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.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    possession and sharing of its instruction manual is being charged as a terrorist offense.

    Oi! You got a loisence for that PDF?!?

    • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        1 month ago

        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.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Never was illegal also most of the things inside are bullshit and don’t work.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          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.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                Yeah, I’m guessing THEY™ took one look at the Anarchist’s Cookbook and said, “yeah, we don’t need to bother.”

                I think the person on this page puts it well:

                Some people claim that the CIA/FBI/author/whoever sabotaged the Anarchist Cookbook to blow up would-be anarchists or to make the recipes fail. However, there is little evidence to support this theory. I find it much more likely that the errors are just due to incompetence. Note that many of the above errors (e.g. wrong symbol for arsenic, wrong formula for alcohol) don’t sabotage anything but are just stupid errors. I would expect that if it were deliberately sabotaged, it wouldn’t have errors like these.

                http://files.righto.com/anarchy/index.html

                On top of that, the author thinks the book should no longer be in print because of what it’s been used for.

                In 2000, Powell posted a message on the book’s Amazon page. He wrote the Cookbook, he said, when he was 19 “and the Vietnam war and the so-called ‘counter culture movement’ were at their height. I was involved in the anti-war movement and attended numerous peace rallies and demonstrations. The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in … The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change. I no longer agree with this.” That teenage action clearly haunts him, and has had bigger consequences than he could ever have foreseen.

                https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/dec/18/why-anarchist-cookbook-author-william-powell-off-shelves

                He wrote it when he was 19. Of course it’s full of errors.

      • MrZee@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        The Anarchist’s Cookbook is actually legal to possess (and buy and sell). It’s a common misconception that it is illegal. In the US, at least.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    … seemingly crafted from plastic and Lego parts.

    They thought the Picatinny rail was Lego.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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      I’m saying that any implemented gun control would become easier and easier to bypass. Hopefully our extremists aren’t smart enough.

  • anonymous111@lemmy.world
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    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?

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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      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.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      Yeah, it’s only half of the puzzle. A quick and easy way to produce ammo casings would be needed if you really wanted to bootstrap your own guns (for good or evil).

      Otherwise, make a flintlock musket maybe?

  • halfapage@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Thanks Ivan, we’ll soon need fucking licenses for CAD licenses and 3D printers, all thanks to you.

    Making lethal stuff gives you a boner? Keep it to yourself, don’t ruin peoples lives and hobbies.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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.

    Hey, that’s good to hear! I guess it is more than just trolling.

  • Media Bias Fact Checker@lemmy.worldB
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    1 month ago
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    Information for New York Times:

    MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
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    Search topics on Ground.News

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/world/europe/ivan-troll-3d-printed-homemade-guns-fgc9.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU4.GT7J.v53wG-jHTevI&smid=url-share

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    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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      Or maybe he’s an irresponsible jackass helping people create untraceable murder weapons that are plastic and thus will never protect anyone from tyranny but will lead to more unsolved crimes and (hopefully) some plastic guns blow up in their face.

      Whom is to say? No matter how thin you make a tortilla, there’s always two sides.

      • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
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        Looks like you didn’t read the post, it’s literally being used by oppressed ethnic minorities in Myanmar against a military dictatorship.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        During WW2, people in Poland mass produced guns out of their bedframes. If you want to make a gun, you need the exact same things as you needed then. 3d printing makes the easy to manufacture parts, you still need the steel ones that aren’t printable. And if you have those, whether you print it or yank a pipe from your bed, it’ll be just as lethal. Not mentioning slamfire shotguns which are a pipe with a nail inside. You can’t control that shit, people will always get one if they want to.