Plan B Forum

Have you heard about ghost guns? Those are guns made outside of factories w/o serial numbers. They're untraceable.

I recently had an ad forwarded to me about the upcoming end of being able to buy poodle shooters based on Biden's statements. The DVD for a small price promised to show how to make your own. BFD. I have no interest.

I've seen lots of pictures of home work shops on social media. None were involved in gunsmithing from what I could see. Nor did I see any 3D printers. What I saw was old school manual machine tools.

The rare exception was someone that had a CNC machine. I can count those on one hand. What I and the others were interested in was what people had made at home in their basement or garage. While none had made guns or parts they could have.

If you ever seen the movie Rocket Boys you'll understand. If you can't make it someone literally down the street can.

Unintended consequences again.

Not unlike the zip guns of yore.

My basic firearms training pre-dates the M-16. Since Viet Nam many, perhaps millions of Americans have been introduced to that firearm or modification there of. Familiarity is a large part of why individuals prefer certain guns and distain others. I still prefer a walnut stock on my rifle and shotgun, even though I know functionally, modern plastic is better. There is nothing new about this. I saw a picture of Harry S Truman in a deer camp while he was holding the model rifle issued in the Spanish-American war--called the .30-40 Krag.

The M-16 and its variants is modular and can easily be separated into its parts. One part, usually called 'the lower' is the essential part with serial number that all the other pieces depend on. All the parts, except 'the lower' can be purchased or manufactured by any one without any paperwork from the BATF.

Somebody always figures out how to game the system. The "Ghost Gun" is made with all the parts purchased on the open, legal market, except the lower. That particular part you make your self. If you never sell it or give it away you have not violated any federal law (which regulations are based on the constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce). But what does it take to 'make' the lower? Many places now sell a chunk of metal that looks like a lower but it is not because the other parts will not fit into it. The maker of the ghost gun follows instructions on You Tube and other paper source of information to drill some holes and do a little filing or grinding. NOW one has a functional lower. and can assemble the rifle with any and all the various bells and whistles that are available for this family of rifles."Tracing" a gun is a small inconsequential forensics task. it becomes useful when one has a gun and one has a bullet. Physical evidence can affirmatively establish that x bullet came out of the barrel of y gun. Tracing the history of a gun from the factory thru various intermediaries to the human who did something bad with it is rarely important.

Modern rifles use a cartridge: A metal tube (usually brass) containing a fast-burning propellant with a bullet plugging one end and the other end with a much smaller hole containing a little metal pill containing an explosive. A mechanism applies mechanical force to the little pill (primer) which causes the propellant to change from solid to gas, and that propels the bullet out the barrel. This cartridge assembly is called in the federal regs 'fixed ammunition'
Mechanical devices which require the propellent (black powder, which has less potential energy per volume than modern rifle or pistol propellent to be poured into the device, then the bullet placed on top of it, and finally the primer (now called a cap) placed at some opening at the rear where its energy will reach the black powder. These antique weapons or replicas, or modern adaptations are exempt from federal firearms laws.

When 'fixed ammunition' was first available there were lots of the older cap-and-ball guns around. Inventors quickly developed the gadgets that would adopt old guns to fire the new fixed ammunition. Occasionally over the last several decades I have seen modern versions of such adapters offered for sale. It was an open question I never saw answered as to the legal ownership of such a modified gun or the parts to do it.

Back in the time of the Viet Nam war and later there were AK47 style guns in circulation around the world that had been made in Pakistan with tools no more sophisticated than a hammer and a file.

IMNSHO, no real restriction on private firearm possession in the USofA will work because it is too easy to just make your own. However, it is NOT easy to make the primer. (About like making your own dynamite. More difficult than making your own c4 or napalm) If availability of Primers is tightly controlled home brewed ammo would be much less reliable.

snailgate

I knew a machinist/gunsmith who could make you whatever you might desire. He worked on guns for Larry Hagman and Clayton Moore. Francis Ford Coppola was at his house once briefly. I have no idea if that was gun related or not. (I had no idea who he was at the time since the machinist had no manners and made no introductions.-which isn’t germane to the issue, just interesting aside.). Where there is a will there is a way.

Clayton Moore? Did he make silver bullets?

Actually, with customers like these, Iimagine he must have been pretty good at what he did.

Big RR wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:45 am

Clayton Moore? Did he make silver bullets?

Actually, with customers like these, Iimagine he must have been pretty good at what he did.

It was his one virtue. Otherwise he was just another asshole. He worked in tandem with a retired police officer from Norway who did engraving and related silversmithing. Knowing the Norwegian and his wife made the rest of the association bearable.

Bullets and gun parts I get.

Try making the primers.

dales wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:12 pm

Bullets and gun parts I get.

Try making the primers.

Time consuming but possible. There are YouTube DIY’s.

When I was a kid I had relatives who did their own reloading and my job, due to having the smallest fingers in the house, was to pick up the primer and set it in the reloading hole.

Burning Petard wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 24, 2021 8:15 pm

My basic firearms training pre-dates the M-16. Since Viet Nam many, perhaps millions of Americans have been introduced to that firearm or modification there of. Familiarity is a large part of why individuals prefer certain guns and distain others. I still prefer a walnut stock on my rifle and shotgun, even though I know functionally, modern plastic is better. There is nothing new about this. I saw a picture of Harry S Truman in a deer camp while he was holding the model rifle issued in the Spanish-American war--called the .30-40 Krag.

The M-16 and its variants is modular and can easily be separated into its parts. One part, usually called 'the lower' is the essential part with serial number that all the other pieces depend on. All the parts, except 'the lower' can be purchased or manufactured by any one without any paperwork from the BATF.

Somebody always figures out how to game the system. The "Ghost Gun" is made with all the parts purchased on the open, legal market, except the lower. That particular part you make your self. If you never sell it or give it away you have not violated any federal law (which regulations are based on the constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce). But what does it take to 'make' the lower? Many places now sell a chunk of metal that looks like a lower but it is not because the other parts will not fit into it. The maker of the ghost gun follows instructions on You Tube and other paper source of information to drill some holes and do a little filing or grinding. NOW one has a functional lower. and can assemble the rifle with any and all the various bells and whistles that are available for this family of rifles."Tracing" a gun is a small inconsequential forensics task. it becomes useful when one has a gun and one has a bullet. Physical evidence can affirmatively establish that x bullet came out of the barrel of y gun. Tracing the history of a gun from the factory thru various intermediaries to the human who did something bad with it is rarely important.

No, it can't. CSI is not real. A ballistic "fingerprint" is a fantasy, especially on a rifle round. Identify a caliber, sure. Rule OUT a type, maybe. (Find a 9mm from a Glock and another from a Beretta, they use different rifling.) Positively identify a round as from one specific gun? No.

Most rifle rounds fragment on impact. High-velocity rounds disintegrate.

Modern rifles use a cartridge: A metal tube (usually brass) containing a fast-burning propellant with a bullet plugging one end and the other end with a much smaller hole containing a little metal pill containing an explosive. A mechanism applies mechanical force to the little pill (primer) which causes the propellant to change from solid to gas, and that propels the bullet out the barrel. This cartridge assembly is called in the federal regs 'fixed ammunition'

Mechanical devices which require the propellent (black powder, which has less potential energy per volume than modern rifle or pistol propellent to be poured into the device, then the bullet placed on top of it, and finally the primer (now called a cap) placed at some opening at the rear where its energy will reach the black powder. These antique weapons or replicas, or modern adaptations are exempt from federal firearms laws.

When 'fixed ammunition' was first available there were lots of the older cap-and-ball guns around. Inventors quickly developed the gadgets that would adopt old guns to fire the new fixed ammunition. Occasionally over the last several decades I have seen modern versions of such adapters offered for sale. It was an open question I never saw answered as to the legal ownership of such a modified gun or the parts to do it.

Back in the time of the Viet Nam war and later there were AK47 style guns in circulation around the world that had been made in Pakistan with tools no more sophisticated than a hammer and a file.

IMNSHO, no real restriction on private firearm possession in the USofA will work because it is too easy to just make your own. However, it is NOT easy to make the primer. (About like making your own dynamite. More difficult than making your own c4 or napalm) If availability of Primers is tightly controlled home brewed ammo would be much less reliable.

snailgate

In WW2, a submachine gun was made that was DESIGNED to be thrown together by a blacksmith.

dales wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:12 pm

Bullets and gun parts I get.

Try making the primers.

I can't...though I'm no chemist. I suspect anyone with any sort of chemistry training could. (It's literally mid-19th-century technology.)