Connecticut prepares to join 20-state coalition challenging anticipated rules enabling online release of plans for 3D-printed guns

Connecticut will join 20 other states in a legal challenge to rules currently being finalized by the Trump administration which would enable the online release of plans that can be used to create a gun with a 3D-printer, Attorney General William Tong said at a press conference Wednesday.

“This is the gun show loophole of the 21st century,” Gov. Ned Lamont said at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, flanked by state politicians and a dozen members of gun control groups.

3D-printed guns are a form of ghost guns, which have no serial number, usually because they are assembled by the user. Tong called them “a significant threat to public safety” in Connecticut and across the nation.

The anticipated rules would allow people “in the secrecy of their homes and basements, to print out plans and produce totally unserialized, unregistered, undetectable, untraceable 3D-printed guns,” Tong said.

The expected legal action is the latest in a long series of legal challenges which Connecticut and other states have mounted in past years to block the release of the online gun files. Although a federal judge in Washington State in November halted the Trump administration’s attempt to let blueprints for 3D-printed become available online, the administration is now making another push.

Tong said that as soon as the anticipated rules are finalized — which he expects will happen this week — Connecticut will join the twenty-state coalition, led by Washington State, in mounting a legal challenge.

Last June, Lamont signed a law banning ghost guns and plastic firearms that do not trigger a metal detector. The law — which includes a provision allowing hobbyists to build their own guns as long as they register them with the state and receive a serial number — went into effect in Connecticut on Oct. 1.

“I can’t believe that we are here today talking about this again,” said Jeremy Stein, the executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, an advocacy group. “We are looking at a situation where the President of the United States is about to sell out our safety to the highest bidder.”

During the conference, Stein displayed a photo of a 3D-printed gun retrieved by Waterbury police last May during the arrest of a man charged with weapons in a motor vehicle and carrying a pistol without a permit. He had a 3D-printed gun with a bullet in its chamber, the Courant reported.

“This was a loaded gun that he made in his home completely of plastic,” Stein said. “This is what we are dealing with.”

Po Murray, the chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, warned that 3D printing technology allows “allows any person, anywhere in the world, to make untraceable guns without a serial number, without background checks, without waiting periods, without permits and other state and federal requirements for gun ownership.”

She also noted that some 3D-printed guns, made entirely of plastic, can be rendered undetectable by security screening systems.

“Why on Earth would we want anyone having access to a plastic gun?” said State Representative Jillian Gilchrest. “We have done our part in the state of Connecticut and we are being failed by the federal government, led by Donald Trump.”