Opinion
According to the Associated Press, America is facing a “surge” of untraceable, 3D-printed guns!!! Oh my!!
To gun-control activists, that’s a reason to panic. To freedom-minded Americans, it’s proof that the right to keep and bear arms is alive and well in the digital age.
The Same Old Panic in a New Wrapper
Every few years, the gun-control lobby finds a new bogeyman. First it was “Saturday night specials,” then “assault weapons,” then “ghost guns.” Now it’s 3D-printed firearms. The AP story quotes Everytown for Gun Safety, screeching of “another wave of unregulated, homemade weapons.” They even hosted a New York summit to discuss ways to “criminalize manufacturing” and censor online blueprints.
But step back and look at their own numbers: 30 recovered guns in 2020, 300 by 2024 — out of tens of thousands of firearms seized nationwide. That’s not an epidemic; it’s a rounding error. What they call a crisis is, in truth, a handful of innovators exercising the same home-workshop freedom that built this nation.
Homemade Arms: The Original American Tradition
Before there were gun stores, gunsmiths, tinkerers, and patriots worked in barns and sheds. From the colonial rifle makers of the 1700s to the garage machinists of today, home firearm building has always been legal, normal, and essential to the balance of power between citizen and state.
As Dean Weingarten wrote in Beyond State Control, “If people desire small arms, they will be able to obtain them by home manufacture.” That’s not a loophole — that’s liberty. The ability to make your own arms ensures no government can ever completely disarm its people. It’s the ultimate “shall not be infringed.”
Technology Outruns Tyranny
The anti-gun crowd acts like 3D printing is some dark art. In reality, it’s the same hobbyist technology used to build drone parts, prosthetics, and automotive components. The tools that make innovation possible don’t suddenly become evil when applied to firearms.
Even John Amin, CEO of the Spanish 3D-printing firm Print&Go, told the AP, “We must focus on curbing misuse, not demonizing the tool.”
Exactly right. The printer is not the problem. Neither are files, code, or plastic. As AmmoLand’s John Crump wrote after yet another media scare, “There are many easier ways to get a gun than print one.” It takes hours of printing, assembly, and mechanical skill — hardly the path of least resistance for criminals. But for law-abiding makers, it’s a rewarding craft and a bulwark of personal sovereignty.
Freedom Can’t Be Filtered
In the AP piece, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg boasts about pressuring YouTube and design platforms to delete gun blueprints. That might play well in Manhattan, but it’s a dangerous precedent for free speech nationwide. As Weingarten noted years ago, controlling firearm design “relies on controlling the flow of information.” That’s a line no free republic should cross. The First and Second Amendments are intertwined — and if you silence one, the other soon follows.
Projects like Hoffman Tactical and Deterrence Dispensed have already shown what comes next: open-source innovation that can’t be stopped or contained.
As Crump put it, “You can’t stop the signal.” Files spread, people learn, and technology marches on — with or without bureaucratic permission.
The Real Story: Empowerment, Not Fear
The AP paints 3D-printed firearms as “untraceable.” But they’re missing the bigger truth: liberty itself isn’t traceable either. The idea that free citizens can design, build, and own their own defensive tools without begging the government for approval is precisely what the Founders envisioned. It’s not chaos — it’s capability.
Homemade firearms represent a healthy, decentralized culture of self-reliance. They remind the world that in America, the right to bear arms doesn’t come from a factory, a license, or a bureaucrat. It comes from the individual — and no amount of fear-mongering headlines can change that.
“If you wish to control a people, control their tools. If you wish to keep them free, let them make their own.”
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About Tred Law
Tred Law is your everyday patriot with a deep love for this country and a no-compromise approach to the Second Amendment. He does not write articles for Ammoland every week, but when he does write, it is usually about liberals Fing with his right to keep and bear arms.
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Beyond State Control: Improvised & Craft-produced Small Arms
Can’t Stop the Files: Media’s War on 3D-Printed Firearms Exposed
We’ve all, well, maybe just some of us, had our fingers and toes crossed, waiting for the day when the Tories, which always seem to be among us, realize that guns are not the problem. People who misuse guns for criminal purposes are the problem. To fix the problem, you need to figure out better ways to control those people, not better ways to control the guns owned by all of us. We may be at or nearing a point where those Tories finally realize that controlling guns has become impossible. Maybe, at long last, they will pay some attention… Read more »