• Handguns, rifles, ammunition are the most common weapons listed on anonymous online marketplaces, according to a new report from the Australian Institute of Criminology.
• Researchers studied several marketplaces allowing users to buy and sell illegal weapons, generally purchased with cryptocurrency.
• In some cases, illegal weapons were actually cheaper than their legitimate counterparts.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Thousands of illegal firearms have been listed for sale on the dark web, including some sold from Australia, with vendors offering ‘stealth packaging’ to help buyers avoid being detected.

The Australian Institute of Criminology has released a study looking at the trends in illegal online gun markets. The research, conducted in 2019, focused on on dark web marketplaces where users can anonymously buy and sell weapons, generally using cryptocurrency.

What they found was an unstable yet thriving ecosystem, with markets quickly popping up, being shut down either by authorities or by operators, and then being replaced by other markets.

While noting that researchers were unable to verify each listing, the report found that guns, accessories and other miscellaneous weapons were readily available online. The most common type of weapons sold were guns (comprising 70% of listed items), rifles (10%) and ammunition (4%).

As with with legal item sales, illicit gun sellers provide prospective buyers with information about how the item would be sent to them. According to researchers, vendors boast about their ability to evade detection when sending illegal weapons. 

“All the weapons will be sent disassembled, in different packs with different mail carriers. The weapons will come with an assembly guide. It will take around 20 minutes for you to assemble the weapon,” a vendor called Firearms72 wrote on one marketplace.

Perhaps surprisingly, researchers noticed that the most popular weapon, the Glock semi-automatic pistol, was being sold at similar prices to its legitimately acquired counterparts.

“The prices of these Glocks are roughly the same price as the offline equivalent but they are not registered or their serial numbers have been wiped off,” said report co-author and ANU Cybercrime Observatory Professor Roderic Broadhurst.

Researchers noticed digital items such as 3D weapon kits, blueprints and printed models were an increasingly popular item sold on the dark web, making up 6% of all listings. Each of these sold for less than a real, legitimate weapon.

“A completed 3D printed model Beretta 70 was available on [dark web marketplace] Berlusconi for A$561 (versus the actual weapon at A$758–A$1,061 or only the 3D software file at A$77),” the report reads.

While the gun sales on dark web markets pale in size compared to the illegal drug trade, researchers say they observed more listings than any study before. 

Increasingly, it seems, you can buy anything online if you know where to look. 

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