Last December 4th, Brian Thompsonthe CEO of the health insurance business giant UnitedHealthcarein the heart of Manhattan. His murdera “brazen and selective attack” according to the police, has become a mass phenomenon in USAespecially because of the fascination it has aroused in Internet its alleged author, the young Luigi Mangioneafter five days of persecution.
Among his belongings, the authorities found what is known as a ghost pistola arma printed on 3D capable of firing 9 millimeter bullets. The courts of New York They accuse him of murder, but also of illegal possession of weapons and possessing a forged instrument. Although it is currently unknown whether Mangione used it to end the manager’s life, the case has once again drawn attention to these relatively new devices and the risks they entail.
The calls ghost weapons are those produced by anyone other than a licensed manufacturer. To make this possible, users use the 3D printinga technology popularized during the last two decades that speeds up the design and manufacturing of all types of three-dimensional objects. This technique allows creating prostheses for people with physical disabilities, but also prototypes for industries such as automotive, design, food or aerospace. Its use is even being investigated to light artificial organs.
The first clandestine workshop that manufactured weapons with 3D printers was dismantled / National Police
Easy access, difficult to trace
However, 3D has also allowed the proliferation of firearms homemade: rudimentary, less powerful than the branded ones and even childish-looking on some occasions, but still lethal. In USAthere are companies that sell ghost gun kits –pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, machine guns or silencers, among others – which sell at a price between 800 and 1,000 dollars, depending on the Washington Post. As if it were a toy, users can download the tutorials and assemble components in about 30 minutes. plastic such as the frame or its handle that, assembled with metal parts such as springs or the barrel, give rise to a dangerous hybrid weapon.
3D printing has dramatically reduced the barriers to accessing a firearm, but it has also made it more difficult for authorities to track it. Being manufactured at home, these weapons can avoid the official records to which factory ones are subject – hence their name of ghost weapons – and more easily end up in the wrong hands. The White House estimates that, between 2016 and 2021, they were used in almost 700 homicides or murder attempts.
Arrested in A Coruña for manufacturing weapons in 3D printers / National Police
criminal groups
Although the companies that do business with 3D weapons defend that it is just a hobby, police investigations have warned that gangs criminalsviolent militias of extreme right o groups terrorists They use them more and more, attracted by this ability to evade the controls of the authorities. In 2022, US police seized 25,785 weapons of this type.
Aware of this risk, the President’s Government Joe Biden He added them in 2022 to the law that regulates the use of firearms to force their manufacturers to mark them with a serial number that allows them to be controlled and to subject their buyers to a background check. Without them, criminalsminors and people with mental illnesses – to whom their sale is prohibited – had an open bar to purchase them. Still, the Democratic administration’s decision was challenged by 3D weapons companies and the Supreme Court is expected to make a decision before mid-2025.
International use
The use of 3D printed weapons is a trend that goes far beyond the US. They are used by cartels narco in Mexico and the racketeering both in Europe and Latin America. In 2023, trafficking operations have been dismantled in Germany, Chile, Ecuador, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden, among other countries. According to Europol data, between 2018 and 2022, 63 cases were detected at the European level. They have even been located in conflict zones such as Ukraine o Myanmarwhere they are used by pro-democratic forces.
Also in Spain. Last year, the Civil Guard He arrested six people after dismantling three illegal workshops in Madrid, Jaén and León. Even so, the Spanish authorities lower the alarm level and point out that it is a “low intensity” threat. Although more and more weapons of this type are seized, they barely represent 0.075% of the total. According to sources from the Special Central Unit to the EFE agency, so far “the cases we have detected in Spain are ‘freaks’.”
