3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2021
Bill: S.2319 | Sponsor: Sen. Markey, Edward J. (D-MA)
Policy area: Crime and Law Enforcement

Summary:
3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2021
This bill makes it unlawful to intentionally publish digital instructions for programming a three-dimensional printer to make a firearm.

To amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the 
distribution of 3D printer plans for the printing of firearms, and for 
                            other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2021''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Three dimensional, or ``3D'' printing, involves the 
        programming of a 3D printing machine with a computer file that 
        provides the schematics for the item to be printed.
            (2) Recent technological developments have allowed for the 
        3D printing of firearms and firearm parts, including parts made 
        out of plastic, by unlicensed individuals in possession of 
        relatively inexpensive 3D printers.
            (3) Because 3D printing allows individuals to make their 
        own firearms out of plastic, they may be able to evade 
        detection by metal detectors at security checkpoints, 
        increasing the risk that a firearm will be used to perpetrate 
        violence on an airplane or other area where people congregate.
            (4) The availability of online schematics for the 3D 
        printing of firearms and firearm parts increases the risk that 
        dangerous people, including felons, domestic abusers, and other 
        people prohibited from possessing firearms under Federal law, 
        will obtain a firearm through 3D printing.
            (5) On June 7, 2013, an assailant used a gun he had 
        constructed by himself to kill his father, brother, and 3 other 
        people at Santa Monica College in California. The person had 
        failed a background check when he tried to purchase a gun from 
        a licensed gun dealer. The gun he used was made from an 
        unfinished AR-15-style receiver, similar to a receiver that can 
        now be made with a 3D printer.
            (6) Firearms tracing is a powerful investigative tool. When 
        law enforcement agencies recover firearms that have been used 
        in crimes, the agencies work with the Bureau of Alcohol, 
        Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace these firearms to 
        their first retail purchaser. The agencies can use that 
        information to investigate and solve the crimes. In 2019 alone, 
        the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 
        and recovered 269,250 firearms.
            (7) Firearms tracing depends on the ability to identify 
        firearms based on their serial number. Traditionally, when a 
        firearm is manufactured domestically or imported from abroad, 
        it is engraved with a serial number and markings that identify 
        the manufacturer or importer, make, model, and caliber, and are 
        unique to the firearm. Firearms made by unlicensed individuals 
        with 3D printers, however, do not contain genuine serial 
        numbers.
            (8) Criminals seek firearms without serial numbers because 
        they cannot be traced. In July 2018, the Los Angeles Police 
        Department completed a 6-month-long investigation that resulted 
        in the seizure of 45 firearms, some of which had been assembled 
        without serial numbers in order to be untraceable. If the 
        schematics for 3D printing firearms and firearm parts are 
        available online, people intending to commit gun crimes may 
        create similarly untraceable firearms in order to avoid 
        accountability for these crimes.
            (9) Interstate gun trafficking, including the trafficking 
        of untraceable firearms, interferes with lawful commerce in 
        firearms and significantly contributes to gun crime. Of the 
        269,250 firearms traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 
        Firearms and Explosives in 2019, 75,513 of those firearms were 
        originally sold by a licensed firearms dealer in a State other 
        than the State where they were recovered. These guns made up 
        28.0 percent of all firearm recoveries in 2019.
            (10) The proliferation of 3D-printed firearms threatens to 
        undermine the entire Federal firearms regulatory scheme and to 
        endanger public safety and national security. By making illegal 
        the distribution of certain computer code that can be used 
        automatically to program 3D printers and create firearms--the 
        only means of combating this unique threat--Congress seeks not 
        to regulate the rights of computer programmers under the First 
        Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, but rather 
        to curb the pernicious effects of untraceable--and potentially 
        undetectable--firearms.

SEC. 3. PROHIBITION.

    Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding 
at the end the following:
    ``(aa) It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally 
distribute, over the internet or by means of the World Wide Web, 
digital instructions in the form of Computer Aided Design files or 
other code that can automatically program a 3-dimensional printer or 
similar device to produce a firearm or complete a firearm from an 
unfinished frame or receiver.''.
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