The supply chain of home made guns

 The NYT has the story:

When a Glock Isn’t a Glock: The History of the Pistol Found With Luigi Mangione
Part of the gun that the police believe was used to kill the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare was made by a 3D printer using a popular design found online. By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Aric Toler

"Homemade firearms have existed for centuries, and fully 3D-printed firearms have been around since 2013, made and used largely by hobbyists in the United States. Laws governing homemade 3D-printed firearms vary by state. At the federal level, the Biden administration has proposed regulating components used in homemade guns as firearms. More than 25,000 privately made firearms were recovered in “domestic seizures” in 2022, according to the Department of Justice.

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"In general, 3D-printed firearms fall largely into three categories. There are fully 3D-printed guns, like the Liberator pistol, an early design released in 2013 that was quickly attacked by the State Department for export violations; these are made of plastic and use few metal parts. The second category, known as hybrid designs, are made of 3D-printed components as well as off-the-shelf parts that are not otherwise related to firearms. The third category — which includes the Chairmanwon Remix — are commonly called kit guns.

"For kit guns, “you’re printing the frame of a Glock or the lower receiver of an AR-15, and everything else is, you know, normally commercially available firearms components,” Charimanwon said.

"The pistol recovered from Mr. Mangione was not made up entirely of 3D-printed parts; it had metal components as well. Those include the slide — the top portion of the gun — and the barrel, which appeared in the photos to be threaded, allowing a suppressor or silencer to be attached. The pistol’s magazine, which can often carry more than 10 cartridges and retails for around $25, appeared to have been store-bought.

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“Three-D-printed weapons can be fabricated and assembled by individuals with little or no technical expertise,” said Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher for the Small Arms Survey. “Three-D-printed weapons have not yet supplanted factory-built weapons in criminal circles, but if and when they do, we will have to completely rethink our approach to small arms control.”