criminological trends behind this challenging new area of illicit weapons activity.

• Provides readers with informative background on DIY gun laws and legislative trends and fascinating descriptions of legal and illegal practices with homemade weapons around the world
• Presents in-depth explanations of the consumer appeal, technology, economics, politics, and enforcement challenges behind America's quickly growing DIY gun-making phenomenon
• Evaluates the current and future appeal of homemade weapons for differing types of crime and terrorism
• Offers a series of forward-looking recommendations for weapons control and security policy in an increasingly "post-industrial" 21st century