He 3d printed the frame, but you need dozens of parts, milled or stamped from steel to complete it and have a working gun. Even the 3d printed frame needs steel inserts. It is like 3d printing a case, then buying a motherboard, CPU and RAM at Best Buy, and claiming your built a 3d printed computer.

There is some appeal to criminals, because the frame is the part that gets the serial number and is regulated. But if you want to attack this problem, the 3d printer is a backwards way to do it.

As far as I've been able to find, that's basically the only documented case of a criminal use of a 3d printed gun. His also malfunctioned every shot during the crime.

Legislators point towards the rise of "ghost guns" in crimes, but then you dig into that and they include every criminal who files off the serial number on a stolen gun in the stats, which is by far the more common circumstance along with being much easier, more reliable, and cheaper for a criminal than 3d printing a lower and assembling it.

They could, they could also more likely buy an 80% firearm lower that does the same, this is why the ATF under Biden cracked down hard on ghost guns, to the point that one manufacturer shut down entirely. I like to watch police bodycam videos when I'm bored, there's a LOT of people who have 80% or "ghost guns" as they call them, I don't think I've ever seen someone using a 3D printed gun. Luigi Mangione was a strange out of the norm exception, he intentionally did it that way.

In reality, a 3D printed gun is not reliable, the filament will melt and nobody wants to have a melted gun while in the middle of a shoot out with other criminals or law enforcement.

Allegedly. And was an illegal search as well, with the contents of the bag was prior to the court order.