GUNSNew York City’s Spike in 3D-Printed Guns Prompts Push for Tougher Laws
Police in the nation’s biggest city are recovering a growing number of 3D-printed guns. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is advocating legislation that would make 3D-printing guns a crime.
This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
Police in the nation’s biggest city are recovering a growing number of 3D-printed guns, law enforcement officials said. The trend reflects a shift in America’s problem with homemade, untraceable “ghost guns” — from weapons assembled with commercial kits to firearms produced on increasingly affordable printers.
Five years ago, the New York Police Department recovered a single 3D-printed gun, according to data provided to The Trace by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. In 2024, the latest year available, that number jumped to 109.
“We have talked so much about the Iron Pipeline,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told reporters on March 31, referring to trafficking routes that funnel guns from states with looser laws to Northeastern cities. “But we have moved from the Iron Pipeline to the kitchen table pipeline. You can sit in the comfort of your own home, at your kitchen table, with polymer and print out a gun.”
The District Attorney’s Office provided the data after Bragg publicly pressed New York state lawmakers to pass legislation imposing criminal penalties for manufacturing 3D-printed weapons and weapon parts. The bill, proposed by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, would also prohibit sharing digital designs for 3D-printed guns.
Ghost guns and 3D-printed guns often overlap, but there are distinctions. Ghost guns can refer to any firearm that’s unserialized and largely untraceable by law enforcement. They have increasingly turned up at crime scenes over the past decade. Between 2017 and 2023, law enforcement nationwide reported a 1,588 percent increase in homemade ghost guns recovered in criminal investigations, many connected to homicides and other violent crimes.
Most ghost guns are assembled at home using commercially manufactured “80 percent” kits. These kits include nearly complete gun components and require minimal technical know-how and just a few hours to be converted into a functional gun.
In 2022, the Biden administration required sellers to serialize kits that could be easily converted into functional weapons and treat them like other firearms. That meant background checks and recordkeeping. The regulations prompted the largest manufacturer of those kits, Polymer80, to shut down, and ghost gun recoveries subsequently dwindled in some cities.
