Colorado Passes Bill Banning 3D Printed Guns and Parts

Colorado clearly has no respect for anyone’s rights.

For years now, they’ve systematically reduced people’s ability to access firearms in complete defiance of the Second Amendment. Now, they’re taking aim at far more than the right to keep and bear arms, while still attacking the right to keep and bear arms.

It’s kind of impressive in a completely authoritarian way.

The way they’re doing it, though, isn’t particularly new. They’re going after so-called ghost guns by not just banning the practice of making them, but even having the information that would enable one to do so.

A highly controversial bill criminalizing 3D printing of firearms and gun components passed out the Democrat-controlled Colorado House of Representatives this week after undergoing a lengthy debate and amendments process. The bill now moves over to the Senate for review.

House Bill 26-1144 would expand current gun rights restrictions by prohibiting the 3D printing of any potentially functional firearms or gun part.

Under current Colorado law, any firearm that is unfinished or lacks a serial number cannot be sold, transferred, or possessed until formally serialized by a federally licensed manufacturer. The existing law, passed in 2023, provides a path to serialization for hobbyist firearms, assembled from homemade parts or kits without manufacturer markings.

Groups and media outlets hostile to gun owners often pejoratively refer to these types of firearms at “ghost guns.”

HB-1144 takes a step further, making “manufacturing or producing a firearm, unfinished frame or receiver, large-capacity magazine, or rapid-fire device (firearm or firearm component) by 3-dimensional printing” a criminal act.

Punishable as a class 1 misdemeanor–and a class 5 felony on a second offense–the bill also prohibits the selling or distributing of digital instructions containing the codes to 3D print a firearm.

During the March 2 vote on the House floor, House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, called the bill a part of an “avalanche” of gun rights restrictions in Colorado,

“No one’s asking for this, this bill feels like an avalanche of continued gun control bills being added one after another,” Caldwell said from the floor, “We’re just getting creative and putting laws on top of other gun laws that haven’t even taken effect yet.”

It’s worth noting, however, that a recent study that tried to link so-called ghost guns to suicides found that increased recoveries of privately made firearms did not correlate to a higher homicide rate. For all the kvetching about these kinds of guns, they’re not translating to higher crime rates, which isn’t surprising. Criminals had little trouble getting guns for decades before 3D printing technology became a thing.

Now, though, they’re taking a shot at freedom of speech, because computer files have long been considered a form of speech, and just because a form of speech can be misused doesn’t mean it’s not protected under the First Amendment. If I can buy a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, which contains recipes for explosives that apparently work, then I should be able to possess a file to make a 3D printed revolver.

This comes at a time when the state is also considering a bill that would ban the sale of gun barrels unless one goes through a licensed gun dealer. 

In that case, Colorado really needs to cool its jets, considering what the DC Circuit Court just said about gun magazines.

The Court says that any components integral to a gun’s operation are arms. pic.twitter.com/t0l2Mq6ozr

— SAF (@2AFDN) March 5, 2026

If a magazine is integral to the gun’s operation, what do you think they’d say about the barrel?

All of this hysteria about so-called ghost guns isn’t going to make anyone safer. Hell, most bad guys didn’t know this was even an option until the media started going off about how this was a thing and that it was all scary and stuff.

Maybe Colorado should try something they used to do, and that was respect people’s right to keep and bear arms and to share information freely.

You know, just to shake things up a bit.

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

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