3D-printed 'ghost guns' a growing concern for Saskatoon police

Saskatoon police have a new emerging threat to deal with when it comes to illegal firearms in the community.

Untraceable ghost guns with no specific origin have begun to show up more often across the country due to the increasing accessibility of 3D printing.

“Of course, this is a technology advancement in the last few years that didn't exist as a challenge for enforcement before,” Saskatoon Police Service Chief Troy Cooper said. “There's no control over who actually possesses them. So we can't have any control over safety as a result.”

The Saskatoon Police Service presented its first ever firearms report to the city's Board of Police Commissioners last Thursday.

The report showed a growing number of handguns being seized by police.

Of the 590 firearms seized by Saskatoon police in 2021, 66 per cent are considered "crime guns.” Of the 392 crime guns, 210 — or 54 per cent — were handguns, the report said.

Patrick Nogier, the superintendent of the criminal investigation division presenting the report, said there aren’t many thefts of handguns being reported in Saskatoon, which suggests that handguns are being transported into the province or are manufactured locally.

“When you have ghost guns, these are guns that do not show up. And you cannot track or trace because they don't follow the same mechanism to legally register them and keep them,” Nogier said.

Police arrested a 46-year-old man in January for allegedly making guns similar to the police-issued Glock, "which is very alarming,” he said.

Purchasing trigger mechanisms and other gun parts is as easy as finding an online retailer and there’s nothing illegal about ordering those parts. However, once a person combines those parts with the 3D printed parts, Nogier said: “You get a lot closer to having a gun that acts like a real gun, not just looks like a real gun.”

Regina police arrested a 58-year-old man earlier this month for firearms offences related to 3D printing following a two-month investigation.

Randy Janes, the owner of Wave of the Future 3D, was aware of the emerging illegal gun printing market when he started his company.

With some 3D printers now available from online retailers for as little as $300, the accessibility is catching the attention of police, but Janes said it’s not nearly as easy as buying a printer and printing a Glock 17 or SIG Sauer P320.

“My theory is it’s easier to go to Home Depot and buy all the parts and build a gun than it is to print a gun,” Janes said.

“You’re not just jumping right into it and buying a printer tomorrow and printing guns the next day. There’s a learning curve… that can be a deadly outcome if you build a gun, do it wrong and it explodes in your hand or in your face.”

Janes has had to turn away some customers asking to print gun parts. In almost every instance, those customers are gun aficionados looking to preserve a historic relic, not make the gun operational or deadly.

“It’s not as easy as media or social media make it sound. There is talk about making guns and firing and shooting them at people, but there are no stories about keeping heritage up and keeping old guns alive that were used in previous wars,” he said.

Nogier said officers in California took roughly 35,000 firearms off the street in 2021, roughly 30 per cent of which were ghost guns. According to Nogier, Canada can expect to see 10 per cent of what the United States experiences in regards to gun activity.

The firearms report showed none of the seven homicides in the city last year were a result of illegal gun activity, with Nogier saying there were four 3D printing gun busts throughout Saskatchewan in recent months.

Cooper never would have imagined 10 years ago that anyone would be printing guns, but he’s no stranger to people taking modern advancements and finding a criminal element to them.

“Every time there's a technological advancement, there's someone that diverts that for illegal means. It wasn't something, of course, that I had envisioned years ago, but it's not surprising,” Cooper said.

“There has to be controls and regulations around this so that we don't see the negative impact. It’s a concern for sure because it’s possible.”