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<\/p>\nSan Diego County jumped into California\u2019s sprawling ghost gun fight this week, suing a 3-D printing filament manufacturer it says hocks material for homespun firearms in violation of state law. <\/p>\n
Working with the Giffords Law Center, the county counsel sued manufacturer Polymaker, alleging the company made a \u201cstrategic business choice\u201d to market and sell 3-D printer filament to Californians for the express purpose of building illegal weapons. The polymer filament is sold in spools that feed into 3-D printers, allowing the devices to form designs created by their owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike ghost guns assembled from commercially sold unfinished parts, 3D printed ghost guns can be produced from plastic filament using consumer-grade equipment,\u201d the suit said. \u201cUpon acquiring a 3D printer, a fully functional, untraceable firearm can be printed and assembled by anyone in less than nine hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
This spring, the San Diego Police Department\u2019s Ghost Gun Team recovered spools of the material from the home workshop of a 16-year-old would-be school shooter, along with printed guns and firearm parts they believe he intended to sell \u2014 evidence, the suit said, of the manufacturer\u2019s harm to the state.<\/p>\n
Polymaker did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The spool suit is the latest in a coordinated effort by California\u2019s municipalities and the state attorney general\u2019s office to throttle the bootleg gun industry by stanching the flow of its precursor components. <\/p>\n
In February, the San Francisco city attorney\u2019s office partnered with the California attorney general to sue the online library Gatalog, whose popular digital firearm manufacturing codes can produce more than 150 different 3-D-printed guns and accessories. <\/p>\n
\u201cWidely available consumer-grade 3D printers capable of printing firearm parts, frames, receivers, and accessories now start at about $200 and are compact enough to fit on a small table,\u201d the complaint alleged. <\/p>\n
\u201cA single spool of PLA+ polymer filament, for example \u2014 the only other material required \u2014 costs approximately $20-30 and may be sufficient to print multiple firearm components,\u201d putting a 3-D-printed handgun at roughly half the price of a Glock, the suit said. <\/p>\n
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In 2023, authorities found polymer filament and other materials for a 3-D gun-printing operation in an RV in Escondido, Calif.<\/p>\n
(Escondido Police Department)<\/p>\n
State law enforcement officers now recover about 11,000 ghost guns and homemade manual-to-automatic conversion kits a year, compared with roughly two dozen a decade ago, the San Francisco suit alleged. According to the San Diego action, more than half of all ghost guns recovered in the U.S. are confiscated in California. It\u2019s unclear how many of those weapons were made from scratch using 3-D printers and how many were built using mail-order kits that contain many of the necessary parts, though law enforcement officials have said the latter is far more common. <\/p>\n
The proliferation of untraceable weapons has forced state and local authorities to stretch their regulatory power under California law to try to capture the blueprint books and filament spools that allow novice tinkerers to build backyard arsenals with minimal upfront investment, technical savvy or criminal ingenuity.<\/p>\n
Gatalog and Polymaker both market through a network of influencers \u201cspecializing in 3D printed ghost gun content, as well as companies and individuals that illegally distribute [digital firearm manufacturing codes],\u201d according to the suits.<\/p>\n
Both also directly target state residents: Gatalog advertises a \u201cCalifornia Compliant Glock 19-based Carbine kit,\u201d while Polymakers\u2019 website features Proposition 65 warnings and state-specific privacy opt-out features.<\/p>\n
That puts both afoul of California law, the suits allege. <\/p>\n
The men behind Gatalog and its sister site, CtrlPew, went to federal court in Orlando, Fla., to try to block that assertion, saying California\u2019s suit interfered with their constitutional rights. <\/p>\n
\u201c[The California suit ] seeks to impose civil penalties and injunctive relief on Plaintiffs for purely Floridian speech and links published on the open Internet,\u201d the complaint said. <\/p>\n
The court rejected that claim. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ghost Gun Ban is a classic example of the exercise of state police power and moral judgment,\u201d U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron wrote. \u201cAs the Supreme Court has recently clarified, \u2018a State may exclude from its territory . . . any articles which, in its judgment . . . are prejudicial to the interests of its citizens.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The recent flurry of ghost gun litigation is part of a broader, increasingly coordinated effort between local governments and the state to advance so-called affirmative litigation under California\u2019s Unfair Competition Law. <\/p>\n
San Diego\u2019s Polymaker suit is one of three launched this week by the county counsel\u2019s new affirmative litigation department \u2014 a division built to wield its recently expanded authority to investigate and sue businesses on behalf of residents. <\/p>\n
Still, whether California can actually enforce its newest gun control measures remains largely untested. <\/p>\n