James, does anybody still use zip guns in Harm City?

Lately Gunwatch has featured a number of articles on homemade guns being used by criminals in other countries, particularly Brazil, Australia and Canada. They range from crude zip guns to well crafted submachineguns (SMG) equipped with silencers.

It got me to wondering if any of the urban youth gangs in America still employ homemade guns on occasion. Given that they were once as much a feature of urban youth gang rumbles as switchblade knives, brass knuckles, chains and car antenna whips . Of course since at least the 1980’s the youth gangs have been awash in cash from the sale of crack and as such have had no problem affording the store-bought stuff. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA 68) was in part intended to disarm street criminals by outlawing the manufacture or importation for interstate sale of a certain class of small to medium caliber, concealable handgun dubbed the “Saturday night special” ( a satirical play on the Colt brand names “Police Special” and “Detective Special”). They were generally characterized by frames made of an inexpensive and easy to cast zinc alloy. These frames lacked durability, but then the SNS was intended to be carried much, displayed as a warning when the occasion demanded it and actually fired very little. As the passing years have demonstrated the GCA 68 accomplished little more than improve the quality of firearms in the hands of the gang bangers. Now we have handguns made with plastic polymer frames that are stronger than steel (like the Glock). Nearly all the firearms in the illegal market today are either stolen or obtained through illegal “strawman” purchases from a gun store. Federally licensed gun dealers are under intense scrutiny by the government, so a licensed gun dealer doing business “off the books” these days is so rare as to be remarkable. Here in the Midwest both state and federal prosecutors in the metro areas have, in their own words, admitted they are reluctant to pursue strawman purchase cases because they involve an exceptional amount of paper work to prove AND they just end up jailing “a lot of black people” (look up the Great White Defendant Syndrome). The blacks who get convicted will typically be the pathetic “idiot” relatives of a gang-banger who were duped or pressured into making the gun purchase for the banger. So typically the only time a prosecutor will be motivated to pursue a strawman purchase case is if a cop was shot with the straw purchased gun.

-Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy,

I have not heard of a zipgun used in the Baltimore area in 20 years. Excuse me, but “we be fo real niggas up in here, cracka!”

Thanks so much for this and the other work you’re doing, Jeremy.

Home made guns are turning up quite bit in Australia now: (Deadly D.I.Y: Homemade guns hit Sydney streets in record numbers)

A homemade 9mm pistol made out of easy-to-buy items.

THEY’RE known as “junk guns”, deadly firearms made from a jumble of copper pipes, bike parts, old power tools, and held together by cable ties.

Record numbers of homemade guns made from materials easily sourced at local hardware stores are hitting the streets, with teenage boys in the city’s southwest and outlaw bikie gangs the prime market.

The weapons are made using instructions found ¬online and include so-called pen and slam guns that use pipes to replicate a shotgun.

They account for about 10 per cent of all firearms being seized by police.

Firearms Squad commander Mick Plotecki said some pen guns sold for as ¬little as $100 and were often as dangerous to the user as they were to other people.

“Most of them are very unsafe weapons, they can blow up in your hand,” he said.

“They are only single-shot pen pistols but one shot is enough. One shot can kill somebody.

“They’re easily concealable and people that make them sell them for relatively small prices.

“Good criminals have the connections to get existing guns but on the lower end, those guns aren’t available so they move to the next thing. We’re seeing it as a growing trend.

“We seem to be seeing it more than we have previously. It does seem to be younger males going for these pen guns, a lot of them in south-western Sydney.

“They seem to be very popular with outlaw motorcycle gang members and also some of the customers are younger males who buy them for various reasons which we can’t explain.

“That’s a concern that they can source guns in the first place, and the fact that people make them and sell them.”

Mr Plotecki said that while there was no evidence the homemade guns had been used by local extremists, it was a concern for the future.

“There is no evidence of that but the community should be aware of them,” he said.

University of South ¬Australia senior lecturer Kesten Green, who specialises in gun control, said criminals making their own guns made “economic sense” because it was cheaper than importing them.

“If they can’t obtain them legally it is much cheaper (to make them) than importing them,” Dr Green said.

“I would imagine the cost of making them would be relatively low.”

(West Australia Police Seize Homemade Machine Guns in Perth -2013)

Check out the homemade Aussie SMG in this video! Outwardly the weapon’s profile resembles the Danish Madsen SMG. It appears to function as well as the factory produced stuff.

(Jeweler Angelos Koots admits to making sub-machine guns at his Seven Hills home and supplying them to bikie groups)

(Homemade Canadian Submachine Guns and Silencers)

(Home built MAC-11 type submachine gun seized in Alberta Canada

A couple of years ago the headless corpse of a victim of this gang warfare was dumped in an alley in Edmonton: (Decapitated murder victim ID'd: reports)

Vancouver, B.C. has seen much gang warfare in the 21st Century:

The Vancouver suburb of Surrey even had its own version of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre not too long ago. The Surrey Six Murders:

(MAC-10 Submachinegun)

(Homemade Brazilian Submachineguns)

P.S. Strictly speaking you can legally make your own gun in the USA, provided you aren’t making it for sale and provided you are not prohibited from possessing firearms because of a felony conviction or a court order, etc. It also most not be full-automatic, a sawed off shotgun (barrel length of less than 18 inches and overall length of less than 26 inches), a short barreled rifle (under 16 inch barrel length), silencer equipped or a military style semi-automatic rifle or shotgun assembled from imported parts. Muzzleloaders are of course exempt from most restrictions. Keep in mind that states vary considerably in their gun laws. For example, what’s legal to posses in Pennsylvania could get you thrown in prison just across the Delaware River in New Jersey: