1000 year old technology

Guns are a known technology. Earliest examples date all the way back to nearly 1000 years ago. Yet some people seem to want to try to uninvent them, as shown by the whole stupid kerfluffle around 3D printed guns.

A tad bit Communism Stronk, but I can totally get behind the message of Guns for the People.


A friend of mine and I have a project, to develop the absolute simplest possible semi-auto rifle. I'm talking uzi levels of simple. She had the project initially just as an idle "to see if I can", and grumpy libertarian that I am, I decided that I wanted to develop a version of all of the major firearm types that can be produced in a garage with nothing but some tubing, C clamps, a dremel tool, and a few hand tools. A drill press, proper vice, blowtorch and stuff will be helpful, but the goal is to make them not technically necessary (just nice to have). Of course, it'd also be designed such that with a minor bit of tooling, you could crank them out for next to nothing but the cost of materials.

I've got a workable basic shotgun (built on a slam fire design, but significantly improved for a minor addition of complexity. Can be fired as fast as you could single-load a pump shotgun), the rifle is nearly all done but the making it, all that's left is to work out a design for a handgun (I'm torn between a simplified version of the Hi-Point, or a simplified version of the micro-uzi).

Essentially, I want to do it as a physical incarnation of this lovely post she penned. 
She'd rather stay on the hardware side of guns, not the politics, but sometimes her hand is forced by the powers of stupid people being wrong on the internet, and the world is a better place for it.

If When we get it/them figured out, there shall be patents, an FFL, and plans made available (I'm all for it/them being widely produced, both at home and by other companies, I'd just like the other companies to have to ask permission first, because Capitalism).