This Act prohibits the intentional online distribution of digital files used to 3D print firearms or essential gun parts to enhance public safety and maintain gun traceability.
Jared Moskowitz
Representative
FL-23
The 3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2025 seeks to enhance public safety by addressing the threat posed by untraceable, self-manufactured firearms. This bill makes it illegal to intentionally distribute digital files or schematics online that can be used to 3D print a complete firearm or critical gun parts. The legislation aims to close a loophole that allows prohibited persons to easily acquire untraceable weapons, thereby strengthening existing federal gun regulations.
3D Printed Gun Safety Act Bans Sharing Digital Blueprints Online, Targeting Untraceable 'Ghost Guns'
The 3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2025 aims to crack down on untraceable firearms by making it illegal to share the digital instructions needed to print them. Simply put, if you intentionally post a CAD file or similar code online that can be used by a 3D printer to make a gun or a key part of one (like the receiver), you’re breaking the law (SEC. 3).
The Ghost in the Machine: Why Tracing Matters
This bill zeroed in on a real problem: the rise of 'ghost guns.' The legislative findings lay out the concern clearly: firearms made at home using 3D printers often lack serial numbers, making them untraceable by law enforcement. The ATF handles hundreds of thousands of trace requests annually, and when a gun used in a crime can't be traced, it complicates investigations (SEC. 2). For the average person, this means that if a prohibited person—someone who failed a background check or is legally banned from owning a weapon—gets their hands on a 3D printer, they can bypass the entire federal regulatory system and create a weapon that police can’t track back to them.
What the Ban Actually Does
Section 3 amends existing federal law (Section 922 of title 18, United States Code) to explicitly prohibit the intentional sharing of these digital instructions over the internet. The goal is to choke off the supply of the blueprints that enable this untraceable manufacturing. Think of it this way: instead of banning the physical gun or the printer itself, the law targets the information—the recipe—that makes the gun possible. This is a direct response to the easy availability of these schematics, which Congress argues allows criminals to manufacture weapons that are both untraceable and, in some cases, undetectable by standard metal detectors.
The Digital Rights Crossroads
While the public safety goal—reducing the number of untraceable weapons—is clear, the method raises significant questions for the tech community. This law essentially restricts the sharing of a specific type of digital file, which touches directly on First Amendment issues and the open-source community. If you’re a programmer, hobbyist, or digital rights advocate, this bill criminalizes sharing technical information that some view as a form of expression or technological knowledge. The bill attempts to preempt this concern by stating it’s not targeting general programming rights, but rather the specific code used to program a 3D printer to manufacture a firearm (SEC. 2). However, drawing a clear line between educational design files and prohibited manufacturing instructions could be tricky for enforcement, potentially chilling the sharing of related, legitimate design files.