Gun Groups & Hollywood Team Up to Fight California’s 3D Printer Bill
Gun groups and Hollywood effects studios are fighting against a California bill that would require 3D printers to block gun files.
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A new California bill would require 3D printers to block gun files, despite experts warning that the tech doesn’t exist.
Legislators in California sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a slew of new bills aimed at tightening gun restrictions in the state. Among those was AB 2047, which requires 3D printers sold in the state to have “firearm blocking technology.”
Legislators said the technology, that would identify and block firearm and firearm parts prints, is a step towards addressing “the growing threat of 3D-printed firearms.”
Anti-gun groups applauded the measure to tackle what they call the “ghost gun crisis.”
“The California legislature, which has long been a national leader on gun safety, just passed a groundbreaking bill to stop the spread of 3D-printed guns, which are just as scary as they sound,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a press release. “We now urge Governor Newsom, an unwavering gun sense champion, to sign this bill and galvanize other states to take action against the growing threat of 3D-printed guns.”
But gun rights groups say the bill not only infringes on the Second Amendment, but also free speech as well.
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“It establishes a troubling precedent that constitutional rights may be conditioned on government-approved technology, expanding regulatory authority into protected constitutional space,” the NRA-ILA, the National Rifle Association’s legislative wing, said in a statement when the bill was introduced in February.
The NRA reiterated its opposition to the measure in a September 1 statement after the bill passed, calling it “a phantom regulation… a capability that 3D-printing professionals say does not exist and cannot be built.”
The version of AB 2047 that ultimately reached Newsom is narrower than the original bill after the state Senate spent weeks stripping and amending the language. Originally, the bill called for a criminal misdemeanor for disabling the software, $25,000-per-violation civil penalties, a mandatory manufacturer self-attestation process, and a public roster of compliant printer models. Those have since been removed.
The gun industry has found some unlikely allies in the fight against this legislation, with tech companies and even Hollywood jumping into the fray.
Effects studios nestled in the hills of Hollywood have argued the software requirements would prohibit them from making movie magic come to life since the bill’s carve-out for entertainment-industry printers doesn’t hold up in practice — no printer is marketed exclusively for prop and stagecraft use.
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They say the general-purpose printers they actually rely on wouldn’t qualify for the exemption. 3D printing companies have also raised the alarm about privacy concerns related to the bill.
“These databases will always lag behind innovation and can be easily circumvented and generate false positives that block legal designs and wrongly flag everyday makers,” Marleen Vogelaar, chief executive of Thangs3D, testified at a Senate hearing this month. The bill also creates serious privacy and security risks by giving third parties access to analyze designers’ files. That threatens intellectual property and adds digital surveillance in a state that values data privacy.”
The mandate also may never actually take effect. It only applies once ASTM International publishes industry standards for firearm-blocking technology; the state Department of Justice must check for those standards quarterly, starting no later than July 1, 2027, and only then does a compliance clock start running.
Despite pushback, Newsom is expected to sign AB 2047 as well as six other bills that landed on his desk this month.
What do you think of 3D printing restrictions? Let us know in the comments below. To keep up with all kinds of news, head over to our News section.
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Additional Resources
- Assembly Bill 2047
- Everytown: California Legislature Passes Groundbreaking Legislation to Stop 3D-Printed Guns
- NRA-ILA: California Lawmakers Introduce New Bill that Would Censor Private 3-D Printers
- NRA-ILA: California Legislature Adjourns, More Anti-Gun Bills Head to Governor’s Desk
- Los Angeles Times: California’s push to ban technology used for ‘ghost guns’ finds unlikely foe in Hollywood