Understanding California’s 3D Printing Restrictions

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he’d signed a slew of gun control bills into law. In similarly surprising news, the sun rose in the east this morning here in Georgia and is still expected to set in the west. 

One of the bills he signed would restrict 3D printers themselves, not just the 3D printing of guns as an activity.

This is one we’ve spent a lot of time talking about, but now it’s here, and it has the potential to impact the entire industry, not just people stuck in hostile territory.

So what does the law actually do?

The bill that started the year as a DOJ-certified detection mandate with criminal penalties was signed into law on September 26 as something much narrower: a conditional rule that only switches on if ASTM International writes a standard first. Here is what the law actually says, who it touches, and when anything could happen.

California’s AB 2047, the California Firearm Printing Prevention Act, passed both houses of the Legislature on August 31, 2026 and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 26, one of ten gun bills signed the same day. It takes effect on January 1, 2027. California becomes the second state, after New York, to tie the sale of 3D printers to the presence of firearm blocking technology, and the first to do so with no exemption for industrial machines.

That sentence needs an immediate qualifier, because most of what circulated about this bill in the spring no longer describes it. The version he signed has no criminal penalties, no fines, no manufacturer attestation, no public compliance list and no fixed date on which printers without blocking software become illegal to sell. What it has instead is a trigger: nothing is required of anyone until ASTM International publishes an industry standard for firearm blocking technology, and if that has not happened by July 1, 2029, the mandate may never activate at all.

Yep, sure enough, there are no criminal penalties in this bill as signed, so that’s some good news.

As someone who has been very concerned about this bill, and who missed the changes, I’m feeling a smidge relieved. Only a smidge, though, because if ASTM does issue a standard before July 1, 2029, then the ramifications will be huge, especially with two of the largest states in the nation requiring the technology and absolutely none that I’m aware of prohibiting it.

In other words, if you get a 3D printer for Christmas some year after the ASTM has decided on a standard, there’s a good chance printing guns will not be supported, even if that’s why you wanted the thing in the first place.

Until then, though, everything is in the clear for all of us, even those in California. Not that I’m saying you good people should disobey unconstitutional laws and exercise your rights in spite of the tyrannical mandates of your state government. I’m saying that, for now, the printer you get will be capable of making guns the day the courts finally strike down the bans on so-called ghost guns.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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