A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:
Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.
Technical questions
Gun control proposals for feasibility
Industry
Training
Wacky opinions
General geekery
Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173
https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE
https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E
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Notes -
Do you share my suspicion that Gun Jesus sold out to H&K ?
He's supposed to dig deep, but his coverage of the G36 controversy was absurd. Basically, after examining and firing newly made guns whose recievers were made out of entirely different polymer type than the guns that had problems, he concluded the whole thing was just internet bullshit based on acceptable deviation and some ammo problems.
Meanwhile, German scientific testing reports were fairly conclusive and ruled out it being ammo issues.
Sometimes it's possible to be wrong about things; you could argue that point harder about the Hudson 9 than you could with HK coverage in general.
That said, if this really was a problem inherent to plastic receivers, we'd expect to see it not just in the G36, but also in every other gun that has its barrel trunnion cast in polymer, be it German (G36, UMP, MP7), American (Tom Bostic's copies), Czech (Scorpion Evo 3), Israeli/Ukrainian (Tavor/Fort-221), Italian (ARX-160), Croatian (VHS-1, VHS-2), or Mexican (FX-05), to say nothing of 3D printed projects that inherently work like that. And no, a competitor's promotional materials doesn't really count as evidence that it happens.
I think the reason people believe the allegations are accurate/have stuck around this long are primarily because the MG36 never saw production (which is what you'd expect if there were heat issues under continuous sustained fire- as in, what a light machine gun is supposed to be able to do- the Internet says this is the reason they cancelled it and, if I recall correctly, predates the 'melting guns' scandal).
And when you look at some of the other guns designed around that time- the G36 was the first gun to be made that way, after all- you'll see the other ones that only really use plastic as surrounding furniture rather than the material the part that contains the barrel is made out of (in particular the Steyr AUG, and FN's F2000 and P90, are fundamentally metal guns even though they don't really look like it when they're put together), so one could reasonably believe a reason they did that rather than just making the receiver out of plastic was because the use of plastic was questionable.
Of course, the other side of it is "people plain don't trust plastic in mechanical devices". To this day, the gun industry always says "polymer", not "plastic"- because everyone knows that the plastic used in guns will, like the dollar-store spoon, melt when you expose it to heat and snap in half if you treat them roughly, and good old-fashioned wood spoons won't. So clearly, all plastic guns are untrustworthy when it matters, and the one study that calls out one gun for potentially doing this is naturally going to get signal boosted to the fucking moon.
https://www.themotte.org/post/296/im-a-gun-guy-ama/51607?context=8#context
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