You can design anything.”įor years, the U.S. The equipment-the 3D printing, it's so cheap. authorities could ever hope to totally block the files from being shared online, he replied: “The government should invent a time machine and kill me seven years ago. And while there’s evidence of extremists and criminals seeking to exploit the untraceability of ghost guns, there is also a nerdy group of designers and tinkerers who insist they are strictly abiding by gun laws and enjoying a “very loud” hobby. “Consequently, anyone from a criminal to a terrorist can buy this kit and, in as little as 30 minutes, put together a weapon.”īut building a 3D-printed gun from scratch, as I learned, takes a lot longer than half an hour. “The buyers aren’t required to pass a background check to buy the kit to make the gun,” President Joe Biden said. They are virtually unregulated federally, but the Biden administration has proposed new rules that would require serial numbers on certain unfinished parts and restrict mail-order kits, which the president singled out in an April speech at the White House. Only ten states plus Washington, DC, have local laws that attempt to regulate ghost guns. To meet these gunmakers and get a true sense of what 3D-printed guns are capable of these days, I decided to enter the shooting contest in Florida-and build my own ghost gun.
