It starts with a crusade against ‘ghost guns.’ It ends with government bureaucrats able to see everything you do.

Trish Randall | April 25, 2026

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house.”

—James Otis, patriot

As an American citizen, whenever legislators deploy the ever-flimsy progressive banner of “public safety,” I feel decidedly unsafe.

Newly proposed and enacted legislation targeting 3D printers and CNC machines would impose restrictions more severe than those the Supreme Court rejects for actual guns.  In conjunction with restrictions on tools, states would create a category of computer source code illegal to possess.

The excuse? “Ghost guns”!

There’s abundant hair-on-fire rhetoric, even written into legislation.  Washington’s recently enacted HB2320 states, “Undetectable and untraceable firearms and firearms components presents a growing threat to public safety.”  The author of California’s AB 2047 testified, “These firearms are incredibly dangerous because they are not part of our regular flow, meaning they are not marked, they are not permitted, they are made in someone’s home, and we don’t even know they exist.”  Not actual use, but private possession frightens this lawmaker.

Plain text on the ATF’s website states that personally manufactured firearms (PMFs) are legal to own and make, even with 3D printed components.

California, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington lawmakers are generating restrictions on certain tools and computer code, used to create millions of items unrelated to guns every day, to thwart Americans’ attempts to make a gun it’s legal to make.

In August, Colorado will forbid using a 3D printer or CNC to make any firearm or part, along with sale or distribution of digital firearm-making instructions to anyone but a student or instructor in an approved gunsmithing program.

Massachusetts’s General Laws Section 121 D bans 3D printers or CNC machines primarily used for making or assembling firearms.

California bill AB 2047 would outlaw 3D printer use to make an illegal weapon, “or the manufacture of any firearm using a 3-dimensional printer, as specified.”  Any firearm?  Like legal PMFs?

More sinister is targeting of source codes.  States intend to maintain databases of source code they declare to be firearms assembly blueprints and illegal to possess.

Makers and sellers of 3D printers and CNC machines would be required to preinstall software to prevent machines using forbidden code or generating forbidden shapes.  But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Bernstein decision says source code is protected speech.

Washington bill 2321 would require machines to “handshake” a government website to confirm code as innocent before initiating a print.  New York lawmakers are going farther, considering background checks to purchase a 3D printer.  Washington State’s recently passed HB2320 includes preinstalled future encroachment.  The attorney general will “adopt any rules or regulations to further establish standards for software control processes.”

The transcript of the April 14, 2026 hearing, memorializing member Ash Kaira’s words and muddled grammar, displays the unconstitutional intentions.

And by the way, the law has been on the books for over two years and hasn’t been overturned yet under Second Amendment grounds.  In regards to their privacy concerns, I think there are there [sic] if there’s a substantial public interest, the it [sic] does allow for limited legal legally justified restrictions on privacy rights.  I do think there is a substantial public interest, and this is clearly going to be challenged in the courts.  And we’ll let the courts decide whether we’re right or not on that.

That individual swore to uphold the Constitution.

Let’s put legally homemade firearms into a larger context.  There are an estimated 300 million guns in the U.S.  The ATF estimates that Americans created 45,240 personally manufactured firearms, about 7,500 per year between 2016 and 2021.  Approximately 692 of those PMFs were used in a homicide or attempted homicide (about 115 per year). 

Between 2016 and 2021, there were 116,876 homicides — about 19,500 per year.  Homicides have been decreasing since — down 6% in 2022, 13% in 2023, 15% in 2024, and a projected 20% in 2025.

When judging a restriction on firearms, the Supreme Court applies the standard of “text, history, and tradition.”  Text refers to conforming to the plain words of the Constitution.  History and tradition refer to conforming to the restrictions imposed on firearms when the Constitution was adopted.

Consulting a handy timeline of firearms regulations, from Massachusetts’s 1633 ban on transferring firearms, gunpowder, and ammunition to Indians to the 2024 Rahimi decision upholding the federal ban on domestic abusers possessing guns, guess what we don’t see: restrictions on tools used to make firearm.

Home and small business use of 3D printers has been increasing for over a decade, and CNC machines, since the 1970s.  In 2024, approximately 2.1 million 3D printers were sold in the U.S.  About 1.4 million Americans owned one.  Approximately $1.25 billion’s worth of medical, surgical and dental 3D prints will be made in 2026.

The ATF doesn’t report how many PMFs include any 3D printed material, but even if all the estimated 7,000–8,000 produced annually included some 3D printed part, that would be a vanishingly small percent of the total firearms available in the U.S., and an even tinier portion of items Americans 3D print every day.

Many who use 3D printers see the problem as proposed controls that can’t accomplish the stated goal.  Source codes are instructions for geometry, not intent.  A tube could be a gun barrel or a segment of tension pole for a shower shelf unit.  Too many ordinary prints would be blocked.

There are several increasingly common features of these tools that are already compatible with expansive government intrusion into our private spaces.  The control screens of many 3D printers alert the user to firmware updates.  If the user clicks, the manufacturer remotely, and quickly, installs updates.  A machine capable of remotely accepting firmware is capable of remotely accepting firmware from the government.  And many 3D printers and CNC machines feature cameras for users to remotely view, or control, printing in progress.

The case of Nancy Guthrie recently revealed startling information about doorbell cameras packaged with instructions saying a subscription is required or images and video won’t be stored.  Nancy hadn’t subscribed, yet investigators acquired images of her property from prior to her disappearance.

I look at my 3D printer, which has received firmware updates by the manufacturer and can be outfitted with a camera (which I skipped).  I consider what multiple American legislators have set in motion, on the excuse that, among the millions of objects 3D printed in America every day, a minuscule percentage might be attached to a homemade firearm — a firearm Americans are legally entitled to make.

I see firmware updates of the Intolerable Acts.  British colonial bureaucrats had been granted authority to enter “any house, shop, cellar, warehouse or room or other place.”  Modern legislators would have for themselves not just authority, but a permanent virtual wormhole into “any house, shop, cellar, warehouse or room or other place” containing a 3D printer or CDC machine.

Looking at a tool I use to make things, I suspect they see a telescreen, and they’re preparing for the opportunity to see what Winston Smith might be up to.