Colorado Bans 3D-Printed Guns
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Colorado just passed a law banning 3D-printed guns while leaving the files that produce them completely legal. That's not a typo.
"Since a positive debate would've only ended in a veto by one, we have decided to accept the cleanup and, next year, come back with a new administration in place."
— Sen. Tom Sullivan, D-CentennialThey're openly telling you this is phase one. The vote happened Monday — the real target is 2027 when Polis is gone. If you think this stops at hardware, you're not paying attention.
The distillery-without-the-recipe problem is real here. The CAD files for printable lowers, magazine bodies, Glock auto sears — all of it stays perfectly legal to download and share in Colorado. What changes is whether you can hit print. That's an enforcement gap you could drive a truck through, and the sponsors know it.
Worth noting that Polis has now twice pulled his own party's gun bills back from their most aggressive versions — not because he's pro-gun, but apparently because his legal team keeps flagging enforceability problems. That's actually a more interesting dynamic than the bill itself. A Democratic governor acting as the brake on Democratic gun legislation is a weird place for Colorado to be sitting.
If you're a Colorado shooter who prints your own components — even serialized ones — this bill changes your situation once Polis signs it. The procedural House vote is a formality at this point.
For everyone outside Colorado watching this: the digital-files angle is where this fight is actually headed nationally. Banning a plastic part is one thing. Banning a file that exists on servers in seventeen countries is something else entirely, and the courts haven't had a clean shot at that question yet.
For those of you who've followed the 3D-printed firearms space — either as builders, competitors running printed components, or just from a legal standpoint — what do you think actually happens when a state tries to ban the digital instructions themselves?
Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett
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