I’m used to the mainstream media taking stands on gun control policy that, frankly, infuriate me. USA Today is a particularly egregious offender in this, up to and including their horrifically idiotic inclusion of the chainsaw bayonet in a list of potential modifications available to the AR-15. However, I’m also used to it. I’m used to large media outlets actively opposing our Second Amendment rights. I don’t like it, but I accept it as reality.
So when they start raising questions about a bit of gun control, it catches my attention.
See, the reason I invoked the name of USA Today above is that they’re talking about gun control again, but this time, they’re doing it a little differently. They’ve opted to talk about the First Amendment concerns regarding New York’s attack on 3D printers and the files one might use to make a so-called ghost gun.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law on May 27 a requirement for 3D printers sold in the state to have technology preventing them from printing guns. Supporters describe it as a first-of-its-kind provision that could reduce gun violence, but critics say such technology impedes on free expression.
The provision was introduced as part of the state’s proposed 2026-2027 budget, which the state legislature approved on May 21.
The law requires all 3D printers sold in the state to have blocking technology − which could be hardware, software, firmware or other measures − to keep printers from making guns or illegal gun parts.
Violating the law would be a civil penalty with a $5,000 fine per product sold.
Groups including the National Rifle Association and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised concerns about the law in part on First Amendment grounds.
“This is ultimately asking tools not to work for the creator and go through a filter, a censorship filter,” Rory Mir, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s director of open access and tech community engagement, told USA TODAY.
One of many issues with this will be that there are a lot of parts that might be used in a firearm that are used for non-firearm products. A pistol grip for a firearm can also be a pistol grip for something else. A tube that can be a gun barrel can be a tube for something else.
As a result, people will find that their printers won’t make things that they need, despite them attempting to build something completely lawful in all 50 states. In essence, New York wants to put a bit of control in a product you’re buying and dictate what you can do with it.
And let’s understand this hysteria and put it in perspective for a moment.
The New York Police Department recovered one 3D-printed ghost gun in 2021, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office spokesperson M’Niyah Lynn told USA TODAY. That number rose to four in 2022, 42 in 2023 and 109 in 2024.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said passing the legislation was a “major step forward for public safety,” in a May 22 X post.
That’s out of 438 “ghost guns” recovered in total for Manhattan in 2024, according to The Trace, which isn’t exactly known to favor any kind of firearm. While I can’t find a total number of gun recoveries for Manhattan, I do know that there were 6,150 “illegal” firearms recovered in New York City. In other words, these don’t even account for one percent of the firearms recovered in the Big Apple, but this is what everyone is losing their minds over?
It should also be remembered that a recent study actually found that there’s no statistically significant correlation between “ghost gun” recoveries and homicides, which is telling. After all, if these are the menace and regulating them is a “major step forward for public safety,” shouldn’t we see some data that supports the claim?
Of course not.
So, because they’ve already banned people from making 3D-printed guns and it hasn’t stopped the criminals, New York has decided they’re going to start telling you what parts you can and can’t print, regardless of what you intend them for. They’re telling you what data you can and can’t use, even if you’re not actually breaking the law.
If code is speech, as the courts have long concluded, then how is this not censorship?
USA Today seems to lean a little more toward New York in this piece, focusing an awful lot on what Everytown had to say about this anal discharge of a law, but the truth is that I think the press can and should be more worried about this. We’ve long seen how an assault on our Second Amendment rights simply leads to more gun control, so why would the First Amendment be any different?
Once the First Amendment starts getting the Second Amendment treatment, folks like the reporters at USA Today might find themselves suddenly having to deal with restrictions that accomplish nothing except to hand control over to the state.
Plus, let’s not forget that you can easily buy books that explain how to make explosives with relatively common ingredients, and we don’t ban that. Why lose your mind over 3D printer files, then?
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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