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Lewis Fidler, the pride of Brooklyn (courtesy yourfreepress.blogspot.com)

A few weeks back, anti-civil rights California State Senator Leland Yee proposed registering and regulating all 3D printers in the state of California. In a state where technological advancements are all that is keeping them out of bankruptcy, it was quickly recognized as one of the dumbest ideas ever and Senator Yee promptly changed his tune. Now, another area that would like to attract more high tech companies is considering the exact same thing: New York City . . .

From the Epoch Times:

A new bill to regulate 3D printed guns was introduced by Council Member Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) on June 12.

The bill would amend the New York administrative code to make it illegal to use a 3D printer to create any part of a firearm unless the person is a licensed gunsmith. A gunsmith using a 3D printer to print any part of a gun would be required to notify the NYPD and register it within 72 hours.

So, no matter what the part is, so long as it goes on a firearm it would be illegal to produce in New York City unless you’re a licensed gunsmith. And if a gunsmith does print a part using a 3D printer, it must be registered with the NYPD within 72 hours.

First off, the bill is completely unenforceable. There’s simply no way to know who has a 3D printer, what that 3D printer is used for and where the parts go. That’s one of the best features of 3D printing, it’s a private operation with no oversight whatsoever by the government. Unless, of course, they also want to throw registration of 3D printers into the mix, which would be interesting to watch.

Also, it’s hilarious to think that the authorities are so scared of 3D-printed guns that they’re willing to make it a crime for me to prototype a new design for a safety for my 1911 without letting the police know what I’m up to.

This is the very definition of stifling innovation. And it’s happening because the politicians know that the existing laws just don’t work. People still have illegal guns, no matter how hard they legislate against them.

Want to start a different discussion or ask a question on another topic? Click here to go to TTAG’s Free Fire Zone.

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63 COMMENTS

    • I still think of that Old El Paso commercial whenever I see their most recent example of staggering idiocy.

  3. This was his reply to someone who put up the link for the cad files on a local blog in Brooklyn. This doofus reps my old neighborhood.
    “Because the law would be difficult to enforce, does that mean we shouldn’t do it? $5,000 ain’t a lot of money to terrorists and drug gangs. These things would be undetectable and lethal. We have to at least make sure that the law is on the right side…or do gun folks think that even THIS is not a common sense regulation that violates their 2nd amendment rights.
    Lew from Brooklyn”

    • I empathize with you as well as with my dad who still lives in the BK. You guys are stuck with pols who cannot seem to get their heads out of their a$$es. No self respecting gangbanger has any use for a single shot plastic gun. Picture a single shot for a drive-by or a shootout, kind of self-defeating. Real bangers use real guns which have been and STILL are readily available irrespective of how much they are outlawed by any NYC or NYS legislator. Whilst I miss the BK I grew up in, I have no wish to return to Bloomie’s Paradise. I would rather continue residing in a state that respects my 2A rights. As for Fidler-he should go sing on a roof.

    • We beat feet from Brighton Beach 2 years ago. No regrets. Great place to visit, wouldn’t live there again.
      Now I have a house instead of an apartment. I’m getting my FFL, taxes are low. Weather is great. Should have done it years ago. F*ck NYC and their Democrat overlords.

        • No sh*t. Brighton 12th, corner of Corbin. From ’77-’11. Wonder if I’d recognise you? How old are you?

        • You might know my younger brother, Mike D. He’s your age. He used to hang out in the school yard, before they cut the hoop down. We lived in 2906.

      • Small world. We grew up together. When you were away and he was staying in your place we had some good times there. You had a sick collection of NY memorabilia. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years and you probably know all the kids we grew up with went their separate ways a long time ago. I also made a move to Cali a year ago. When you speak with him tell him Al (punim) says hello.

        • Give him a call, I’m not going to ask your name, let him tell me. Thou from that building the list is short.
          Sorry to bore the rest of you with our detective game.

      • I dont really use facebook. These guys will forward my email to you. We can connect that way.

        • Cool, just told him. He sends greetings. Looking forward to the email. Gotta bounce. Good night.

  4. Wow California didn’t even go that stupid. Next thing you know you will need a license to breath in New York.
    The funny thing is like Nick said you can’t enforce this. There is no enforcement at all. People can make a 1911 or AR on a CNC to, what you gonna do, outlaw CNC machines too? I mean really..

  5. If I had a 3 d printer I’d make a free monogrammed ball gag for every liertard and regressive in the country. If they promised to wear it. Always.

  6. New York City is where stupid was invented. They called it the Sullivan Law, and it’s been around as long as Browning’s M1911.

    The Big Apple’s motto should be: “Keeping People Defenseless for 100 Years.”

    • And governor Roosevelt vetoed the “Uniform Firearms Act” passed by the NY legislature in 1932 because it would have weakened the Sullivan law, while the governor of Arizona vetoed a similar bill because he found it too invasive of personal liberties. Some things never seem to change, or perhaps they do change, for the worse.

    • Or: “The Big Apple’s motto should be: “Keeping the Law Abiding People Defenseless for 100 Years.” Like those crime-committing members among the MAIG folks, Tim Sullivan was a punk. But in 1910-1911 murder in NYC was becoming commonplace, and the professional criminals’ guild thugs came to resent the intrusion by new-comers and do-it-yourselfers. Even after passage of the Sullivan Act a serious mobster could still get a carry permit. This proves the law was not intended to put professionals out of business.

  7. This is encouraging news indeed; while he’s at it, msyne the Mental Midget could outlaw alcohol, non-pharmaceutical drugs and kinky sex to boot.

  8. If I were a NY gunsmith I’d get all my gunsmith buddies and start cranking out AR rail covers 24 hours a day and send truck fulls to the police department and tell them have at it

    • Make only a rear peep sight and make them by the millions. Send THOSE in and bog down the registration system until the computers overheat and turn on their masters in an orgy of blood and binary.

      • Hah!!! You guys had exactly the same idea I had. I posted mine below before reading yours.

        I’ll pitch in a few dollars toward the plastic “ink” that the gunsmiths would need for this demonstration of civil disobedience. Anyone else on board?

        • Sittin here in BK, love this idea if this BS passes! Would be hilarious to just do every safety/selector switch under the sun by the thousands. Tell ’em ‘sorry, just trying to help make us safer’ hahaha. How does one become a licensed gunsmith? Cus I’d be all over it! @scottlac hahaha I just almost died

      • “…until the computers overheat and turn on
        their masters in an orgy of blood and binary.”

        This has to be one of the greatest lines I’ve
        heard in a while. Now all I can think about
        is using a mouse as a nuncuk to beat back
        a sentient Ipad.

      • Guys, you’re thinking too grand.

        Detents, roll pins and screws. By the billions, in every shape and size and spec for every gun ever made.

        Hell, would it have to be a law of intent? ‘You can only print screws if you intend to use them for non-firearm applications’? How could it even be determined until you showed up at their office with a flatbed?

    • At one time I would have fell for this BS, now I was reborn into the real world and there are lots of us out there in just 6mos. I am now a NRA member

    • Rail covers for wanker rails would be an ideal component to manufacture. Simple tooling, all you need is a mini-mill, some aluminum, dovetail cutters, end mills and some polishing so it doesn’t look like hammered dog poop.

      Peep sights have fine, fiddly threads that take something approaching real skills to make.

      • Exactly what my thoughts were. Basically a flat peice with a couple screw holes. Simple and quick to make a trunk full.

  11. Wow. Just wow. Who’s going to be processing the registrations and where do I put the serial numbers on my 3D-printed 1911 grip panels? What a joke. “any part of a firearm.” What on earth are they “thinking”????

  13. These people are so stupid they can’t change their own light bulbs, they really don’t know how dumb their ideas are.

    • I came in here to post a “what about printing a 64oz soda cup” comment, but found you beat me to it. *sad face* 🙂

  15. Everyone in the city should print out instructions manuals for a gun they don’t own. Then register them. If the city complains about it, you just made an honest mistake and didn’t understand the law.

  18. We need every gunsmith in New York City (are there actually any in New York City?) to acquire a printer and print millions of the tiniest, non-descript part possible — such as a pin. Then they have to submit them to the New York City Police Department for registration. The idea is to bury the Police Department … similar to everyone paying their taxes in pennies.

    Strategic suggestion: the gunsmiths would not have to actually print millions of pins. Just a few thousand and keep submitting them over-and-over to keep the pencil pushers buried up to their armpits in paperwork.

    Now that would be an epic demonstration of civil disobedience.

    • There are, according to my Google-Fu, about two dozen gunsmiths in NYC.

      The most famous of these is Griffen & Howe.

  19. What about one of those little safety flags that indicates your action is clear? Do you have to buy someone else’s molded plastic doodad instead of printing one yourself? Derp, NY.

  20. Our founding fathers are spinning in their graves at a rate that contributes to global warming.

  21. As someone who knows more about 3-D printing technology than any NY or CA politician I say this to suggestions about regulation: Good Friggin’ Luck!! You don’t stand a chance. Not only is the 3-D printer going to change the gun industry, it’s going to change the world. The technology is spreading fast. Improvements to the original liberator pistol are already too many to count. I promise you (laugh now) that new polymers are being in in invented almost daily. Some of them already rival steel in their fracture points and ability to withstand heat. In a decade you will not only be capable of making single shot handguns in your bedroom, you’ll be making fully automatic rifles. Will they last for a quarter of a million rounds? Probably not, however you’ll shoot 10,000 rounds and then just print a new one for pennies. This Is Not Hype! I don’t have a crystal ball but I assure the naysayers they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about! On a brighter note, this could finally end all gun control. The court’s only option will be through punishment of violent offenders (what it should always have been). Since anyone will be able to produce any weapon they desire the paradigm will shift and criminals will no longer get 3 year sentences for robbing someone with a gun. They will be sent to some cold Alaskan labor camp where they will do hard labor for 30 years until every day of their sentence is served or they die shivering beneath a thin wool blanket mumbling about how sorry they are for what they did. Basically if you want to print a bazooka, fine…. But use it to hurt someone and you’ll wish you were never born. The future actually looks bright for law abiding citizens and bleak for thugs, and the 3-D printed gun will make this a reality. Remember I told you.

  22. To be honest, I empathize with law enforcement on this. We all, myself included, are very quick to jump on the rights aspect of this, but they’re right. This particular technological genie is out of the bottle…and isn’t going back in. And eventually, someone is going to make the completely undetectable gun that works for more than a shot or two, and can actually hit something…and it’s going to be used to do something terrible. It’s a fact. It will happen. And there’s nothing anyone can do, with current technology, to stop it.

    The problem is, the old paradigm of regulate and legislate, isn’t going to work for this. And yet LE and security types are going to have to prevent the attacks that will eventually come with these types of weapons.

    It’s not an enviable position to be in…and we’re going to see a ton of knee-jerk, completely ineffectual and unenforceable legislation proposed, and probably passed, because they don’t understand that there is almost nothing they can do to stop it.

  23. So after thinking five minutes about this, here’s my devious thought:

    Help this moron get this legislation passed. BTW, he looks like that “second Kyle” from South Park, all grown up. I wonder how his asthma is doing.

    Someone in NYC has to get a FFL as a ‘smith. You’ll need a Type 01 FFL, same as for a dealer/pawnshop. Get some property or rental space in an area already zoned for light industrial, manufacturing, business, professional services. That way, the city can’t hold you up on zoning, which is always the way the locals try to slow things down.

    Get a cheap 3D printer. It will never need to do anything other than plastics.

    Now, what to make: It has to be something that can be sensationalized. Rail covers? Meh. Sure, they go on evil AR’s – and just about everything else that’s festooned with a wanker rail these days.

    Hmmm. It needs to make a firearm more deadly – at least in the minds of those people who emit mental flatulence at the mere mention of the word “gun.”

    I’ve got it: Make the little wedges that people put into the back of AR’s to keep the upper receiver from floppin’ around loose on the lower receiver. Simple part, easy to make, no moving parts or threads, it can be said that they increase accuracy… and therefore you can argue (with a straight face) that you’re in a serious business, that you’re not there just to piss off people with public pensions and nice little blue uniforms.

    And, after all, it’s a part for the evil, wicked, baby-killing, military-style AR-15, the type of gun that even can have the “shoulder thing that goes up.”

    You can imagine the type of New Yorker depicted above losing all bowel control. Making parts for AR-15’s? With 3D printers? Here within the Saintly Five Boroughs? Oh. My. God.

    Yes, you absolutely must register that part with the police.

    So do it. Make ’em by the thousands, and ship them over to the NYC’s finest donut munchers, each in an individual package, with it’s own USPS tracking number.

    Then (this is the part where I start giggling like a kid): refuse to sell any of these to law enforcement.

  24. What’s really funny is one of the more popular “home” 3D printer companies, Makerbot ( http://www.makerbot.com/ ) is based in…you guessed it, NYC! (Brooklyn to be precise) and their retail store is in manhattan.

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