Got an idea for a firearm that would be legal to build and serve your needs in a SHTF disaster?
I was just watching a "Build Your AR" type of video, slowly falling asleep to the boring presentation, when my sleepy brain said, "Yo, what if we did THIS?"
"THIS" was take an AR and from it, build a rotating tri-barrel Gatling style minigun... and make it squeeze-powered.
There was a pistol, a Walther I think, made for a German police force, that was a squeeze cocker. What if we expanded on that system a little and made a squeeze-drive system for the drive to spin the barrels and fire the gun? Fit the tri-barrels inside the M-lok barrel shroud of the upper and come up with some type of feed system. Bet I could make it work with rimfires, and maybe some pistol calibers
Quote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 02:11:57 PMGot an idea for a firearm that would be legal to build and serve your needs in a SHTF disaster?
I was just watching a "Build Your AR" type of video, slowly falling asleep to the boring presentation, when my sleepy brain said, "Yo, what if we did THIS?"
"THIS" was take an AR and from it, build a rotating tri-barrel Gatling style minigun... and make it squeeze-powered.
There was a pistol, a Walther I think, made for a German police force, that was a squeeze cocker. What if we expanded on that system a little and made a squeeze-drive system for the drive to spin the barrels and fire the gun? Fit the tri-barrels inside the M-lok barrel shroud of the upper and come up with some type of feed system. Bet I could make it work with rimfires, and maybe some pistol calibers
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJWQ3lOOwi9nyF7Sr1ZRNAHFR2tTnO947x0lP0PsfZ8w&s=10)
You need to join www.weaponsguild.com. These types of conversations go on everyday. Except these crazy bastards actually build the stuff.
They also have plans for firearms you can build in a shtf situation right in your garage. Really interesting forum. A number of professional firearm designers and builders hang out on that forum.
Also happens to be the nicest, most helpful forum I've ever been a part of. And I've been on that forum longer than ZS even. Well over 20 years.
I think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
Quote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
I've shot a P7. Amazing pistols!
Quote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
You're right, that's the one I was thinking of. In my nutty half-asleep brain I sort of crossed it with those flashlights that are squeeze-powered by using gears to drive a little generator. My idea skips the generator but uses the squeeze to drive the barrel rotation, possibly also involving a flywheel.
Quote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 05:01:08 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
You're right, that's the one I was thinking of. In my nutty half-asleep brain I sort of crossed it with those flashlights that are squeeze-powered by using gears to drive a little generator. My idea skips the generator but uses the squeeze to drive the barrel rotation, possibly also involving a flywheel.
Interesting.
So it's like a gatling gun, but instead of a crank, it's a squeeze trigger?
Someone call Mark Serbu and see if he can brew up something like this. Seems to be right up his alley.
Quote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 05:43:49 PMQuote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 05:01:08 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
You're right, that's the one I was thinking of. In my nutty half-asleep brain I sort of crossed it with those flashlights that are squeeze-powered by using gears to drive a little generator. My idea skips the generator but uses the squeeze to drive the barrel rotation, possibly also involving a flywheel.
Interesting.
So it's like a gatling gun, but instead of a crank, it's a squeeze trigger?
Someone call Mark Serbu and see if he can brew up something like this. Seems to be right up his alley.
Marks in Weapons Guild. :)
Quote from: Moab on March 20, 2025, 07:27:10 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 05:43:49 PMQuote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 05:01:08 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
You're right, that's the one I was thinking of. In my nutty half-asleep brain I sort of crossed it with those flashlights that are squeeze-powered by using gears to drive a little generator. My idea skips the generator but uses the squeeze to drive the barrel rotation, possibly also involving a flywheel.
Interesting.
So it's like a gatling gun, but instead of a crank, it's a squeeze trigger?
Someone call Mark Serbu and see if he can brew up something like this. Seems to be right up his alley.
Marks in Weapons Guild. :)
Why am I not surprised by that ?
We ought to invite him over here and see if he'd actually join.
Quote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 07:44:27 PMQuote from: Moab on March 20, 2025, 07:27:10 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 05:43:49 PMQuote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 05:01:08 PMQuote from: 12_Gauge_Chimp on March 20, 2025, 03:40:32 PMI think the squeeze cocking pistol NT2C was thinking of is the old HK P7.
I kind of want one of those along with an MP5 so I can bring my "Guns of Die Hard 1" idea to reality. I'd also need a Beretta 92FS, but that's probably easier to obtain than a P7 or an MP5.
You're right, that's the one I was thinking of. In my nutty half-asleep brain I sort of crossed it with those flashlights that are squeeze-powered by using gears to drive a little generator. My idea skips the generator but uses the squeeze to drive the barrel rotation, possibly also involving a flywheel.
Interesting.
So it's like a gatling gun, but instead of a crank, it's a squeeze trigger?
Someone call Mark Serbu and see if he can brew up something like this. Seems to be right up his alley.
Marks in Weapons Guild. :)
Why am I not surprised by that ?
We ought to invite him over here and see if he'd actually join.
I think I met him a few times at various shows.
Mark Serbu seems like he'd be a good guy to chat with. Pretty sure, though, that a lot of the technical firearm stuff would go way over my head.
Quote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 02:11:57 PMGot an idea for a firearm that would be legal to build and serve your needs in a SHTF disaster?
I was just watching a "Build Your AR" type of video, slowly falling asleep to the boring presentation, when my sleepy brain said, "Yo, what if we did THIS?"
"THIS" was take an AR and from it, build a rotating tri-barrel Gatling style minigun... and make it squeeze-powered.
There was a pistol, a Walther I think, made for a German police force, that was a squeeze cocker. What if we expanded on that system a little and made a squeeze-drive system for the drive to spin the barrels and fire the gun? Fit the tri-barrels inside the M-lok barrel shroud of the upper and come up with some type of feed system. Bet I could make it work with rimfires, and maybe some pistol calibers
This isn't quite there, but I recall seeing a double-barreled AR setup (I don't think it was the Gilboa Snake, though); the gas tubes were crossed over, so that the gas from firing one cycled the bolt for the other, and back and forth. I wonder if you could take something like that and run it with something like a binary trigger -- pull the trigger to fire one, release the trigger to fire the other. I think tying one trigger to two hammers might be the weak point in this system, but if you could get it to work with two, you could probably get it to work with three. Or instead of multiple hammers, if you could work rotating barrels into that gas system somehow, theoretically, you could have even more barrels.
I am only a questionably sane monkey, though, so take it with a grain of salt, and all that.
Quote from: Mr. E. Monkey on March 28, 2025, 08:41:04 AMQuote from: NT2C on March 20, 2025, 02:11:57 PMGot an idea for a firearm that would be legal to build and serve your needs in a SHTF disaster?
I was just watching a "Build Your AR" type of video, slowly falling asleep to the boring presentation, when my sleepy brain said, "Yo, what if we did THIS?"
"THIS" was take an AR and from it, build a rotating tri-barrel Gatling style minigun... and make it squeeze-powered.
There was a pistol, a Walther I think, made for a German police force, that was a squeeze cocker. What if we expanded on that system a little and made a squeeze-drive system for the drive to spin the barrels and fire the gun? Fit the tri-barrels inside the M-lok barrel shroud of the upper and come up with some type of feed system. Bet I could make it work with rimfires, and maybe some pistol calibers
This isn't quite there, but I recall seeing a double-barreled AR setup (I don't think it was the Gilboa Snake, though); the gas tubes were crossed over, so that the gas from firing one cycled the bolt for the other, and back and forth. I wonder if you could take something like that and run it with something like a binary trigger -- pull the trigger to fire one, release the trigger to fire the other. I think tying one trigger to two hammers might be the weak point in this system, but if you could get it to work with two, you could probably get it to work with three. Or instead of multiple hammers, if you could work rotating barrels into that gas system somehow, theoretically, you could have even more barrels.
I am only a questionably sane monkey, though, so take it with a grain of salt, and all that.
The idea
is to have rotating barrels. If it's legal to have binary triggers then it should be legal to have a squeeze trigger that is ratcheted with multiple steps and each step firing the weapon. Pair that with a gear-driven setup to rotate three barrels from the force of the trigger squeeze and you have a manually operated AR Gatling gun
Quote from: NT2C on March 28, 2025, 09:06:13 AMThe idea is to have rotating barrels. If it's legal to have binary triggers then it should be legal to have a squeeze trigger that is ratcheted with multiple steps and each step firing the weapon. Pair that with a gear-driven setup to rotate three barrels from the force of the trigger squeeze and you have a manually operated AR Gatling gun
I get that, I'm just wondering if there's a way to do it that doesn't result in a 15-20 pound trigger pull. :icon_crazy:
If you don't want a gas system
at all, then yeah, I assume you'd have to do something like you're describing. In states that don't like semi-auto, I guess you'd have to do that. I was just thinking that a gas-driven system might be easier.
Quote from: Mr. E. Monkey on March 28, 2025, 09:49:08 AMQuote from: NT2C on March 28, 2025, 09:06:13 AMThe idea is to have rotating barrels. If it's legal to have binary triggers then it should be legal to have a squeeze trigger that is ratcheted with multiple steps and each step firing the weapon. Pair that with a gear-driven setup to rotate three barrels from the force of the trigger squeeze and you have a manually operated AR Gatling gun
I get that, I'm just wondering if there's a way to do it that doesn't result in a 15-20 pound trigger pull. :icon_crazy:
If you don't want a gas system at all, then yeah, I assume you'd have to do something like you're describing. In states that don't like semi-auto, I guess you'd have to do that. I was just thinking that a gas-driven system might be easier.
Make it gas driven and it becomes an NFA item though, and thanks to the GCA 1984 we can't make and sell them. Lessening the trigger pull is easy if we pre-load it with springs or pullys. Just as your garage door is easy to open thanks to spring pre-loading.
Quote from: NT2C on March 28, 2025, 10:37:03 AMQuote from: Mr. E. Monkey on March 28, 2025, 09:49:08 AMQuote from: NT2C on March 28, 2025, 09:06:13 AMThe idea is to have rotating barrels. If it's legal to have binary triggers then it should be legal to have a squeeze trigger that is ratcheted with multiple steps and each step firing the weapon. Pair that with a gear-driven setup to rotate three barrels from the force of the trigger squeeze and you have a manually operated AR Gatling gun
I get that, I'm just wondering if there's a way to do it that doesn't result in a 15-20 pound trigger pull. :icon_crazy:
If you don't want a gas system at all, then yeah, I assume you'd have to do something like you're describing. In states that don't like semi-auto, I guess you'd have to do that. I was just thinking that a gas-driven system might be easier.
Make it gas driven and it becomes an NFA item though, and thanks to the GCA 1984 we can't make and sell them. Lessening the trigger pull is easy if we pre-load it with springs or pullys. Just as your garage door is easy to open thanks to spring pre-loading.
That should only be the case if it's not semi-automatic though, right? I'm talking about using the gas to rotate the barrel along with cycling the bolt -- which it already does in a semi-automatic rifle. This would still be one round fired per function of the trigger.
This is a semi-automatic firearm, no NFA issue. (https://silver-shadow.com/shop/gilboa/dbrsnake/) What I'm talking about is basically this, but with a binary trigger (still semi-auto) instead of two separate triggers. Instead of firing two rounds from one barrel, it would fire one round from each -- one on the trigger pull (single function) and one on the release (single function). Mechanically, it might be a mess, but legally, I don't think there is any reason you couldn't do this same thing with 3 or more barrels. Each is fired by a single action of the trigger.
The only difference between that and what I was talking about in that last post is that you would also be using the gas action of the semi-auto to rotate the barrels as well. You're still firing one and only one round per function of the trigger.
The bigger issue I see with this, aside from the complexity, is that in an AR, in particular, it seems like the moving barrels could put a LOT of strain on the locking lugs on the bolt, as they'd probably end up helping to stop and hold the barrel in place each time it fires.
I always thought it would be cool if someone made a dual caliber survival rifle. But with a better caliber set. Like .308 and .22lr. or something common. I have not researched them. Just seen them from time to time. And the calibers always seem like some weird hard to find combo. But maybe an extra AR upper is the answer? Idk. Can you run a . 22lr upper on an AR10 lower?
Idk. I always think in terms of survival or shtf. I wish that lightweight Rugar AR10 (I forget the name. SAR or something?) hadn't sucked so bad. And I think a few got the glitch worked out last time I looked. But not sure. Iirc it was a 6lb AR10 or something like that? And fairly accurate. But I think it has a feed problem. Only $800. But mostly cause of the bad reputation I suspect. So a less expensive lightweight AR10 or similar would be cool. With a matching lightweight .22lr upper.
- I always wanted to construct a modern westernized variant of the TP-82 Soyuz Cosmonaut Survival Gun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82), complete with the machete stock and survival kit. I'm thinking .410 / .45 LC for the shotgun, and 5.56 NATO for the rifle barrel.
- I want to try my hands at experimenting with a semi-automatic variant of the Heym SR30 Ball-Bearing Lock (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-44H321Bsg), the unlocking being done by a moving spring-loaded weight. This would create a free-floated fixed barrel without any additional holes, with a recoil-operated, non-rotating, completely locking (as opposed to delayed blowback) bolt. Unfortunately, there are about a gazillion operating and locking mechanisms for semi auto rifles that are technologically optimized and commercially viable. No one is going to fund experiments of this kind.
Quote from: Moab on March 29, 2025, 07:22:19 PMI always thought it would be cool if someone made a dual caliber survival rifle. But with a better caliber set. Like .308 and .22lr. or something common. I have not researched them. Just seen them from time to time. And the calibers always seem like some weird hard to find combo. But maybe an extra AR upper is the answer? Idk. Can you run a . 22lr upper on an AR10 lower?
Idk. I always think in terms of survival or shtf. I wish that lightweight Rugar AR10 (I forget the name. SAR or something?) hadn't sucked so bad. And I think a few got the glitch worked out last time I looked. But not sure. Iirc it was a 6lb AR10 or something like that? And fairly accurate. But I think it has a feed problem. Only $800. But mostly cause of the bad reputation I suspect. So a less expensive lightweight AR10 or similar would be cool. With a matching lightweight .22lr upper.
You might find the "Hydra" interesting. https://www.hydraweaponry.com/
Holy shit! You are so right.
I'm in love with their bullpup too! Damn.
Screenshot_20250725_182751_Chrome.jpg
https://www.hydraweaponry.com/product/bmp-23/
And the Hydra is crazy. 2 minutes to hand swap a barrel in a different caliber.
Screenshot_20250725_183028_Chrome.jpg
https://www.hydraweaponry.com/product/hydra-survival-package-4-caliber-kit/
They lack a lot of documentation and demonstration tho. This guy could really benefit from a marketing team.
Like what is the weight savings between this and separate uppers? .308 and .22lr in this would be a game changer. But it looks like .308 and 9mm is the best it offers.
But that bullpup?! With an AK operating system in 5.56 bullpup design. It looks so simple, compact and lightweight in a 16 inch barrel! Some rail would be nice though. But man. What a cool rifle.
Why don't they have some videos of the quick swap barrels? Or the bmp 23 in action? There's a little more info in their downloadable catalog. And I love how clean the website is. But they are losing an opportunity to market these better. I can see the advantage but they don't point out any of the advantageous in their website.
But very cool designs.
Iirc nobody really makes a reliable .22lr AR upper. If someone could perfect that. For say an AR 10. Or similar larger caliber. That would be a survival sweet spot.
And I can never remember the list of uppers that work on an AR-15 interchangeably.
Thanks for posting this!
I wouldn't mind having a real-life version of the revolver shotguns Mouse used after the deja vu scene in The Matrix.
I've also been thinking about a rifle with an AR-15-style gas system but with AR-18 style guide rods and springs instead of a buffer, tube, and spring. Imagine taking an AR-15 BCG and cutting the back off even with the head of the firing pin, and it would be pretty close to what I envision. Why stick with an AR-15 style gas system? Because the gas vents are on the bolt carrier, and the firing gases blow all the crap away from the ejection port as the bolt cycles. The reason for the spring and guide-rod assembly from an AR-18? To build the rifle into a workable bullpup or build it conventional with a true folding stock.
Olympic Arms did something similar with the OA-98 pistol that came out during the national Assault Weapons Ban. The spring setup in that thing is a nightmare though.
"All I ask of a firearm is reliability, accuracy, and the capability to drop a god at 800 meters." - text of a button I got at a con and still have somewhere around here
Fantasy firearms? Sure, I'll bite.
M1903A3 and M1 Garand in 7.62x51 NATO that take the same detachable magazine. M1 Carbine that takes either 9mm or 5.56x45 NATO. Mini-14 that takes AR15 mags. An actual M14 or FAL that takes 5.56x45 NATO with AR15 mags.
Quote from: Crimson_Phoenix on September 23, 2025, 09:46:01 PMFantasy firearms? Sure, I'll bite.
M1903A3 and M1 Garand in 7.62x51 NATO that take the same detachable magazine. M1 Carbine that takes either 9mm or 5.56x45 NATO. Mini-14 that takes AR15 mags. An actual M14 or FAL that takes 5.56x45 NATO with AR15 mags.
The Imbel SAR-4800 Sporter is an FAL chambered in 5.56 NATO and takes AR mags via a mag well adapter.