Re:I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
by mikeash on Saturday May 25, 2013 @08:09PM
(#5769430)
I know that making guns is not hard. It's not all that interesting that people are able to build guns themselves. After all, it's ancient technology, and people build far more complicated machines at home.
What's interesting to me is not that a gun can be built by an individual, but that this particular kind of gun can be built legally by an individual in the US without informing anyone.
People build their own airplanes, for example, but at the end of the day they have to get them inspected and registered before they can legally fly them. That one can build an AK-47 without any such controls, and still be completely within the law, is interesting.
If the rest of the parts were not legal to purchase, they could be built from scratch too. A skilled craftsman can make an entire AK-47 replica in ~one day. An unskilled one following plans on the internet working from what's procurable from any hardware store and using cheap tools from the same source can make (a much shoddier one) in a few weeks.
Making guns is not hard. They are, in their basics, very simple pieces of gear, and can be built from the same materials with same tools as any other metalworking project.
In conflict zones where gun imports are successfully blocked, the locals invariably build their own. These weapons range from AK-47 replicas to zip guns [1] that make 15 minutes to make. I'd argue that for crime, the zip gun is the more practical one.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Va87gB_4AI