this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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How big of a problem is this even? I've only heard one case of someone using a ghost gun in a murder and that didn't stop the police from finding the suspect.
Guns are extremely simple devices. It's not something you can solve with 3d printing legislation... It's just people giving lip service to gun control IMO.
If you know how to 3d print a gun, you can easily find out how to make a zip gun with a bit of pipe, the kind you'd probably need to 3d print a "ghost gun" regardless.
Like ffs I saw a YouTube video or a dude getting two pieces of pipe, closing one end and putting a nail in it, then making a one shot shotgun out of cheap fucking material. You just need closed space and to hit the end of the fucking bullet. Guns are not magic. They're simple as fuck, and hard to regulate partially because of how simple they are.
These laws are probably more for surveillance than preventing ghost guns.
https://armamentresearch.com/luty-sub-machine-guns-past-present-future/
Famous examples that don't use 3d printing, the Luty guns he made as a crypto anarchist psycho trying to disseminate open source plans lol. The knowledge is very easily accessible.
And this is basically how former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was assassinated
It's not just gun control.
It's control of information and surveillance of every bit of data and every part printed for any reason.
It's not even just surveillance! It is destruction of property rights generally, including the right to repair and the ability for individuals to own their means of production.
They are, 100%. Watch Louis Rossman 's video on the New York law (if you can stomach his vlogs for that long) - it's had a shitload of money dumped into lobbying for it by none other than overly controlling industrialist Michael Bloomberg himself. They are trying to crush user ownership of manufacturing right off the bat.
Not a major problem AND going after 3D printing doesn't actually solve the problem - the core components that make a gun a gun, such as the barrel, firing pin, etc., still need to be manufactured in the "traditional" way (unless you're trying to make a single use, one shot gun, but even that has better alternatives than 3D printing).
As it's been pointed out above, the pieces of equipment - lathes, mills, CNC machines - required to make the aforementioned parts require no licencing, no safety mechanisms to prevent gun part manufacturing.
The CA law includes all manufacturing machines that take sets of instructions, if I'm not mistaken
You don't even need a CNC machine. Basic hand tools and some pipe are enough to make a zip gun.
A lathe takes no instructions and is potentially the most useful tool of all listed for the purposes of making a gun.
Shit, just browse makerlab.com and you’ll find all sorts of gun parts!
I print airsoft parts from time to time and it's honestly pretty annoying thinking I've found the part I need only to realize that it's the counterpart for an actual gun. There's loads of gun parts on 3d printing sites.