While police departments across the country have reported an increase in 3D printing Firearms When they show up at crime scenes, gun safety advocates and law enforcement officials warn that a new generation of untraceable weapons could soon outpace the “ghost guns” that have already flooded U.S. streets.
At a summit in New York City on Thursday, the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety will bring together policymakers, academics, Leaders of the 3D printing industry and law enforcement officials to meet the growing challenge. They fear that as printers become less expensive and more sophisticated – and gun parts schemes spread rapidly on the Internet – the United States may be on the verge of another wave of unregulated, home-made weapons that evade tracking serial numbers and background checks.
Numbers compiled by Everytown from about two dozen police departments show how quickly the problem is getting worse: Just over 30 3D-printed guns were found in 2020. By 2024, that number had risen to more than 300. While that number still represents a small fraction of the tens of thousands of firearms seized by the nation’s approximately 18,000 police departments each year, the rise It reflects the early trajectory of ghost guns — DIY weapons assembled from kits for years that have eluded federal regulation.
“We’re now starting to see what kind of looks very familiar,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown. “It’s now in a small number of recoveries in some major cities, doubling or tripling year-on-year. We’re seeing this all-too-familiar rate of growth and that’s why we’re bringing this group together to discuss how to stop it.”
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imposed new rules in 2022 requiring serial numbers, background checks, and age verification for stealth gun kits. Regulations approved by the Supreme Court Earlier this year. Ultimately, lawsuits and a statewide ban put Polymer80, once the leading manufacturer of such equipment, out of business in 2024.
But 3D-printed weapons present a thorny problem. They are not manufactured or sold by the firearms industry, and neither 3D printer companies nor the cloud platforms that host gun blueprints fall under the jurisdiction of the ATF. This leaves a lot of preventive work to volunteer work and new legislation.
In addition to seeking self-regulation for the industry, the summit aims to bring together academics and policy makers to talk about possible legislative ways to address the issue such as creating laws to criminalize the manufacture of ghost weapons or the sale of blueprints.
In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pressured manufacturers of printers and online platforms to remove gun designs and add safeguards against misuse. His office recently asked YouTube to remove a tutorial about printing a gun that a suspect said he found while watching a Call of Duty demo.
“So we reached out to YouTube and updated their policies. If we were just going after gun property instead of thinking about how to prevent these guns from being printed and proactively talking to these companies, we would be severely behind the curve,” Bragg said.
A major digital design platform also agreed to implement a detection and removal program earlier this year after Bragg’s office discovered that several weapon blueprints had been shared and available for download on its site.
Both Everytown and Bragg said the companies have been receptive. Some printer makers have rolled out firmware that recognizes the shapes of gun parts and prevents machines from producing them, an approach that invites comparison to safeguards added decades ago to prevent color printers from copying bills.
John Amin, founder and CEO of Spain’s Print&Joe said he became fascinated with 3D printing when he was an engineering student. It has voluntarily implemented a series of checks to prevent the manufacture of illegal weapons including human oversight and automated detection.
“We should focus on reducing misuse, not demonizing the tool,” Amin said. “We already have powerful ways to do that.”