Recently, Everytown for Gun Safety hosted a 3D Printed Firearms Summit in New York City with the goal being to “build cross-sector collaboration and chart actionable strategies to stem the tide of 3D-printed firearm (3DPF) related violence.” This gathering of gloom is seemingly leftover from the Biden-Harris administration, which convened similar confabs of gun control absolutists. One positive note is that these kinds of anti-gun “summits” must now be funded with Everytown’s own money rather than by taxpayers through Biden’s defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Media hype ahead of the summit warned, “We’re at the start of a new public safety crisis and there is no time to waste,” and “3D-printed firearms are the new frontier in the fight against gun violence.” Everytown is apparently measuring this crisis by “recovery data from twenty U.S. cities submitted exclusively to Everytown” according to their Facebook post. Exclusive crime-related data given just to Everytown may raise its own kinds of red-flags to consider.
While 3D printing is a newer and developing technology, homemade firearms, or PMFs (privately made firearms) are not. Since the birth of our nation, citizens have enjoyed the right to create their own privately made firearms. A review of the basic facts on PMFs would have made for a helpful presentation at the summit.
As far as federal law is concerned, individuals can legally make firearms for personal use without a license, as long as the person is not prohibited from possession of firearms, the firearm is detectable, and the firearm is not made or sold for profit. Firearms and related items that are illegal under federal and/or state law, however, are still illegal. Items that are already regulated by federal and/or state law are still regulated.
Firearms continue to be heavily regulated regardless of how they are manufactured. Articles referring to 3D printed firearms are a mishmash of terms interchanging 3D printed firearms with “ghost guns” and undetectable firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, to name just a few, continue to govern firearms produced by 3D printing. The mere absence of a serial number does not make a gun undetectable, and if 3D printers were capable of producing undetectable firearms, such guns would already be illegal to manufacture and possess anywhere in the country.
As has been the typical route of a gun control solution in search of a problem, the “solutions” to cure a generally legal activity are concerning for law-abiding citizens on a larger scale as they hint at the continuation of not only censorship among the Second Amendment community but expansion of the surveillance state of gun owners and the suppression of broadly applicable technology.
In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has pressed various printer manufacturers and online platforms to take down gun designs as well as petitioned YouTube to censor videos with reference to the legal 3D printing of firearm parts. Additionally, there have been calls on other companies to install firmware in their printers that would detect the shapes of common gun parts and block their printing. If programs can be created to block printing, can they also be created to register the user or report the attempt? There should be serious concern with enlisting technology companies for gun control efforts and their assistance in the creation of a surveillance state for gun owners. Additionally, as NRA-ILA previously reported, there have even been efforts to require background checks for the purchase of 3D Printers.
Unfortunately, more surveillance efforts are being proposed, including the Gun Hardware Oversight and Shipment Act (GHOST Act) introduced earlier this year by U.S Rep. Tokuda of Hawaii (Hi-02), which would empower the government to track purchases of gun parts, including barrels, slides, and bolt carriers. While that bill has stalled, for now, it shows the direction in which efforts to suppress private firearm manufacturing is headed.
The 3D printed firearm world is evolving. However, if criminals, by definition, are not following existing laws on guns and violence, it is difficult to see a public safety solution in layering more regulation upon those legally engaged in 3D printing. More concerning may be asking authorities or private companies to control and censor information made available to people on what they are legally allowed to create in their own homes. To cite another example, many illegal drugs start out as plants. But that doesn’t make horticulture a presumptively suspect activity or justify censoring content on gardening.
As the Everytown summit demonstrates, gun control activists are perfectly willing to demolish other rights in their attempts to achieve, not just a gun-free America, but an America where every precursor to a gun is tightly controlled. 3D printers enable citizens to create and fabricate for a variety of purposes. And, yes, this includes the lawful construction of firearms for one’s own use, a practice as old as the Republic itself.
How much innovation and freedom are firearm prohibition advocates willing to sacrifice for their own illusions of safety? Judging by the latest panic over 3D printing, you’d have to wonder if the printing press itself would be safe.
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