{"id":5102,"date":"2025-10-16T16:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/5102\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T16:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:54:17","slug":"gun-safety-advocates-warn-of-a-surge-in-untraceable-3d-printed-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/5102\/","title":{"rendered":"Gun safety advocates warn of a surge in untraceable 3D-printed weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

By CLAUDIA LAUER, Associated Press<\/p>\n

As police departments around the country report a surge in 3D-printed firearms<\/a> turning up at crime scenes, gun safety advocates and law enforcement officials are warning that a new generation of untraceable weapons could soon eclipse the \u201cghost guns\u201d that have already flooded U.S. streets.<\/p>\n

At a summit in New York City on Thursday, the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety will bring together policymakers, academics, 3D-printing industry leaders<\/a> and law enforcement officials to confront the growing challenge. They fear that as the printers become cheaper and more sophisticated \u2014 and blueprints for gun parts spread rapidly online \u2014 the U.S. could be on the brink of another wave of unregulated, homemade weapons that evade serial-number tracking and background checks.<\/p>\n

Numbers collected by Everytown from about two dozen police departments show how quickly the problem is growing: A little over 30 3D-printed guns were recovered in 2020. By 2024, that figure had climbed above 300. While still a fraction of the tens of thousands of firearms seized each year by the nation\u2019s nearly 18,000 police departments, the spike mirrors the early trajectory of ghost guns \u2014 build-it-yourself weapons assembled from kits that for years eluded federal regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now starting to see what kind of feels very familiar,\u201d said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown. \u201cIt\u2019s now at a small number of recoveries in certain major cities, such that it\u2019s doubling or tripling year over year. We\u2019re seeing this very familiar rate of growth and that\u2019s why we\u2019re getting this group together to discuss how to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GhostGhost guns, provided by the New York City Police Department, are displayed in the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s office, in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/p>\n

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imposed new rules in 2022 requiring serial numbers, background checks and age verification for ghost-gun kits, regulations upheld by the Supreme Court<\/a> earlier this year. Lawsuits and state-level bans eventually pushed Polymer80, once the leading manufacturer of those kits, out of business in 2024.<\/p>\n

But 3D-printed weapons present a thornier problem. They aren\u2019t manufactured or sold through the firearms industry, and neither 3D-printer companies nor the cloud-based platforms that host gun blueprints fall under the ATF\u2019s authority. That leaves much of the prevention work to voluntary action and new legislation.<\/p>\n

In addition to seeking industry self regulations, the summit aims to bring together academics and policymakers to talk about possible legislative ways to address the issue such as creating statutes to criminalize manufacturing ghost guns or selling blueprints.<\/p>\n

In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has pressed printer manufacturers and online platforms to take down gun designs and add safeguards against misuse. His office recently asked YouTube to remove a tutorial on printing a gun that a suspect said he found while watching a Call of Duty demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u2033So we reached out to YouTube and got their policies updated,\u201d Bragg said. \u201cIf we were just prosecuting gun possessions rather than thinking about how to prevent these guns from getting printed and proactively talking to these companies, then we would be sorely behind the curve.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major digital design platform also agreed to implement a detection and removal program earlier this year after Bragg\u2019s office found numerous gun blueprints being shared and available for download on its site.<\/p>\n

Both Everytown and Bragg said companies have been receptive. Some printer makers have introduced firmware that recognizes gun part shapes and blocks the machines from producing them, an approach that advocates compare to safeguards added decades ago to prevent color printers from copying currency.<\/p>\n

John Amin, founder and CEO of Spanish company Print&Go, said he became fascinated with 3D printing when he was an engineering student. He voluntarily implemented a series of checks to prevent illegal weapons from being made including human oversight and automated detections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must focus on curbing misuse, not demonizing the tool. And we already have powerful ways to do just that,\u201d Amin said.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 16, 2025 at 11:48 AM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By CLAUDIA LAUER, Associated Press As police departments around the country report a surge in 3D-printed firearms turning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5004,5003,5005,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-5102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-3d-printed-guns","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-safety","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}