CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

At least three stake­hold­ers say tra­di­tion­al high-pow­ered weapons and not guns ac­ces­sorised by 3D com­po­nents re­main the biggest threat to cit­i­zens in T&T.

Ear­li­er this week, head of Cari­com Im­pacs and the Small Arms Sur­vey’s Da­ta and An­a­lyt­ics, Nico­las Florquin, said they were see­ing a range of new types of firearms mak­ing it in­to the il­lic­it mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly ghost guns that are ac­ces­sorised by 3D parts.

How­ev­er, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Nebert Marin, a Trinida­di­an who is the di­rec­tor of Sas­man (Se­cu­ri­ty & Sur­vival Man­age­ment) Sales LLC in Flori­da, USA, a com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in the ex­port man­age­ment of firearm parts, ac­ces­sories and se­cu­ri­ty equip­ment from the USA to the Caribbean, said, “The al­lure of 3D-print­ed firearms is sexy to talk about and it gives those re­spon­si­ble for keep­ing the na­tion safe a mys­te­ri­ous scape­goat to blame for not be­ing able to con­trol the wide­spread avail­abil­i­ty of il­le­gal firearms.

“The truth is that 3D-print­ed firearms and the tech­nol­o­gy need­ed for print­ing them is nowhere as ad­vanced as some may imag­ine and the cost of do­ing it well enough for such firearms to be re­li­able is so ex­pen­sive, that it would be cheap­er to smug­gle il­le­gal firearms for some time to come.

He said the price of a 3D print­er ranges from US$630 to US$28,000 and over for the three types of print­ers one can pur­chase for such ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said the files need­ed for print­ing 3D firearms were read­i­ly avail­able on­line at no cost and the ma­te­r­i­al used in 3D print­ers was al­so read­i­ly avail­able for pur­chase on­line. He said there was no re­stric­tion on any­one pur­chas­ing a 3D print­er.

How­ev­er, he said the strength of the ma­te­ri­als pro­duced by fil­a­ment and resin print­ers wasn’t ro­bust enough to with­stand the rigours of con­tin­u­ous firearm use. He said man­u­fac­tur­ing a 3D-print­ed firearm will re­quire some­one with a lot of ex­per­tise to bring the end prod­uct to be­ing some­what re­li­able.

He ex­plained that the in­trigues in­volved in hav­ing to smug­gle a bar­rel, up­per re­ceiv­er and a low­er parts kit for a 3D-print­ed firearm were the same as when traf­fick­ers smug­gled en­tire firearms, whether as­sem­bled or in parts. He said there is no re­al ben­e­fit to crim­i­nal el­e­ments in Trinidad for 3D-print­ing firearms.

He said af­ter con­sid­er­ing the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of 3D-print­ed firearms, no one would pro­duce one for a vi­o­lent of­fend­er know­ing ful­ly well it was un­re­li­able at best.

He said the prices in the US for the firearms com­mon­ly re­cov­ered by the po­lice in T&T ranged from US$400 for a hand­gun to US$800 for an AR-15 ri­fle and the con­ver­sion mech­a­nisms used to make those firearms au­to­mat­ic start from around US$150 and all were il­le­gal in the USA.

Marin said the fo­cus for T&T law en­force­ment needs to be on il­lic­it smug­gling of weapons as op­posed to 3D-print­ed firearms.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said 3D guns were a spe­cial­ty weapon some­times pre­ferred by sicar­ios or pro­fes­sion­al hit­men to by­pass de­tec­tion and be­cause of ease of as­sem­bly, use and dis­pos­al.

How­ev­er, he too said with il­le­gal firearms flood­ing T&T through porous bor­ders, es­pe­cial­ly hand­guns that can be had for as low as $3,000, it was not worth most crim­i­nals’ ef­fort and mon­ey to man­u­fac­ture 3D guns.

Figueira said what should be more con­cern­ing to law en­force­ment in T&T than 3D guns was that crim­i­nals were im­port­ing re­load­ing press­es from the US and re­load­ing their own am­mu­ni­tion.

He said this was the rea­son why some spent 5.56mm AR-15-type shell cas­ings at crime scenes bore the mark of sev­er­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty arms such as the T&T Air Guard, T&T Reg­i­ment and even the TTPS, not­ing they were be­ing re­cy­cled.

Mas­ter firearms in­struc­tor Jer­ry Goodridge mean­while said 3D-print­ed guns were seen as the next step in the de­vel­op­ment trend for fu­ture weapons.

How­ev­er, he said as more so­phis­ti­cat­ed sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy equip­ment were made avail­able to bor­der con­trol of­fi­cers and foren­sics, the de­tec­tion rate will in­crease.

Goodridge said while the fo­cus was on il­le­gal firearms, he was con­cerned that crim­i­nals would re­sort to more pro­lif­ic use of poi­sons, hand grenades, mil­i­tary-grade ex­plo­sives and DIY bombs made with read­i­ly avail­able elec­tri­cal com­po­nents.