Showing off 3D-printed weapons before being sold online, Marseille’s attorney general on Monday expressed concern about the “outsourcing of the arms trade” following the dismantling of a major network in France and Belgium, AFP reported.

“This is the first time in France,” which “continues to worry us,” Nicolas Bessonet said at a press conference where the three weapons seized in late January were presented.

Led by the National Gendarmerie’s Cyber ​​Unit, it took a year of painstaking investigations, including investigators infiltrating Telegram groups, to carry out this massive seizure in late January in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Ile-de-France, Grand Est, Midi-Pyrénées and Belgium regions.

Three hundred gendarmes, including members of the elite GIGN unit, were mobilized to arrest fourteen people, seize eight 3D printers, seven complete 3D weapons, and twenty-four conventional weapons, often undeclared and seized mostly from collectors.

This network was headed by a 26-year-old man, previously convicted of a drug-related crime, who lived in Roquebrune-sur-Argent (Var). After he moved to Belgium, an international warrant was issued for his arrest with a view to handing him over to the French authorities.

“He shared a libertarian mindset” and was part of the “pro-American gun movement,” which aims to “distribute weapons to as many people as possible to protect themselves from a state they see as totalitarian and repressive,” he explained. Colonel Hervé Petry, head of the national cybercrime unit.

In total, six people chose SIZO, five more are under judicial control, one of whom is kept at home with an electronic bracelet. All are between eighteen and thirty years old, some of them have criminal records.

Some individuals participated in the manufacture of weapons, while others acted as middlemen and dealers. Buyers (collectors or persons connected with drug trade) were also detained.

To avoid inspections, the 3D-printed parts were sent to the buyer one by one.

“It’s still illegal, punishable by up to six years in prison,” Bessonet recalled.