The 'most dangerous man in the West' who you've probably never have heard of

Lethal weapons made from plastic and Lego parts are getting into the hands of gang members, rebels and paramilitaries across the globe... with one man thought to be leading the distribution.

Online instructions on how anyone can make the potentially deadly gun and an array of others are being spread online.

It is largely by a group called Deterrence Dispensed, which urges citizens to be "armed and ready," and is led by a man with the online name of Ivan the Troll.

In the past three years, a handmade semiautomatic firearm, known as an FGC-9, has been found in the hands of Northern Irish paramilitaries, rebels in Myanmar, neo-Nazis in Spain and gang members in France.

The name stands for "F**k Gun Control" with a reference to the 9-milimeter bullets it fires.

There is no official record of anyone being killed by one yet, but in 2023 in Marseille, police discovered found what looked like a toy assault rifle, made from plastic and Lego parts, but it was lethal, and had been used in an attempted murder, they later said.

And, next month in the UK, a British teenager is due to be sentenced for building an FGC-9 in what will be one of teh latest terrorism cases involving the makeshift weapon.

In December 2020 Matthew Cronjager, a British neo-Nazi, was arrested and accused of trying to recruit and arm a militia.

It was later found he had downloaded a Deterrence Dispensed manual for making 9-millimeter ammunition and the plans for the FGC-9.

He was later convicted and jailed for more than 11 years, said that he wanted to topple the government and start a revolution.

Deterrence Dispensed is still making available instructions on how to make it and several other lethal-looking plastic 3D-printed guns.

Its website currently says it is moving to a new host, but it still links to details of several of the home made guns.

The FGC-9 appears to have ben created with a goal of arming as many people as possible.

One manual available through its website states: "We together can defeat for good the infringement that is taking place on our natural-born right to bear arms, defend ourselves and rise up against tyranny."

Kristian Abrahamsson, an intelligence officer with Swedish border police, told the New York Times: "It’s not just a gun. It is also an ideology.”

His unit has seized dozens of them being imported.

An investigation by the newspaper looked at its growth from a "hobbyist" project to its widespread use by groups who would usually require traditional firearms in about 15 countries.

Now sharing the manual in the UK will be a terrorist offence. Ivan the Troll is in many YouTube videos and other podcasts.

The New York Times said through court documents, corporate records and information on social media accounts, it identified him as 26-year-old Illinois gunmaker John Elik.

It was after Dr Rajan Basra, a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), and security researcher Nathan Mayer had linked him to the Ivan the Troll accounts using online clues after he was identified in a lawsuit as an owner of a website promoting 3D-printed guns.

Mr Duygu was found dead in 2021 of undetermined causes only days after being questioned by German police.

Mr Elik took on promotion of the gun after this, creating his own designs.

His aunt, Amy Elik, is a Republican state representative who supports gun rights and voted against the state’s ban on homemade firearms. The Times said she did not respond to a request for comment.

The Times said it also sent an interview request and a summary of its article to Mr Elik's email address and got a reply from an Ivan the Troll account which declined to answer questions saying he did not believe he would be treated fairly.

But, it said he did say it was wrong to focus on “European cops complaining about a small number of guns being recovered,” and shootings in which nobody was injured, “rather than the gun’s use as a tool of liberation.”

The gun’s actual creator was Jacob Duygu, a German national of Kurdish heritage, in 2020.

Mr Duygu wanted everyone to be able to own a firearm on their own terms.

His gun could be made without commercial gun parts, meaning anyone with a 3D-printer could make one for a few hundred pounds.

Police forces across the globe, including the National Crime Agency (NCA)( in the UK see 3D-printed guns and converted blank firers as the new firearms threat, with a number of prosecutions of manufacturers already.

The Sunday Express reported that the NCA wants creating 3D-printed manuals to be a criminal offence.

In the US, 3D-printed guns are regulated by different of state laws.

Illinois law means any manufacturers have to add serial numbers to homemade gun components to enable traceability.

Some of Mr Elik's social media accounts have said things as alarming as this: “Civilians need assault weapons because having a weapon made for killing people is very important for self defence.

“If it’s made for killing people quickly and easily, even better.”

Dr Basra said describes the gun as "a game changer,” adding “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?”

In an article published on the network's website yesterday, he wrote: "The broad 3D-printed gun movement has a strong libertarian ethos. While many participants are simply hobbyists attracted to the technical or aesthetic aspects of the guns, there is a distinctive ideological dimension to the movement (known as Gun Computer-Aided Design, GunCAD, or 3D Second Amendment, 3D2A).

"One central tenet is that bearing arms is a (universal) human right, whether for individual self-defence or as a collective safeguard against government tyranny. GunCAD is thus deeply sceptical of State interference in citizens’ lives and heavily influenced by US Second Amendment culture.

"This worldview – combined with an irreverent Internet culture – means that the movement is inherently adversarial towards advocates of gun control. At its most confrontational, this can manifest in the flouting of local gun laws. Other times, it can also consist of the trolling of lawmakers, law enforcement, lobby groups, or tech companies."