Police warn the number of home-made firearms being seized across Australia is growing exponentially, and DIY weapons pose the most significant emerging threat to public safety.
Hundreds of privately made guns and firearm parts have been discovered and seized in dozens of raids across the nation as part of Operation Athena, a taskforce targeting trafficking and use of illegal firearms, involving all Australian law enforcement agencies.
A haul of privately made guns seized by police as part of Operation Athena.Credit: NSW Police
The firearms have increasingly become the weapon of choice for organised crime networks, outlaw motorcycle gangs and street-level criminals.
Many are being created using 3D printers, with easily accessible, cheap parts, including plastics and metals.
Chair of Operation Athena, Detective Superintendent John Watson, said privately made firearms were already infiltrating the criminal world and posed a real and imminent danger to the community.
Watson, who is also the commander of NSW Police’s drug and firearms squad, said there had been rapid improvements in the reliability and sophistication of 3D-printed firearms, previously dismissed as unreliable and prone to malfunction.
Police warn the number of privately made firearms being seized is growing exponentially in Australia.Credit: NSW Police
Technological advancements meant some 3D-printed and privately made illicit firearms were now capable of firing dozens of rounds of shots within a few seconds.
To address the ongoing threat posed by these firearms, senior police from all of Australia’s law enforcement agencies, including intelligence, firearms ballistics and forensic experts, and legal academics, gathered in Melbourne’s CBD this week.
The illicit firearm symposium aims to use the group’s collective expertise to find ways to disrupt and hinder criminal groups from trafficking and manufacturing privately made weapons.
Experts warned Australia was moving into an era where the barrier to entry for producing these weapons was dangerously low, and joint action was needed now to mitigate the risk.
Detective Superintendent John Watson.Credit: Janie Barrett
Watson said while illicit firearms had not yet flooded criminal markets, the guns were increasingly being encountered during law enforcement operations, heightening the concerns of police.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
“Criminals are getting better at talking among themselves about how to manufacture these particular parts.”
Watson said in the past nine months, there had been more than 90 raids across Australia resulting in hundreds of charges involving illicit guns and firearm parts.
“These firearms could be made out of plastic, screws, sometimes a combination of household equipment, and while they may look clownish or even toy-like, the fact is they are genuine and potentially lethal weapons,” he said.
“Australia has the toughest firearm laws in the world, that’s a fact. What these criminals are attempting to do is skirt around these laws and put the public in danger.”
Police were also concerned about the rising numbers of blueprints, outlining how to make guns, sourced from overseas or on the dark web, being seized by police.
“It not just about firearm possession, it’s about the manufacturing of them,” Watson said. “People are actively sourcing parts of firearms from overseas. You can think of it as almost like a jigsaw ... putting the pieces together, they are lethal.”
He described the scene at some of the raids like a “manufacturer’s den” where illicit guns are being stockpiled, alongside firearm parts, 3D printers and blueprints.
3D printing allows almost any three-dimensional object to be modelled using relatively cheap and widespread machinery. The technology has become more sophisticated allowing an entire gun to be printed, along with the ammunition.
Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters were killed in the Port Arthur massacre, was a keynote speaker at the event in Melbourne.
He commended the symposium and said being proactive about reducing the threat of privately made firearms was the “most crucial thing” police and authorities could do to prevent tragedies.
Mikac said he wished similar meetings had been held before the tragic events at Port Arthur in 1996, which sparked sweeping gun reforms in Australia.
Walter MikacCredit: James Braund
“If this was the case, my life could have been a lot different,” he said.
“The ramifications just keep flowing. Even now, some people have taken their own lives, some people have never recovered, from a mental health perspective.
“You still see the scars of what people had to witness.”
Earlier this year, detectives from NSW crime command’s drug and firearms squad, the Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police launched a strike force aimed at investigating importation and private manufacturing of firearms.
In one search at a home in Googong (a NSW town 26 kilometres south-east of Canberra), investigators seized a loaded Glock pistol, a sawn-off rifle, four replica Glock pistols, four privately manufactured firearms, firearm magazines, firearm parts, three taser cartridges, a ballistic vest, multiple flick knives, a cannabis plant and prohibited drugs. An 18-year-old was arrested and charged.
In October last year, detectives from Victoria Police’s illicit firearms squad seized seven handguns from a house in Gordon, 95 kilometres west of Melbourne. The weapons seized included four privately made firearms – four rifles, three gel blasters, a home-made flamethrower, more than 70 cannabis plants, large amounts of ammunition, privately manufactured firearm parts, a 3D printer and other illicit substances.
Police arrested and charged a 47-year-old man with offences including possessing a trafficable quantity of firearms and parts for manufacturing a firearm.
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