Lawmakers in several states move to crack down on 3D printed gun files and those who create them

Gun rights content creator Liberty Doll opens her report with a blunt warning: multiple states are now moving beyond “ghost gun” talk and aiming straight at the tools and instructions that make home manufacturing possible, especially anything tied to 3D printing.

In her telling, the big picture isn’t just one bill in one state. It’s a spread-out push across Colorado, Washington, and California, plus a federal court decision she says could reshape how lawmakers argue about the First Amendment and “gun files.”

She frames it as a two-front fight: one side is trying to control the hardware – printers and CNC machines – while the other side is trying to control the software, meaning CAD files and “digital instructions” that can be used to make parts.

And she says the line between “regulated” and “banned into oblivion” is getting thinner.

Liberty Doll also leans on a recent court development to set the tone: she says the Third Circuit ruled that files for 3D printed guns are not protected speech, even though other courts had previously treated them as First Amendment-protected expression.

That decision, she argues, is giving lawmakers extra confidence to draft aggressive bills, because they can point to a court and say, “See? This isn’t speech, it’s just function.”

Colorado’s Approach: Expand Gun-Control Rules To Files And Machines

Liberty Doll starts in Colorado, and she talks about it like a stack of bills designed to cover every angle – parts, files, and even non-3D methods like CNC milling.

First, she mentions Senate Bill 43, which she describes as a measure aimed at regulating firearm barrels, including 3D printed barrels, by pushing sales and transfers through FFLs and requiring background checks.

Her take is that this kind of rule makes sense on paper to the people writing it, but collapses in practice once you remember what home manufacturing is. You can’t background-check a file someone prints in their garage, and you can’t force a private object into an FFL transaction if the entire point is the person is producing it themselves.

Then she pivots to a more sweeping proposal: Colorado HB114, which she describes as a bill to prohibit the 3D printing of firearms and components.

She lists the sponsors as Reps. Lindseay Gilchrist, Andrew Boesenecker, and Sens. Katie Wallace and Tom Sullivan, and she notes Sullivan is tied to the barrel bill too.

Her emphasis is on the definitions. She says HB114 doesn’t just target a “3D printer” the way most people imagine it. The language also wraps in CNC milling machines and similar equipment.

In other words, Liberty Doll argues this isn’t really just a “3D printing” bill. It’s a home-manufacturing bill with a modern label.

She reads sections she says would make it illegal for most people – anyone who isn’t a federally licensed manufacturer – to make, possess, or distribute certain kinds of gun-related digital instructions.

And she highlights the penalty structure: a first offense as a class one misdemeanor (which she says can mean up to a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine), then a class 5 felony for later violations.

Liberty Doll also points out what she sees as political theater around it. She notes that Colorado already bans unserialized “ghost guns,” yet lawmakers still introduced this new layer of restrictions anyway, with student activists pushing for it at the Capitol.

Then she adds a detail that, in her view, undercuts the urgency: she cites Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms noting that depending on the year, Denver police seizures of 3D printed guns have been reported as low as single digits and as high as a few dozen – numbers that look small when compared to the state’s population.

You can hear what she’s getting at: even if the issue exists, she’s not convinced it’s widespread enough to justify turning possession of “instructions” into a criminal offense.

California’s Lawsuit Strategy: Go After Distribution, Not Just Devices

Liberty Doll’s report then shifts from bills to what she portrays as a direct pressure campaign through the courts.

She says California is suing multiple groups and individuals over distribution of 3D printed gun files, naming Gatalog Foundation, Control Pew, and “several other individuals,” plus a long list of unknown “John Does.”

Her framing is that California isn’t just trying to stop illegal gun possession inside the state. It’s trying to reach outward and punish people for conduct and speech happening elsewhere, including in states where that activity may be legal.

She highlights Matt Larosiere of Fuddbusters as one of the defendants, and says he is counter-suing California, arguing the state is trying to govern conduct that occurred in Florida, where it’s legal.

Liberty Doll also brings up a twist she treats as important: she says many of the plans in question are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

In her telling, that matters because it creates a collision between copyright law – where creators protect and register work – and California’s legal claims, which she says could make it harder for groups like Control Pew to register or defend those copyrights without opening themselves up to more legal punishment.

That’s the “lawfare” point she keeps circling: even following normal legal processes could become a liability if a state is determined to make the entire category of information toxic.

Whether a court agrees with that theory is another story, but Liberty Doll’s message is clear: she believes California is trying to make the cost of staying in the fight so high that groups fold.

Washington’s Bills: Regulate The Code And Force “Blocking” Printers

Liberty Doll describes Washington as the place where the legislative language gets the most ambitious.

She talks first about House Bill 2320, which she notes is long, heavily amended, and already passed the House as of February 17 in her report.

She quotes the bill’s stated purpose as stopping people from obtaining firearms without background checks, and then she pushes back with a practical argument: prohibited people already aren’t allowed to lawfully obtain guns, so she sees the lawmakers’ framing as a kind of rhetorical shortcut.

Then she reads what she says are the relevant sections, focusing on how the bill repeatedly includes manufacturing “by use of a three-dimensional printer” and “computer numerical control milling machine,” along with “other means.”

To Liberty Doll, those words matter because they expand the scope beyond “you can’t buy this” into “you can’t make this,” which drifts into a wider ban on homemade firearms.

She then zeroes in on a phrase she repeats because she thinks it’s the real battleground: “digital firearm manufacturing code.”

In her description, Washington is trying to define and regulate CAD files and other digital instructions as a controlled item, and she points to language that restricts selling or distributing those files to anyone who isn’t licensed under federal manufacturing statutes.

The part she seems most alarmed by is the “intent” framework. She reads a section saying that possession of the code can create a rebuttable presumption of intent to unlawfully distribute or manufacture.

In plain English, she warns, it’s not “prove what you did.” It’s “we assume what you meant,” unless you can prove otherwise.

That’s a huge philosophical shift, and even people who aren’t deep in gun politics can feel the tension there. Presumptions like that don’t just punish bad acts; they change the power balance in everyday encounters, because now possession itself becomes suspicious.

Liberty Doll then brings up Washington HB2321, which she says is sitting in committee, and she describes it as the “blocking features” bill – similar to proposals she’s seen in New York.

Her summary is striking: after July 1, 2027, she says the bill would ban the sale of printers in the state unless they have software designed to detect and reject “firearms” and “illegal firearm parts,” and unless manufacturers file an attestation to the attorney general under penalty of perjury.

She emphasizes that Washington’s definition of “3D printer” would also include machines capable of subtractive manufacturing, which again pulls CNC machines into the same net.

And she points out how sweeping that becomes. If you regulate printers this way, you aren’t just regulating firearms. You’re regulating a general-purpose tool used for all sorts of harmless manufacturing, hobby work, engineering, and education.

Liberty Doll predicts printer costs would rise and says the “banned file database” concept sounds like a perfect target for hackers. Even if you disagree with her politics, that particular warning makes sense: a centralized database of “forbidden designs” is, by definition, a list people will want to obtain and share.

The Third Circuit Question: Speech, Function, And A Dangerous Shortcut

Near the end of her report, Liberty Doll returns to the court issue because she sees it as a potential turning point.

She says the Third Circuit recognized that computer code can be protected speech in general, but in the Defense Distributed case involving New Jersey’s ban on 3D printed gun files, she says a panel held that gun files are “purely functional” and not protected.

She also recounts how the court compared gun-printing files to acts like kicking someone in the shin or robbing a bank, as a way of arguing that not everything that “communicates” qualifies as protected speech.

Her expectation is that Defense Distributed will appeal.

And here’s where the broader stakes show up: if courts treat these files as non-speech because they are “functional,” lawmakers will keep writing bills that treat distribution as a crime in itself, not because someone misused a firearm, but because someone shared information.

That is an enormous policy lever, and once it exists, it tends to expand.

The Real Fight Is Over Definitions And “Intent”

Liberty Doll’s reporting, at its core, isn’t just “states are cracking down.” It’s that the crackdown is being built through definitions that quietly do most of the heavy lifting.

If you define a CNC machine as a “3D printer,” you aren’t regulating one niche hobby. You’re pulling a whole category of modern making and manufacturing into a gun-control framework.

If you define “intent” by presumption – like Washington’s approach, as she describes it – you aren’t just punishing distribution. You’re putting ordinary possession of files into a suspicious category, which can chill behavior even when someone isn’t doing anything illegal.

And if you label code as “purely functional” and strip it of First Amendment protections, you create a legal lane where lawmakers can argue, “We’re not regulating speech, we’re regulating an instrument.”

That shortcut might feel satisfying to people who want fast solutions, but it also carries a risk: once the government learns it can regulate “instructions” by calling them “function,” the logic doesn’t have to stop at firearms.

Even If You Support Restrictions, The Tech Mandates Should Make You Nervous

The “blocking features” concept is the kind of idea that sounds clean until you picture it in real life.

You’re asking companies to build printers that can detect banned shapes, reject prints, and be impossible for skilled users to override. Liberty Doll treats that as unrealistic, and it’s hard not to see why: tech that claims it can’t be bypassed usually ends up bypassed, while regular users get stuck with false positives and locked-down machines.

The bigger worry is what happens when the state requires a general-purpose device to behave like a monitored product with compliance reporting. That’s a different world than “we’re banning a specific weapon.” It’s a world where tools come pre-loaded with rule sets, and the rules get updated based on politics.

Liberty Doll closes by saying she’ll keep tracking these bills. But the bigger takeaway from her report is this: states aren’t just trying to ban a thing – they’re trying to control a process, from files to machines to assumptions about intent.

And once the fight becomes about controlling the process, the map gets bigger than any one lawmaker probably admits out loud.