March 8, 2022 • 29 mins
We discuss the history of homemade guns in liberatory movements, and meet two fighters who battled the Burmese government.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is me and
mar printing The Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms,
regular people all over the world have had the same
basic idea, maybe if I made myself a gun, the
government wouldn't be able to be such a dick to me. Historically,
this has had little impact on the willingness of governments
to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun
(00:26):
manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a
gun in your home was really no different from making
it in a shop, as long as you had the
proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on
their own and were best fired in a volley by
a shitload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were
extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some
poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a
(00:49):
threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield
prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fuel
lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology
led to a change in warfare and helped to change society.
As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle.
They required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity.
(01:11):
Nations and peoples without the know how our infrastructure were
at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came
into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways
to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity
their foes enjoyed. Indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often
consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron.
(01:34):
In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in
South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and
Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the
French during the Cochin China Campaign of eighteen sixty two.
American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler fortifications in
the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the months that
(01:55):
led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the
men who fought to create the United States busy themselves
building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities to
resist the English. This trend has never really stopped in warfare.
The day before we recorded this, James, my partner in
this series, sent me a screen grab from a live
stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for AK forty
(02:16):
sevens on a three D printer. Firearms manufactured outside the
arms industry have played a role in every conflict of
the modern era, but as you probably guessed, they have
had the greatest influence in the little wars of colonialism.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms ownership in
their colonies except the individuals and ethnic groups that adopted
its local enforces. Since most of these places had never
developed their own industrial base from arms industry, colonial rebellions
often relied on homemade weapons in their early stages, along
with modern firearms pilfered by deserting local soldiers. Where domestic
(02:53):
productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out of their
way to relocate it, along with the profit it generation,
to the metropol All were reflected on this in his
novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century, the Indians
cast guns that are at any rate up to the
European standard. Now, after we've been in India one hundred
(03:14):
and fifty years. You can't make so much as a
brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among the colonizers,
being armed became almost a synonym for being a man.
This was particularly true for the colonial police forces and militaries,
but it was also true domestically. Most people are broadly
familiar with the u S. Second Amendment the robust gun
(03:36):
culture that it's spawned, but during the heighther colonialism, English
citizens are also free to arm themselves. In nineteen hundred,
Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne, Cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a
speech in which he claimed he would laud the day
when there was a rifle in every cottage. In England,
firearms were utterly and restricted at this point. The first
(03:59):
chaine to this came in nineteen oh three with the
first law that required a permit to carry a handgun
and restricted children from buying guns. Still, firearms were widely
available until a red panic gripped the nation in nineteen
nineteen following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Across the ocean
in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly restricted, where
(04:23):
orwell himself would learn what it was to fire a
rifle at someone who shot back. Armed unions and working
people served as the only bullwark to a military coup.
In nineteen thirty six, in Madrid, one officer opened his
armory to the union militias, but another refused to hand
over for the bolts for the guns they had been issued.
In Barcelona, where the anarchist left had a long tradition
(04:45):
of armed political violence, the coup was repelled by workers
with guns, and a general leading troops there was imprisoned
and executed. The same pattern played out all across the
country in July nineteen thirty six, when the military rose
up to topple the elected government. In the cities where
the government opened the armories to the people, the coup
(05:07):
was repelled. In the cities where the government did not,
the coup succeeded. Reflecting on this in nineteen forty one,
or w Wait, the totalitarian state can do great things,
but there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot
give the factory work or a rifle and tell him
to take it home and keep it in his bedroom.
(05:28):
That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or
working class flat is a symbol of democracy. It's a
job to see that it stays there.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Despite Orwell's please. The years that followed the Second World
War led to greater restrictions of the ability of the
public to arm itself. By the nineteen fifties, carrying any
weapon for self defense was illegal. Semi automatic center fire
arms were banned in nineteen eighty eight, and pistols were
banned in nineteen ninety six after a mass shooting killed
sixteen children in Dunblane. This was all utterly infuriating to
(05:58):
a man named Philip A.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Looty.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Loody, born in nineteen sixty five grew up on a
farm in West Yorkshire, England. We don't have a tremendous
amount of detail about his upbringing, but by the time
he was in his early thirties he'd become a committed
crusader for an unrestricted right to bear arms. A skilled
machinist with a well equipped shop, Loody began the long
process of learning how to craft homemade firearms. Soon he
(06:24):
was building semi and fully automatic weapons. Now these were
not military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled, which made
them terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be crafted from
widely available things like sheet metal, washers and screws. The
person assembling a looty gun would need to be a
skilled craftsman, but they would not need access to welding rigs, forges,
(06:46):
or rather expensive industrial equipment. Loody published a book Expedient
Homemade Firearms, The nine millimeters Submachine Gun in nineteen ninety
eight through Paladin Press. In the late nineteen nineties, Paladin
was one one of the places you could go to
mail order fringe political literature and guides for stuff like
trapping human beings or disabling the drive system of an
(07:07):
Abrams tank in the United States. Nothing about Loudy's book
was or is illegal, but Phil didn't live in the
United States. He was arrested several times, starting in the
late nineteen nineties when a pair of illegal home built
guns were found on his property. Ludy spent the rest
of his life, which ended in twenty eleven, operating a
website where he raged against gun control. His main argument
(07:30):
was that England was headed for totalitarianism, and like Orwell,
he believed only public ownership of arms could prevent this.
Unlike Orwell, Ludy was firmly on the right wing. He
traced society's problems to quote a combination of political correctness
and anti freedom of speech laws legislation governing how we
speak about such subjects as religion or a person's race
(07:53):
being just two examples. Words and phrases that have been
used for centuries without malice are now insipid in people's mouths,
said to cause a fence by those very same speech police, who,
on the other hand, turned a blind eye to the violence,
foul language, and sexual references blasted daily through our TV
sets of phenomenon that really does cause a fence to
many people. Luti never succeeded in sparking a renaissance and
(08:16):
civilian arms ownership in the UK, but his ideas were
adopted by organized criminal groups all around the world. In Brazil,
looty guns can go for as much as twenty five
hundred dollars. From twenty eleven to twenty twelve, nearly half
of the submachine guns seized by police in Sao Paulo
were homemade. Most of these arms were certainly used as
(08:36):
tools by drug dealers or other gangsters, but some of
them were surely also the tools of citizens who simply
sought a way to defend themselves in a place with
no real rule of law. Looty guns have long been
popular among motorcycle gangs in Australia, and in October of
twenty nineteen, a fascist terrorist carried out the last of
that year's eight Chan shootings in Hulla, Germany with a lootygun.
(09:00):
His weapons, thankfully did not work well. As a general rule,
looty guns were never going to be of much use
to anyone besides organized criminals. They aren't great in a gunfight,
but you can use them to spray bullets into a
room or a vehicle at close range pretty well. The
year after Phil Loudy died twenty twelve, a fellow named
(09:21):
Cody Wilson decided to carry on his work. Cody felt
three D printing carried the possibility of eventually manufacturing arms
of a quality that might rival traditionally produced guns. He
started simple with a single shot three eighty handgun based
around the old Liberator pistol from World War II. The
Liberator had been a single shot forty five caliber handgun
(09:43):
meant to be dropped into Nazi occupied territories and used
by insurgents to stealthily kill single German soldiers and take
their guns. Cody Wilson described himself as a crypto anarchist,
and when his ideas began to draw attention, he dropped
out of law school to create Defense Distributed. This organization
was dedicated to the development and distribution of plans to
(10:04):
craft three D printed weapons. It used a platform called
deaf Cad to allow users to develop and share blueprints.
In twenty thirteen, the first CAD gun file became available
online to everyone. It was downloaded more than one hundred
thousand times in two days. I'd like to quote now
from an article on the website three D Natives. This
prompted the US government to demand that Defense Distributed remove
(10:26):
the file from their site. What followed is a legal
battle between Cody Wilson and the US government, consisting of
back and forth lawsuits. It lasted five years until in
twenty eighteen, the Trump administration legalized three D printed guns.
The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual assault of
an underage girl and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless,
the organization did not cease to exist without Cody. Today
(10:49):
for a yearly fee of fifty dollars. Users of the
DEFCAD website can access the files containing different designs of
three D printed guns. And I should note here that
it's probably more accurate to say the Trump administration legalized
sharing the plans and printing the files and whatnot of
three D printed guns, not legalized three D printed guns.
Home made firearms have been federally legal in the United
(11:09):
States since forever. The fighting in the courts over all
this has continued ever since, and in twenty nineteen, a
federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD. This sparked the
creation of a new group, de Terence Dispensed, which was
even less centralized. The basic idea was that this would
make them harder to take down via lawsuits or police action.
Not stated was that this might also protect their reputation
(11:32):
from a Cody Wilson's situation. The debate over the legality
of three D printed firearm plans continues on to the
present day, but the development of these arms has continued
at an ever faster pace. The best modern three D
printed arms can even rival conventional guns. It's worth emphasizing
that these are not purely plastic tools. The Liberator pistol
used a metal nail, and the better three D arms
(11:54):
have metal barrels rifled using other craft methods that require
some knowhow, but arguably less than it took to manufacture
a looty gun. Three D printed arms have been confiscated
by police around the world, but in recent months they've
begun to crop up somewhere new in the arms of
revolutionaries fighting against a military coup.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Me and mah Berman before that said relatively strict gun
control laws for decades. When George Orwell was a policeman
there in the nineteen twenties, he may have carried a gun,
but the people he was policing did not. In the
nineteen thirties, the British leaders allowed tat organizations similar to
militias to form and drill, but they weren't allowed to
(12:44):
carry guns. Gun licenses under the dictatorship were issued primarily
to party members, but most were revoked after nineteen eighty
eight failed Pro democracy uprising. The only civilians who were
permitted to own arms through the Chin, the nation's poorest
ethnic group, who allo on guns to hunt for food.
In many cases, these guns were flintlocks that would not
(13:07):
have looked that out of place on the battle Fill
two centuries before. In practice, though, things are very different.
The current conflict is best seen as a flare up
in violence, so it has been ongoing since Britain left
the country in nineteen forty seven. The Tatmador has consistently
used violence against marginalized ethnic groups in the country and
they have consistently taken up arms in response. But unlike
(13:31):
civil wars in the Middle East, wealthy nations in the
West have not been flooding me and Mihle with weapons
for decades, and the various EAOs or ethnic armed organizations
have had to turn to much more unorthodox roots to
arm and equip themselves against the government. To get a
better idea of what things are like on the ground,
we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial
(13:51):
volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought
with the Korrenn people in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, so the ammunition is a constant problem.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
The shortage is absolutely permanent, and yes, there is two
sources for the for the for the weapons, there is
the black market, and the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive.
This is why I would like to have my notebook
(14:27):
here with me, because I think I wrote down the
conversation I had with some leaders of the kind at
the time, asking them why we didn't do more persons.
But we just can't afford it, you know, we just
can't afford it. Like strictly, we we don't well, we
don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of of
(14:51):
operation we need to. So all the operations we did
were always focused on if we could capture some ammunition,
if we could get you like weapons, but especially ammunition.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, so there is you know that that's the second
source of of course, of of weapons.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Uh, let's say source is the it is the captures
of course, then the black markets. The black markets used
to be huge in Cambodia. I don't know, it's the
situation now. That was in the nineties. It was it
was a bit of the Albania of some Systizia at
(15:36):
this time, right.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
And so there is also the other ethnic groups that
receive sometimes say a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Of of arms and ammunition from sponsors, like some of them,
like the Western term is our sponsors by chin that
sort of like the supply of nation. It's pretty good
of webons. I think it's even cartolony and stuff. Then
(16:11):
there is also groups that also produced locally quite good.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
They are on arms, light arms.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Usually, so yeah, these are the different sources of what
comes the OK in the time I was there.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
In the early weeks of the protests. Once it I
claimed clear that non violent demonstrators were going to be
met with state violence, protests began to fashion weapons. First,
they thought soldiers with assault rifles, using catapults and bows
and arrows. It was incredibly brave, but it wasn't very effective.
By the twenty eighth of March, protesters have taken a
(16:54):
step fo A group calling itself the Klay Civil Army
set up barricades. I defended them using pressurized air rifles
that fired marbles and bicycle wheel bearings. The rifles all
used the same design and the same components. They were
based on a video someone found on YouTube, but they
weren't lethal. They helped protesters defend their space, albeit at
(17:18):
great cost. In that first clash, four protesters and four
soldiers were killed. The protesters in Calais were able to
hold out a few days using old hunting rifles and
air guns. The ambush military patrols and they took four
police hostage. Then they exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters.
But in early April, the Tapmador returned to the protest
(17:40):
camp in Calay with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns
and killed eleven people. We must fight back against them.
If not, our generation will face a worse situation than us.
They have no laws, a neighborhood villager who battled the
regime's forces told The Irrawaddy, a local paper. The air
guns spread around the cuntry trey quickly to avoid surveillance.
(18:02):
Protesters talked about cooking up berryani on telegram channels, and
what they meant was desperately scouring the Internet for a
way to fight back and finding a way to make
an air rifle out of a buttane canister, a pipe
and a cigarette lighter, combined with fireworks and smoke bombs
made of potassium nitrate. The air rifle gave protests just
(18:23):
enough cupboard to escape police charges, but they also gave
the hunter an excuse to further escalate the violence.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Attitudes are hardening among the protesters too. In Mandalay, they
took air rifles to the barricades on Saturday, hardly a
match for the weapons of war they face, but now
they know this is a fight to the death and
more destruction. After a fire raged in pg Dagon township overnight,
people living there but kept away by security forces returned
(18:56):
to find sixty homes burned to the ground. Now all
they can do is picked through the ashes, trying to
save anything from the military's policy have scorched a.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Even the top Madaw makes its own weapons, a highly
unusual move for a relatively small nation. Top Mada troops
and police can be seen with a bewildering array of
indigenously produced copies of M sixteen's ouzies and even five
to five six Galil pattern AK style rifles, as well
as M three light machine guns, which are slightly updated
copies of the MG forty two used by the Nazis
(19:37):
in World War Two. After the failed eight eight eight
eight uprisings in nineteen eighty eight, the military offered concessions
to China in return for more advanced weapons. They got them,
but it didn't stop China from also supplying ethnic armed organizations.
EAOs don't have access to the same munitions factories that
the government does, but there is a long tradition of
(19:58):
homemade weapons in Myanmar. In more remote parts of the country,
home made air rifles and shotguns seem to have been
relatively commonplace before the start of the conflict, and they
were mostly used for hunting. The country is also covered
with land mines, which the EAOs used a great effect
against the topmat Aw. We spoke to Pierre, a former
combatant with the KRIN who no longer lives in me
(20:19):
and Maar. His experience is not that recent, but it
helps us to understand the way this conflict has been
fought for decades.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
What we used to to produce a lot of land mines,
that's that's produced at the base.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yes, with like you know, very systems. Is a little
bit of.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
One type of plastic explosive, a couple of BOMBOO for
contactors and.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Battery. That's it.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Pellet guns are not good for combat, and EAOs mostly
relied on weapons imported from Thailand, India or China. Overwhelmingly
these were ak or In sixteen pattern rifles.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Yeah, mostly in my in the units have been there
is probably a majority of platforms.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
In this time.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yes, yeah, definitely, I mean it's more reliable and you know,
simple to part. It's very adapted to the to the to.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
The type of guerrilla it was. It was quite correct,
I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
From the moment that I switched to a case at
least because at first I tried to use this Sucreparency
M sixteen and it was a nightmare of malfunctions. So
I switched back to a case. What I best know
(21:50):
used doesn't have this. I never really had any any
malfunction music case. Maybe one time it's a qulty lot
of communition, but that's it. Not really the rightful inlude.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
The fight, Pierre says, has never been restricted to the
battlefield for the top of the door. Violence against civilians
is part of their four cuts doctrine that cuts off funding, food, intelligence,
and recruits for the EAOs. Now they are moving that
same outlook to the cities.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Like literally.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Literally a bye by absolutely no rows of wall of hers.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I mean, like one of.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The first things that I saw when we went going
patrolling in the in the Karen villages, huh around the
houzone of operation, is that there was absolutely no girl
between the edge of eleven to the age of seventeen.
(22:55):
I was, like, I asked you know, my my commander
about it, and he says, yeah, like obviously if they
if they stay us, they will be rapped by the
tapmado and the first patrol like the first time they
will will come.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So this this gives you a little bit of the
tone of what they are about. They constantly ransom civilians
when they don't model them, like you know, shell villages
for norrision or because there had been an operation of
the kind of a and they take revenge and who
(23:33):
they can take revenge.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
And with the civilians. You know, this is this is
how they be. This is who they are basically.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
The Topmadaw is a large army in many of the
conscripts are hardly high speed operator types, but that hasn't
stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I mean they have as many army, different units with
different military value. Let's say, uh, you know, many times
the units that they stuck on hilltop in the middle
(24:12):
of rebel zone are not like the most combative let's say,
but sometimes you will get surprised resistance. But yeah, except
for that, when.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
They do.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
An operation in in a place, they bring in like
more elite troops let's.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Say, by contrast, the k n l A, the Karnean
National Liberation Army and other e aos relied on civilian
support to survive.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
The CAN operates in in Karen territory and the civilians
are karent. I mean, uh pretty much when we when
we arrive in uh in a village as medics, you
know that with us that take care of the population,
(25:07):
distribute medicine.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Uh No, like I don't know what to tell me.
Is like quite it's quite a funny accusation coming from
the technolo.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
This attitude has helped them, Per says, and they have
always been open to non current recruits.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
First of all, it is not absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Let's say, some kind of ethnicist organization or ethno nationally
it's like, you know, with some hate for I think group,
including the Obama I think group that like traditionally you
know are the leaders of the Tamadel that have been
(25:48):
oppressing them for seventeen years. But they have absolutely no resentment.
They are extremely open to work with Democrats, democratic forces
from from every In fact, yes.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Since nineteen eighty eight, Per said, the k in l
A had been willing to link up with democratic rebels
providing them with training and shelter in order to further
their shared goal of a federal and democratic country that
treated all ethnicities with respect.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So PDFs.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
So these rebels, let's say, also trended by the Karrents
and also by people I know very well since it
was my commander then Neda. So I've seen I've seen
the Karrents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the Bama opposition,
(26:40):
meaning the Bamara, the main ethnic group are I'd say
this for you of people that might not know the difference.
And so the Karens always add representation and they took
like you know, political refugees, let's say, from inside the
(27:03):
Boma in the territories. The control manor prose was like
the student association, which exact na my cantricle right now.
But all these our organization of position. And so now
they keep this tradition by helping the these new rebels
(27:25):
of the PDF to get military training.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And yes, by the summer of twenty twenty, young people
had fled into the jungles and many of them, even
the ones of Burman ethnicity, were fighting alongside the Karin
and Karni rebels. They'd previously seen as troublemakers and terrorists.
Just a year or two before, we spoke with one
of these people, Zahlin, who left his home in May
of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
There was students, friends, but also young people from just
the neighborhood. Most people were just above twenty, a lot
of somewhere single. You know, there's women as well, people
who knew technology, young people from the from the technology
(28:10):
computer coologists why Caauk University. A lot of these people
who knew modern technology went into the jungle to go
in the jungle to train and be able to overthrow
the men online government. So there, it was very tiring.
(28:32):
We had to go up and down on lots of hills.
It was two days of walking get there, so up
and down the hills and back down, up and down
until we got to the training plan.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources, thanks for listening.
Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is me and
mar printing The Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms,
regular people all over the world have had the same
basic idea, maybe if I made myself a gun, the
government wouldn't be able to be such a dick to me. Historically,
this has had little impact on the willingness of governments
to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun
(00:26):
manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a
gun in your home was really no different from making
it in a shop, as long as you had the
proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on
their own and were best fired in a volley by
a shitload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were
extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some
poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a
(00:49):
threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield
prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fuel
lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology
led to a change in warfare and helped to change society.
As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle.
They required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity.
(01:11):
Nations and peoples without the know how our infrastructure were
at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came
into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways
to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity
their foes enjoyed. Indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often
consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron.
(01:34):
In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in
South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and
Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the
French during the Cochin China Campaign of eighteen sixty two.
American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler fortifications in
the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the months that
(01:55):
led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the
men who fought to create the United States busy themselves
building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities to
resist the English. This trend has never really stopped in warfare.
The day before we recorded this, James, my partner in
this series, sent me a screen grab from a live
stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for AK forty
(02:16):
sevens on a three D printer. Firearms manufactured outside the
arms industry have played a role in every conflict of
the modern era, but as you probably guessed, they have
had the greatest influence in the little wars of colonialism.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms ownership in
their colonies except the individuals and ethnic groups that adopted
its local enforces. Since most of these places had never
developed their own industrial base from arms industry, colonial rebellions
often relied on homemade weapons in their early stages, along
with modern firearms pilfered by deserting local soldiers. Where domestic
(02:53):
productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out of their
way to relocate it, along with the profit it generation,
to the metropol All were reflected on this in his
novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century, the Indians
cast guns that are at any rate up to the
European standard. Now, after we've been in India one hundred
(03:14):
and fifty years. You can't make so much as a
brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among the colonizers,
being armed became almost a synonym for being a man.
This was particularly true for the colonial police forces and militaries,
but it was also true domestically. Most people are broadly
familiar with the u S. Second Amendment the robust gun
(03:36):
culture that it's spawned, but during the heighther colonialism, English
citizens are also free to arm themselves. In nineteen hundred,
Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne, Cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a
speech in which he claimed he would laud the day
when there was a rifle in every cottage. In England,
firearms were utterly and restricted at this point. The first
(03:59):
chaine to this came in nineteen oh three with the
first law that required a permit to carry a handgun
and restricted children from buying guns. Still, firearms were widely
available until a red panic gripped the nation in nineteen
nineteen following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Across the ocean
in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly restricted, where
(04:23):
orwell himself would learn what it was to fire a
rifle at someone who shot back. Armed unions and working
people served as the only bullwark to a military coup.
In nineteen thirty six, in Madrid, one officer opened his
armory to the union militias, but another refused to hand
over for the bolts for the guns they had been issued.
In Barcelona, where the anarchist left had a long tradition
(04:45):
of armed political violence, the coup was repelled by workers
with guns, and a general leading troops there was imprisoned
and executed. The same pattern played out all across the
country in July nineteen thirty six, when the military rose
up to topple the elected government. In the cities where
the government opened the armories to the people, the coup
(05:07):
was repelled. In the cities where the government did not,
the coup succeeded. Reflecting on this in nineteen forty one,
or w Wait, the totalitarian state can do great things,
but there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot
give the factory work or a rifle and tell him
to take it home and keep it in his bedroom.
(05:28):
That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or
working class flat is a symbol of democracy. It's a
job to see that it stays there.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Despite Orwell's please. The years that followed the Second World
War led to greater restrictions of the ability of the
public to arm itself. By the nineteen fifties, carrying any
weapon for self defense was illegal. Semi automatic center fire
arms were banned in nineteen eighty eight, and pistols were
banned in nineteen ninety six after a mass shooting killed
sixteen children in Dunblane. This was all utterly infuriating to
(05:58):
a man named Philip A.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Looty.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Loody, born in nineteen sixty five grew up on a
farm in West Yorkshire, England. We don't have a tremendous
amount of detail about his upbringing, but by the time
he was in his early thirties he'd become a committed
crusader for an unrestricted right to bear arms. A skilled
machinist with a well equipped shop, Loody began the long
process of learning how to craft homemade firearms. Soon he
(06:24):
was building semi and fully automatic weapons. Now these were
not military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled, which made
them terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be crafted from
widely available things like sheet metal, washers and screws. The
person assembling a looty gun would need to be a
skilled craftsman, but they would not need access to welding rigs, forges,
(06:46):
or rather expensive industrial equipment. Loody published a book Expedient
Homemade Firearms, The nine millimeters Submachine Gun in nineteen ninety
eight through Paladin Press. In the late nineteen nineties, Paladin
was one one of the places you could go to
mail order fringe political literature and guides for stuff like
trapping human beings or disabling the drive system of an
(07:07):
Abrams tank in the United States. Nothing about Loudy's book
was or is illegal, but Phil didn't live in the
United States. He was arrested several times, starting in the
late nineteen nineties when a pair of illegal home built
guns were found on his property. Ludy spent the rest
of his life, which ended in twenty eleven, operating a
website where he raged against gun control. His main argument
(07:30):
was that England was headed for totalitarianism, and like Orwell,
he believed only public ownership of arms could prevent this.
Unlike Orwell, Ludy was firmly on the right wing. He
traced society's problems to quote a combination of political correctness
and anti freedom of speech laws legislation governing how we
speak about such subjects as religion or a person's race
(07:53):
being just two examples. Words and phrases that have been
used for centuries without malice are now insipid in people's mouths,
said to cause a fence by those very same speech police, who,
on the other hand, turned a blind eye to the violence,
foul language, and sexual references blasted daily through our TV
sets of phenomenon that really does cause a fence to
many people. Luti never succeeded in sparking a renaissance and
(08:16):
civilian arms ownership in the UK, but his ideas were
adopted by organized criminal groups all around the world. In Brazil,
looty guns can go for as much as twenty five
hundred dollars. From twenty eleven to twenty twelve, nearly half
of the submachine guns seized by police in Sao Paulo
were homemade. Most of these arms were certainly used as
(08:36):
tools by drug dealers or other gangsters, but some of
them were surely also the tools of citizens who simply
sought a way to defend themselves in a place with
no real rule of law. Looty guns have long been
popular among motorcycle gangs in Australia, and in October of
twenty nineteen, a fascist terrorist carried out the last of
that year's eight Chan shootings in Hulla, Germany with a lootygun.
(09:00):
His weapons, thankfully did not work well. As a general rule,
looty guns were never going to be of much use
to anyone besides organized criminals. They aren't great in a gunfight,
but you can use them to spray bullets into a
room or a vehicle at close range pretty well. The
year after Phil Loudy died twenty twelve, a fellow named
(09:21):
Cody Wilson decided to carry on his work. Cody felt
three D printing carried the possibility of eventually manufacturing arms
of a quality that might rival traditionally produced guns. He
started simple with a single shot three eighty handgun based
around the old Liberator pistol from World War II. The
Liberator had been a single shot forty five caliber handgun
(09:43):
meant to be dropped into Nazi occupied territories and used
by insurgents to stealthily kill single German soldiers and take
their guns. Cody Wilson described himself as a crypto anarchist,
and when his ideas began to draw attention, he dropped
out of law school to create Defense Distributed. This organization
was dedicated to the development and distribution of plans to
(10:04):
craft three D printed weapons. It used a platform called
deaf Cad to allow users to develop and share blueprints.
In twenty thirteen, the first CAD gun file became available
online to everyone. It was downloaded more than one hundred
thousand times in two days. I'd like to quote now
from an article on the website three D Natives. This
prompted the US government to demand that Defense Distributed remove
(10:26):
the file from their site. What followed is a legal
battle between Cody Wilson and the US government, consisting of
back and forth lawsuits. It lasted five years until in
twenty eighteen, the Trump administration legalized three D printed guns.
The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual assault of
an underage girl and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless,
the organization did not cease to exist without Cody. Today
(10:49):
for a yearly fee of fifty dollars. Users of the
DEFCAD website can access the files containing different designs of
three D printed guns. And I should note here that
it's probably more accurate to say the Trump administration legalized
sharing the plans and printing the files and whatnot of
three D printed guns, not legalized three D printed guns.
Home made firearms have been federally legal in the United
(11:09):
States since forever. The fighting in the courts over all
this has continued ever since, and in twenty nineteen, a
federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD. This sparked the
creation of a new group, de Terence Dispensed, which was
even less centralized. The basic idea was that this would
make them harder to take down via lawsuits or police action.
Not stated was that this might also protect their reputation
(11:32):
from a Cody Wilson's situation. The debate over the legality
of three D printed firearm plans continues on to the
present day, but the development of these arms has continued
at an ever faster pace. The best modern three D
printed arms can even rival conventional guns. It's worth emphasizing
that these are not purely plastic tools. The Liberator pistol
used a metal nail, and the better three D arms
(11:54):
have metal barrels rifled using other craft methods that require
some knowhow, but arguably less than it took to manufacture
a looty gun. Three D printed arms have been confiscated
by police around the world, but in recent months they've
begun to crop up somewhere new in the arms of
revolutionaries fighting against a military coup.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Me and mah Berman before that said relatively strict gun
control laws for decades. When George Orwell was a policeman
there in the nineteen twenties, he may have carried a gun,
but the people he was policing did not. In the
nineteen thirties, the British leaders allowed tat organizations similar to
militias to form and drill, but they weren't allowed to
(12:44):
carry guns. Gun licenses under the dictatorship were issued primarily
to party members, but most were revoked after nineteen eighty
eight failed Pro democracy uprising. The only civilians who were
permitted to own arms through the Chin, the nation's poorest
ethnic group, who allo on guns to hunt for food.
In many cases, these guns were flintlocks that would not
(13:07):
have looked that out of place on the battle Fill
two centuries before. In practice, though, things are very different.
The current conflict is best seen as a flare up
in violence, so it has been ongoing since Britain left
the country in nineteen forty seven. The Tatmador has consistently
used violence against marginalized ethnic groups in the country and
they have consistently taken up arms in response. But unlike
(13:31):
civil wars in the Middle East, wealthy nations in the
West have not been flooding me and Mihle with weapons
for decades, and the various EAOs or ethnic armed organizations
have had to turn to much more unorthodox roots to
arm and equip themselves against the government. To get a
better idea of what things are like on the ground,
we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial
(13:51):
volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought
with the Korrenn people in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, so the ammunition is a constant problem.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
The shortage is absolutely permanent, and yes, there is two
sources for the for the for the weapons, there is
the black market, and the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive.
This is why I would like to have my notebook
(14:27):
here with me, because I think I wrote down the
conversation I had with some leaders of the kind at
the time, asking them why we didn't do more persons.
But we just can't afford it, you know, we just
can't afford it. Like strictly, we we don't well, we
don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of of
(14:51):
operation we need to. So all the operations we did
were always focused on if we could capture some ammunition,
if we could get you like weapons, but especially ammunition.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, so there is you know that that's the second
source of of course, of of weapons.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Uh, let's say source is the it is the captures
of course, then the black markets. The black markets used
to be huge in Cambodia. I don't know, it's the
situation now. That was in the nineties. It was it
was a bit of the Albania of some Systizia at
(15:36):
this time, right.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
And so there is also the other ethnic groups that
receive sometimes say a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Of of arms and ammunition from sponsors, like some of them,
like the Western term is our sponsors by chin that
sort of like the supply of nation. It's pretty good
of webons. I think it's even cartolony and stuff. Then
(16:11):
there is also groups that also produced locally quite good.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
They are on arms, light arms.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Usually, so yeah, these are the different sources of what
comes the OK in the time I was there.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
In the early weeks of the protests. Once it I
claimed clear that non violent demonstrators were going to be
met with state violence, protests began to fashion weapons. First,
they thought soldiers with assault rifles, using catapults and bows
and arrows. It was incredibly brave, but it wasn't very effective.
By the twenty eighth of March, protesters have taken a
(16:54):
step fo A group calling itself the Klay Civil Army
set up barricades. I defended them using pressurized air rifles
that fired marbles and bicycle wheel bearings. The rifles all
used the same design and the same components. They were
based on a video someone found on YouTube, but they
weren't lethal. They helped protesters defend their space, albeit at
(17:18):
great cost. In that first clash, four protesters and four
soldiers were killed. The protesters in Calais were able to
hold out a few days using old hunting rifles and
air guns. The ambush military patrols and they took four
police hostage. Then they exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters.
But in early April, the Tapmador returned to the protest
(17:40):
camp in Calay with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns
and killed eleven people. We must fight back against them.
If not, our generation will face a worse situation than us.
They have no laws, a neighborhood villager who battled the
regime's forces told The Irrawaddy, a local paper. The air
guns spread around the cuntry trey quickly to avoid surveillance.
(18:02):
Protesters talked about cooking up berryani on telegram channels, and
what they meant was desperately scouring the Internet for a
way to fight back and finding a way to make
an air rifle out of a buttane canister, a pipe
and a cigarette lighter, combined with fireworks and smoke bombs
made of potassium nitrate. The air rifle gave protests just
(18:23):
enough cupboard to escape police charges, but they also gave
the hunter an excuse to further escalate the violence.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Attitudes are hardening among the protesters too. In Mandalay, they
took air rifles to the barricades on Saturday, hardly a
match for the weapons of war they face, but now
they know this is a fight to the death and
more destruction. After a fire raged in pg Dagon township overnight,
people living there but kept away by security forces returned
(18:56):
to find sixty homes burned to the ground. Now all
they can do is picked through the ashes, trying to
save anything from the military's policy have scorched a.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Even the top Madaw makes its own weapons, a highly
unusual move for a relatively small nation. Top Mada troops
and police can be seen with a bewildering array of
indigenously produced copies of M sixteen's ouzies and even five
to five six Galil pattern AK style rifles, as well
as M three light machine guns, which are slightly updated
copies of the MG forty two used by the Nazis
(19:37):
in World War Two. After the failed eight eight eight
eight uprisings in nineteen eighty eight, the military offered concessions
to China in return for more advanced weapons. They got them,
but it didn't stop China from also supplying ethnic armed organizations.
EAOs don't have access to the same munitions factories that
the government does, but there is a long tradition of
(19:58):
homemade weapons in Myanmar. In more remote parts of the country,
home made air rifles and shotguns seem to have been
relatively commonplace before the start of the conflict, and they
were mostly used for hunting. The country is also covered
with land mines, which the EAOs used a great effect
against the topmat Aw. We spoke to Pierre, a former
combatant with the KRIN who no longer lives in me
(20:19):
and Maar. His experience is not that recent, but it
helps us to understand the way this conflict has been
fought for decades.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
What we used to to produce a lot of land mines,
that's that's produced at the base.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yes, with like you know, very systems. Is a little
bit of.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
One type of plastic explosive, a couple of BOMBOO for
contactors and.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Battery. That's it.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Pellet guns are not good for combat, and EAOs mostly
relied on weapons imported from Thailand, India or China. Overwhelmingly
these were ak or In sixteen pattern rifles.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Yeah, mostly in my in the units have been there
is probably a majority of platforms.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
In this time.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yes, yeah, definitely, I mean it's more reliable and you know,
simple to part. It's very adapted to the to the to.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
The type of guerrilla it was. It was quite correct,
I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
From the moment that I switched to a case at
least because at first I tried to use this Sucreparency
M sixteen and it was a nightmare of malfunctions. So
I switched back to a case. What I best know
(21:50):
used doesn't have this. I never really had any any
malfunction music case. Maybe one time it's a qulty lot
of communition, but that's it. Not really the rightful inlude.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
The fight, Pierre says, has never been restricted to the
battlefield for the top of the door. Violence against civilians
is part of their four cuts doctrine that cuts off funding, food, intelligence,
and recruits for the EAOs. Now they are moving that
same outlook to the cities.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Like literally.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Literally a bye by absolutely no rows of wall of hers.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I mean, like one of.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The first things that I saw when we went going
patrolling in the in the Karen villages, huh around the
houzone of operation, is that there was absolutely no girl
between the edge of eleven to the age of seventeen.
(22:55):
I was, like, I asked you know, my my commander
about it, and he says, yeah, like obviously if they
if they stay us, they will be rapped by the
tapmado and the first patrol like the first time they
will will come.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So this this gives you a little bit of the
tone of what they are about. They constantly ransom civilians
when they don't model them, like you know, shell villages
for norrision or because there had been an operation of
the kind of a and they take revenge and who
(23:33):
they can take revenge.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
And with the civilians. You know, this is this is
how they be. This is who they are basically.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
The Topmadaw is a large army in many of the
conscripts are hardly high speed operator types, but that hasn't
stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I mean they have as many army, different units with
different military value. Let's say, uh, you know, many times
the units that they stuck on hilltop in the middle
(24:12):
of rebel zone are not like the most combative let's say,
but sometimes you will get surprised resistance. But yeah, except
for that, when.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
They do.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
An operation in in a place, they bring in like
more elite troops let's.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Say, by contrast, the k n l A, the Karnean
National Liberation Army and other e aos relied on civilian
support to survive.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
The CAN operates in in Karen territory and the civilians
are karent. I mean, uh pretty much when we when
we arrive in uh in a village as medics, you
know that with us that take care of the population,
(25:07):
distribute medicine.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Uh No, like I don't know what to tell me.
Is like quite it's quite a funny accusation coming from
the technolo.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
This attitude has helped them, Per says, and they have
always been open to non current recruits.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
First of all, it is not absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Let's say, some kind of ethnicist organization or ethno nationally
it's like, you know, with some hate for I think group,
including the Obama I think group that like traditionally you
know are the leaders of the Tamadel that have been
(25:48):
oppressing them for seventeen years. But they have absolutely no resentment.
They are extremely open to work with Democrats, democratic forces
from from every In fact, yes.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Since nineteen eighty eight, Per said, the k in l
A had been willing to link up with democratic rebels
providing them with training and shelter in order to further
their shared goal of a federal and democratic country that
treated all ethnicities with respect.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So PDFs.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
So these rebels, let's say, also trended by the Karrents
and also by people I know very well since it
was my commander then Neda. So I've seen I've seen
the Karrents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the Bama opposition,
(26:40):
meaning the Bamara, the main ethnic group are I'd say
this for you of people that might not know the difference.
And so the Karens always add representation and they took
like you know, political refugees, let's say, from inside the
(27:03):
Boma in the territories. The control manor prose was like
the student association, which exact na my cantricle right now.
But all these our organization of position. And so now
they keep this tradition by helping the these new rebels
(27:25):
of the PDF to get military training.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And yes, by the summer of twenty twenty, young people
had fled into the jungles and many of them, even
the ones of Burman ethnicity, were fighting alongside the Karin
and Karni rebels. They'd previously seen as troublemakers and terrorists.
Just a year or two before, we spoke with one
of these people, Zahlin, who left his home in May
of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
There was students, friends, but also young people from just
the neighborhood. Most people were just above twenty, a lot
of somewhere single. You know, there's women as well, people
who knew technology, young people from the from the technology
(28:10):
computer coologists why Caauk University. A lot of these people
who knew modern technology went into the jungle to go
in the jungle to train and be able to overthrow
the men online government. So there, it was very tiring.
(28:32):
We had to go up and down on lots of hills.
It was two days of walking get there, so up
and down the hills and back down, up and down
until we got to the training plan.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources, thanks for listening.
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