3D Printed Guns Go
Viral
Ivan
the Troll from Illinois champions guns for all. He helped design to terrorists,
drug dealers and freedom fighters in at least 15 countries.
In
the past three years, this model of homemade semiautomatic firearm, known as an
FGC-9, has appeared in the hands of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, rebels in
Myanmar and neo-Nazis in Spain. In October, a British teenager will be sentenced
for building an FGC-9 in one of the latest terrorism cases to involve the weapon.
An
online group known as Deterrence Dispensed publishes free instructions on how to
build the weapon, a manual that says people everywhere should stand armed and ready.
“We
together can defeat for good the infringement that is taking place on our natural-born
right to bear arms, defend ourselves and rise up against tyranny,” the document
says.
This
American brand of libertarianism has historically been a tough sell in many other
parts of the world. Even if some people believed it in theory, strict laws made
buying a gun so difficult that the ideology was almost beside the point.
The
FGC-9 is changing that.
“It’s
not just a gun. It is also an ideology,” said Kristian Abrahamsson,
an intelligence officer with the Swedish customs police. Dozens of FGC-9s have turned
up in his country in recent years, he said.
This
animation shows a visual breakdown of the basic components of a FGC-9 confiscated by the police in Western Australia in 2022.CreditCredit...By
James Surdam
The
New York Times has charted the FGC-9’s growth from a hobbyist’s garage project to
a lethal pistol wielded by insurgents, terrorists, drug dealers and militia members
in at least 15 countries.
While
countless 3D-printed guns have been designed and circulated on the internet, international
law enforcement officials say that the FGC-9 is by far the most common. The gun
is so desirable among far-right extremists in Britain that the possession and sharing
of its instruction manual is being charged as a terrorist offense.
Nobody
does more to promote the gun and the ideology than its co-designer, who goes by
the online name Ivan the Troll. The figurehead of Deterrence Dispensed, he has appeared
in numerous YouTube videos and podcasts, but always under his aliases.
Court
documents, corporate records and information posted on his social media accounts
link the Ivan the Troll persona to a 26-year-old Illinois gunmaker named John Elik. The nephew of a state representative, Mr. Elik has emerged as one of the most important figures in the
nascent international industry of 3D-printed guns.
Police
forces around the world see that industry as a threat to gun restrictions that have
limited who can have access to firearms. On that, the authorities and gun rights
supporters agree.
The
Times sent an interview request and an article summary to Mr. Elik’s email address. A reply from an Ivan the Troll account
declined to answer questions and said that he did not believe he would be treated
fairly.
In
the United States, 3D-printed guns are regulated by a hodgepodge of state laws.
Illinois has restricted the sale and possession of homemade gun components, except
by firearm dealers and manufacturers. Because he is a licensed manufacturer, there
is no indication that Mr. Elik is violating that law.
Illinois law requires manufacturers to add serial numbers to homemade gun components.
The
videos posted online encourage viewers to know their local laws.
Most
of the mass-produced weapons of the 20th century, even those now marketed for personal
defense, were originally designed for militaries and hunters.
The FGC-9, by contrast, was created with the explicit goal of arming as many everyday
people as possible.
FGC
is an abbreviation that represents what its creators think of gun control. Nine
is for the 9-millimeter bullet it fires.
The
use of the FGC-9 by insurgents opposed to the military junta in Myanmar is part
of its creators’ stated plan, a realization of the hope that guns could be used
to stand up to the state.
Mr.
Elik, in his email to The Times, said it was wrong to
focus on “European cops complaining about a small number of guns being recovered,”
and shootings in which nobody was injured, “rather than the gun’s use as a tool
of liberation.”
The
Prototype
The
gun’s chief designer was Jacob Duygu, a German national
of Kurdish heritage.
Germany
requires gun owners to be licensed, but Mr. Duygu wanted
to own a firearm on his own terms. He made it his mission to give anyone the tools
to do the same, especially in countries with strict gun control laws.
Mr.
Duygu developed an affinity for American libertarianism
and the Second Amendment right to bear arms, according to Rajan
Basra, a senior fellow at the International Center for
the Study of Radicalization who has studied the proliferation of the FGC-9.
Mr.
Duygu was known online as JStark,
in homage to Maj. Gen. John Stark, a military leader of the American Revolution.
Social
media accounts linked to Mr. Elik have voiced similar
views.
“Civilians
need assault weapons because having a weapon made for killing people is very important
for self defense,” one post read, adding, “If it’s made
for killing people quickly and easily, even better.”
Mr.
Duygu’s design was published in March 2020 with the stated
goal of circumventing gun laws. Homemade firearms have been around for centuries,
but Mr. Duygu’s was a breakthrough. The FGC-9 could be
built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated
and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.
Anyone
with a commercial 3D printer, hundreds of dollars in materials, some metalworking
skills and plenty of patience could become a gun owner.
“It’s
a game changer,” Dr. Basra said. “Now you have something
that people can make at home with unregulated components. So
from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?”
The
assembly instructions for the first iteration of the FGC-9 called for each gun to
be etched with General Stark’s motto, “Live Free or Die.”
The
release of the FGC-9 inspired gun enthusiasts to suggest their own modifications.
Among them was Mr. Elik, who separately developed a do-it-yourself
process for making the spiral grooves, or rifling, inside a gun barrel.
Going
Viral
The
weapon first received high-profile attention in December 2020, when Matthew Cronjager, a British neo-Nazi, was arrested and accused of trying
to recruit and arm a militia. The targets included the British government, Jews,
gay people, Muslims and members of ethnic minority groups.
Mr.
Cronjager, then 17, had downloaded a Deterrence Dispensed
manual for making 9-millimeter ammunition and the plans for the FGC-9. He was arrested
after trying to pay an undercover officer to manufacture the gun. Mr. Cronjager, who was later convicted and jailed for more than
11 years, said that he wanted to topple the government and start a revolution, court
records show.
Since
then, several people with white-supremacist and anti-immigrant leanings have been
prosecuted for terrorism offenses in Europe after trying to obtain the weapon to
commit mass shootings. Drug gangs and prison inmates in Brazil have also been found
with the weapon, the authorities there say.
No
law enforcement official has yet linked an FGC-9 to a homicide, though they say
that may be because traditional forensic techniques are not always reliable on homemade
weapons.
Ivaylo Stefanov, of Interpol’s
illicit weapons unit, said, “Everybody thought it was going to take decades for
the technology to be advanced and for the printers to be available to private citizens.”
Interpol
is notified of FGC-9 seizures at least every two months, and Mr. Stefanov said that many more were probably going unreported.
“You see it even in European countries that have never ever had such cases,” he
said.
Ivan the Troll’s media message is that this
is hypocrisy. Western governments, he has noted, have armed the world’s insurgents
and authoritarian leaders with weapons of war. “I’m sharing a computer file,” he
said in a 2022 interview. “If I’m guilty of sharing information, what does that
make them?”
And while the FGC-9 has become a staple with
some of the world’s far-right extremists, it has also been embraced by insurgent
groups that are fighting Myanmar’s military junta, which has committed atrocities
on its own people.
“A lot of people use them,” said a fighter
there who goes by the call sign 3-D. He said the FGC-9 was often used for personal
defense rather than for combat because its design left
it susceptible to jamming in the harsh jungle environment.
As technology improves, Mr. Stefanov and others said, amateur gunmakers will most likely
be able to use untraceable parts to build guns that fire like machine guns. The
Biden administration is trying to regulate homemade gun components as firearms,
a move that the Supreme Court will soon review.
Increasingly, the FGC-9 is being produced
not only by individual hobbyists and extremists, but also by criminal operations
that manufacture weapons to sell or rent. Makeshift factories have been found in
Australia, France and Spain.
“There is an obvious ideological element,”
said Colonel Pétry, the French officer. “But we must not
be naïve. Above all, there is a desire to make themselves fabulously rich.”