Published on: 01/28/2023 – 06:36
What was just a vague fear ten years ago is now a reality: untraceable firearms made with 3D prints are circulating across the North American continent. Coming from the United States, the phenomenon is gaining momentum in Canada.
From our correspondent in Montreal,
Imagine. You sign up to a website and pay a few tens of dollars to buy a program and kit. You run this program in your 3D printer that you bought for $300 and within hours a plastic assault rifle stock takes shape. You only need half a day of tinkering, the time to assemble the legally ordered stock and metal parts and you have a firearm. Impossible ? In the United States, the practice is legal. It’s illegal in Canada, but more and more people are trying the experiment.
uptrend
A trend worrying police departments across Canada, who are increasingly confronted with printed guns. Radio Canada repeated it Earlier this year by surveying dozens of provincial services. The numbers are revealing. In Calgary, Alberta, police seized two illegally imprinted firearms in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, seventeen imprinted firearms were confiscated. In all, police said they recovered 100 firearms built with 3D printing across Canada that same year, but provinces like Quebec declined to comment on the issue.
“My police sources tell me that the phenomenon is increasing, even here in Quebec, in the small town of Trois-Rivières, where a few weeks ago printed guns were confiscated from someone who made them at home,” confides Francis Langlois. Associate Member of the Observatory for the United States of the University of Quebec and expert on the issue of firearms in the United States and Canada.
an american idea
The topic is anything but new. CodyWilson, a libertarian American from Texas, became the standard-bearer of gun pressure in 2012. He had then demonstrated the possibility of printing a pistol. He has since fought to allow home printing in the name of the first two amendments to the US Constitution won in 2018, under Donald Trump. His website is now a reference in the field, and Americans can now 3D print guns at home.
The difference from 2012 is the recent technological advances and user customization that have allowed the practice to evolve. While the handgun invented by Cody Wilson only fired six shots before self-destructing, guns made under pressure today last longer. Budding manufacturers have adapted, notes Francis Langlois: “We’re seeing more and more hybrid weapons where the less critical components are printed in polymer, a material that’s become tougher over the years, and the rest is metal parts. »
In 2021, Joe Biden tried to contain the phenomenon by specifically targeting the supply of weapons components. “Because the federal government has the power to regulate trade between states in the union, Joe Biden has been tightening the screws on carriers like UPS and other Fedex around the world. It has become more complex to export such metal parts. US federal agencies have therefore broadened the definition of a firearm a bit, targeting its major components that can no longer be shipped between states. But it is still possible to craft 3D weapons by ordering metal components within the same state. However, this style of assembling weapons is also making its way across the border.
Bypass laws, adapt laws?
Gun ownership has been increasingly regulated in Canada since the 1970s, making it illegal to print firearms at home. But a Canadian might very well order spare metal parts online, use his 3D printer to draw the missing parts, and end up with a completely untraceable weapon.
So the real challenge is to systematically trace the metal parts and not just number the buttocks, reproducible in 3D. This is one of the issues on which Bill C-21, which will change the regulation of firearms in Canada, needs to be resolved in the coming months. Francis Langlois was also invited by the committee responsible for his evaluation. “One of my recommendations was to force manufacturers to identify all components of a gun. We should broaden the definition of a firearm, from barrel to breech, including the trigger, put serial numbers on those components, and ask the people who buy them, who make them, to have a license, or at least to notify the authorities ‘ says the researcher.
But the phenomenon of 3D printing is not yet at the fore when it comes to firearms. For Francis Langlois, the risk is still marginal given the 400 million guns that are legally located in neighboring USA. “Mexico, like Canada, has the same concern: Some of these weapons regularly cross borders. So, 3D printing firearms becomes a real issue when it gets really hard to get hold of a gun in the Americas.