Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language

Acting on a tip off, firearms officers from West Midlands Police

have raided a family home in a suburb of East Birmingham...

..and detained a 30-year-old man after discovering

an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom.

Officers have concerns over two firearms that appear to be

homemade and potentially lethal.

The resident of the property, David Biddell-Portman, is

arrested on suspicion of possessing prohibited weapons.

Ballistics examiner Gareth Cooper

is dispatched to assess the seized guns.

My work involves the examination of almost every

firearms-related incident that occurs in the West Midlands.

3D guns are very much an emerging threat.

If an individual can manufacture from scratch

a completely untraceable firearm

in his own home and that the police literally have

to stumble onto it is exceptionally worrying for UK law enforcement.

Within the property, a forensic search recovers

a total of six firearms and ammunition.

They also cease multiple digital devices.

Over 300 component gun parts...

..and in an upstairs cupboard...

..find a 3D printer.

Right, these are weapons that have been recovered.

That looks 3D-printed, doesn't it?

The seized firearms are brought to a secure facility

for immediate examination.

Quite the arsenal, isn't it, for one person to have?

Oh, yeah.

Gareth is joined by DC Mike Hall, the officer in charge of the case.

So, that's a sniper rifle from Switzerland.

OK.

There's nothing to suggest it's been deactivated.

That, for me, is a viable section one firearm. OK.

And needs a certificate to possess.

The sniper rifle is of immediate interest because if he doesn't have

a licence, there will be offenses potentially committed there.

He could be planning to sell these guns on.

So, these are the two weapons that we believe are the 3D-printed ones.

This is the first time we've seen a 3D-printed firearm.

Is it something you've come across before? Nobody has seen these.

Nobody's seen these anywhere in the West Midlands.

This is a really unusual find, nationally, let alone locally.

It's going to take time to analyse and examine these weapons properly.

We need to make an assessment exactly how significant

the threat is from Biddell-Portman.

Yeah, you all right, Sarg?

Due to the unknown threat posed by the suspect,

detectives meet to decide

on the investigation's immediate priorities.

A massive arsenal of weapons have been seized, including

a sniper rifle and we believe there are two 3D-printed firearms.

You've got to ask yourself, why these are in this property?

So, we want to know - is David Biddell-Portman linked to

firearms, criminality, drug dealing. You know, gun distribution.

Is he a weapon supplier? It's as serious as it gets.

Seeing these guns, they do scare me.

To have recovered these types of weapon from a wardrobe

in a nice residential family address, it is a game changer.

In order to establish a forensic link between David

and the firearms...

..his DNA and fingerprints are taken to be compared with

the weapons seized at the scene.

We've run David's name through the databases we have

and he has no previous convictions.

OK...

So, right now, we need to establish whether he is a collector,

or are we looking at somebody with extremist views?

Follow me now.

Is David making firearms?

Have these guns been fired before?

We simply do not know.

Before the suspect is interviewed,

the two firearms which police believe to be homemade

are forensically examined by Gareth.

This 3D-printed weapon is based on the AR15 American assault rifle.

It's partially 3D-printed, so this lower section is made of plastic.

The upper section here is made of alloy.

This is a semi-automatic gun, but this is an unconventional

design, and I can already see that the bolt is also 3D-printed.

These guns have been frequently featured in mass shootings

over in America.

Because they're a military weapon,

they are capable of inflicting severe injuries

across a number of casualties in a very short space of time.

Next, the second firearm is assessed.

Most of the gun we can see is 3D-printed.

Virtually all of it.

Moulded into the side of the lower receiver are the letters FGC9.

FGC stands for "fuck gun control".

These people are online anarchists,

ideologically opposed to gun control.

The reason they published the gun details online was specifically to

bring the opportunity for firearms possession to the whole world.

You don't need any specialised components,

so anybody in theory can manufacture this without arousing any

suspicion and without the knowledge of the authorities.

In the wrong hands, that could be an extremely dangerous weapon.

They are obviously 3D-printed weapons.

However, we don't know whether they are viable at this stage.

If they work, then they would be illegal

to possess anywhere in the UK.

The officers are going to be looking for evidence that incriminates this

individual in the act of actually making a firearm from scratch.

That's what they need to prove.

With David refusing to answer questions...

He's effectively given the explanation that he's just

a collector who's interested in these things.

..detectives review bodycam footage, where

he made significant comments during his arrest.

House just looks like a normal family home, doesn't it? Yeah.

Balloon in the corner there.

Is he asking because he doesn't

know, or is he asking just for clarity?

It's certainly interesting as to,

that's the wording that he's picked out from. Does it indicate

that he's got a knowledge of the firearms legislation? Yeah.

He's just quite calm, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah.

Like, quite calm, considering what's going on.

If David is a firearms dealer,

I need to find any link to any organised crime groups.

For me, he's an unknown risk.

I wouldn't know what somebody like him would be capable of doing.

The National Ballistics Intelligence Service holds

a record of every firearm in the UK that has been linked to a crime.

But initial checks are unable to find a connection to any

previous firearm offenses.

Our dilemma here is that because these guns were homemade,

3D-printed,

they're untraceable. There's no serial numbers,

there's no markings on them.

They're commonly known as ghost guns.

If you can make these in your own home and be under the radar,

then you can produce these firearms and sell them.

With no way of linking the 3D firearms to any previous crimes...

That's it. Yeah, if you want to

stick it on there, Mike? And we'll take a look. Cheers, mate.

We don't see these every day. No.

..Mike tasks digital forensics officer Wayne Johnson with

examining the 3D printer seized from the suspect's house.

So, up here is the plastic filament

and we're going to feed that through.

I need to open up this clamp and feed it past these cogs.

So, this plastic will feed through into the nozzle that gets really hot

and then it will start depositing that plastic onto this plate.

And then, it's going to start layering up different

levels of that plastic to eventually create the model.

So, the plate and nozzle move quite quick, but

it's got to do hundreds and hundreds of layers to build up one object.

So for us to get this 3D printer to make a model,

someone needs to load that file from their computer to give it

those instructions to print that object.

I can give you an example here. OK.

This is part of a bionic hand.

So, what we can see here is how the model is going to be built

layer upon layer upon layer.

In this case, there's over 400 layers.

To build a whole gun, I think it's going to take hours and hours,

if not days.

What I'll need to show for the courts is what files have

come through this particular printer, if it's possible.

This printer doesn't actually store any

sort of history about what's been printed.

What I'll do, I'll go through all the items that you've seized.

So, the computers, the memory cards, and see if I can find any

evidence that links the suspect to manufacturing guns on this printer.

What I'm hoping to find on his other devices is files that he maybe

downloaded that contains those instructions for that 3D printer.

It does take some skill to do and research.

And it often falls to the devices that we recover to actually give

us the full story, the full picture, of what actually has happened.

OK, so I'm going to go through the

media that I've extracted from the phone.

Wayne starts trawling through the digital devices

seized from the suspect, to find any evidence of firearms manufacturing.

And we're looking at sort of just over 60,000 images and videos.

See, a person's phone is almost like an unofficial diary.

It's constantly logging what you're doing on the internet,

where you are, what photos you took,

and it's logging all this, often without your knowledge.

These days, no-one really deletes anything off of their device.

They've got plenty of storage and it

just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And then that's stuff that we rely on

to recover, to find out what someone's been doing.

He does look like your average sort of family man.

A loving dad.

You know, we see a nice video here, appears to be the suspect.

It looks like he's into motorbikes and quads.

You often see maybe what their interests are, what hobbies they do.

It's really helpful if I can sort of learn what their life might be like.

But also, sometimes, you can see two sides to that person.

Paintball. You can see him here running around a forest,

hiding behind obstacles.

And it's where you can get to play war, essentially.

They have those bits that they're happy to portray to friends

and family, and then there's this darker side,

the stuff that's being hidden, maybe because they're involved in crime.

After finding no evidence of a link to any illegal firearms,

Wayne uses advanced software to search the phone for deleted data.

I'm not seeing anything to do with social media.

No real emails.

It's quite unusual, these days.

So, I can see now that on his mobile phone, he is actually making

some attempts to hide his activity.

There's an interesting one here I don't see too often,

an app called Keybase.

These type of apps allow you to talk to other people or set up

groups and communicate securely.

Interestingly, the user has changed it on this particular phone

to delete every chat within 60 seconds.

This app allows you to chat to other people,

but the whole chat is hidden.

This does raise suspicion why somebody might need

that on their device. It's not normal,

unless somebody is trying to hide something.

So, it's really important now to try and get into that app to

see exactly what are they talking about and what is it they're hiding.

West Midlands Police are no closer to establishing

whether David Biddell-Portman is manufacturing weapons.

A meeting is called with Tony Gallagher

from the National Ballistics Intelligence Service

to create a forensic strategy for the guns.

So, one of the reasons why we called the meeting is for all of us

to understand what we can do

to obtain the best evidence around obviously something

I think most of us on this side of the table are learning about.

All your fingerprints and DNA is from the outside parts. Yeah.

That doesn't say he assembled it. OK.

So, to do the inside parts, you're going to have to take it

apart under DNA conditions.

DNA and fingerprinting the internal parts before you start test firing.

You would expect his DNA and prints to be on the internal parts,

if he has assembled it. Yes. Yeah.

The problem with taking it apart... Yeah.

..it might not go back together.

To classify it as a firearm, at some stage we're going to have to

put a round in it, a live round.

That may destroy it.

That's your dilemma, from our perspective.

The functionality of the gun fundamentally affects

the nature of the charges that the police will lay.

If they can't prove that it works, then it may end up being

nothing more than an imitation firearm.

There may not even be any offenses.

So, it is critical that we understand whether it works

and that has to be done in a hands-on way.

I think it makes perfect sense to dismantle the gun, to then do

the fingerprints, put the gun back together, to then obviously to

consider the test firing, if that's possible.

The 3D firearms are sent to the University of Warwick's

digital imaging department for a high resolution CT scan.

OK.

Ready?

I suggest we use the test can and we load it in and see what

we can see before we do a full 3D reconstruction.

The CT scans are incredibly useful to us

because they give us an opportunity to see what the inner

workings of the gun is like before we try and take it apart.

So that's the trigger there.

I'll push back a bit more, so we can see a bit more.

You can see a lot of it there.

The scan can reveal how much of the gun is plastic

and whether any metal components have been used to reinforce it.

So, the magazine gets loaded in here.

I mean, can we drop it down a bit? Yeah.

3D-printed guns are not conventionally constructed.

Additionally, they are not made of necessarily

the strongest of materials.

There is a risk when you take one apart and try and resemble it,

you may damage some of those components.

If it doesn't go back together, as it came apart, then it can't be

test-fired and we may never be able to demonstrate beyond doubt

that it was ever a viable weapon.

What you're looking in here is the results from those,

the CT scans that we carried out on the weapons.

We were very surprised that,

when you look inside his weapons, how sophisticated they really are.

Gareth consults 3D printing expert

Professor Mark Williams on which firearm is robust enough to

withstand being dismantled and then test-fired.

What we're going to do first is rotate the gun

and then we're going to strip away all the plastic components

and leave the metal components behind.

That's perfect for our purposes.

Only the parts of the gun with a greater density than

plastic are revealed.

So on the top here you've got the AR15

and there's a lot of metal in that.

I can already see the hammer

and trigger mechanism, exactly as I expect to see in a real AR15.

They're clearly made of metal.

The relative density and darkness in the image shows us that.

The purpose of including the metal components in this

is to increase the longevity. Yeah.

The whole thing cannot be made of plastic.

There are essential parts that have to be

metal to make a viable, a viable gun.

There are 3D-printed guns that contain virtually no metal,

but they disintegrate very, very quickly,

usually the first time you fire them.

The weapons that the officers have recovered in this

case are hybrid weapons, which means that part of their componentry

is 3D-printed, but of course you need internal metal

components to handle the pressure on discharge.

Next, Gareth examines the construction of the FGC9.

What I can see, Mark, is a lot of screws holding these

components together.

What I don't want to be doing is having to disassemble

and reassemble a lot of machine screws that are potentially

going to strip, work their way loose, come out.

There are so many screws in the FGC9.

I really don't want to be taking those out.

The AR15 looks to be the simpler one to dissemble.

This is the gun that I'm going to be taking apart.

I don't want to break the gun and destroy any evidence,

if I can possibly, possibly avoid that.

It may break,

nonetheless, but I want to know that I've done everything

I can do to avoid that happening.

Now, I'm looking through Keybase that allows a user to encrypt

and essentially hide chats.

In digital forensics, Wayne has used specialist software to recover

deleted images from the encrypted app found on the suspect's phone.

What we have recovered is a lot of the media that's been exchanged

and the vast majority appears to relate to firearms.

They're really zoomed in images on different parts.

I can see a particular image here that's been annotated by a sad face.

It looks like maybe it's been manufactured wrong, or

since broken on there.

So, to me, they almost look like guides.

Probably is relevant that they are being hidden in this chat

and then being forensically wiped.

Why is David using this level of encryption?

It may be that he's utilising this app to hide his tracks.

Does David have accomplices?

Does he have other people who he's selling to online?

Kelly, will you see if there's

anything that sticks out to you? Yeah.

With the new information that David may be communicating with others,

detectives have been sent forensic analysis of his financial

records to check if he is buying or selling firearms.

First, if we just have a look at the incoming,

the 1488 large green one

is his main job, his main source of employment. OK.

It does appear a relatively stable income every

single month coming in. Yeah.

Nothing that's really odd.

There's nothing really like a huge four figure sums that you'd

expect, you know, a firearm

to be traded for... Yeah. ..on the black market.

The outgoing, we can see where his money goes.

907, Coinbase.

So what's that?

It's around cryptocurrency. OK.

So, not only do we have 907, there's a further 500.

That's the majority of his incoming, isn't it?

I mean, if you're earning that much money going towards Coinbase,

that raises a few concerns, for me.

Large cryptocurrency payments are suspicious to me.

With their levels of encryption, it is

frustrating because it's harder to chase than a regular bank account.

So, for me, I rely on forensics.

It's crucial to establish fingerprints on the weapons

to support the fact that he's manufactured these firearms.

I've brought some tools over.

Yeah, lovely. We'll get those cleaned down.

Now the decision has been made to dismantle the AR15 printed

firearm, Gareth can attempt to take it apart to

search for fingerprints on the internal components.

When we got into the lab with the box,

we obviously don't know how many parts is going to be in.

What I'm hoping is if I remove a couple of pins here, it should

separate the upper and lower halves. Oh, right, OK.

And then if I can get the front hand guard off it, it should

expose the barrel, and there might be residual prints and DNA.

The firearm must be dismantled

in sterile conditions to avoid contamination.

If the suspect's fingerprint is found anywhere on the internal

componentry of the weapon, that will be strong indication

he was involved in its construction.

I imagine the police will be very keen to ask him how they got there.

In the fingerprint development lab, technician Kat Harold

receives the individual parts of the 3D gun.

The compartments have all been took apart,

so there might be some exposed surface areas.

So, I've got no value ridge detail just there.

We don't know when we recover an item whether it has fingerprints

on it because you can't see them with the naked eye.

And it's not until we use

our different processes that it develops the fingerprints.

By using different wavelengths of light, it gives you

more of a contrast between the background and the fingerprint,

which enables it to be viewed better and photographed more easily.

There's not enough characteristics in there at the moment to

mark it up for photography.

Initial examination under different light sources shows no

fingerprint ridge detail on the plastic components.

Plastic as medium for retaining fingerprints isn't great.

It's quite a rough surface.

A fingerprint is very fragile

and they're that small that something that maybe slightly

rough can interfere with the characteristics of a fingerprint.

Next, Cat loads the gun barrel and other metal components

which have a smoother surface into a superglue cabinet.

The glue is placed in a metal foil container here

and this heats the glue up, which then evaporates.

When you sweat on your hands, part of the sweat component is chloride

ions and that is what the superglue attaches to,

leaving a white residue.

It takes just 40 minutes to process the sample.

So, there are a few ridges at the top of this component.

It's just there by the "up".

It has been enhanced slightly further with the superglue.

There is one last opportunity to enhance the ridge detail

further, using a green florescent powder.

So now, I'm just going to powder each component and

because the item is black as well, it will provide a good contrast.

Oh, OK.

I have found some more friction ridge detail.

So, it's just on the side surface, there.

Just this part, here.

You can see that it is part of a fingerprint, but there's not

enough information for the bureau to do an identification from that.

OK, do you want the light on?

Without DNA and fingerprints on the internal components, there is

a threat of him getting bail.

OK, so your buzzer is...

He could be capable of some atrocity.

I cannot simply take that risk.

With the possibility that the suspect could be bailed,

DC Hall meets Gareth for an urgent review of the case.

I've not got communications with others, you know, regarding

firearms, but if David has been producing

firearms in his bedroom, his scale, there's no end on it for me.

He could just keep going as... If he hadn't been arrested

when he did, he could have just kept going and going and going.

We don't know what was in his mind.

We don't know what his motivations are.

In terms of how much planning was needed,

it speaks to a significant level of investment in time and energy.

Licensing checks have come back for the other guns

found in his property.

So that sniper rifle, that for me is a viable section one firearm.

The suspect should have a certificate.

There is no certificate listed to the address or to David himself.

OK.

David doesn't have a licence for the rifle or the silencer,

so we can charge him with those, which will then afford us

that crucial time to complete further forensics.

The potential for harm that he represents is at the other

end of the scale, isn't it? Agree.

Sound, OK.

David Biddell-Portman is now remanded in custody

on charges of possession...

..giving Wayne time to hunt for evidence of the more serious

offense of manufacture.

The suspect has given no passwords for any of the devices.

If we can't get into these laptops, then we're not going to be

able to capture any evidence potentially of him

printing these gun components on his printer.

Before any data can be retrieved,

the hard drive must first be made secure.

OK. So, now, I'm going to connect this to a write blocker.

This means that no data's going to get changed on this drive.

We're just going to read the data from it.

What we don't want is this connecting to some kind of network.

It might be the suspect has sent a command to wipe all

the data from this drive.

So, removing it this way and connecting to a write blocker,

we're going to prevent any of that happening.

There's no encryption on here or anything else that's

preventing me getting to the data.

I can see for this particular exhibit, I've got

over 800,000 sort of artifacts that it's recovered.

It's logging everything that you do

and it's going to sort all those out for me.

Whenever you use a digital

device, it will leave some kind of trail behind.

Is there anything related to firearms,

the manufacture of guns, how they were printed,

and what research might be needed to produce those.

If Wayne can't find any incriminating

link to the 3D printer, detectives will have insufficient

evidence to charge David with manufacturing firearms.

So, I'm just going to filter now

and look at what documents we've got on here.

OK, that's interesting. So, there's a good few hundred PDF documents.

They're pretty much all related to 3D printing firearms.

Ah, perfect.

There we have it, a FGC9.

Instructions on how to assemble it.

This shows a guide - how to actually make the gun that was

found at the suspect's address.

Ah, actually there's quite a few of these images.

All for this gun.

They seem to span quite a few years, actually.

I've got some that started off around December 2017, all the

way up until pretty much when these devices were seized by officers.

Over that five-year period, it appeared that his knowledge is

getting better and better in how to manufacture a firearm.

I can see the various different manuals sort of changing over time.

They're becoming more specific.

This suggests to me that it's not just a passing interest.

Although hundreds of downloaded manuals have been recovered,

the investigation is still missing conclusive evidence that

proves David used the 3D printer to make the guns.

In order to confirm that the AR15 firearm is viable,

Gareth must successfully reassemble it to be test-fired.

First things first, I'm going to try and reassemble the upper.

This bolt group's unconventional.

It's not one that's designed originally as part of the weapon.

If we can't put this weapon back together and then subsequently

fire it, we won't be able to prove that it is a lethal deadly weapon.

David may avoid prosecution.

So, this is the front locating pin going into place.

The parts aren't exactly perfectly cut,

so there are issues with alignment.

Three of them down the one side and they just clamp the two sides

of the hand guards together around the barrel nut, holding it in place.

The level of construction is reasonably good.

It is going together.

The final locking pin goes in.

And in theory...

..the weapon is functional.

It's possible to see the bolt body moving in conjunction

with the charging handle. That all looks to be operating fine.

You do begin to understand this individual

is a sophisticated instructor.

There is without question hundreds and hundreds of hours

of research effort and development evidenced in what we can see.

There is a chance that these guns just don't work,

but he is clearly doing what he's doing, in my opinion, with

the firm intention of making them work.

In digital forensics, Wayne is searching for evidence

amongst nearly 800,000 files on the suspect's laptop to determine

whether he used a 3D printer to make firearms.

So, for this, what I do want to do is look for any STL files,

the 3D printer file type,

because I know these are needed for the 3D printing process.

So, I'm just going to apply that filter now.

He runs specialist AI software

to analyse the laptop's hidden system files.

There is a file format used for the creation of 3D images

and they're called STL files.

If I can link these STL files to the suspect's printer,

I might be able to show that he's printing these gun parts.

Ah, OK.

Straight away, I've got over 3,000 results.

That's really, really interesting. I weren't expecting that many!

Having a quick look at some of the titles,

I can see references to firearm components.

So, I can see a hand guard, a holster, barrel chamber.

This is sort of a different level, really.

This is perhaps somebody who's constantly making these files.

So, I'm really interested to see

now what they're actually doing with them.

Are they actually then printing these?

My next step is to export those files

and actually see what they contain, because when you create them,

you have to say what printer you want to create them for.

Wayne can now check if these files are compatible with

the same 3D printer found in David Biddell-Portman's house.

So, here, I've opened up an STL file, created

specifically for his printer.

And this particular one appears to be a FGC9 upper receiver,

which is, you know, a component part of a gun.

So, in this case, there's 259 layers

and we can actually see those, layer by layer, if we want to.

You can't really get better evidence. That shows to me

that he is preparing these files for printing.

I've got no real doubt in my mind that this person is

printing off those particular components, using this printer.

The final step of proving that the homemade AR15 is a lethal firearm

will now take place at the National Ballistics Intelligence Service.

Are you ready?

To be classified as a viable firearm,

the weapon must be capable of firing a live round.

But that may not be straightforward.

The problem we have with these firearms is

they are, in essence, homemade.

So, therefore, none of the industry standards apply.

Now, for me, that's a danger.

We don't know what's going to happen when we load it with a live round.

Moving into the breach.

So we're going to have to take it stage by stage

and start off with no propellent and no projectile.

Firing.

WEAPON FIRES

Unloading.

Looks intact, Matthew.

Yeah, looks intact.

Now they've established that the gun is functional...

Need a rod. OK.

..Tony attempts to fire a blank cartridge, to check the gun

can withstand an increase in chamber pressure.

OK, loading.

Firing.

WEAPON FIRES

So, we know that it's actually capable of discharging a cartridge.

We're going to do a live round out now.

So, the crunch point is firing the first live round.

I cannot see the plastic mechanism of these firearms

withstanding the chamber pressures

that are going to be generated with live ammunition.

To ensure that the bullet goes down the barrel, the force behind it

has to be equal to the force that's being pushed back on it.

So, if it's not locked in, then everything goes back

and it blows up in your face.

For the final test...

..Tony will use ballistic soap to measure the lethal force of the gun.

Now, the ballistic soap is designed to replicate skin and muscle tissue.

OK, loading with one of the modified live round.

Firing.

WEAPON FIRES

How far in have we gone?

Possibly half way? Half way, wow!

I'm going with there. And depth?

That is a depth of 15 centimetres... Wow! ..six inches.

That's a lot deeper than I was expecting it to go.

That's lethal.

That's a dead man.

DC Hall speaking, how can I help?

Mike, an update on the 3D guns.

We fired it using an improvised projectile and it functioned.

And what we found was that penetrated ballistic soap to

a depth of 15 centimetres.

OK. So, that's quite a depth. Yeah.

And it will be our opinion it's a viable prohibited weapon.

Excellent. Music to my ears.

No problem. Bye, thank you.

Before finalizing what charges to seek from the Crown Prosecution

Service, DC Hall gets an update on all the digital forensic evidence.

Certainly can say that the user of those devices is downloading

component parts for guns. Oh, brilliant.

I mean, this is a part I started to print on the printer.

Oh, wow! OK. This is what's called the lower receiver of the FGC9.

So, if I show you that picture there of one of the exhibits that

you seized, we can see this part here is across there.

Can you say to me that he's sent a command to the printer to be

able to print out these materials?

The file's been downloaded and I can see that he has created

these files for that particular printer.

The printer's in working order. There's the actual build.

It's fantastic for us, evidentially,

and it's what I've been looking for to try and secure this conviction.

West Midlands Police have gathered enough evidence to charge

David with manufacturing prohibited firearms, instead of the lesser

charge of possessing a silencer and firearm without licence.

It's hard to know which way a jury will go, but I believe in court

David will find it difficult to deny that he built these guns

and that he had no knowledge they were capable of being lethal.

Hello, Ballistics, Gareth Cooper speaking, can I help?

Good morning, it's DC Hall here.

Hello, Mike. If you're sat down, a guilty plea has been entered.

Guilty plea? OK.

His charges are for manufacture of a prohibited weapon.

Entered a guilty plea on two counts. I'd like to congratulate and thank

you for the work that you've

helped me out with through this investigation.

No, no, you're most welcome. It's what we do.

And I'll keep you posted with anything further, all right?

Take care, Mike. Bye-bye. Bye.

The work completed by our forensic services

here at West Midlands Police,

put before the Crown Prosecution Service, I believe prompted

David into a corner to plead guilty, as he had nowhere else to turn.

We still don't know why he's manufactured these weapons,

what's motivated him,

but the law is very clear.

You cannot 3D print your own firearm at home.

Now, if you embark on this journey that David's embarked on to

build a viable deadly weapon,

we will find you eventually.

The viability of these guns demonstrates that

David Biddell-Portman is capable of building functional firearms.

Certainly, there is the potential

for the guns that he has made to cause harm,

whether he intended it or not.

These are next generation

and in terms of the future

of improvised weaponry, I think we are looking at it.