The Gatalog Presents: The HitchHiker

Theory of the Project

One of the greatest utilities in printing guns is the positive mental health benefits of building something yourself. However, at the time of this writing, the economy is kind of fucked up. The amount of affordable DIY projects that had objective utility were severely lacking, most requiring a cash investment of at least $300 to wind up with something worth building.

Then, I saw how cool and popular takedown ultralight backpacking 22s are, and how truly useful they are. However, most of them are hundreds of dollars, and require an extended manipulation to re-load. Even the old cricket single shot 22s require 3 different manipulations to load and fire.

While thinking about how to make an affordable 22 takedown backpacker, I remembered the oft-misunderstood nature of open bolt firearms under US law. To be clear: there is nothing in the law specifically forbidding open bolt operation, or even open bolt semiautos. The issue lies where a machinegun’s parts and design is used, and an extra part simply keeps it from behaving like a machinegun.

Something designed from the ground up as a single-shot, even if it auto-ejects and auto-cocks, if it cannot feed from a magazine, cannot be regulable in this fashion.

I further realized that going with an open bolt single shot design, if I got a little clever with the fire controls, would solve the frustratingly long reload time present in most backpack 22s, as well as provide multiple points of rim contact, thus making ignition more reliable than traditional 22s.

The result is the Hitchhiker. A gun you only have to cock once. You pull the bolt back, insert a cartridge (which is retained by the combination disconnector), and squeeze the trigger to shoot. The blowback force will re-cock the bolt, the primary sear holding it open, meaning all you have to do is stick in another cartridge and fire again.

I hope you will enjoy the simplicity of this design, its ease of use, and the relatively quick firing cycle.