There goes gun control. “After an attempted gang murder in the French city of Marseille last year, the police found what appeared to be a toy assault rifle, seemingly crafted from plastic and Lego parts. ‘But the weapon was lethal,’ Col. Hervé Pétry of the national gendarmerie recalled.”
FGC is an abbreviation that represents what its creators think of gun control. Nine is for the 9-millimeter bullet it fires.
Mr. Elik, in his email to The Times, said it was wrong to focus on “European cops complaining about a small number of guns being recovered,” and shootings in which nobody was injured, “rather than the gun’s use as a tool of liberation.”
Anyone with a commercial 3D printer, hundreds of dollars in materials, some metalworking skills and plenty of patience could become a gun owner.
While countless 3D-printed guns have been designed and circulated on the internet, international law enforcement officials say that the FGC-9 is by far the most common. The gun is so desirable among far-right extremists in Britain that the possession and sharing of its instruction manual is being charged as a terrorist offense.
Ivan the Troll’s media message is that this is hypocrisy. Western governments, he has noted, have armed the world’s insurgents and authoritarian leaders with weapons of war. “I’m sharing a computer file,” he said in a 2022 interview. “If I’m guilty of sharing information, what does that make them?”
And while the FGC-9 has become a staple with some of the world’s far-right extremists, it has also been embraced by insurgent groups that are fighting Myanmar’s military junta, which has committed atrocities on its own people.
“A lot of people use them,” said a fighter there who goes by the call sign 3-D. He said the FGC-9 was often used for personal defense rather than for combat because its design left it susceptible to jamming in the harsh jungle environment.
possession and sharing of its instruction manual is being charged as a terrorist offense.
Oi! You got a loisence for that PDF?!?
It’s not a new thing, I remember something called the anarchists cookbook (I think) that wasn’t too hard to find twenty years ago which is illegal to possess.
Edit: it is illegal to possess in the UK, apparently it’s legal in some other countries
Maybe in Britland, but not in any country with civil rights and respectable free speech laws.
The Anarchist Cookbook isn’t isn’t illegal. Hell, the US government publishes TM 31-210, a field manual on improvised munitions that goes a lot further than the Cookbook ever did.
Never was illegal also most of the things inside are bullshit and don’t work.
Depended on the copy you got - the counter intelligence response to the anarchists cookbook was to flood networks with versions with subtle but important errors that would either cause premature explosions or the final result to be inert.
It’s a common counter intelligence tactic to bury harmful information in a deluge of misinformation.
… seemingly crafted from plastic and Lego parts.
They thought the Picatinny rail was Lego.
What gun control?
-Me, an American
I’ve never really understood the 3D gun printing use case.
Yes, they can fire bullets but bullets are illegal where guns are illegal.
Am I missing something?
There were cases where decommissioned guns could be bought in the UK (firing pins removed). Gangs were recommissioning these guns by adding the removed components.
However, where do the bullets come from?
Article doesn’t mention. I guess you either get them from the $100 electrochemical machine you bought to make the pressure-bearing parts or attempt to pay an undercover police officer for it, which was the way the only British dude arrested tried to obtain the guns.
Edit: That, or from a state where you don’t need a permit to just buy ammo.
Machine is borderline overselling it.
The ECM process works by pumping water containing an electrolyte through a metal part. When a current is applied to the water, exposed metal gets slowly etched away.
What these groups are doing is starting with high pressure hydraulic pipe and inserting 3D printed jigs that are basically a negative mask to bore out the pipe to their desired diameter, cut the chamber, machine in rifling, etc, with the end product being a functional barrel. As far as I’m aware, so far this has been limited to pistol caliber cartridges; rifle calibers are a step up in pressure and come with a whole host of different engineering challenges.
The “machine” is really nothing more than a bucket, an aquarium/pond pump, and a desktop power supply. It’s honestly a really clever approach to the problem from an engineering standpoint.
Ivan the Troll’s media message is that this is hypocrisy. Western governments, he has noted, have armed the world’s insurgents and authoritarian leaders with weapons of war. “I’m sharing a computer file,” he said in a 2022 interview. “If I’m guilty of sharing information, what does that make them?”
- “Owning hypocrites” is hardly a good reason to endanger the general population
- Other people being worse doesn’t make you any better or less guilty
- Sacrificing peoples lives to send a message kinda does make you a terrorist
If this was his intention that is. It seems so given his nickname, but maybe he just got famous and used his chance to come up with some bullshit.
