[SHOT 2026] Automatic For The People: Now You Can DIY A Gatling Gun

When I was a kid, one of my favorite GI Joes was Rock ‘n Roll, who dual-wielded a set of twin-barrel Gatling guns. Very cool to an 8-year-old, but middle-aged me realized the whole idea was ridiculous—there’s no way someone would could use a Gatling gun as a personal, portable weapon.

And yet, now there is a way. It’s the new M1337, and it’s a Gatling gun that you can make yourself, thanks to the wonders of 3D printing.

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Power to the people

First, a very quick explanation of how the gun works: The M1337 uses AR-pattern barrels and other parts, with all the mechanical hard parts held together by 3D-printed parts. The files for those 3D parts are freely given away online. The creator sells a parts kit that has some of the parts that you don’t make yourself, and you can source other bits yourself.

The work from an initial idea to the first prototype took him about 5-6 months; from there, refinement of the prototype took another 18 months, with help from other testers to get the pattern ready for final release. It took a lot of help at this level, with the different tolerances of beta testers’ 3D printers showing places where the design needed to be tweaked to be more widely useful. But this wasn’t the designer’s first or only project; he’s also worked on a straight-pull AR and a 9mm belt-fed design, so he knew that this wouldn’t be a one-and-done release without refinement.

Shooting the M1337

The designer says the model on display at SHOT Show only had a round count between 100 and 200 shots, but he has another at home that he’s put hundreds more through. The longest string of shots he’s put through his design is an 80-round belt. While that might not sound like much, remember this is just a normal guy who has to buy his own ammunition. Mag dumps … errrr, “belt dumps” can get pretty expensive at today’s prices. He says that it’s hard to crank the gun quicker than 850 rounds per minute, but also hard to crank it slower than 650 rounds per minute—once you get start shooting, you tend to get into a rhythm, he says.