Hacker News Reader

Comment by smabie | Hacker News Reader

Is it legal to make your own gun in most places? It's always been a fantasy of mine since I was a little kid, and I finally have the capital and attention span to do it.

Do people ever make non replicas? It would be unbelievably cool to design and Smith an a original weapon.

View on HN

Where are you located? It's legal in much of the US, including California (although there are some legal hoops to jump through).

Take a look at the "Gunnit Rust" posts (particularly Tier I) on /r/guns for inspiration.

Thanks, I'm in the US. Will take a look.

I wouldn't suggest starting totally from scratch as a first project, so if you want something more challenging than an AR you might look into surplus parts kits. InrangeTV had a good series covering their CETME-L kits a couple years back.

In most jurisdictions, there will be a single part that is legally the gun. That will be the main part that any licensing and registration will be attached to. In America it’s the lower receiver, but in some countries it’s the barrel. Once you’ve got the registered part, everything else can be purchased as parts. For the most part if it’s illegal to own, it’ll be illegal to buy as a part (e.g. unregistered automatic sears in America, or high capacity magazines in some states).

The one exception to this will be jurisdictions with restrictions on “assault weapons”, such as California. In these jurisdictions weapons become illegal based on their configuration; adding a pistol grip to a weapon with a removable magazine might make it illegal, for example.

As always, do your own research and ask a lawyer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Pakistan

> Gun laws in Pakistan allow for the wide ownership of firearms there. Only tribal areas of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa permits the ownership of heavy weaponry including the use of rocket-propelled grenades, short, medium, and long-range rockets, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, etc

I am suddenly very envious of Pakistan.

There’s no more tribal areas officially

Fortunately so

The obvious warning - be very careful if you intend to fire it, do your reading first, yadda yadda. It's legal in America, though some states restrict production of certain things. Yes, you can absolutely make a non-replica, but if you want to actually design your own weapon, I recommend reading Chinn's The Machine Gun which has most of the requisite mathematical details.

As far as AKs go, you can buy a receiver flat, barrel and the other parts and make your own. Sites like ak-builder.com, local gun message boards and enough people to have a build party will be enough to roll your own.

AK's are hands down one of the easiest guns to builds. You can build the receiver with fairly simple shop tools, basically a vice, something square like a piece of square tube and a drill. I have built several guns in my time, but I have always been in awe at how simple and functional the AK is. Someone once told me, cleverness is when a person takes something complicated and makes it as simple as possible. The AK is an absolute embodiment of that concept.

Totally my opinion - What does legal mean? It’s a relative term just like everything else. Yes there are cultures where “normal” definition of legal might not be adhered to but thst dosnt mean they don’t have laws. In some sense they live (and die ) by their own set of rules. And those rules and laws are as legal we might think of legal things in the west.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com