Colorado lawmakers have launched laws that may make it a prison offense to fabricate firearms utilizing 3D printers or CNC milling machines with out a federal license.
Titled Home Invoice 26-1144, the brand new invoice prohibits the unlicensed manufacturing of accomplished firearms, unfinished frames or receivers, large-capacity magazines, and rapid-fire units. Federally licensed firearm producers would stay exempt, supplied they function inside the bounds of their license.
Nonetheless, the invoice’s attain doesn’t cease on the workshop door. Lawmakers have taken intention on the digital layer that underpins fashionable gun manufacturing, making it illegal to own digital directions, together with CAD information and comparable code, the place there may be proof of intent to supply a firearm unlawfully.
Distributing these information to non-licensed people in Colorado would even be prohibited, by any means, no matter whether or not the distributor relies in-state or overseas, and no matter whether or not cash adjustments palms.
Penalties Set as Opposition Mounts
On penalties, the invoice is obvious. A primary offense would carry a category 1 misdemeanor cost. Repeat violations could be elevated to a category 5 felony. The invoice defines its key phrases, features a severability clause, and is about to take impact July 1, 2026, with a regular security clause hooked up.
“Present regulation doesn’t have firearms specifically, which this invoice accomplishes,” defined the invoice’s sponsor, Consultant Andrew Boensenecker, a Democrat who represents Fort Collins.
Based on a information report, Boensenecker contended that as a result of present regulation solely covers vital gun components, a broader ban is required to forestall unhealthy actors from printing novel firearm designs that slip via current authorized guardrails.
Sponsored by Democrats in each chambers, the invoice cleared the Home Judiciary Committee on a 7-4 vote alongside occasion strains. However the margin did little to quiet dissent.
Republican Consultant Ava Flanell of Colorado Springs known as the measure puzzling, arguing “It looks as if this regulation already exists.” Moreover, Committee Chair Javier Mabrey took the considerations critically sufficient to name for amendments and “keep away from unintended penalties.”
Individually, public testimony targeted on the potential breadth of the invoice, with some critics questioning whether or not restrictions on “digital directions” might unintentionally seize actions comparable to 3D printed props utilized by cosplayers and airsoft lovers, and even lengthen to video video games that depend on comparable underlying code.
The sharpest warning got here from Daniel Fenlason, Director of Operations for the Colorado Capturing Sports activities Affiliation (CSSA), stressing that “That is going to be a lawsuit that our group at CSSA will discover.” He believes “It’s going to price the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of {dollars} and you’ll lose on the Supreme Courtroom.”
Home Invoice 26-1144 builds on a basis already laid by Senate Invoice 23-279, signed into regulation in 2023, which tackled the associated problem of unserialized firearms, prohibiting unlicensed people from manufacturing firearm frames or receivers, together with via 3D printing, and proscribing the possession, sale, or switch of such weapons and key parts, topic to specified exceptions.
That regulation additionally requires sure firearms to be serialized via federally licensed sellers and carries an an identical penalty construction, with first violations handled as class 1 misdemeanors and repeat offenses elevated to class 5 felonies.
Home Invoice 26-1144 represents the state’s newest effort to maintain tempo with quickly evolving manufacturing applied sciences and shut the regulatory gaps which have allowed untraceable, unlicensed firearms to proliferate.
A Rising Nationwide Debate
Colorado is just not alone in shifting to manage the 3D printed firearms area. States together with New York and Washington are pursuing a extra interventionist method, proposing necessities that 3D printers and CNC machines display design information and block the manufacturing of firearm parts.
In New York, the proposal would mandate built-in safeguards on 3D printers and prohibit entry to design information, whereas Washington’s Home Invoice 2321 would require a firearm-detection system to approve information earlier than printing and set up a state-managed database of restricted designs.
That method has already drawn skepticism on technical and sensible grounds. Critics argue that file-screening programs are troublesome to implement and comparatively straightforward to bypass via minor design adjustments, whereas additionally elevating considerations about broader constraints on general-purpose manufacturing instruments.
Others notice that many so-called ghost weapons proceed to originate from kits and traditional provide chains, calling into query how a lot such measures would finally obtain.
This contrasts with Colorado’s method, which restricts the usage of manufacturing applied sciences and limits entry to digital directions, somewhat than requiring built-in file screening on the machine stage.
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Featured picture reveals a FGC-9 3D printed gun. Photograph by way of Dr. Yannick Veilleux-Lepage.
