We can always just learn how to make our own firearms and gunpowder. Anyone know how much would it costs to procure the materials and equipment?
It pays to know these things.
making your own guns, bullets and gunpowder is fairly easy. getting accurate guns is a harder.. making your own primers is the tough part.
you can make an adequate muzzle loader out of whats in your house right now.
If by “gunpowder” you mean black powder, the ingredients are inexpensive enough, and sulpher and lamp black (or any fine carbon powder-which you can make yourself) are easy enough to get, but the potassium nitrate (or sodium natrate) might be a little difficult to obtain—haven’t tried recently.
[The formula: 76% Potassium Nitrate, 14% Charcoal, and 10% Sulfur, but I always used 15 parts to 3 parts to 2 parts, and used any measure that was handy. It’s not very fussy stuff.]
I made black power all the time when I was a kid (err, that was about 50+ years ago) and bought all the ingredients at the drug store.
Things have change.
If you want to make a modern version of “gun powder,” you’ll have to learn to make gun cotton (cellulose nitrate) and nitroglycerine. A little more difficult, (made them too, as a youngster), but not sure you can get any of the “ingredients” (like sulphuric and nitric acid), and they certainly won’t be cheap. Bought those things directly from Merck & Merck. My Grandfather was a pharmacist and gave me all his old catalogs, and a lot of chemicals, too. Try that these days.
The nitrocellulos and nitroglycerine are not something you want to fool with unless you’re a chem geek like I was (wouldn’t even considerate it today), and making them into anything useful is not easy, requiring other processes like stablizers and solvents, like ether, to form pellets and sheets.
Reloading propellants are inexpensive and that’s the way to go. All made and formulated for you.
Hank