5 ms·
Interestingly, the guns keep getting easier to make at home, but the ammo is still too challenging, as handmade powder and primers are really unreliable / dange
by nickpinkston 4y ago
Interestingly, the guns keep getting easier to make at home, but the ammo is still too challenging, as handmade powder and primers are really unreliable / dangerous.
Of course lots of people made ammo at home using off the shelf components, but if you have access to primers, powder, etc. you'd probably just smuggle the bullets themselves.
Like Chris Rock said: "We need bullet control" - ie it's actually harder to make ammo than the guns themselves.
- HideousKojima 4y agoBlackpowder is dead simple to make yourself. Makes cycling semi-autos harder/less reliable and less powerful, and mesns a lot more cleaning, but if "bullet control" succeeded in the US I think we'd see a mass switch to blackpowder and electrical ignition replacing primers.
- notch656c 4y agoHome-made black powder cartridges aren't too bad. The caps are hardest to make but easy enough to hide as they are really fucking small and you only need 6 to fill a black powder revolver. A black powder revolver legit is good enough for self defense and almost as useful as a modern revolver if you maintain the load everyday. Also a good 'felon carry' as black powder revolvers are unregulated federally in US. Also little known but fun fact. Flintlocks aren't considered guns in Canada. You can buy the flintlock, and make the powder all without any scrutiny.
- MisterTea 4y agoA guy I used to work with came from a South American country where shotgun shells and ammo were at a premium, among other goods, which were common here in the USA. He setup a smuggling operation that was half legal: he put shot gun shell and bullet parts like casings, primers, and so on and hide them inside of appliances he was legitimately exporting second hand. He wound up making enough money to quit and run that operation full time. Haven't spoken to him in years though.
- anonporridge 4y agoThe nature of something that has an inelastic demand, like guns or drugs (for very different reasons) is that by increasing the scope of regulated exchange or outright bans, you just create pressure for creativity and innovation to solve the problem that it's "too hard to make at home". Yes, regulating ammo will make it harder for the average person to access. But, it will also drastically increase the amount of people experimenting with making powder at home and/or develop novel solutions to weapons making that are even harder to control, like very high power air rifles or electrically driven railguns. The pressure for this kind of innovation currently doesn't really exist, because ammunition is readily accessible. If we want to start regulating it, we have to acknowledge that we may be creating pressure to develop a future where alternative solutions that can't be easily controlled have flooded the black market. Ultimately, bullet control is the same problem as gun control. It's treating a symptom rather than the disease. Since the symptom of gun violence is not an existential threat to our society, it absolutely seems like a waste of effort and political capital that should instead be targeted at the root reason for eruptions of deadly violence, whatever the tools.
- notch656c 4y ago>you just create pressure for creativity and innovation to solve the problem that it's "too hard to make at home". As shown by "what about ammo" guide by IvanTheTroll et al, by which europeans are producing 9mm ammo economically at scale with completely unregulated components. Europeans trivially have a gun and full magazines of modern ammo within a couple weeks never leaving the Schengen area and without any black market interaction nor permits/licenses.
- closewith 4y agoAnd yet it hasn't emerged as a problem, because the friction and potential legal outcomes make home made firearms undesirable.
- notch656c 4y agoIt's not a problem in the sense organized crime buys manufactured guns with ease and the people making these weapons are likely primarily hobbyists or people merely seeking self defense unconnected to larger organizations.
- fwungy 4y agoIt will just come in through the open border like all sorts of other things now do.
- lazide 4y agoFYI, it isn’t actually harder to make ammo than the gun. I have a decent amount of experience reloading and machining (including machining parts that could easily be guns, but weren’t). I also have quite a bit of experience with muzzle loading/black powder, etc. It’s just not something that is currently optimized to make in an improvised way, because ammo is normally the easy, bulk, part. It does require a decent amount of expertise, and ability to pay attention to detail though. If someone was so motivated, metal slugs + compressed gas can make a far more than adequate weapon (semi-auto too!), and would 3D print quite nicely. If someone was going to go that way, 3D printing a suppressor would be trivial too. And those slugs could be easily cast in any kitchen using commonly available materials (zinc, for instance, if lead was controlled). The underlying reason this isn’t really a problem is due to motive, economics/payback, etc. It’s solidly in the ‘but why?’ category for pretty much everyone, but if someone had a reason, I bet they could make a 3D printable design with a couple pages of directions and almost anyone could do it. The local scuba shop would have quite the run on pony bottles though!