Online gun sales, 3D printing of plastic weapons pushing firearms into hands of criminal underworld

Updated

His name is ReadySetGo, and for $250 he can get you a gun straight out of a James Bond movie.

It is an easily concealed plastic handgun that fires a plastic - but lethal - bullet and cannot be detected by X-rays and metal scanners.

Or there is OzGun, who for $3,950 can source a single Glock 17s, the gun favoured by Australian law enforcement.

OzGun can also get you ammunition, while ReadySetGo will provide barrels for his firearms in a variety of calibres: 9mm, .380, .45 and .44 special.

There is no trick to their offers. Both gun-runners are offering the real deal: lethal handguns that Australia's criminal underworld would love to get a hold of.

What is new about these 21st-century gun dealers is that they exist online and are virtually untraceable.

Both dealers sell on an online black market called Agora, which specialises in drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine and ecstasy, but also has almost 50 lethal guns, from pistols to assault rifles, for sale.

OzGuns and ReadySetGo are the only gun sellers on Agora that say they are in Australia, and therefore can send their products to Australians looking for illegal guns without the risk of passing Customs.

The ABC's 7.30 program went to the website and asked both sellers about their guns.

The terrorism implications of such a weapon are huge. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione

"I have been sending and receiving guns throughout Australia for years," OzGuns said via Agora's messaging system.

"I am sure that when you receive the first item you will be back for me as my service is above expected standards."

ReadySetGo said of his offering, the Liberator: "These are properly made. I have fired them, by hand, safely."

The Liberator is a plastic gun that can be built using a 3D printer, a machine that can create virtually any three-dimensional object using synthetic materials.

The Liberator achieved infamy last year when its Texas-based designer released its plans for free onto the web. The US government shut him down, but not before the schematics were downloaded about 100,000 times.

Terrorism implications of 3D-printed guns 'huge'

That release prompted NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione to warn Australians of the risks of the Liberator.

"3D guns are made of thermo-plastic or synthetic material, which makes them undetectable in airport X-ray machines," Mr Scipione said.

"The terrorism implications of such a weapon are huge."

The online guns are also just one element of an increasingly vibrant Australian black market in illegal guns, which has been boosted by the recent upswing in public shootings in eastern Australia, particularly Sydney.

Other recent cases of more traditional handgun smuggling have also sparked fears among police that criminals are importing handguns from overseas in large numbers.

In 2012, NSW police broke up an elaborate gun-smuggling ring that had imported as many as 200 Glock pistols from the US via a suburban Sydney post office.

The men involved had imported the guns in broken-down pieces and then reassembled them.

"It demonstrates that very clearly there are issues with the importation of firearms - that potentially this is the tip of the iceberg," Michael Plotecki, the commander of the NSW Police Firearms and Organised Crime Squad, said of the smuggling ring.

"We've got to assume that if this criminal organisation can find loopholes that allow them to get 200 Glocks into the system, then there are other organisations that are working in the same process."

Mr Plotecki also noted that his squad saw a six-fold rise in handgun seizures between 2010 and last year, from 59 to 302.

A 2012 case involved two Sydney men, Mohamed Metleg and Nawak Chaouk, who bought 20 Glocks in the US and attempted to smuggle them back to Australia hidden inside a Chevy 350 engine block.

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) seized the engine before it was shipped.

Metleg and Chaouk are now in Australians jails, awaiting extradition to the US, where they will face gun charges.

Topics: law-crime-and-justice, police, australia, sydney-2000

First posted