Expedient Homemade Firearms
Expendient Homemade Firearms is a series of two books written and released by English self-taught gun maker and gun rights activist P.A. Luty, primarily in protest of the United Kingdom's sweeping gun control legislation of the 1990's.
Philip Luty took a tough philosophical approach to the individual right to own firearms. Another issue was the way that firearms are actually classified/legislated in the United Kingdom. For example, in the United States, "functional" pressure-bearing parts of the gun (eg barrel, bolt assemly and so on), are considered "firearms". Rather, the receiver of the gun, or in layman's terms, "the frame on which the gun is built" is what is considered the gun. This is not the case in the United Kingdom, where instead the receiver of a gun is essentially unlegislated. Rather, the pressure-bearing components like the barrel are what their laws consider "the gun".
Luty realized something. That to truly ban firearms, common items like pipes, sheet metal and so on, would all need to be banned. Unless this were to occur, the only thing needed for anyone to construct a firearm, would be to have basic knowledge on their function. As a result, he authored his two volumes of "Expedient Homemade Firearms", and constructed his own 9mm submachine gun, which is now commonly known as the "Luty SMG". Philip Luty was later arrested, both for constructing an illegal firearm, as well as for publishing his guide on how to do it, which is illegal in the U.K. due to a lack of freedom of speech. Along with Luty's protesting of firearm regulations, his Expedient Homemade Firearms books were just as much a protest against restrictions on speech in the United Kingdom.
When arrested, police had to essentially verify that what he made was in fact a firearm. Despite the crude constructions of Luty's submachine gun, he proved his own theory correct. His cheaply made machine gun, constructed from parts common at a local hardware store, did in fact function. The judge admitted that Luty had no criminal intent.
More information on these books, as well as other designs by Luty, can be found at: TheHomeGunsmith.com
