I'm not a huge early adopter of technology, but it's not because I'm a Luddite or anything like that. I've just been burned on spending money on the new hotness only to see it become nothingness, only too quickly. I'm too cheap to spend money like that, so I wait until technology has proven itself.
3D printing, for example, is here to stay. It's just too easy to make whatever odds and ends you need in your life, or to make a prototype of a new product, or even start a business printing things and selling them on the internet.
It's a fascinating technology to me, and it opens the doors to so many other possibilities.
And we've seen it turn toward firearm production, which is about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.
Forbes decided to look into groups dedicated to 3D printing on social media, and I don't think they liked what they found.
A pink uzi. A leopardskin handgun with a golden scope. A rifle designed to look like it's from the Halo videogame. A multicolor toy assault rifle, made for a four-year-old’s birthday.
These aren't the kinds of guns you can buy off the rack. They were built at home, with 3D printers, evidence of a burgeoning online community where enthusiasts imagine, design and literally print out the guns of their dreams and then share the results online. Tens of thousands of users have joined private social media groups on Facebook, Discord and other sites to share their latest handgun creation, offer tips on how to print weapons and commiserate about anti-gun laws. Many of these so-called “3D2A” groups are run by 2nd amendment absolutists who say that they’re exercising their constitutional rights and participating in an increasingly popular American pastime; like an arts and crafts community, but for deadly weapons.
In fairness, it is an arts and crafts community, but for deadly weapons.
But that doesn't mean they're wrong to do so.
“If you can go to the library and get a book about how to build a gun, you should be able to do the same thing online,” says Todd Kelly, who helped set up the 2A Printing Facebook group with over 60,000 members. He describes the gun designs posted in the group as “art” that amounts to free speech, and is explicit about his political aims. “Our goal in the 3D printed community is that no government will ever be able to tell someone that they cannot have a gun.”
Kelly makes a great point, actually.
The truth is that if you have the tooling, you can build a firearm lawfully, even without a 3D printer being a thing. You could have done this for decades before the 3D printer hit the commercial market. One of my first stories here at Bearing Arms dealt with P.A. Luty's submachine gun, and that didn't exactly require in-depth machining knowledge.
And yes, there are books on how to do it in many libraries. If I can access them via my local library or on Amazon, why is using a 3D printer such a big deal? Because it democratizes gun manufacturing?
This is the reason given:
But the movement is up against the twin enforcers of social media companies and the government. Often, the groups are banned for posts that appear to facilitate weapons sales or are mistakenly identified by moderators as such, a practice outlawed across most major social platforms, including Facebook, Discord and Reddit. The Justice Department is also keeping tabs on their activity. Federal agents raided a now-defunct Discord group called the 2A Print Depot in 2024, seizing “group members’ chats and data links” for a nearly 18 month stretch beginning in June 2023, according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes. Two administrators of a group with the same name on Facebook also had their accounts searched, the warrant said. Agents similarly looked into communications between members of Kelly’s Facebook group. The warrant also said federal investigators have run undercover profiles in at least one of the private groups, which require users to apply for entry, through to 2025.
The warrant said that at least one user was a convicted felon, and appeared to be posting images of themselves illegally using a firearm. Two of the five group administrators named in the warrant have been charged, one for being a felon in ownership of a firearm, another for failing to register their 3D-printed rifle. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Of course, there's always a fear of criminals using some new technology to break the law.
However, what no one has been able to show is that criminals found in possession of so-called ghost guns that were manufactured in this way had absolutely no other way to get a firearm.
We know that criminals have obtained guns via either theft or some other illicit means for decades. They're still getting most of their guns that way. The so-called ghost gun is still just a blip on the radar.
The vast majority of people who do it, though, really do look at it like an arts and crafts project. I'm a woodworker. I have a friend who makes guns. He's not a felon and he's here in Georgia, so it's perfectly legal for him to do so, but to him, varying it up and finding ways to make new and interesting firearms is an artistic outlet for him, just as my planing and shaping wood with hand tools is an outlet. He's just much better at his creative outlet than I am.
The Feds are freaking out, as is Forbes, because they don't like the fact that the government can't control what's happening.
It's the same reason that they don't like face-to-face gun sales between private parties. They want universal background checks because then they can increase their control, not of the illicit gun trade, but the actions of responsible, law-abiding folks.
The crooks are going to keep using this technology until something better comes along. You're never going to stop them. Someone is going to hold onto the files and continue churning out products from now until the end of time. The genie is out of the bottle.
Trying to put it back in is nothing but a waste of time, money, and energy.
You're better off just focusing on the criminals and not what lawful citizens are doing.
Of course, we all know the odds of that one happening.
