Luke Fortune
Introduction
Luke Fortune is a 23-year-old man from Longwell Green near Bristol who was sentenced to thirteen years and eight months in prison after turning blank-firing guns into lethal weapons in his family’s garage and mailing a 3D-printed sub-machine gun to a fellow firearms offender. Fortune admitted eight firearms offences, including manufacturing guns at the family home, and his case — prosecuted with the National Crime Agency’s digital and financial evidence — became one of the most detailed public accounts of Britain’s home-manufactured weapons problem: a teenager with a drug debt, a garage workshop, and online contacts who together assembled an arsenal that ended up buried in a bush. Judge Anna Richardson told him the sentence was not one that would leave him hopeless, because he had the majority of his life ahead of him.
Background Information
Fortune is from Longwell Green, a suburb east of Bristol. He was 19 years old when his offending began, and the court heard he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, which his barrister Barry White said made him “more suggestible” and more likely to hyperfocus on things. Between 2022 and 2024 his bank accounts showed spending of several thousand pounds on blank firearms — the deactivated-looking weapons that can lawfully be bought in Britain and illegally converted into live-firing guns. He worked alone but was in close online contact with Gerard Dagnall, 33, of Norris Green, Liverpool, another firearms offender with whom he exchanged weapons, videos, and encouragement. In a prepared statement to police after his arrest, Fortune said he had got involved with criminality because he “owed a drug debt.”
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted and sentenced. Fortune admitted eight firearms offences and was sentenced to thirteen years and eight months, with a serious crime prevention order on top.
Fortune’s offending came apart when police found a Glock-style pistol and a revolver hidden in a bush in Longwell Green, which led to his arrest. When NCA officers raided his home, they discovered numerous blank bullets, cartridges, cases, and primers in various states of conversion — the raw material of the illegal transformation from blank-firer to lethal weapon. He had converted blank firing guns into lethal weapons in the garage of his family home and manufactured guns there, including a 3D-printed FGC9 sub-machine gun, a design circulated online specifically to be printable by anyone with a hobbyist’s equipment.
The digital trail showed Fortune had planned to travel to Thailand to smuggle guns back to the UK, before attempting to bring over more from Belgium. He sent Dagnall the 3D-printed FGC9 sub-machine gun through the post along with a video of himself test-firing it in a wood. Dagnall replied by sending Fortune a photograph of the package next to his passport with the message: “I can’t believe you sent me a machine gun through the post.” Fortune admitted two counts of possessing firearms, two counts of possessing ammunition, one count of converting a firearm, one count of manufacturing a firearm, one count of selling firearms, and one count of conspiracy to import firearms. He was sentenced at Taunton Crown Court.
Sentencing him, Judge Anna Richardson said: “The length of this sentence is not one that would leave you hopeless… you have the majority of your life ahead of you.” She added that the long jail term was “a tragedy for [Fortune], a tragedy for his family, but a consequence of his serious offending.” As well as the prison term, she imposed a serious crime prevention order, which she deemed “necessary” to protect the public — a court order restricting his activities after release precisely because the offending was organized, technological, and exportable.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The case was publicized by the National Crime Agency as an example of how firearms offending now combines online subcultures, 3D printing, and international smuggling ambitions with ordinary criminal finances — a drug debt pulling a 19-year-old into a enterprise the sentencing judge called his “criminal enterprise” run from his family home. Crown Prosecution Service specialist prosecutor Nigel James said Fortune set up that enterprise within the family home. The sentence — nearly fourteen years for a man in his early twenties — placed Fortune among the most seriously sentenced young firearms offenders in the region, and the weapons he made are now off the street: the bush-hidden pistol and revolver recovered, the garage conversion stock seized, the posted sub-machine gun in evidence.
Current Status
Fortune is serving a sentence of thirteen years and eight months imposed at Taunton Crown Court, with a serious crime prevention order restricting his conduct after release. Dagnall, the recipient of the posted sub-machine gun, was named in court records as a firearms offender in Liverpool; the NCA described the two as being in close contact, and the case documents their exchange as part of a wider investigation. Fortune, who attended his sentencing hearing by video link from custody, faces a term that extends into his mid-thirties, subject to the standard release arrangements for sentences of this length.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Fortune was 19 when the offending began and 23 when he was sentenced; the term takes him past the age at which most people establish a trade or career, and the serious crime prevention order will follow him into his first years of freedom, restricting what he can do, buy, and communicate about. His autism and ADHD were treated by the court as mitigation shaping his suggestibility rather than excuses, and the judge explicitly balanced his vulnerabilities against the seriousness of manufacturing and selling lethal weapons. The family home where the garage workshop operated became a crime scene, and the case’s publication by the NCA means his name is attached to one of the region’s most cited examples of 3D-printed weapons manufacturing — a permanent public record that will outlast the sentence.
Sources
- BBC News, “Bristol man who built 3D printed sub-machine gun at family home jailed.” source