Minnesota Moves to Ban Ghost Guns

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Minnesota is trying to ban ghost guns at the state level, and the bill goes further than most people probably expect.

"The ability to 3D print a firearm or order a gun-building kit online makes it far too easy for dangerous individuals to get their hands on a gun, and that's a serious problem."
— Attorney General Keith Ellison

The rhetoric is familiar, but the actual bill text is where it gets interesting — they're not just targeting unserialized guns, they want to criminalize sharing the digital files used to print them. That's not regulating a firearm, that's regulating information, and that's a First Amendment fight nobody has fully won or lost yet.

The ATF already tried the federal regulatory route on ghost guns and got slapped down by the Fifth Circuit. Minnesota is running a state criminal statute instead — different legal pathway, same destination. Whether that survives a constitutional challenge is genuinely unclear, and that uncertainty is exactly why this is worth following even from Idaho.

The file distribution piece is the one to watch. Once a state successfully criminalizes a CAD file, that template is sitting there ready for the next legislature to copy. Idaho's not immune to that kind of legislative drift just because we're not the ones moving it right now.

For those of you who build — whether that's an 80% lower on the bench or printing parts for a project gun — what's your read on the serialization requirement specifically? Is that a line you'd be okay with, or does mandatory serialization on a home build change the calculation for you?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett