Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is joining with Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, and the NYPD in an effort to combat the flooding of 3D-printed ghost guns in the Big Apple by introducing new legislation.
During a meeting inside the DA’s office, lawmakers and NYPD officials hammered home the worrying technological advancements in the at-home arms race. According to the NYPD Commanding Officer of the Field Intelligence Program Courtney Nilan, the scientific growth in 3D gun printing has developed substantially in just a few years and continues to progress by the week.
Using a 3D printer that can be purchased for as little as $200, the underground firearm community can now illegally press gun parts, including lower receivers, magazines, and even silencers, making the iron pipeline a non-factor in the ongoing war on guns.
“There’s so many more people doing this now that they’re perfecting the digital downloads. The digital downloads have advanced and there are so many more open-source chat rooms and forums, where I’ll go on and say ‘Hey, mine started cracking after I shot it five times.’ ‘Oh, try this design. This is a little better design,’” Nilan told amNewYork Metro. “We’re seeing some of these can have hundreds or thousands of rounds run through them and not fail.”
The blueprints to artificially assemble these deadly weapons can be stored on tiny SD cards or flash drives and cultivated by online enthusiasts to aid one another in the refinement of the technology that allows anyone to make killing devices. Nilan also added that the only way to make these guns legal is to take the weapons to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and have them officially serialized. However, Nilan says she has not had a report of a single person doing this.
While it is illegal to own a fully assembled 3D-printed gun, current law does not make it illegal to print the weapon. The legislation dubbed S7364, which is being unveiled during Gun Violence Awareness month, will look to make the production process a class D felony and the sharing and distribution of files containing blueprints would be made a class A misdemeanor.
“This is kitchen table stuff. You can do this at your kitchen table and the people who want to know about it, there’s an entire underground element that knows,” District Attorney Bragg said. “We see, in discussion groups, the sort of discussion of how to build these guns in the CAD files, a very significant and scary chatter with extreme views and violence. So, pairing those two rising, hate crimes and this technology is scary.”
To date, the Ghost Guns Initiative— a partnership between the DAs office and the NYPD—has prosecuted cases involving the seizure of over 90 ghost gun parts, 42 fully assembled ghost guns, 24 serialized firearms, 423 high-capacity magazines, 47 silencers, and other gear including scopes and rapid-fire modification devices.
The NYPD showcased how easily these weapons can be produced by exhibiting the machines that make them and the plastic product. And although the guns are often made in bright colors such as green or pink, police officials remind the public that these are far from toys and shoot very real bullets.
“With S7364, New York is continuing our fight against gun violence by making manufacturing 3D-printed guns and ghost guns illegal. I thank D.A. Bragg and Assembly Member Rosenthal for staying on top of our ever-changing technological environment to keep New Yorkers safe,” Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal said.
