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The New York Legislature is in the early stages of considering a bill that would require buyers of certain types of 3D printers to provide background checks.
State Assembly Bill A2228 states that “a dealer in a three-dimensional printing machine sold in this state that can print firearms, or any firearms, is required and authorized to request and receive criminal history information.”
The government will have 15 days to review the buyer’s information, check for weapons charges or other illegal records, and decide what to do. This would mean that anyone buying a 3D printer capable of printing a gun (which is a 3D printer) should do a check.
We live in a world where anyone with access to a 3D printer, the right digital documents, and the right knowledge can print and assemble an innumerable gun. It turns out that Luigi Mangione, the killer of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson, used 3D printing. A Glock handgun to hit its target. Governments around the world have grappled with how to deal with the problem of widespread, home-issued, unregistered guns spreading around the world on demand.
A2228 is one solution, but I have a hard time imagining Amazon or other online retailers requiring people in NYC to go through a background check to buy a 3D printer online. But strange things have happened.
Democratic State Senator Jenifer Rajkumar is the primary sponsor of A2228, which was introduced on January 15 and is still in committee. Rajkumar has tried before to establish similar laws in 2023, but it died in committee.
“Three-dimensional printing guns are becoming more and more popular every year. There were 100 people taken off the streets of New York City in 2019. This number will rise to 637 in 2022. At the same time, shootings have increased by 1,000% across the country. Right now, three-dimensional printers allow people to create, buy, sell, and use countless guns without any background checks. This bill needs to have a background check so that three-sided printed guns do not end up in the wrong hands,” Rajkumar said in a memo on the 2023 bill.
NY state budgets may take comments from the public, which are public on the legislature’s website. “I strongly oppose the proposed law requiring background checks to purchase 3D printers,” one commenter said. “While I understand the goal of addressing concerns about the misuse of 3D printing technology, this raises concerns about overuse, effectiveness, and unintended consequences.”
Government regulations governing 3D printed firearms are all over the place. In California, the state they treat them like ordinary guns. This means that a person must be legally allowed to own a gun, that the gun must be “legal” and that it must have a serial number. There are similar laws in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and specific bans in other states.
To date, there is no federal law on 3D printing. The Biden White House has issued an executive order to target people who sell it 3D gun assembly tools. But, like California, Biden’s EO is an attempt to regulate 3D printed guns as if they were ordinary guns.
The truth is that everyone who has a 3D-printing tool in their home probably wasn’t interested in putting their homebrew guns in the federal government at first.
