20 US Prosecutors Ask Bambu Lab, Creality and Flashforge to Build Gun-Blocking Tech Into Every Printer

Key takeaways

Prosecutors Against Gun Violence (PAGV), a coalition of 20 prosecutors co-chaired by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein, sent a joint letter on June 29 to Bambu Lab, Creality and Flashforge.
The letter urges the three companies to voluntarily equip all 3D printers sold in the United States with technology that blocks the printing of firearms and firearm parts.
The ask mirrors New York’s first-in-the-nation law requiring blocking technology in 3D printers sold in the state; California and Washington have introduced similar bills.
The letter carries no legal force — it is a pressure campaign, and it requests a meeting with each company.
Industry critics argue that reliably detecting gun-part geometry in print files is technically infeasible and would burden legitimate users while doing little to stop determined bad actors.

The regulatory fight over desktop 3D printing just moved from statehouses to the inboxes of the industry’s three biggest consumer brands. On June 29, Prosecutors Against Gun Violence (PAGV) — a coalition of twenty prosecutors from jurisdictions stretching from California to North Carolina — sent a joint letter to Bambu Lab, Creality and Flashforge, urging them to proactively build firearm “blocking technology” into every 3D printer they sell in the United States. The story was picked up this week by trade outlets including Fabbaloo and 3Druck.

What the letter actually asks for

The coalition — chaired by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein — wants the manufacturers to adopt what it calls minimum safety standards consistent with New York’s new law: equipping all printers sold in the US with technology that prevents the unlicensed production of firearms and firearm parts. Bragg called at-home gun printing “a very real and present national public safety threat,” and the group asked each company for a meeting with its offices. The full text is public in the letter sent to Flashforge (PDF).

The prosecutors’ core concerns are familiar from the ghost-gun debate: 3D-printed firearms carry no serial numbers, can be made by people barred from buying guns, and — being largely polymer — could in theory slip past metal detectors. This isn’t the Manhattan DA’s first approach to the industry, either; Bragg’s office wrote directly to 3D printing companies in 2025, and model repositories such as Thingiverse have already tightened enforcement against firearm files.

The New York precedent — and who’s next

The timing is no accident. New York recently became the first US jurisdiction to enact legislation requiring 3D printers sold in the state to include firearm-blocking technology, and PAGV’s letter explicitly asks the manufacturers to treat that law as a nationwide baseline rather than a local compliance problem. According to the coalition, California and Washington have introduced similar legislation; Fabbaloo has separately been tracking California’s AB2047, which drew organized opposition from the maker community ahead of its final public hearing in Sacramento.

For manufacturers, that is the strategic squeeze: comply voluntarily everywhere, or face a patchwork of state mandates that each define “blocking technology” slightly differently.

Why much of the industry says it can’t work

The pushback from the 3D printing community has been immediate and technical. Fabbaloo’s Kerry Stevenson, covering the letter, argues that what the prosecutors request is effectively impossible to implement: the geometry of a firearm component cannot be reliably distinguished from an innocuous mechanical part, so any printer-side filter would produce false positives on legitimate prints while missing files that are trivially modified, split into pieces, or sliced on open-source software. Desktop machines also do not print complete working firearms — printed frames and receivers still require metal components such as barrels and springs — which critics say makes the printer itself the wrong layer at which to intervene.

Proposals floated by prosecutors and lawmakers so far, as reported by amNewYork, revolve around checking print jobs against databases of known gun blueprints and using AI shape recognition to flag suspect parts — approaches the community argues are both easy to evade and prone to blocking lawful work. There is a real cost to getting this wrong: millions of hobbyists, engineers, schools and small manufacturers rely on these machines daily for entirely lawful purposes.

What this means for makers right now

Today, nothing changes at your workbench. The letter creates no legal obligation, and outside New York no state currently requires blocking technology. What it does signal is that pressure on the desktop segment — Bambu Lab, Creality and Flashforge together account for a large share of consumer machines — is escalating on two fronts at once: legislation in the states, and direct corporate pressure from law enforcement. How the three companies respond, publicly or in the requested meetings, will shape whether “blocking technology” becomes an industry standard, a New York quirk, or a prolonged legal fight. None of the three had issued a public response at the time of writing.

FAQ

Does the prosecutors’ letter change what my 3D printer can print?

No. The letter is a request, not a law or regulation. It asks Bambu Lab, Creality and Flashforge to adopt firearm-blocking measures voluntarily and to meet with the coalition. Your printer’s capabilities are unchanged.

Which US states require gun-blocking technology in 3D printers?

Only New York has enacted such a law — the first of its kind in the US, covering 3D printers sold in the state. California and Washington have introduced similar bills, but neither has passed as of early July 2026.

Can a desktop 3D printer actually print a working gun?

Not a complete one. Desktop FFF machines can print polymer parts such as frames or receivers, but a functional firearm still requires non-printed metal components. That gap is central to the industry’s argument that printer-side blocking targets the wrong point in the chain.

Have Bambu Lab, Creality or Flashforge responded?

As of publication, none of the three companies has publicly responded to the PAGV letter. The coalition has requested meetings with each manufacturer.

Sources: PAGV press release, PAGV letter (PDF), Fabbaloo, amNewYork.