LIVE FREE OR FUCKING DIE | 01

Test firing the FGC-9

SOMEWHERE IN WESTERN EUROPE—Ten miles deep into a gloomy European forest, I’m stood watching a masked man fire a volley of shots from a 3D-printed rifle. Around 80% of the gun is made of plastic. Bang, bang, bang. The echo of each round bounces through the trees as hot bullet casings land in the dirt. Smoke clears from the suppressed barrel.

“Shooting it yourself, out in the open … that’s a really cool thing to do,” says the gunman, who goes by the alias JStark.

It’s the first time he’s properly test-fired the gun, an invention he’s spent years secretly perfecting with the help of some anonymous associates. “The smell of the gunpowder when it burns…” he trails off. He loves it.

Even through his balaclava and dark sunglasses, JStark is visibly excited.

Due to where we are—a major country in Western Europe—what JStark is doing is very illegal. If caught, he could be sent to prison for more than a decade. JStark doesn’t care though. He’s a founding member of what is believed to be the largest 3D-printed gun network in the world. They’re called Deterrence Dispensed, and their primary objective is to make gun control a global impossibility. Many consider the group to be extremists. Some even call them terrorists. Others, heroes.

Whatever you think of them, they’re active, organised, and they’re not going away. A whole decentralised global community of anonymous gunsmiths and self-taught 3D-printing experts work day and night through Deterrence Dispensed. They design various models of hybrid firearms that can be made almost entirely in someone’s bedroom with the use of a 3D-printer, a laptop, and some metalworking tools. Their 3D-printed guns have been seen in over three dozen countries, including Finland, Brazil, France, Barbados, England, Syria, Indonesia, Poland, Myanmar... The list goes on.

I first heard of JStark in 2018 when I was speaking with someone involved in 3D-printed gun manufacturing. Specifically, the clandestine element of such a community. The tone of the conversation shifted, and he said to me: “There’s a guy…” I understood immediately that this wasn’t just any guy. This guy, it was explained to me, was happily risking his freedom by secretly designing and building a 3D-printed gun in Europe. The gun would be unlike any other. “He’s kind of… eccentric.” That guy, of course, was JStark, and that gun is the FGC-9 (which stands for Fuck Gun Control – nine millimetre). The FGC-9 has been designed so that it can be made illicitly in Europe, where gun control is very strict. If you know how, it can be manufactured entirely without having to import any other parts from outside the region.

Most of the firearm is made of plastic—Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene to be exact. ABS Filament. A few weeks before I met with JStark, wrapped up spools of the filament had been purchased online and delivered to his workshop in Western Europe. It was then fed through a basic commercial 3D-printer and transformed into a framework to then be adapted into a fully functioning firearm.

As JStark fired off several more shots, the kick of the spring inside the FGC-9 rang out with each pull of the trigger. It was distinctive. I’ve been around plenty of guns, and they’ve never sounded like this. The ping of the FGC-9 betrays it’s makeshift nature, but the bullets fired at a force of over 1000 FPS, do not. This thing can kill you with ease.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Reporting from 2020