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It's been a big gun week. How about one more gun and we can do something not-gun next week?
The NYT did the thing again. Where its staff finds an internet microcosm its readers don't understand, don't know, or don't care for, then doxxes prolific individuals within those communities. Most commonly this process is referred to as journalism. Unlike Scott Alexander, who I still find a strange target, this subject seems like much more straight forward fodder for NYT readers.
One "Ivan the Troll" has his name revealed. Now, the 3D printing (3DP) community is not my own. Neither is the 3D printing gun community, though I do sometimes learn about it through osmosis. Any mistakes or misunderstandings I make are to be expected.
Ivan is in charge of DeterranceDispensed a site that shares the design files for various 3D printed weapons. Ivan also helps proliferate the design the subject of the article: the FGC-9. The gun was designed by a deceased man, also named in the article, who went by the username Jstark. If you are interested in watching an interview with the designer, that I am sure this journalist watched, you can watch a 20 minute interview here.
If you don't want to watch the interview, a helpful Jstark quote can probably tell you a lot about him: "You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” No step on snek.
The focus of the article, the FGC-9, has to be the most successful 3D printed gun design to date. The NYT puts this design's popularity in perspective:
Bad people use it.
Less bad people use it.
Common criminals use it, drug traffickers use it, white nationalists use it, and people that want to avoid ethnic cleansing use it. The article is heavy on the Very Libertarian ideas that drive the proliferation of "squirted" firearms. The article ends with a quote:
My understanding is that we're well past the point where you can 3D print a janky disposable gun with a trip to the hardware store. A couple jigs, research, some Science! (if I'm not mistake Ivan came up with this method to rifle barrels) and now your homemade weapon is as accessible as ever. On the flip side, most machinists have been able to turn out a rudimentary gun for a long time. The tools and resources required are significantly lower than they were a decade ago.
Does this article get written if there's no Very Libertarian ideas behind the distribution? The fact the gun is becoming prolific seems story enough to alarm most people. Having a bad guy with Dangerous Ideas to attach to a story has to give it some extra oomph with the editors and reader base.
I appreciate this article was written. It gave me some reason to catch up to some of the progress of 3DP guns. The cat is out of the bag. No more 2015 toys that primarily risk harm for the shooter. They're still relatively janky things. Anyone relying on one would rather have a conventionally manufactured firearm or, at least, some professionally machined parts. It's good enough for self-defense though. Now the main limiting factor for an individual in a restricted jurisdiction (see: most of the world) is ammo.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 3DP gun community solves caseless ammo in a decade or some other novel solution. Nail guns get made accurate somehow? Shaped rock bullets?
Doxxing people still seems bad.
The Wikipedia article mentions that some rifling is achieved through electrochemical machining ("reverse electroplating"). Still, I think the barrel is a major bottleneck. Most hardware stores likely don't happen to sell high grade steel piping with an inner diameter of 9mm, I guess.
I also don't quite get some design choices. Is that buffer stock required? Wikipedia implies that there are variants without the buffer, so possibly not? Given that the barrel length is significantly shorter than even the infamous MAC-10, why go for the SMG form factor at all instead of treating it as a slightly oversized hand gun?
Agreed.
In my opinion, no. Don't get me wrong, I would rather fight an attacker with that thing than with my bare hands. But I don't think it is a good option given the risk landscape in areas with tight gun control, such as Europe.
Generally, people are cheap, don't want to go to prison and don't want to die because their self-defense (or rather home defense -- that thing is a bit large to keep in your coat just in case) option failed, often in increased order of priority.
The FGC-9 is cheap, sure. It also poses little risk of discovery for someone who who has excellent online opsec, certainly less than using a dark net marketplace. (Of course, buying the ammo will expose you to all the same risks as buying a gun and serve as probable cause to search your property if you are discovered.)
However, if one was discovered for any reason (such as using the weapon for home defense), you will not get any rebate for it being a homemade weapon of limited reliability instead of a standard 9mm.
If you estimate it unlikely that you will need a home defense weapon, then getting a 3d-printed weapon is not worth the hassle and risk of prison. Depending on your jurisdiction, there are likely a number of options you can just legally buy, from pitchforks to crossbows.
If you think there is a significant risk that your life will depend on your ability to win home defense fight, then you don't want a homebrew solution which might fail you in that moment. Getting a hunting licence or joining a sport shooting club are often avenues to legal gun ownership, albeit not the ability to carry your guns loaded in public spaces. (Technically, I think you are also not allowed to keep them loaded them for home defense, but 'I only took the gun out of the safe and loaded it when I heard glass breaking' will be plausible, 'I only printed my FGC-9 when I heard glass breaking' not so much.)
Agreed. From my understanding, you would need casings, primers, powder and a projectile.
Casings and bullets are mechanical, but I am very doubtful that 3d printing will help very much there (besides casting molds for lead, perhaps).
Primers and powder are chemistry. Both are technically explosives, but with much higher quality requirements than what some bomb-maker would care about. Most people prefer not having to clean their barrels between shots in a gunfight.
In a lot of areas, the option available to private citizens have
explodedgreatly expanded. The amount of electronic components or machine parts I can order from the internet is higher than ever. For chemicals, the opposite feels true. Substances you would have found in youth chemistry kits in the 1970s will raise eyebrows if you want to buy them as an adult today. Table salt is about the only chemical where you can be reasonably sure not to land on a watchlist if you buy it, and you can't produce gunpowder from it.(Dear authorities: I have no plans to acquire any firearms, munitions or explosives. I own pepper spray strictly for animal defense and will get rid of it once it becomes verboten.)
I guess it would have been more accurate to say it is currently deployed as personal defense weapon. You don't go looking for a gun fight with it. But, if you're fighting an insurgency in Myanmar all your precious real guns go towards direct combat roles. Most likely to people with experience. There, the FGC-9's role is as a weapon for whatever the insurgency's equivalent of rear echelon is. Maybe that is 16 year old kids. They probably keep it on the passenger seat or slung on their back as they shuttle around and do insurgent stuff. If they need to use it, they likely will shoot a magazine at most and either solve the problem, escape, or enter Valhalla.
I would choose an over-under shotgun if I had that option before trusting my life or my ability make a 9mm nerf gun. Most places have a pathway to get a sporting shotgun. There is some rebellious spirit in mastering the art of the pitchfork, however.
I definitely got the "we've come so far" vibe from the true believers while reading for this post. Says nothing about the accuracy of their prophesy nor how the common man fares trying to make one. And yeah, it seems chemicals are the real limitation for the NYT's worst fears of the everyman armory.
I learned to sympathize with the mailman. Now I (try to remember to) carry pepper spray while on runs. Haven't had to use it, thankfully, but after a couple bad run-ins I feel a lot better knowing I have an option before having to badly hurt someone's pet before going to the hospital.
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You're archive link only got part of the article. Here's one with the whole thing: https://archive.ph/fjWPe
Thanks, edited.
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As I understand it, in the US the surveillance state is monitoring enough of this stuff that you can get easily busted for making a gun in a gun-free jurisdiction, such as New York City. So state capacity will "solve" this "problem".
Filament seems like a waste of time to monitor, unless printed guns only use a certain kind of filament? Printers can be purchased second hand. So, that leaves barrels, barrel blanks, and bolts as key components you can't get from Home Depot/Lowe's.
Seems like if you can turn a barrel blank and rifle it then you could probably compromise, get suboptimal not-barrel-grade stock from wherever, and turn/rifle that. Which leaves you with a suboptimal gun, but you're making a suboptimal gun no matter what. Again though, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Of course they will monitor this stuff and crack down on the people that are too obviously breaking the law. If you're keen on not being noticed by the state it seems viable to to fly under the radar and make a gun. At least until AI is profiling everyone with great accuracy.
Glock frame rails are probable cause in a way that every other key component is not.
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