A HITMAN on the streets of New York using a ‘ghost gun’ to assassinate a businessman in cold blood might sound like something out of a movie.
But in the wake of Luigi Mangione’s alleged hit on a healthcare CEO last week, fears are growing over the surging popularity of the chilling weapons, which are increasingly being found in Britain too.
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Over the past decade, ghost guns – home-made firearms constructed using 3D printers that can be knocked up in bedrooms and garden sheds – have become the scourge of American law enforcement.
The US Department of Justice disturbingly found there has been a 1,000 per cent rise in such guns being found at crime scenes over the past eight years.
And increasingly, a growing number of Brits are being locked up after being found with the weapons too, with experts warning that key components can be bought “freely and cheaply” .
Disturbingly, many of these criminals have the most sinister of backgrounds, with recent examples including a man found posting on a ‘domestic terrorism’ message board, a Neo-Nazi and two crooks planning to sell their weapons en masse to criminal gangs.
As laws around ghost guns struggle to keep up with their rapid rise in popularity, there is a huge online community of enthusiasts freely sharing videos on how to build them and offering tips on how to evade detection.
These guides are not just on the dark web but on mainstream sites such as YouTube.
Meanwhile, websites are able to advertise makeshift machine guns and even Hello Kitty-branded silencers without fear of breaking the law.
Last year Graeme Biggar, the head of the National Crime Agency, called for the Government to make possessing 3D-printed gun blueprints illegal after a four-fold increase in seizures.
The calls are being echoed by politicians and activists in troubled hotspots like Birmingham, which last year overtook London as the UK’s gun crime capital.
Birmingham Edgbaston MP Preet Kaur Gill tells The Sun: “The rise of 3D-printed firearms represents a serious and growing threat, turning easily accessible digital blueprints into untraceable weapons.”
US cops allege that Luigi Mangione used a ghost gun to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in New York.
What makes these weapons particularly attractive to criminals is that they have no serial numbers, making them untraceable.
After Mangione was eventually arrested in Pennsylvania for Thompson’s murder, he was allegedly found to be carrying a 3D-printed gun.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro told a news conference: “I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun.”
Death kits
The UK has some of the strictest gun ownership laws in the world and even possessing “any relevant component part” of a firearm can be an offence if you don’t have a licence.
But in the United States, these components are only considered to be a firearm once the lower receiver is capable of discharging a deadly bullet.
Firms are selling 80 per cent complete lower receivers and the kits that help owners to turn them into killing machines.
This is despite the fact that in the United States firearms are widely available, with an estimated 400 million weapons in circulation.
But ghost guns are often wanted by people who are not allowed to carry firearms due to their age or criminal convictions.
Parts can be purchased freely and cheaply either from shops or online
David Platt
In the UK, experts are increasingly concerned about amateur ‘weapons manufacturers’ or potential terrorists bringing them to Britain’s streets.
Firearms expert and forensic scientist David Platt says: “Being located on an island means it is more difficult for genuine ‘illegal’ firearms to be smuggled into the country.
“Although this obviously still occurs, the numbers are likely to be relatively small in comparison to countries that have a land border.
“The difficulty in importing these firearms leads to a premium price being put on genuine firearms.
“Improvised and 3D-printed firearms are generally manufactured within the UK and one reason is to avoid the risk of discovery during importation.
“Generally, the materials used to manufacture these firearms cost considerably less than purchasing a genuine factory produced firearm. “
Police crackdown
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Police and the courts are cracking down hard to prevent these homemade weapons flooding the UK as they have done in the States.
In November Owain Roberts, from Newport in Wales, was jailed for four years and nine months after making part of a gun using a 3D printer.
The 19-year-old purchased nuts and bolts, steel barrels and metal rods online and used a 3D printer to make parts of an FGC-9 gun.
FGC stands for “F*** Gun Control”.
He was part of a messaging group called ‘domestic terrorism’ and shared anti-Semitic messages online, Cardiff Crown Court heard.
No use other than to cause death
Judge Nicholas Hilliard
Roberts admitted manufacturing a part/component of a firearm. A firearms expert told the court that the gun was “reliable and lethal”.
While in October 20-year-old Neo-Nazi Jack Robinson – who was at an “advanced stage” of building his own semi-automatic rifle and accompanying ammunition – was jailed for six-and-a-half years.
When police arrested Robinson, then 18, in February 2023, they also discovered a stash of military-style clothing, stab vests, balaclavas and German Second World War memorabilia at his home in Portsmouth.
Winchester Crown Court heard that while operating online under usernames including “kill all Jews”, the teenager had downloaded more than 500 documents containing information on explosives, weapons and 3D-printed guns, alongside a large volume of white supremacist propaganda.
When you just find something on the internet, buy a printer, it is the sort of thing you can gradually be drawn into
David Dyson
Firearms expert and barrister David Dyson fears that the kit guns are tempting youngsters to have a go at building them.
He tells The Sun: “You tend to get misguided enthusiasts, often kids, who look on the internet and they will be interested.
“They are not all ‘criminals’. They are people who have come across it yet they would never buy a blank firing gun and convert it.
“They would know that is clearly wrong, but when you just find something on the internet, buy a printer, it is the sort of thing you can gradually be drawn into.
“But they are still firearms and regardless of motive, the courts will come down on you.”
In the wrong hands
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In May last year two men were jailed for making sub-machine guns using a 3D printer.
In what was thought to be the first case of its kind in the UK, Sibusiso Moyo and Christopher Gill were convicted of plotting to build and supply the homemade weapons to criminal gangs.
Moyo, from Hull, was jailed for 18 years while Gill, from Bradford, was sentenced to 13 years and eight months.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard said the guns had “no use other than to cause death”.
And in May this year Dion Matthews, 60, from Burton-on-Trent, was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison at Stafford Crown Court on May 9 after he admitted using a 3D printer to produce four viable hybrid semi-automatic rifles.
Slam guns
It isn’t just 3D printed guns that are being used in crime.
Primitive home-made “slam guns” which originated in the Second World War are also being used on the streets.
In November 2021, a 13-year-old was left paralysed after being shot in an underpass in Hockley, Birmingham, by members of the city’s notorious Armed Response gang.
The attackers shot their anonymous victim with a homemade shotgun, known as a slam gun, as he desperately tried to escape up a grass bank.
Zidann Edwards and Diago Anderson, both 20, and teenager Tarfique Thomas, then 17, were jailed for attempted murder.
And the terrifying thing is these things are simple to make if you know how says David Dyson.
“The slam-fire shotgun is basically two tubes,” he explains. “So with two tubes you can make a lethal weapon.
“They were developed in WWII in the Philippines and they were referred to as ‘the gun to get a gun’. Locals would make one of these things and then use it to shoot a Japanese soldier to steal his rifle.
“There are no limits to human ingenuity.”
In addition, he was given 10 concurrent sentences of one year for possessing hundreds of rounds of homemade 9mm ammunition.
Detective Constable Jack Jones, from Staffordshire Police, said: “Matthews told us he had made these weapons using a 3D printer and items he bought online ‘out of curiosity’.
“The reality is that these were viable weapons that were tested and shown to be capable of firing live ammunition.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
“Our message is clear; that weapons manufactured using 3D printers will be treated as seriously as any other traditional firearm and those who make them can expect to be given lengthy prison sentences as a result.”
The Sun has approached YouTube for comment.
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