New California ghost gun lawsuit takes aim at company that sells 3-D printer filament
San Diego County jumped into California’s sprawling ghost gun fight this week, suing a 3-D printing filament manufacturer it says hocks material for homespun firearms in violation of state law.
Working with the Giffords Law Center, the county counsel sued manufacturer Polymaker, alleging the company made a “strategic business choice” to market and sell 3-D printer filament to Californians for the express purpose of building illegal weapons. The polymer filament is sold in spools that feed into 3-D printers, allowing the devices to form designs created by their owners.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-10-10/san-diego-california-ghost-gun-3d-printer-filament-lawsuitOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
130 replies
Don't tell them about pipes.
I believe they'll eventually come for those too.
IMO the real end goal of these laws isn't to ban ghost guns, it's to ban plebs from being able to build or create anything at all. 3D printing a plastic piece to fix a broken tab in some gizmo cuts into corporate profits so a manufactured moral panic about ghost guns appears. I'm sure they'll eventually get to a pipe rifle moral panic at some point to lock down DIY plumbing.
" Oi, you got a licence for that sewage mate? "
I am skeptical about that, though the visual is funny.
We've been there before.
So they'll make black iron pipe illegal and require it to be replaced with plastic flex hose.
hold on let me go sue home depot for selling black iron pipe and nails because someone made a pipe bomb. Nowhere has poly-maker ever advertised or suggested their speciality filaments could make firearms.
Someone's looking for a payout settlement, fuck California
you could literally make a shotgun with that too. Saw a YouTube video. Two pipes, one fit in the other, small one was the right size to hold a shell, and a nail at the end of the closed pipe triggered it if you used your hands to hit it.
Super effective and easy one shot shotgun. there's no real way to regulate guns IMO. They're not complicated devices.
Guns are just a slight evolution of the sling, just us throwing rocks further and faster.
Same as it ever was.
The shit shovel too AK guide is still on my favorite guides that were floating around on the interwebz
the problem is that someone is San Diego county
They used fear of guns to attack Right to Repair and small manufacturing. It was never about guns.
That is completely bizarre.
This is getting a bit fucking ridiculous. They're suing filament manufacturers now.
A video I posted a few months ago about this bullshit: https://youtu.be/E1B2cWEaWDw
@jballs that’s like suing a hardware store for someone hit with a piece of wood my point is filaments are legal it is the end-product that is meant to be perceived
#3DPrinting
Yeah, and they also want to make it illegal to print something without a magic algorithm sitting between your computer and printer determining if it's a gun part or not. I can't help but feel like these people don't know the first thing about how 3d printing actually works.
Totally. Brought to you by the same brilliant minds that claimed all videogames besides Tetris were simply "murder simulators" and school-shooter training programs. 🙄
Why do the most wasted brains have so much influence...
@jballs that’s called censorship even though I am Canadian have no guns , it is not something I find practical especially with the law creating a potential black market
#3DPrinting
Polymaker is a Chinese supplier, selling to California residents, while also running ad campaigns through ghost gun content creators aimed at California residents, defining themselves explicitly as a ghost gun ingredient.
If they didn't want to get caught up in this, they shouldn't have gotten involved in the illicit arms business. But they wanted to be known as the plastic supplier that is cool with you making ghost guns, and that isn't going to fly in California.
Plastic suppliers that don't advertise themselves explicitly as being part of the ghost gun supply chain will be fine.
So polymaker actually choose the individual channels their ads (not about ghost guns) were put on...or was that an algorithm (AdSense)?
I don't remember seeing them do any specific sponsored content, though they may and probably have, but that have a very open affiliate program that every 3d printer youtuber I've seen is in. They also give out codes for streaming channels to give away filament.
All this I'm saying is I don't think they're "choosing" these channels but I doubt they care what the content in on any channel.
they have a specific partnership with a 3D2A channel The 3D Print General off the top of my head
Will be fine, for now.
Well, doesn't that just show how useless that ban is?
Sue the steel mills for guns too while you're at it.
Hol up, those guns are made by corporations. What are you thinking?
Anyone with machining knowledge can turn a block of metal into a working gun part
As an old toolmaker, that's not as true as you think. It requires a lot of other knowledge besides running a lathe or mill. I speak from experience, having had to learn how to make repair parts for antique and collectable firearms at times.
If your goal is to make a working gun, it's pretty achievable, repairing or restoring existing one is obviously quite a bit harder.
So education is destroyed and all machines sold to China.
Americans can order guns to their doors, but the 3d printers are the issues you choose to tackle...
No, they can't. Guns can only be legally shipped to a federally licensed gun dealer. The dealer cannot transfer it to the buyer without the mandated background check.
The gun laws are already fucked up enough. You don't have to make shit up.
You can have long guns purchased through the Civilian Marksmanship Program shipped directly to your door. Those are a drop in the bucket compared to most firearm purchases in the US, though.
False.
https://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/eligibility-requirements/
CMP can't do that in states like California or any of the other states with decent gun laws.
I’ve only been threatened with a gun by the government and I bet that is the case for the vast majority of us.
But you want them to regulate it.
Reading comprehension of a dog.
Talking about regulation (and support for common sense gun laws that would also limit cops) ≠ support for all regulation. You and the people who upvoted you need to retake whatever class you learned English through.
Can order black powder revolvers to your door, and can buy replacement parts that allow them to fire cowboy cartridges, which are just low FPS lead rounds, like 800fps. They'll kill a fella, but don't have quite the same force as modern rounds. They also burn a lower grade powder and are a bit more smokey.
Actually, those conversion cylinders are perfectly happy with modern smokeless powders suitable for their caliber. Though it's more about velocities than pressure. I can load any smokeless .45 Colt for my cylinder that is listed for the standard pressures, (about 11,000psi). But it is highly recommended to keep your velocities no more than 850fps, (the original velocity for the Colt SAA). Frame stretching is the issue. Those cap and ball revolvers are made from a bit softer metal than modern revolvers. Remington's are stronger than the open top Colts.
Trump is trying to pass that law right now, a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but it reinforces my point
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12725
This also didn't solve anything, if you look at the statistics.
Maybe they should sue steel manufacturers too since that’s the main material used for most fire arms.
This seems awfully familiar to the gun crackdowns after the Black Panthers started using them for self defense.
Is this filament specifically designed for guns?
No, polymaker just have a big range of engineering friendly filament, just as they have pretty artsy ones, and low cost workhorse filament for makers
Sounds like the lawsuit is on thin ice, then.
They apparently sponsored a maker who prints guns, which is the justification.
Still stupid for a mountain of reasons, not least of which is that 3D printing guns is perfectly legal in many places.
Saudi Arabia can't go after the companies that sell oak barrels to Jack Daniels because alcohol is illegal there.
It's like saying steel is specifically designed for guns. For plastics, stronger is a nice property for many applications.
under the second amendment, and under the ATF's ruling, citizens are allowed to manufacture their own firearms. this is getting struck down..... if it were in Texas and not the gun-stealing California. I hope to the gods it gets struck down, because this would be a travesty for all my brothers, sisters and non binary pals in California... my heart goes out to y'all.
States are allowed to add some restrictions to gun laws. So the new ATF rules likely won't be decisive in this case.
If this goes up to the federal court level, it's almost certainly getting struck down. It's a pretty clear infringement upon the 2nd amendment.
It's a miracle that the CA gun laws haven't been struck down at the federal level yet.... By the gods, I hope they do. The situation in CA is utterly miserable for y'all.
2A is already abused to hell, but I see no way to make an argument to say it protects manufacturing a firearm. It, at best, protects possession. There are other reasons this is illegal, but please read the second amendment before you say dumb shit about it.
This is a direct quote from the ATF Director, Rob Cekada:
https://youtu.be/1h_wRotsHTw?t=390
The interview starts at 390 seconds.
the voice-to-text transcription wasn't entirely accurate, but it should be good enough to get the point across.
That transcript says that, if it isn't illegal to build a firearm, then it's legal to build a firearm. No shit. Obviously. It says nothing about 2A protections.
Also, he is not a lawyer. Do you think everything the director of ICE says is supported by the law?
Again, read the second amendment. Please. It's very short.
....Have you ever thought critically about what "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." actually means..?
It's not a plaintext right to manufacture firearms, yes. It is, however, an --implied-- right. In order to keep and bear arms, citizens must also obviously have the right to -make- their own arms.
In fact, there have already been court cases on this very issue in other states.
Defense Distributed v. Blanche, comes to mind, though there may have been others.Dude, yes, I have. Have you?
How did most nations at the time defend themselves? It wasn't standing armies. Only the richest nations could afford those, and the US was not one of them. It was expected that militias would be risen when a threat appeared.
Ok, now how did those militias operate? Did they store weapons in their homes? Did they manufacture them? No, to both of these. Weapons were kept in armories, and the militias drilled with them. They were well regulated, not just random people with guns calling themselves a militia. They were actual organizations trained and prepared for an attack, and their weapons and ammunition were organized in armories, where you had to go to muster.
Ok, now how does any of this imply the right to manufacture? You have a right to obtain at best, though ideally, in those early days, your militia organization would be obtaining them, not you as an individual.
Please, critically read it and think about it for yourself. What does the text actually say, and what were the customs of the time?
I'm all for people having the rights to weapons. Hell, I'd even agree the right to manufacture is held, to a limited extent, by the people. However, the 2nd Amendment does not provide this. The 9th does. I'm tired of the 2nd being used by people to try to cover everything. It's made weaker by this. The 9th does cover everything though.
Jfc these people are out of their minds
huh. who knew the answer to gun violence in the US was to regulate 3D printers!
This will get tossed. But here's why it's actually happening:
I mean yea, advertise your filament with YouTubers making guns, and you put yourself in the...oof.
Yeah people too easy to judge instead of reading the actual article. Despite the article being click baity, seems a pretty reasonable reason to sue polymaker. They should do little bit of research on who they choose to sponsor.
For fucks sake.
i hope.polymaker fights this. this law ia wrong and should be challenged in court
you mean polymaker
yeah, typo
Por que no los dos?
The specifics revolve around a 3d-printed-gun advocate named Sean Aranda, whose youtube channel focuses on the subject. According to him, when youtube demonetized the channel in 2023 Polymaker approached him with a sponsorship offer. A couple months later Polymaker announced Aranda was a new member of its marketing team.
So regardless of where you stand on the Calif anti-3d-gun law, this isn't a simple case of going after egg farmers because of illegal omelets.
You've got some point there, but doesn't demonstrate the uselessness of the law? Unless of course they are going after every producer of technical filaments, which is like going after anyone with a lathe or a CNC machine.
No I think this is an example of the opposite - it's not an action against the filament industry or the 3d printing community in general, it's against an individual company for allegedly marketing filament specifically to print guns, not just because filament could or might be used to print guns. Whether the law itself is right or wrong is a different issue.
Which makes the law useless. People with nefarious plans don't need ads. There really are just two possibilities, either it is repressive and overreaching or it is useless.
Ok whatever. I won't try to argue over the validity of your definition of "useless" since you clearly think it's absolute.
It is not absolute, you are free to argue in which way it is useful, in practical terms. Have you done so?
Do you think any follower of mentioned channel has difficulties finding functional FDM filaments without ads on the channel? If not, whats the point of the law's application in this example?
You can make a crude firearm/hand held pipe bomb with a pipe and lighter. A lot less effort than 3d printing one.
Are they going to go after builders merchants now?
They can arrest Home Depot for intent to distribute.
Plumbers and carpenters are now felons.
Pfffffff hahahaha, are you also going to go after weed walker too?
The USA is a joke
Next they'll be looking at the violent motherfucker that invented 3d printing. Plus fishing supply companies that produce a different kind of, but still a, filament. /s
Might as well go after the smelters for making the metal that goes into knives and guns.
Sure Some people take the filament to the sea to murder fish for sushi lovers. But the real purpose is to 3D print unimaginable violent content.
They're trying to make this a case over marketing and intent rather than materials.
The actual types of filament they're concerned with are carbon fiber nylon (sold by many brands) and "PLA Pro" which is just a bit better regular PLA.
These are sold by tons of brands all across the internet.
Here's another article with a bit more information: https://www.3dprintingjournal.com/p/san-diego-county-sues-polymaker-over
So it seems the legal question is "was polymaker advertising their filament specifically for printing working firearms?"
Them having a couple military style colors for printing toy guns seems pretty far from a specific gun use filament. I was expecting a specific blend of herbs and spices specifically for withstanding the rigors of shooting real ammo or something, not a fucking color that is "military".
Also, good luck trying to probe that they used specific advertising channels to market directly to the ghost gun groups. Flimsy reasoning at best.
I'm not a gun guy but from my understanding of ghost guns you pretty much buy the whole gun online in parts, and you just 3d print a handle.
So I don't understand why people are so afraid of 3d printing when it really has minimal to do with the final product. From what I can tell you can't just 3d print a gun from start to finish like its a llm. You still have to buy the actual gun parts from the manufacturer. To me this sounds completely unrelated and like a issue with regulating gun parts.
You can carve a handle out of soap, wood, or buy a solid chunk of plastic and its the same result.
They used to make guns out of umbrella parts.
One of the best guns of all time (the .45 1911) was made by a typewriter offshoot of Remington.
The problem is that, legally speaking, the lower receiver is the gun. So you can buy all the other parts online with no background check etc.
A person with a machine shop and knowledge on how to use it could also do this
Makes you wonder if there's a more sensible way to classify things legally... Probably not.
My biggest problem with all these attacks on 3d printing is that what you are talking about is completely legal as far as I am aware. There are tons of places online that sell partial receiver blanks that require the buyer to do the last few bits of machining and turn a "block of metal" into a "gun", legally speaking. It is currently completely legal for an individual in the US to build a gun without telling anyone about it for personal use so long as the final result does not run afoul of ant NFA rules (like automatic fire, length of shotgun, caliber size, etc.). They don't start doing anything illegal until they sell them, or even give them away (again, assuming they meet all of the NFA rules - obviously someone making themselves a gun has a high risk of running foul of the myriad of rules here, but the end result has to be evaluated to determine if they broke the law or not).
So all of these are just using gun terror as an attack vector against 3d printing in general. Just like the "think of the children" campaigns all over the world that are really just about stripping us of privacy and security. The guns aren't the real problem and neither are the kids. A free, private, and secure populace is the problem.
I am not advocating that people build their own guns. I am not a lawyer. I advise anyone go learn your local laws and discuss with actual legal counsel before choosing to attempt anything that could be against federal firearm law. kthx
To me this is so weird.
On one hand you have the gun nuts blocking any meaningful reform to gun control that would prevent mass shootings, school shootings, and general gun crime. Nationally, 98-99% of these are committed with regular firearms.
Ghost guns on the other hand are involved in 1-2% of all violent crimes. You'd think otherwise because the RECOVERY rate is 40-50% of all guns, meaning whenever the police recover a firearm from a crime scene, about half of those are ghost guns. But that doesn't mean the guns were used to commit the crime itself, often it's more like "we caught this guy dealing weed, he was on probation, and had a ghost gun in his car". The actual violent crime statistics for ghost guns is the above 1-2% - that's where the firearm used was a ghost gun.
But of course you can have more than one mass shootings a day (365 shootings as of 30 Sept in 2026, with 361 dead, 1553 injured), and not lift a finger. But one CEO gets offed with a ghost gun, and suddenly the 1-2% of gun crime gets more focus and crackdown than the other 98%+...
You can print all sorts of gun parts though, like suppressors and modifications to allow a gun to shoot faster than normal.
With that being said, trying to ban 3d printing or sue filament manufacturers is monumentally stupid.
I don't know how impactful those are, and I think a person with access to a decent metal shop could pose more danger.
What is it just the access that's scary then? As a guy that doesn't know guns, you often hear things like a potato or a water bottle can be made into a makeshift surpressor or turning a single fire into a sensative rapid fire trigger is trival. So I'm just not understanding why 3d printers are almost entirely linked to making guns in everyone's minds. When I first got a elgoo that was the first thing people would jokingly ask if I was going to make one.
Like maybe I can understand the argument that access is so low anyone can do it, but even then you can't just download a gun. The person who is doing this already bought gun parts and knows how to assemble them. This is not going to stop that kind of person from building a gun in any form. The gun is still the metal parts you buy online. A silencer, a trigger mod, whatever is useless until you handle ghost guns.
Yeah going after printing and/or filament is dumb. I'm I guess what some would call a "gun guy". 3D printing in this space is less practical and more just for fun.
You can use a metal coat hanger to full auto an AR. A printed suppressor is going to be so weak it'll probably break on first use. Oil filters work tho. If you want to illegal things the better way to do most often doesnt involve printing.
Ive alwaya assumed 3D printers were new enough that Genie could be put back in the bottle
Who is Jeannie?
I'm pretty sure you can. It might only work once though.
Basic guns aren't really all that complex.
Statements like these always seem deceiving to me. Like, how much time did you give them? Some of these people race to get their story out too quickly, without giving a reasonable amount of time for a response.
What if they respond later? I guess they could update the article, but that's still after people have already read it and formed their opinions based on the original contents.
This is very normal, and not meant to be deceiving. If the group who didn't respond to the request does respond after the article was published, that will be removed and a statement that reads something like "Polymaker (insert title or department) responded after initial publishing with this statement" and that statement will follow after. From a journalistic integrity standpoint it shows that they wanted to get both sides of a story, especially if one side was interviewed or quoted. The alternative of not stating that comment was requested is we read the article and wonder if Polymaker ever got a chance to speak their side.
But that's kinda my point: I still don't know if they had a chance to speak their side before the article was published, nor do I know if they will.
It's really just a nitpick on my part. If they plan to publish a follow-up article about the response, then it would seem a bit more honest to just add one word: "yet"
I have seen sometimes where the author of the article will include the amount of time given for a response to give context. I like that quite a bit. On the other hand, some companies make it exceedingly difficult to contact them or throw you into a maze of powerless and uninformed underlings.
Oh my God! America could end up having a real problem with gun violence...
Was it ever about the children? It's not about the gun violence either
Seems the safe option for others is to cease all shipments and sales of printers and filament to California.
What about bullets?
I print my own bullets /s
Gonna have to stop all sales of lead and brass in any form (don't want to have access for people to melt things down). Gunpowder of course, including all the elements needed to make gunpowder. You know, just to cover all the bases. /s
Hmm... You're right. That's a big job and I'm only paid to do it.
Okay, let's blame the 3D printer people.
more /ssssssss
They are going about this all wrong. Just make possession of an illegal firearm a crime and enforce it.
But then I'd be guilty! I have some Polymaker filament right here! It's still new in the box and everything...
Shit, maybe there's a sketchy filament black market where I can fence it...
Sorry I misspoke. It’s fixed. Basically illegal firearms should be enforced better.
all firearms are legal.
the difference, is that some firearms require certain permits to possess under the 1986 Hughes amendment to the NFA.
for possession of a machine gun, you either need a transferrable (any registered MG pre May 1986, extremely rare, and this in good condition are literally worth more than most houses), or an FFL-31-SOT, which allows you to manufacture "dealer samples".
Suppressors (AKA Silencers), and Short Barrel Rifles/Shotguns are now fully transferrable under a form 4473; due to the recent Texas ruling against the NFA.
the requirement for Form 4473s; however, are likely to change due to the semi recent elimination of most of the tax stamp requirements for transferring NFA items; which was only allowed (per the supreme court) because congress has the constitutional power to enact and enforce taxes, but they do not have the power to regulate firearm circulation. the NFA is on its last legs. I will celebrate the day it is finally killed. The victims of the ATF's enforcement over the years deserve renumeration... or at the very least, an apology.
I can’t possess some firearms legally, therefore many firearms are effectively not legal. How it came to be like that is largely irrelevant.
I’ll be surprised if that changes.
Getting your FFL-31-SOT is pretty easy. It's just some paperwork. The tricky part is the taxes and license fees; which are admittedly pretty stupidly high. IIRC they're somewhere in the range of 4 digits - 5 digits.
using what the ATF classifies as "Destructive Devices" (40mm grenades, mortars, etc) requires tax stamps still, and some paperwork, registering who has it and where it is, etc... but they are legal.
If you're a convicted Federal Felon who has served their sentence, you can petition the courts to have your right to possess firearms reinstated. Of those who petition, most get their right reinstated; in the pro-gun areas. You only get one shot though IIRC; so you should go to a court in a heavily red state to have the best chance. It's a federal-level decision, so pretty much any federal court should do.
With the way the current administration is going; as much as I disagree with some of their decisions, the NFA is well and truly on its way to the grave.
Every law abiding citizen should be able to possess and operate any firearm, regardless of fire rate, caliber, or form factor.
Good luck, brother.
Freedom doesn't include asking for permission and paying for the privilege to do so.
Shall not be infringed!
Bah! You ruined my hilarious joke 🤣
How? Already If you want a above board gun you will just buy actual gun. If you are up to some shady shit or just an enthusiast, you go for 3d printed guns. You can't effectively enforce this especially in the US unless you ban printers, preferably federally and ban 3d printing as a practice. You can't effectively scrub the models from the internet, you can't stop people from printing and you can't really enforce distribution because everybody with a printer, will and a little knowhow can make their own.
The real news here is the filament company are complete doofuses if they are marketing their high strength filament especially for gun making. That's just like if OpenAI was marketing their new cutting edge image gen AI model as something meant for making deepfake P*rn of celebrities. One would think that they would cover their asses with more neutral wording and description regarding their product. That is a PR and legal problem bound to happen.
The same way that they enforce other crimes.
Murdering someone is illegal. Murdering someone while being involved in a gang is extra illegal and affects sentencing for example.
Caught with possession of a “ghost” gun? Insta-jail. Or maybe increase the charge to terrorism.
The legal system has tons of options at their disposal. Going after filament manufacturers is like going after black powder suppliers.
Nor arguing that this isn't removed.
Yeah and the point was that there is no practical way to do that. It's much harder to control these things than just regular stolen, misplaced or otherwise illegally acquired guns. You cant use deterrence when you are speaking about a tool that you are just going to use to commit crimes that are are going the be more severe that just an illegal firearms possession. Ofc everybody who are above board and law abiding will stop even thinking about 3d printer firearms. However if somebody is considering murder you think they care if they potentially get +5 years added to their sentence if they do it with self printed weapon instead of regular firearm?
Yes, that’s how the system works today. Your sentencing is affected by specifics of your crime.
It’s not really a deterrent. Murderers are gonna murder. I lived above one and they murdered with a pillow and telephone cable. I also sat on a trial that put a murderer away. Their circumstances affected their sentencing drastically.
If it's so unenforceable, why isn't it an issue in other countries? Even ones that have nearly the same number of guns as America? 🤔
You still have to buy bullets.
Good thing this is the only problem we have in the world
If things goes the way I think it will, California will need more guns to fight off the Trump Regime during the opening years of the 2nd American Civil War.
I hope this lawsuit fails.
The type of people buying those guns will definitely not be on the side against the regime.
maybe we should be printing these
I think you mean "hawks" as in selling, not "hocks" as in loogies.
I didn't write the article
Both are correct. Hock also means to pawn. Hawk can also mean to offer to sell, specifically by calling out in the street.
The suit accuses the company of selling not pawning, so I'm pretty sure it should be "hawk".
Then lil' Petey Hegseth ran out of guns and all this shit was suddenly legal. /s
Weird how shit like this always is an issue in the USA and basically nowhere else. Must be the lack of freedom or sth., we're just too suppressed in commie Europe to have these issues, can't even buy 9mm rounds in the supermarket. Shame.