NY Lawmaker Targeting 3D Printable Plastic Guns

A Manhattan lawmaker wants the state to crack down on the unlicensed assembly of make-at-home 3D printable plastic “ghost guns.”

State Sen. Brad Hoylman is proposing legislation after the Trump administration settled a lawsuit last month filed by gun-rights activists that will allow them to post detailed blueprints on the Web on how to make a plastic gun with a 3D printer.

The Second American Foundation, which helped bankroll the gun-rights lawsuit against the Obama administration’s shutdown of a Texas-based firm’s posting of gun-making blueprints online, called the settlement a “victory for free speech.”

But Hoylman (D) said the deal is an invitation to kill.

His bill, drafted with input from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, would make it illegal to manufacture or assemble a ghost gun without a gunsmith license.

It also requires a gunsmith who manufactures or assembles a ghost gun to register the gun with law enforcement and obtain a permanently affixed serial number.

And the measure would require that each major component of a legally produced ghost gun be detectable by a metal detector and generate an image that adequately depicts the shape of the gun.