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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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There is a 3d2a guy working on electronically primed polymer cased ammo. Very much a hobby project on a shoestring budget. One of the NGSW program entries used polymer ammo but the army went with Sig (to go with their Sig pistols and Sig LPVOs), you can buy polycased 308 ammo right now. The other area people go to for impractical is barrel rifling which at this point is mostly solved with electrochemical machining, at least for the lengths of things like the FGC which are designed around zero access to firearms parts regimes.

Brass is cheap and reusable though -- I think the sort of people you'd wanna worry about shooting back when you try to take their guns very likely have thousands of loaded rounds + tens of pounds of powder + many primers that will last them quite long enough to be a serious nuisance.

but nobody is making all-polymer cases

Steyr has done it before with their ACR entry, Textron did it with their LSAT (which became the ammunition for their NGSW rifle, since withdrawn).

They're far from the first plastic cases; Dardick managed to get 95% of the way there in 1960 but his design makes certain compromises that make getting to 100% difficult (their triangular geometry prevents most naive approaches to seal the bottom of the case). People have tried to 3D print these cases but they can't take the pressure.