We recently learned that the police dismantled in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) a clandestine workshop in which weapons were manufactured with 3D printers . Specifically, two 3D printers were found along with different parts of weapons, in addition to a replica of an assault rifle, two Tasers and a machete.
The police claimed that they had also found manuals on terrorism and urban guerrillas (including more than 30 manuals on how to make homemade explosives and how to make firearms through 3D printing), as well as material from white supremacists.
The owner of what would have become the first workshop of this type to be discovered in Spain, who has been accused of illegal possession of weapons and explosives , is Spanish and worked as an administrator in a nursing home on the island.
In a statement, the police indicated that the operation had started when investigators discovered that a person was trying to sell firearms and explosives through the Internet.
This investigation took them to Tenerife, and when the agents began to investigate in the workshop, they found a fully functioning 3D printer, which was just at that moment printing a short rifle frame that was almost practically complete. And, although the operation was carried out in September of last year, it is now that it has finally been revealed.
This is something that alarms the European authorities, especially if we take into account that, over the last few years, there have already been two similar cases in other European countries.
In 2019, for example, a 26-year-old was convicted in the UK for trying to make a weapon with 3D printers. And, in October of that same year, a man of Nazi ideology murdered two people in an attack perpetrated in a synagogue located in Halle (Germany) with homemade weapons made with a 3D printer.
As experts indicate, getting a 3D printer is actually as simple as spending less than 300 euros, which is what they currently cost in the market. Then, getting manuals for the manufacture of weapons is just as simple, being available on the ‘deep web’ or even on certain web pages not yet identified by the police.
Therefore, all this can negatively affect arms control , since the parts necessary for the manufacture of weapons through a 3D printer are not subject to any control. Worse still, they don’t appear on any national gun registry.
