It's a truism at this point to say that Americans own a lot of guns. Case in point: This week, a fire chief in rural Alabama stopped to help a driver who had just hit a deer. The two men walked into the driveway of a nearby home. For reasons unknown, a man with a gun came out of the home and started shooting. This was a bad idea on many levels, but mostly practically because both the fire chief and driver were also armed. Everyone was shot, the fire chief died, and the man who lived in the house was charged with murder.
But despite the ease with which legal weapons can be obtained, there is still a robust black market for the trade in items such as “ghost guns” (without serial numbers) and machine gun converters (which turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon). According to a major new report released this month by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, there was a 1,600 percent increase in the use of privately made “ghost guns” during crimes between 2017 and 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, seizures of machine gun converters also increased by 784 percent.
Ars Technica has been working on these issues for years, as both “ghost guns” and machine gun converters can be produced using 3D printed parts, the schematics of which are now widely available online. But you can be aware of a problem and still be surprised when local prosecutors start talking about black market smuggling rings, clumsy burglary schemes, murder – and 3D printing operations run out of a local apartment.
Philadelphia story
I live in the Philadelphia area, and this is a true Philadelphia story; I know all the places in it well. Many people in this story live in Philadelphia, but the violence (and 3D printing!) they are accused of happened in the suburbs, in places like Jenkintown, Lower Merion Township, and Bucks County. If you know Philly at all, you might know that these are all suburban areas in the West and Northwest and are generally all pretty comfortable places. The New York Times published a long story this month titled “How Sleepy Bucks County Became a Rival to the Hamptons.” Lower Merion is one of Philly's wealthier suburbs, while Jenkintown is a charming little northwest suburb that was also the setting for the long-running sitcom The Goldbergs. Local prosecutors are more likely to be busting shipments of fake Jason Kelce-signed merchandise or going after comedian Bill Cosby (and later not).
But today, prosecutors in Montgomery County announced something else: They had busted a local 3D-printed black market gun ring — and said one of the group's 3D-printed guns was used to kill a man last month during a failed burglary.
Mugshots of Fuentes and Fulforth.
Credit: Montco DA's office
It's a pretty bizarre story. As police tell it, the case started with 26-year-old Jeremy Fuentes driving north to an address in Bucks County. Fuentes worked for a junk hauling company in nearby Willow Grove, and he had gone to Bucks County to quote for a job. As the homeowner showed Fuentes around the property, Fuentes reportedly saw “a large gun safe, multiple firearm boxes, gun parts and ammunition” inside the home.
Outside of work, Fuentes is said to be a member of a local black market gun gang, so when he saw so much armor in one place — and when he noticed the homeowners were elderly — he saw dollar signs. Police say that after the estimated visit, Fuentes contacted Charles Fulforth, 41, of Jenkintown, who was a key member of the gun ring.
Fuentes had an idea: Fulforth should rob the house and steal all the gun-related supplies. Unfortunately, the group was not very good at giving directions. Fuentes did not provide complete and accurate information, so when Fulforth and an accomplice went to rob the house in December 2024, they instead drove to a home in Lower Merion. This house wasn't in Bucks County at all – in fact, it was 30 minutes south – but it had a similar address to the house Fuentes had visited.
When they raided the Lower Merion home on December 8, the two burglars found not an elderly couple, but a 25-year-old man named Andrew Gaudio and his 61-year-old mother, Bernadette. Andrew was killed, while Bernadette was shot but survived.
Police arrested Fulforth just three days later, on December 11, and picked up his fellow burglar on December 17. But the police did not immediately realize what they had stumbled into. It wasn't until they searched Fulforth's Jenkintown apartment and found a 9mm 3D-printed pistol that they realized this might be more than a simple burglary. How had Fulforth acquired the weapon?
According to a statement on the case released today by the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, the investigation included “search warrants at multiple locations and forensic searches of cellphones,” which revealed that Fulforth had its own “firearms manufacturing facility,” or “a group 3D printers.” Detectives even found video of a Taurus-style weapon part being printed on the devices, and they came to believe that the weapon used to kill Andrew Gaudio was “one of several Fulforth manufactured weapons”.
In addition to making parts for ghost weapons in his “highly sophisticated, clandestine firearms manufacturing facility,” Fulforth was also accused of making machine gun converters with 3D printed parts. These parts would be pre-installed in the weapons the group traded to increase their value. According to the investigators: “The examination of the recorded cell phone conversations between the members of the arms trade revealed that when [machine gun conversion] When switches were installed on AR pistols, the price of the firearm increased by at least $1,000.
Fuentes, who initially provided the address that led to the killing, was arrested this morning. Authorities have also charged five others with participating in the gun ring.
A tragic and stupid story, but one that emphasizes how mainstream 3D printing technology has become. There is no need for a huge production facility or dimly lit warehouse; just put a few printers in a bedroom and you too can become a local arms dealer.
There's nothing new about any of this, and in fact fewer people were shot than in the bizarre Alabama shootout mentioned above. Still, it hits home when a technology I've been writing and reading about on Ars for years shows up in your community — and leaves a man dead.
