British self-defense-rights activist Philip A. Luty
has made a crusade of publicizing information
about building homemade guns. He sells plans
for the above weapon through his Website.
The Obama administration is off to a good start on civil liberties when it comes to Guantanamo, reviving some hopes of due process and the possibility that arrest by federal agents will less frequently result in people dangling by their thumbs. President Obama is also making the right noises on medical marijuana. But gun owners are more than a bit concerned that their rights will be ridden over roughshod during the next few years. While there's no sure way of heading off government action, it is possible to evade and sabotage the enforcement of restrictive laws. Specifically, gun owners should continue to acquire and distribute the know-how for making their own guns.
Gun owners' concerns may well be justified; President Barack Obama has a history of hostility to private ownership of firearms and Attorney General Eric Holder went so far as to sign on to former Attorney General Janet Reno's amicus brief (PDF) in the case of D.C. v. Heller, opposing the position that the Supreme Court finally adopted: that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. There are already a couple of long-shot gun control measures circulating in Congress, including H.R. 45, a licensing and registration measure.
But laws are only as good as their enforceability -- a lesson that politicians need to take to heart in a country where 42.4% of the population has smoked illicitly cultivated grass decades after marijuana was outlawed, and where Prohibition was a moonshine-soaked failure. If self-defense-rights activists want to preserve their liberty, they need to continue battling in legislatures and the courts, but they should also take steps to make sure that gun laws are unenforceable -- that bans on firearms are countered by the equivalent of homebrew, moonshine and speakeasies.
This isn't exactly reinventing the wheel. Underground weapons manufacturing is a major business in places as far apart as the Philippines and Pakistan. VBS.tv offers a fascinating video tour of firearms and ammunition manufacturing and sales under remarkably crude conditions in the tribal areas of Pakistan. In the market there, gunsmiths turn out everything from muzzleloaders to hand-crafted Lewis guns and AK-47s in facilities less well-equipped than the average American home workshop.
So, where do you start? Well, you need plans, of course. You could copy an existing firearm, like those Pakistani craftsmen do, or like the World War II-era Polish resistance and pre-independence Israelis did when they churned out vast quantities of Sten guns. Or you could acquire plans purposely created for home manufacturing. Yes, they exist. And one of the better known sources for such plans is Philip A. Luty.
Probably the best endorsement for Luty's designs is that at least one of them works. We know it works because he went to prison in Britain for building a working copy from the design he published in the book, Expedient Homemade Firearms: The 9mm Submachine Gun. The book was written as a rejoinder to the British government's restrictive laws regarding firearms, and the powers-that-be didn't appreciate the rebuttal.
The time behind bars seems to have just ticked him off, since Luty, now free, is the proprietor of The Home Gunsmith Website, which offers several free plans for simple, improvised firearms. The site also offers plans for more complicated weapons for sale. And should the authorities get clever and decide to restrict ammunition ... well, Luty now offers a book for sale on how to improvise that, too.
It should be noted that, given Luty's ex-con status and the relatively close scrutiny under which he certainly operates these days, his more-recent designs have probably not been test-fired as diligently as the original. So, caveat emptor.
The point here isn't that setting up underground firearms bazaars is an adequate substitute for living with a government that knows its limits and respects our rights. It's that the means exist for rendering restrictive laws impotent and pointless. Short of turning your basement into a reproduction of the Ayalon Institute, the best use for simple gun plans may be to mail them to members of Congress as evidence that Americans are prepared to short-circuit their most draconian efforts. Imagine how much grief and blood could have been spared if pre-Prohibition legislators had been buried under such a weight of homebrew recipes that they'd conceded the point that a ban on alcoholic beverages was destined to fail.
Well, OK. Such an effort is unlikely to elicit rational thought in the minds of government officials. But it's a low-cost approach that just might have some effect. And the effort would help in developing and distributing effective plans that would ensure the ultimate failure of legal restrictions on the means for self defense.
Besides, it's just pretty nifty to have plans for building your own submachine gun.
Below, a video demonstration of a homemade .22-caliber pistol.
You might also enjoy these:
- Gun Rights Examiner: Presumptive confirmation a preemptive surrender
- LA Gun Rights Examiner: Gun control in America, Part III: it doesn't work unless it fails
- Old firearms given new life by restrictive New York gun control laws
- Ammunition bans, like other gun control laws, promise to be as ineffective as most prohibitions
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Comments
I need to take another metal shop class, but I think I could do it. :) Thanks for the article.
There are others
geocities.com/elmgrove1765/project6/project6.html
Google bowling ball mortar
If folks can make them with no special tools in pakastani huts or the balkans I think it's safe to say that America will never be disarmed.
If it gets to the point that home-built guns are necessary, they will only need to work long enough to acquire better guns (and ammo) from the sources that will be exempt from any prohibitions.
As we make more of our own guns the government will work even more feverishly to destroy the ammunition industry.
Not to sound trite,but my idea of "gun control" is knowing where to hide them from the inevitable bureaucratic bans that will soon arise.
I will only keep my guns for the original intent of the second ammendment-to kill anyone in government who wishes to impose tyranny against me.
WHF?
What are you teaching people? This is highly dangerous.
dont be a pussy
not as dangerous as a government which knows who all owns guns
Bobby, slavemasters didn't teach slaves to read because it "was dangerous" too.
Teaching people to rely on government, or anyone else for that matter, is truly dangerous.
If it gets to the point we are relying on homemade 22 pistols and dangerous homemade
rifles, we already lost the war.
We've only lost the war when we lie down and quit.
I had the privilege of being at a by-invitation-only gun show and seeing two perfectly functional 1911 .45 Colt copies made in the 'Nam jungle. Granted they were single shot but as Kent M. says they only have to shoot once. Plus I made usable black powder when I was 12. It ain't rocket surgery.
Remember: It only has to work once...
I had the privilege of being at a by-invitation-only gun show and seeing two perfectly functional 1911 .45 Colt copies made in the 'Nam jungle. Granted they were single shot but as Kent M. says they only have to shoot once. Plus I made usable black powder when I was 12. It ain't rocket surgery.
No doubt when the Gun Prohibition hits full stride, known liberal gun haters will be found to be in possession of suppressed single shot Assassin's Specials after a knowledgeable confidential informant drops a dime on them. Chaff is a long standing tactic in war. This will keep the gun confiscation police busy eroding their political support and away from conventionally armed dissenters. A control system with a massive false positive rate will fail.
Interested in building your own guns?
Go to homegunsmith.com
Tell 'em Wolfrick sent you.
Like Wolfrick said, homegunsmith.com has a lot of information on building your own firearms legally, and if you pay for a premium membership, you get access to the library, which contains hundreds of blueprints and a lot more information.
Not sure if it is recent or not, but the website thehomegunsmith.com is not working anymore. Anyone know if it was moved?
When the government comes after the people, you better believe they will come bearing fully automatic weapons and all the rest of their high tech stuff. Ever wonder why they are so determined to restrict and eventually outlaw all Class III guns and the so called "destructive devices"?
thing is, one bullet, one kill.
small cal. weapons kill just as effectivly as large.
one or two men, shooting one shot at a time, can take out an entire company, where a company of 100 with fully automatics can waste 100 rounds each and leave the 1 or 2 people standing...
don't let them take your guns in the furst place and you don't nead homade guns.
tdm: exactly.
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