In September 2022, a 50-year-old man was arrested by the Spanish authorities in Bermeo, a coastal town near the French border, for manufacturing firearms using a 3D printer. A month later, a resident of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, was also arrested for trying to sell a semi-automatic weapon, also 3D printed, to undercover police officers. On November 24, as reported in daily newspaper Le Parisien, a pistol dubbed the FGC-9 (for "Fuck Gun Control"), the star of home-made weapons, was found on a 24-year-old man by the police in Val-de-Marne, a suburb to the southeast of Paris.

While "the immediate threat posed by (...) 3D-printed firearms is currently low," according to a research report by the Flemish Peace Institute and the Small Arms Survey, a group of independent experts, published on Thursday, December 7, it is nonetheless of concern to public authorities, who perceive it as an emerging risk exacerbated by very rapid technological development. "While the basic operation of firearms has hardly changed in the last century, the 3D-printed weapons being produced today are undergoing increasing, continuous technical improvements," Matt Schroeder, co-author of the study, pointed out. "Gradually," he added, "this technology may lead to a decentralization of the entire firearms manufacturing process."

With an investment of a few thousand euros to acquire an efficient printer, and technical skills within the reach of anyone with a web connection – downloading files easily available on the Internet – it is possible for a person working out of their garage to produce a virtually complete range of firearms, from semi-automatic pistols to assault rifles. For criminals, the benefits are immediate: no need to establish relations with weapons traffickers, no danger of getting caught by specialized services still focused on organized firearms import networks, a production chain reduced to its simplest form, from designer to user, all at minimal cost. Worse, notes the report: "The lack of serial numbers also complicates tracing efforts, which have been a cornerstone of investigations into the trafficking of industrially made firearms."

The latest models of 3D-printed weapons no longer even require the use of factory-made parts, which until now made it possible to establish their traceability and impede clandestine manufacturers and traffickers. As for attempting to thwart the spread of the computer files from which the weapons are printed, such an undertaking "would require a level of government surveillance and control of digital communications that few citizens of EU member states would find tolerable." In other words, "almost all of the controls that governments rely on to detect and prevent the international trafficking of firearms are either inapplicable to transfers of files for 3D-printed firearms or very difficult to enforce."

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