New York Proposes Doing Background Checks on Anyone Buying a 3D Printer

The New York legislature is in the early stages of considering a bill that would require people buying certain kinds of 3D printers to pass a background check.

State Assembly Bill A2228 says that “any retailer of a three-dimensional printer sold in this state which is capable of printing a firearm, or any components of a firearm, is required and authorized to request and receive criminal history information.”

The state would then have 15 days to root through the buyer’s information, look for weapons charges or other disqualifying criminal history, and make a decision. This would, in effect, mean that anyone buying a 3D printer capable of printing any piece of a firearm (which is quite a few 3D printers) would have to pass a criminal background check.

We live in a world where anyone with access to some 3D printers, the right digital documents, and some practical knowledge can print and assemble an untraceable handgun. It’s likely that Luigi Mangione, the assassin of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, used a 3D-printed Glock-style handgun to hit his target. Governments across the world have struggled with how to handle the problem of widespread, home-printed, unregistered firearms spreading across the planet on demand.

A2228 is one solution, but I have a hard time imagining Amazon or other online retailers requiring people in NYC to pass a background check to buy a 3D printer online. But stranger things have happened.

Democratic State Sen. Jenifer Rajkumar is the lead sponsor of A2228, which was proposed on January 15 and is still in committee. Rajkumar previously attempted to pass similar legislation in 2023, but it died in committee.

“Three-dimensional printed guns are growing more prevalent each year. There were 100 taken off the streets of New York City in 2019. That number skyrocketed to 637 in 2022. Concurrently, ghost gun shootings have risen 1,000% across the nation. Currently, three-dimensional printers allow people to make, buy, sell, and use untraceable guns without any background checks. This bill will require a background check so that three-dimensional printed firearms do not get in the wrong hands,” Rajkumar said in a memo attached to the 2023 bill.

NY state bills can take comments from the public, which are public on the legislature’s website. “I strongly oppose the proposed legislation requiring background checks for the purchase of 3D printers,” one commenter said. “While I understand the intention to address concerns about the misuse of 3D printing technology, this measure raises significant issues related to overreach, effectiveness, and unintended consequences.”

State laws regulating 3D-printed firearms are all over the place. In California, the state treats them as regular firearms. Meaning that a person needs to 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 outright bans in other states.

To date, there is no federal 3D-printed gun law. The Biden White House passed an executive order aimed at regulating people who sell 3D-printed gun assembly kits. But, like California, Biden’s EO is an attempt to regulate 3D-printed guns as if they were normal guns.

The truth is that anyone 3D-printing a weapon in their home probably wasn’t interested in putting their homebrew gun into federal databases in the first place.