> I wonder if there's any type of plastic filament that could do the job. On a practical note, probably not: the designers probably tried really hard to make a

> I wonder if there's any type of plastic filament that could do the job. On a practical note, probably not: the designers probably tried really hard to make a fully plastic gun - they took the trouble to make the barrel out of plastic - but didn't. Stands to reason that it's due to necessity. At a more theoretical level, I think you'd find it exceedingly difficult to trigger a primer using a material softer than the primer itself. I'm sure it's not impossible - for example, you could probably trigger a primer by shooting it with a plastic bullet - but within the engineering confines of a handgun it seems implausible, particularly since the easy solution, using a nail, is so readily available.