Alberta police dealing with growing problem of 3D-printed 'ghost guns'

3D printing now provides the criminal element in northern AB and B.C. Peace Region to make firearms. Ghost guns a new untraceable weapon.

A decade ago, building a working firearm at home required machining skills, welding experience and specialized tools. Today, Edmonton Police’s firearms examination unit Const. Erik Tolley said almost anyone can do it with a consumer-grade 3D printer, downloadable files and a few hours of work.

Ghost guns are becoming easier to build — and harder for police to trace “Even 10 years ago, somebody making a good firearm needed machining and welding skills,” Tolley said. “Those people were generally gainfully employed and less likely to be doing it. Now I can teach my kids how to print one in a couple of hours.

The skill level has almost dropped to zero. The result is a steady increase in privately manufactured firearms arriving on evidence tables across Alberta. Tolley, who examines firearms for police agencies throughout the province outside Calgary, says 3D-printed firearms have gone from a rarity to the most common form of homemade gun he encounters.

In 2020, the Edmonton firearms laboratory handled just two case files involving 3D-printed firearms. Today, the lab averages three or four files every month containing one or more privately manufactured firearms. So far in 2026, Tolley has personally examined 25 privately manufactured firearms.

Twenty-three were either completely or partially 3D printed, while the remaining two were improvised pipe guns. Across the entire lab, he estimates the total is roughly double that. “They’re out there all over the place,” he said.

The quality varies dramatically. Some are little more than plastic, gun-shaped objects incapable of firing. Others are sophisticated enough that someone “was going to get shot with this manufactured firearm,” Tolley said.

Province-wide, the numbers tell a similar story. According to Mike Tucker of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT), police agencies across Alberta seized 374 3D-printed firearms over the past five years — 20 in 2021, 72 in 2022, 100 in 2023, 86 in 2024 and 93 in 2025. Because ALERT focuses primarily on organized crime and drug investigations, Tucker said the overwhelming majority of the 3D-printed firearms they seize are connected to those criminal networks.

A spike in 2023 coincided with Project Reproduction, a major Alberta investigation into clandestine firearm manufacturing. Since then, Tucker said seizure numbers have remained relatively stable, suggesting the initial surge in interest may have levelled off. Unlike conventional firearms, however, ghost guns create a unique challenge for investigators.

Factory-produced firearms carry serial numbers that can often be traced back to manufacturers and purchasers. Many 3D-printed firearms have no serial number at all. “The ability to trace them is almost zero,” said Tolley.

Researchers are exploring whether microscopic marks left by individual printers could someday identify the machine used to manufacture a firearm, but that forensic science remains in its infancy. For now, investigators usually cannot determine where a printed firearm originated. Tucker said police have no reliable method to link a firearm to a specific printer or location.

Still, because of the convenience of home manufacturing, investigators believe most of the 3D-printed firearms seized in Alberta were likely produced in Alberta. Police are also seeing more than fully assembled weapons. Under Canadian law, a printed receiver alone is legally considered a firearm.

Commercial firearm kits are readily available containing virtually every other component needed to complete a weapon once a receiver has been produced. Tolley believes police are seeing only a fraction of what’s actually being manufactured. “The ones that are out there but haven’t been used criminally?”

he said. “It could be tens. It could be thousands.”

As printers become cheaper, stronger and more precise — and online tutorials continue to reduce the technical knowledge required — Alberta investigators expect privately manufactured firearms will remain a persistent challenge. “It’s so easy now,” Tolley said. “That’s what’s changed.”

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