Overview
- New York’s FY 2026–2027 budget bill (S.9005/A.10005) would criminalize distributing or possessing digital instructions to illegally manufacture firearms, mandate manufacturer‑installed “blocking technology” on 3D printers, and require in‑person sales or transfers of the machines.
- Washington House Bills 2320 and 2321 take a similar approach by requiring printers sold in the state to include software that flags and blocks suspected firearm components.
- Adafruit argues firearm detection from raw STL or G‑code is a hard classification problem likely to generate heavy false positives and false negatives, while sweeping in CNC mills and offline or open‑source toolchains.
- The New York proposal calls for a technical working group to determine feasibility, which Adafruit warns could become a rubber stamp without independent experts and peer‑reviewed evidence.
- Adafruit proposes amendments that shift focus to unlawful intent, drop mandatory file scanning, exempt open‑source and offline workflows, limit liability for sellers and educators, and require rigorous, peer‑reviewed feasibility assessments.