Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made a plea on Monday for new Ghost Gun preventions to be adopted in the Governor’s budget this legislative session before it’s too late.
Photo by Dean Moses
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made it clear in an exclusive interview with amNewYork on Tuesday: Albany must step up to help the city stop the proliferation of “ghost guns.”
Bragg gave a stark warning about the nearly untraceable, 3D-printed weapons in the Big Apple, and the rapid rate in which the technology is progressing. In the DA’s view, ghost guns offer an easy way for any criminal, including those legally barred from having weapons due to a prior criminal conviction, to obtain a lethal weapon.
“If you were going to buy or sell an illegal gun, why would you go and do it another way? If you’re trying to do it illegally, if you’re in one of these categories where you can’t get a permit?” Bragg asked. “This is how you would move illegal guns. It’s the quickest, safest way from law enforcement detection. And so if we don’t soon — we’re already behind the curve, but the public safety implications are very significant.”
Bragg’s plea comes as state lawmakers continue negotiating an omnibus budget agreement, which will likely be late once again; April 1 is the state budget deadline, and all indications are that Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Legislative leaders are not close to reaching an agreement.
In her State of the State address in January, Hochul announced she was seeking to codify and expand on laws enacted by Bragg. Some of this legislation includes establishing criminal penalties for the manufacturing and sale of 3D-printed firearms, blocking their production, and more. This legislation could be included in a final omnibus budget bill.
Just several years ago, only portions of a working ghost gun could be printed and assembled, and even then, the finished product would be unreliable, with the potential to even explode upon use. But today, in 2026, an entire working deadly weapon can be manufactured inside any home all with only a working knowledge of computer files and a 3D printer worth a few hundred bucks.
This has allowed the criminal element to bypass the need for background checks, to get a permit, or even the need to smuggle them in from out of state, leaving Bragg to point out that if you are a criminal, this is the most logical and perhaps most dangerous way for arms dealers to continue the trade.
The rapid advancement of ghost gun technology
“If you were going to buy or sell an illegal gun, why would you go and do it another way? If you’re trying to do it illegally, if you’re in one of these categories where you can’t get a permit?” Bragg asked.Photo by Dean Moses
According to David Stewart, Chief of the Manhattan DA’s office Counterterrorism Unit, the dangers of ghost guns go even further than fully crafted handguns.
Enhancements like 3D-printed auto sears can be produced in about an hour and added to an existing semiautomatic rifle, allowing the user to fire an entire ammunition clip with a single trigger pull.
The plans for these guns and enhancements are uploaded to and from the internet through what is known as CAD files and allow operators to download the schematics to print the weapons.
“Not surprisingly, we’ve seen these weapons recovered in numerous search warrants across the city, along with evidence that they were being manufactured using 3d printers. In fact, we’ve moved beyond the risk that these weapons can be used, and now we see them used in shootings and homicides across the city. The data backs up this trend, ghost guns and 3d printed guns are on the rise,” Stewart said.
While overall shootings are down, the rate of recovery has increased substantially over the last several years. Bragg stated that in 2018, 17 3-D printed guns were recovered by police, which jumped to a massive 150 in 2020. And then the trade exploded in 2022, with a whopping 585 3D-printed guns confiscated.
DA Bragg’s office 
DA Bragg’s office
Justin Wagner of Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun violence prevention organization, shared that this trend has increased across the country and that the guns are coming from disturbing sources.
“Data we collected from 20 cities showed a 1,000% increase over the last five years in 3D-gun recoveries at crimes, and that is only going to escalate,” Wagner said. “There is an entire community of people online that are dedicated to anarchy, to crypto anarchist beliefs, to white supremacist beliefs, the FGC nine. FGC stands for f**k gun control. A lot of the people that are active in this space, in creating these files and distributing them have very, very far out there views when it comes to ideology and guns.”
A 3D printed clock.Photo by Dean Moses 
3D printed auto sear.Photo by Dean Moses
Bragg showed amNewYork the easy process of creating an auto-sear. Pointing to the machine, Bragg stated that if the laws were enacted, those who made and distributed the weapons would face stronger repercussions.
“If we charge it as you print one hundred as manufacturing with heightened penalties, my hope would be, particularly in this space, when people are sort of following along, that we would get some deterrence, and you’d actually see the use of these go down,” Bragg said. “We’re very hopeful that it will pass.”