Solages, Advocacy Groups Voice Support For 3D-Printed Gun Proposal

ALBANY, NY. — Advocacy day took place this month in the New York State Assembly, giving nonprofits and community groups the chance to champion causes close to their hearts. For volunteers from gun safety groups Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, those causes included a state budget proposal sponsored by State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages that aims to stop the production and distribution of 3D printed guns and gun accessories.

The legislation, Part of a piece of legislation called the “Public Protection and General Government Article VII Legislation,” would make it illegal to manufacture, ship or possess the 3D printing code to manufacture a pistol converter or a ghost gun, with exceptions built in allowing people in the military, law enforcement, peace officers or licensed gunsmiths to ship the convertible pistols.

The legislation would also make it a requirement that 3D printers sold in New York state come with designs that block them from printing guns, gun components and any “illegal accessories,” the legislator’s office said.

“We know that across the country and here in New York, law enforcement is increasingly recovering semi-automatic pistols that are being converted into illegal guns. Many of the conversions are being made possible by small devices called Glock switches. With a device no bigger than a quarter, a handgun can be transformed in seconds, firing dozens of rounds in a moment,” Solages said. “Technology is moving very quickly and our laws need to keep pace. All of us are talking about AI and computers, but we also have to talk about this in regards to gun violence. We know that machine guns and conversion devices are already illegal, but law enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. This has to be done through the manufacturer, and we need to hold them accountable...We cannot wait for the bar to cross us. We have to meet the moment. New York has led the nation before when we talk about gun safety and stopping gun violence in our community, but we need to do it again.”

Indeed, ghost guns are not entirely new to New York; a Harlem man was indicted in 2024 on the accusation that he had made the weapons in his apartment and test fired them in Manhattan's Central Park, while a New Rochelle “hub” for ghost gun production was raided by police just last summer. In her announcement of anti-ghost-gun legislation in January, Gov. Kathy Hochul called the illicit firearms, “the nation’s fastest growing gun safety threat.”

“These proposals will keep illegal ghost guns off of New York streets, and enhance measures to track and block the production of dangerous and illegal firearms in our state,” Hochul said in that announcement, in which she promised to mandate the reporting of 3D printed guns to a state police database, make it a crime to sell, distribute or possess the code to manufacture a gun or its components in New York, place the gun-producing block on 3D printers and require gun manufacturers to make their weapons harder to modify by illegal means.

For her part, Solages sponsored a bill in the assembly in January that aimed to limit the spread of pistol converters. Those converters, In the eyes of the nonprofit leaders, the ghost gun legislation highlights a dangerous challenge to gun safety efforts: Technology.

“While our movement has been working to pass lifesaving laws, technology has been evolving faster than the policies designed to keep us safe, and that gap is being exploited by bad actors and gun traffickers,” Moms Demand Action Executive Director Angela Ferrell-Zabala said. “This isn’t some hypothetical problem. It’s already happening…law enforcement is recovering 3D-printed ghost guns and illegal conversion devices at crime scenes. And when these weapons are used, the consequences are devastating…Lawmakers must act now to stop the Plastic Pipeline before these weapons ever reach our streets. Because if technology can evolve, our laws can evolve too.”