What additive manufacturing did, starting around 2013, was collapse the barrier to firearms production almost completely. A $200 printer, a spool of plastic filament, and a digital file can now produce a functional firearm.

That cost figure is the thing people keep glossing over. We're not talking about a machinist's setup or even a decent reloading bench investment — we're talking less than a range bag with optic. The barrier isn't the hardware anymore.

The technology will break gun control. People don't like to register their firearms any more. They don't trust the government.
— Cody Wilson, 2013

Say what you want about Wilson — and there's plenty to say — but that statement wasn't wrong as a prediction. The State Department ordered the files pulled two days after release. They were already on The Pirate Bay before the takedown order was processed. That's not a firearms story, that's a physics story. You can't un-ring that bell.

The FGC-9 was "the easiest, cheapest, most accessible, and reliable semi-automatic DIY firearm" available.

The jump from the Liberator — a single-shot proof of concept that gave out after eight rounds — to a reliable 9mm semi-automatic carbine built from hardware store steel tubing happened in about seven years. For context, that's roughly how long it took me to dial in my long-range load. The design iteration in this community moves fast.

A drop-in auto sear costs less than $2 in filament and can be printed in under ten minutes on a low-grade consumer printer.

This is where the conversation at the LGS counter usually goes sideways. People conflate the whole ecosystem — legitimate competition shooters printing trigger guards, collectors making range toys — with the MCD problem. Those are genuinely different things with different legal weights, and it matters that we don't lump them together.

The FGC-9 section is worth sitting with — specifically the detail that it was designed from the ground up for European jurisdictions where factory barrel components are regulated. That's not an American story at all. That's what happens when the design intent is to route around specific legal frameworks.

What's your actual read on where printed firearms fit in the broader conversation about home gunsmithing — do you see a meaningful line between printing a frame for a parts kit build and something like the FGC-9, or is it all the same animal to you?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team