Police say a 16-year-old Garfield High School student was arrested after officers found a semi-automatic ghost gun and evidence of firearm manufacturing involving a 3-D printer.<\/p>\n
San Diego police said the teen was taken into custody on May 6 at Garfield High School without incident. Investigators said the student had a handgun tucked into his pants at the time of the arrest.<\/p>\n
Authorities said they later searched the teen\u2019s home and discovered evidence suggesting the manufacturing of several weapons, including ammunition and 3-D printed machine gun conversion devices.<\/p>\n
Police also recovered a 3-D printer, carbon filament and a handgun magazine.<\/p>\n
Firearms expert and trainer William Desy said the technology needed to manufacture firearm components is widely available.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a 3-D printer and you have some software, you can pretty much make anything you want to make,\u201d Desy said.<\/p>\n
Desy said restrictions on gun parts and unserialized weapons, commonly known as ghost guns, are not preventing some people from obtaining materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a 16-year-old has a car they can drive to Arizona and buy all the parts,\u201d Desy said.<\/p>\n
Desy said building a handgun with a 3-D printer is not complicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see a lower receiver for a handgun, a bag of ammunition, several lower receivers,\u201d Desy said while discussing the evidence recovered.<\/p>\n
In an e-mail to parents, Garfield High School Principal Guillermo Medina wrote that \u201cbringing a firearm onto school campus results in an automatic recommendation for expulsion, and we will be pursuing that recommendation in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Diego police spokesperson Ashley Nicholes said investigators acted quickly after receiving reports about the teen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this is concerning to parents, and we want everyone to know when we get reports of anything like this, our team is going to act swiftly,\u201d Nicholes said.<\/p>\n
Investigators said the 16-year-old is suspected of supplying firearms to others and is also a suspect in a recent robbery at a trolley station.<\/p>\n
Desy said the allegations raise additional concerns about firearms being distributed to other minors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he is providing them to other juveniles, that is a huge problem,\u201d Desy said.<\/p>\n
Police urged parents to pay attention to changes in behavior and ask questions if something seems unusual.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they see something \u2014 a change in their child or unique behaviors that are not normal to them \u2014 pay attention and ask questions,\u201d Nicholes said.<\/p>\n
Police said the teen was booked into the Juvenile Detention Facility on several charges, including robbery, illegal gun possession and gun manufacturing.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police say a 16-year-old Garfield High School student was arrested after officers found a semi-automatic ghost gun and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":794932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-797446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-sandiego","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116576893693333501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}