New York Bill Would Require a Criminal Background Check to Buy a 3D Printer 🤔

Supporters of the bill say it’s necessary to thwart convicted felons who use 3D printers to develop untraceable “ghost guns.”

By

Mack DeGeurin

PublishedMonday 2:30PM

Comments (46)

A ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House April 11, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden announced a new firearm regulation aimed at reining in ghost guns, untraceable, unregulated weapons made from kids. Biden also announced Steve Dettelbach as his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

A ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House April 11, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden announced a new firearm regulation aimed at reining in ghost guns, untraceable, unregulated weapons made from kids. Biden also announced Steve Dettelbach as his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)

New York residents eyeing a new 3D printer may soon have to submit a criminal background check if a newly proposed state bill becomes law. The recently introduced legislation, authored by state senator Jenifer Rajkumar, aims to snub out an increasingly popular loophole where convicted felons who would otherwise be prohibited from legally buying a firearm instead simply 3D print individual components to create an untraceable “ghost gun.” If passed, New York would join a growing body of states placing restrictions on 3D printers in the name of public safety.

The New York bill, called AB A8132, would require a criminal history background check for anyone attempting to purchase a 3D printer capable of fabricating a firearm. It would similarly prohibit the sale of those printers to anyone with a criminal history that disqualifies them from owning a firearm. As it’s currently written, the bill doesn’t clarify what models or makes of printers would potentially fall under this broad category. The bill defines a three-dimensional printer as a “device capable of producing a three-dimensional object from a digital model.”

“Three-dimensionally printed firearms, a type of untraceable ghost gun, can be built by anyone using a $150 three-dimensional printer,” Rajkumar wrote in a memorandum explaining the bill. “This bill will require a background check so that three-dimensional printed firearms do not get in the wrong hands.”

Rajkumar did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s requests for comment.

Ghost guns generally refer to unserialized and untraceable firearms that people can purchase or assemble on their own without a background check. 3D printers aren’t technically necessary to create a ghost gun but they can and have been used to fabricate individual unserialized components, firing mechanisms, or in some cases, entire functioning firearms.

Business is booming. The New York Police Department has reportedly seen a 60% increase in ghost guns seized from city streets for the past two consecutive years. NYPD recently traced some online ghost gun sales to a “ghost gun printing operation” filled with 3D printers and firearms nestled within a daycare center.

“To those who think printing 3D guns is the way of the future. You are wrong,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said during a press conference following the daycare siege.

Ghost gun seizure figures aren’t any more reassuring on the national level either. A recent report released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives notes a 1083% increase in ghost gun recoveries from 2017-2021, figures they say are likely underreported. A handful of states, including Hawaii, Delaware, and New Jersey, have each passed their own legislation banning 3D-printed firearms. Comprehensive federal laws prohibiting ghost guns remain non-existent.

Rises in crimes carried out with these slapped-together weapons attracted the attention of the Biden Administration, which last year updated federal rules to say “buy build shoot” kits available online qualify as “firearms” under the 1968 Gun Control Act. Predictably, gun rights advocates have challenged those changes, arguing they run afoul of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court temporarily revived Biden’s ghost gun regulation in August this year, though its long-term legal future remains unclear.

But Second Amendment die-hards aren’t the only ones who’ve objected to regulation targeted at 3D printed firearms though. Free speech experts and some civil libertarians have argued banning 3D-printed firearms, or at least the designs to create them could run afoul of the First Amendment since the instructions are simply lines of text and code. That was part of the argument Defense Distributed founder and self-identified crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson made when he sued the State Department in 2015 to continue publishing blueprints of the company’s “liberator” 3D printed gun online. Defense Distributed eventually settled that lawsuit with the Trump Administration.

Wilson, whose company also manufactures and sells computer-controlled milling machines capable of churning out firearms in a few hours, told Gizmodo he “strongly support[s]” Sen. Rajkumar’s proposed background check requirement.

“The legislative paradisiacs in the New York State Senate give firms like mine monopoly powers when they create these kinds of requirements,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to make money selling cheap Chinese 3D printers, so I bless the ground New York State senators walk on when they propose domestic commercial protections like this.”

Wilson was arrested in Taipei, Taiwan in 2018 after being accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in Texas. He has since pleaded guilty to injuring a child and has had to register as a sex offender.

1 Like

Help us all! So what are they gonna do next, require a background check to buy parts as well? It doesn’t take that much technical skill these days to build your own from off the shelf parts. Might as well do a background check on for buying CNC milling machines too. Besides, how exactly will they apply this to Amazon and the like?

To be clear, I have never owned a gun, and have no plans to ever own a gun, as they do not interest me. I agree with the principal of keeping guns out of criminals’ hands. I have no problem with outlawing the sale and distribution of 3d printable gun designs. I do not think, however, that regulating cheap 3d printers is gonna have any significant positive effects on that. 3d printed guns, at least of the plastic variety, are about as dangerous to the user, as whoever they are aimed at. Besides, if you need a background check to buy a printer, what happens if you build your own printer, does that become illegal?

Edit, basically, to make this actually work effectively, they’re gonna need to regulate printers much like they regulate guns.

I agree with you,

The problem that I have always had with this is that all the outlawing of firearms and such unfortunately does very little to actually help solve the problem.

If someone is looking to own a gun for nefarious reasons having it be illegal to own is not going to stop them from owning it and commiting further crimes with the weapon.

Especially with something like this, it will do absolutely nothing to stop the production of ghost guns because as you pointed out printers are not that hard to design/build, and there are already enough of them in the wild that it will be near impossible to enforce this kind of legislature. If a criminal is looking to produce an illegal gun, having another illegal device to produce said gun means absolutely nothing to them. All this does is serve to annoy all the people who are having their hobbies illegitimated because of a select few bad actors.

I will not share my stance on ghost guns or firearms in general as this is not necessarily the place to share such ideas, and I would not like to introduce debates around such topics into this thread/ forum. But I think most will be able to agree that this is just a loose loose situation for everyone involved.

2 Likes

I 100% agree.

I read about this a little bit back and just giggled. People with ZERO knowledge about 3D printers and the community making laws on them. Much the same as those making laws concerning the Internet when most of them likely need help with their cell phone. :roll_eyes:

I wish them luck on the idea although as other have posted, it doesn’t really take much to build your own with a few parts, tools and YouTube.

“Three-dimensionally printed” ??? Only someone without knowledge of 3D printers would say that. As if a 3D printer could maybe print in four dimensions?

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I guess the New Yack lawmakers don’t think that their residents are smart enough to go to New Jersey to buy a printer.

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as someone who is in both worlds within Canada, if they where to handle it like we do firearms it would be 8-14 hours of class time (2 different levels) and both written and practical tests then background checks and contact to all past partners. Then if you are finally licensed you are checked every 24hours and your name is flagged even for standard traffic stops
even within the USA FFLs must run a background check with the FBI before a sale can go through
if you want I can give more information but I will leave it at this for now

that particular cat is out of that particular bag. There are far too many printers and too many printer designs and parts available to regulate in a meaningful way. It would end up regulating people whom are law biding and unlikely to print fire arms for illegal purposes. The element of society whom want un traceable firearms will buy un traceable printers.

On a side note, I simply cannot imagine holding a fully printed gun putting a live round in it and pulling the trigger. I would be too afraid of blowing my hand apart. The guns that still use barrel and receiver still need controls to buy anyway.

Unless that isn’t the case, not really knowledgeable in fire arms.

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I have personally used a couple of different printed firearms before, note… not ones that I have printer or that I have in my possession, they were properly licensed ones that are owned by other people.

They were interesting, I used a printed glock-19 which was only a printed lower, and an orca which is a mostly printed ar-15 if I remember correctly. Overall they were decent to shoot, the real thing was much better of course. The orca had some feeding issues which freaked me out, and it started to get really hot, didn’t shoot that one for too long. The glock was fine though, it certainly was nerve wracking and I could feel the lower rattle with every round that went through it, but it seemed to work ok.

But I agree, overall I am not big on the idea of printing parts for firearms, specifically looking at it from a functional standpoint. Not trying to get into the ethics of printed firearms. To me there is too much risk, stuff can go south quick with real firearms, there is no need to add extra variables into it.

Not in the US, only the receiver (usually) is regulated all other parts are for sale. The same in Canada I believe. Homemade 3D guns are perfectly legal in the US by non-felons.

As far as needing barrels etc. that no longer matters. There are 3D printed designs that use printed former’s that can be used to electrochemically erode a barrel chamber and rifling out of high tensile pipe. They use simple, almost primitive equipment. All other parts can be printed or fabbed with little tooling and knowledge. These designs have shown up in Myanmar used by the rebels to fight the domineering government where regular guns are very hard to find. Yes you are nuts to shoot most 3D guns but there are some that are very good designs and more all the time.

It is typical of Gov’mint officials and poly-tishuns that they rail against things they don’t understand and have little to no knowledge about. The same thing happened in the early days of home computers where they though a hacker could start WW3 by using a phone (dial up) to hack the launch computers. Even if they could, which they couldn’t it would impossible to stop.

You can’t put the A-bomb back in the bottle and 3D printers have escaped too.

The other thing that freaks me out is that metal printers like the rapidia we have in our storefront are starting to become more available. One of the definite downsides of 3D Printed firearms is that the plastic can cause reliability issues. But if the entire thing can be printed out of solid metal it opens a whole new can of worms in terms of reliability and usage.

And with these printers now becoming more accessible and mainstream its only a matter of time until the entirety of the firearm can be printed with metal, it could probably be done fairly easily at this point.