California and San Francisco are cracking down on ghost gun manufacturing by suing websites that provide code and instructions for 3D printing ghost guns.
“The ghost gun industry continues to exploit new technologies, including 3D printing, to evade the law,” said state Attorney General Rob Bonta in a briefing Friday. “We can’t afford to allow untraceable firearms to take root in our communities.”
Bonta and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed the joint lawsuit Friday, accusing Gatalog Foundation and CTRL Pew of unlawfully distributing computer codes that are spliced and then used to 3D print ghost guns, which are unserialized firearms that can be difficult to trace.
Gatalog and CTRL Pew are online platforms where users can download code, blueprints, and guides used to create ghost guns and gun parts with 3D printers. The companies are based out of Florida. Gatalog Foundation president Matthew Larosiere, treasurer Alexander Holladay, and director John Elik have also been named as defendants in the suit.
“Gatalog has been distributing over 150 designs for dangerous and untraceable weapons and prohibited accessories,” Chiu said during the briefing. “By illegally disseminating these codes, Gatalog has made it quick, cheap and easy for anyone, including teenagers, to 3D print ghost guns and convert firearms into machine guns.”
California has uniquely seen disproportionate growth in the ghost gun black market compared to every other state in the country because it has some of the strictest gun laws.
Ghost guns have increasingly posed a threat to public safety in San Francisco, with the city having the third-highest rate of instances where ghost guns were used to commit crimes in 2022, behind Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2020, ghost guns made up 44% of the guns recovered in homicides in San Francisco, according to Chiu.
“When we learned about the impact of Gatalog on San Francisco and California, we approached the Department of Justice,” Chiu said. “We’re asking the court to stop Gatalog’s illegal distribution of ghost gun blueprints, which circumvent gun safety laws and make us all less safe.”
Gatalog and CTRL Pew did not respond to requests for comment.
The GIFFORDS Law Center, a law firm that focuses on legal action for gun violence prevention, has also joined the suit.
“We’ve made great progress on ghost guns, but reckless and irresponsible actors in the gun industry continue to choose to violate the law,” said GIFFORDS Law Center chief counsel and vice president Adam Skaggs in a speech. “Instead of selling unfinished ghost gun parts and kits, they instead distributed code to 3D print the same parts.”
Under a state law, it is illegal to distribute computer code for printing ghost guns. A new state law that went into effect on Jan. 1 also makes it unlawful to promote or facilitate the illegal manufacturing of firearms.
Bonta, Chiu and Skaggs are hoping that a judge will grant an injunction to prevent the sale of Gatalog’s and CTRL Pew’s code that can produce ghost guns.