In 1991 the Croatian parliament voted to seceded from what was formerly the ‘Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’, leading to armed conflict between Croatian and Serbian government forces as well as various paramilitary groups formed along ethnic lines. [Read More…]
One cannot suppress a certain sense of nostalgia at the thought of being forced to hand over one’s Air Jordan’s by a gallant gentleman of the favela wielding one of these contraptions, many of the examples below being whittled from wood and held together [Read More…]
Pictured are two dirt simple improvised ‘zip guns’ seized by police which were the subject of an officer safety notice. The weapons have been constructed by screwing together standard pipe fittings which can be obtained for a total of around $5 at any local [Read More…]
A police officer in Beong-dong, northern Seoul was shot and killed Wednesday during a standoff with a man (Seong Byung-dae, 45) who was also kitted up with body armor and had previously attacked a neighbor with a hammer. The firearm or multiple firearms used by the [Read More…]
Last month police in Brazil raided an illicit workshop in the city of Belo Horizonte which was producing submachine guns for large scale criminal distribution, each gun apparently being sold for 3,500 BRL (around $1000 US) through a WhatsApp group. A 68 year old man who [Read More…]
Earlier this month two gunmen burst into a restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market, killing four people and wounding six more. The death count could have been much higher had one of the attacker’s weapons not reportedly jammed, CCTV footage appearing to show [Read More…]
This ordinary looking axe wouldn’t look out of place carried in any rural setting. Sliding down the metal collar below the head however reveals a .22 caliber break barrel single shot mechanism cleverly concealed inside the bored out wooden handle. The story behind [Read More…]
Here’s a very neat little takedown gun seized by police in Italy which is entirely handmade, fits in a backpack and is chambered for either .22lr or .22 hornet. Intended varmint may or may not have included local magistrates.
Sent in to TFB is another concept design for an ‘afternoon’ DIY submachine gun of particular crudeness and expediency. The majority of components are laminated together from readily available square section steel tubing, owing to its namesake. Apparently the [Read More…]
Pictured is an interesting improvised 9mm firearm being sold within criminal circles in Brazil. The entire trigger group / lower is from a standard paintball marker, allowing for a more useful semi-automatic (open-bolt) operation. A clever feature is the use of standard [Read More…]
A 60 year old man in Japan was recently arrested for building homemade guns of his own design. According to him it was his hobby for the last 40 years. He used scrap anvils as a source of hardened steel and crafted his own ammunition using toy caps and casted lead [Read More…]
Here’s a humorously tasteful take on a crude Vietcong-esque single-shot pistol design. All it’s missing is an intricate engraving depicting the last of the buffalo.
A recent gun amnesty in Mexico offering quick cash and groceries saw a number of interesting homemade and modified firearms turned in. Perhaps the jewel of the haul was a very nicely made .22lr revolving rifle: In contrast, a trash bag full of zip guns was handed in, an [Read More…]
It doesn’t help that a large number of submachine guns churned out in the garages of Mexican drug cartel ‘engineering departments’ point the finger at the USA as their country of origin. You’d think that these people would know that there are [Read More…]
Pictured is a homemade submachine seized by police during a raid which also uncovered a suspected meth lab. The weapon itself is very obviously based on a design described in the infamous Expedient Homemade Firearms series of manuals published by British author P.A [Read More…]
A recent ‘gun turn in’ sponsored by Newport Police Department spurred on local gun collectors to make a small profit by turning in unwanted junk firearms and also grabbing up a few bargains themselves. Merely 22 minutes into the four hour event the [Read More…]
The below are machine pistols of a design that were being produced and distributed by criminal networks in Sweden. Apparently specifications for many of the parts were simply sent off to various machine shops and ordered as ‘boat components’. All examples [Read More…]
Some glorious individual decided to take a duffel bag full of improvised slam-fire shotguns (of legal length) to a local gun buyback which was offering $50 for each gun handed in. Unfortunately on this occasion the officer manning the table was apparently [Read More…]
A number of factories raided by police near the Uttar Pradesh/Haryana boarder in India appear to have been producing copies of the Jaco Western pistol, a popular DIY design published in 1972 and sold via mail order in the USA. Many more Indian homemade pistols can be [Read More…]
Homemade firearms have long featured strongly in Indian criminology. Known locally as Kattas or tamanchas, these crude handmade pistols account for up to 30% of firearms related crime. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, their use is continuing an upward [Read More…]
Police in Sydney, Australia have arrested a suspected manufacturer and supplier of pen guns, an increasingly popular weapon among Australia’s world famous gasoline marauding biker gangs. The examples seized are extremely minimal in design, the suspected culprit [Read More…]
As previously delved into, a seemingly endless variety of these are regularly emerging, some of factory quality, others of bedroom quality. A very crudely made model recently trending in numbers, sometimes fitted with a barrel made from a section of brass hex [Read More…]
A development in improvised weaponry spearheaded by South America’s drug cartel armorers has been the blow-back operated open-bolt automatic rifle. The simple solution to the usual intricacies of a typical assault rifle’s locking, delay or gas operation is [Read More…]
The recent political upheaval in Egypt has fueled demand for cheap weapons for personal defense giving way to a variety of locally produced guns. Most commonly seen are patterns for simple homemade single shot shotguns and pistols circulating [Read More…]
The new boss of the Firearms and Organized Crime Squad has revealed that at least 10% of firearms seized by police in NSW are homemade. “Supt Plotecki said there was anecdotal evidence that outlaw motorcycle gangs were targeting people who have the skills to make [Read More…]
Two homebuilt pistols were seized among other firearms on Tuesday by police in Sydney. They appear to have plastic (or perhaps aluminum) lower receivers with angular magazine wells. Both examples appear very well made. VIDEO – Illegal firearms seized by Sydney [Read More…]
Not quite – though as this recent article points out, there do appear to be increasing numbers of staplers converted into fairly advanced zip guns being confiscated worldwide. The common double action stapler is highly modular, regularly seen trivially adapted to [Read More…]
Pictured is an interesting display at The Israel Defense Forces History Museum in Tel Aviv, featuring crude Sten gun copies among many other improvised firearms used around the time of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. Also featured are some 12 gauge revolving drum shotguns [Read More…]
Australia’s garage-gun-fest continues with a fresh seizure of M11 submachine-gun copies reportedly produced by a jeweler, admittedly supplying up to 100 of the homemade weapons to local gangs.