Ghost Guns

Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution

Mark A. Tallman

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781440865640
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216089971
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Routine Shooting: Why Should We Care about Homemade Small Arms?
• Chapter 1: Printing Pandora’s Box: How the 4th Industrial Revolution Transforms Security
• Chapter 2: Teaching Iron to Fly: Artisanal, Industrial, and Neoartisanal Gunmaking
• Chapter 3: The Global Gun: How DIY Small Arms Are Manufactured and Used around the World
• Chapter 4: The Substitution Effect: Would Criminals and Terrorists Make Their Own Guns?
• Chapter 5: Scanning Darkly: How Weapons Screening Can Detect Ghost Guns (But Fail to Stop Terrorists)
• Chapter 6: Land of the Gun: Politics and Practicalities of DIY Firearms in America
• Chapter 7: “You’d Be Better Off Brain-Scanning People”: How the Industrial Devolution Complicates Weapons Control
• Chapter 8: Enter the Tech Vigilantes: Surveillance Capitalism and “Corporate Gun Control”
• Chapter 9: Uninventing the Wheel: Weapons and Crime Control in a Postindustrial Age
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author