TL;DR: The California State Assembly passed AB 2047, the "California Firearm Printing Prevention Act," on May 26, 2026 (58-19); the bill is now in the state Senate, where it cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2026 and was re-referred to the Senate Public Safety Committee. The bill would require every 3D printer sold in California to ship with Department of Justice-approved surveillance software that scans files for firearm parts and reports "suspicious" prints to a state database. The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a deeplinks post on June 26, 2026 calling the Assembly's amended version a mix of silver linings and broken carveouts: the resale carveout for individual owners is a clear win, the open-source carveout only applies to tools that ship with "compliant censorship software," the performance standard for the algorithm was downgraded from "effectively prevent" to "substantially reduce the likelihood of foreseeable circumvention," the entertainment-industry carveout protects big studios and leaves indie filmmakers and cosplayers out, and the bill now relies on non-governmental third parties to set the standard and on manufacturers and resellers to self-police. EFF is asking California residents to call their state senators at eff.org/3DPrintCA before the bill moves through Senate Appropriations and reaches a floor vote.[1]
What Just Happened
The California State Assembly passed AB 2047, the "California Firearm Printing Prevention Act," on May 26, 2026 (Ayes 58, Noes 19), and the bill is now advancing through the state Senate, where it cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2026 and was re-referred to the Senate Public Safety Committee. The bill, introduced by Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan in February 2026, would require every 3D printer sold in California to ship on a DOJ-maintained roster of approved models, with "firearm blocking technology" that scans files for gun parts and reports certain printing patterns to a state database.[1][2]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a deeplinks post on June 26, 2026, titled "We Can Still Stop California's 3D Printer Surveillance Scheme," describing the Assembly's amended version and urging readers to contact their state senators before the bill moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.[1] The EFF post is the structural event that makes the Assembly passage a Senate-stage story: the bill is no longer hypothetical, and the next legislative window is the one EFF is trying to close.
EFF's framing of the amended version is direct. "Some are welcome changes, but most have only highlighted the technocratic absurdity of the proposed scheme. Our core concerns, that this mandate censors lawful speech, builds out corporate surveillance, and criminalizes open source experimentation, have not been remedied."[1] The post walks through four specific amendments. Each is a test of whether the Assembly's changes address the structural problem, and each, in EFF's read, does not.
The Four Amendments: Silver Linings and Broken Carveouts
The Assembly's amended AB 2047 made four changes EFF flags as material. One is a real win. Three are partial fixes that don't change the underlying structure.
Silver lining: the resale carveout. The original bill would have criminalized the private resale of 3D printers purchased before the mandated censorship software existed. The amended version carves that out. "Starting with one silver lining, the current bill includes a carveout for the private resale of devices. The original bill would have made it a criminal offense for an individual to resell 3D printers purchased before this mandated censorship and surveillance software. This is a clear win for the 3D-printing community, but it is unfortunately not enough."[1] The carveout is the most concrete Assembly concession EFF identifies. It does not affect the new-printer mandate.
Broken: the open-source carveout. "One of the most dangerous aspects of the bill is that it criminalizes individual users for common practices, like creating and using alternative open source programs with their 3D printer. New amendments provide a carveout for the use of an open source tool, but only if it includes compliant censorship software. The bill burdens open source developers with ambiguous and unrealistic standards for print blocking, and continues to create a chilling effect for open source users."[1] The carveout names a category the open-source community already populates (Marlin, RepRapFirmware, Klipper, slicers, host software) and excludes the entire category unless the open-source project ships the surveillance itself. The structural effect: the open-source carveout exists on paper and does not exist in practice.
Downgraded: the performance standard. EFF identifies this as the most consequential change. "To reiterate, there is no world where the mandated technology actually works as intended. It will both block lawful use of 3D printers, and allow firearms to be printed by anyone determined to do so. There is no amendment that can change this reality. Instead, the current bill simply drops the pretense that this mandate is expected to work. The performance standard of algorithms changed from 'effectively prevent[ing] a technically skilled user from evading [the algorithm]' to 'substantially reduce the likelihood of foreseeable circumvention attempts.'"[1] The downgraded standard removes the test against a skilled adversary, the population the bill is supposedly aimed at, and replaces it with a "whack-a-mole" framing: instead of trying to work, the algorithm tries to make some attempts harder, knowing that "literally infinite" circumventions exist. EFF's read: the bill is no longer pretending to be effective, only to be active.
Defensive edit: the Hollywood carveout. "The bill includes yet another carve out for commercial users. This time for the entertainment industry, which makes extensive use of 3D printers for props and costumes. That's fine for big studios, but it leaves out indie filmmakers, cosplayers, and many other small creators. This is simply a defensive edit to limit corporate opposition."[1] EFF's structural critique applies: there is no clean 3D-printer dividing line between consumer and commercial use. "These are general purpose tools which might be picked up by a prop department of a big studio, or an artist getting ready for Comic Con. Indeed consumer level products are not only used by amateur artists and engineers developing their skills. Commercial 3D printers, like their traditional 2D equivalents, are frequently used in workplaces, as well as by professionals honing their skills or just trying to get some work done at home."[1] The carveout hands manufacturers a tiering mechanism (a "more expensive tier" for commercial buyers) and locks the consumer tier into surveillance.
The Surveillance Standard Now Lives with Non-Governmental Third Parties
The amended bill's most consequential structural change is the move from a state-administered standard to a self-policing regime run by the manufacturers and resellers the bill regulates. "The bill now leaves us with an unclear process that relies on non-governmental third parties to define standards, and now relies on manufacturers and resellers to self-police."[1]
The shift is the same pattern the consumer age-verification market ran through over the last two years. Persona, Yoti, and the smaller vendors define what counts as a "verified" user. Discord, Snapchat, and the platform operators police the failure modes. The state issues the framework, the vendor builds the tool, the platform integrates the tool, and the user carries the consequence when the tool misfires. The bill's third-party-standards-plus-self-policing structure reproduces that pattern for 3D printers: California DOJ publishes a roster; the manufacturer certifies the printer; the reseller attests to the chain; the printer's onboard software scans, blocks, and reports.
EFF's commercial-carveout analysis points at the structural risk that follows. "Commercial carveouts hands printer manufacturers the ability to sell a more expensive tier of printers, locking-in and up-charging their commercial customers. Some of those customers will choose to buy general retail versions, but that carries its own price: increased risk of IP theft as all printed files are surveilled the same way they are for hobbyists. That means a real risk of businesses leaking any prototypes or new designs to not only the printer manufacturer, but potentially snooping governments and/or the general public through data breaches."[1] The same scanning infrastructure that reports "firearm patterns" also reports every other pattern. The DOJ database is one access-control failure or one data-broker sale away from becoming a registry of every print run on every California 3D printer.
The pattern is not new to the State of Surveillance beat. The verification-as-surveillance pattern that EFF flagged in AB 2047 is the same pattern the EFF, the ACLU, and Cory Doctorow have been flagging in the consumer age-verification mandates: a state framework that hands a vendor the role of gatekeeper, and the user the role of subject.[3][4]
The New York Parallel Is Already on the Floor
AB 2047 is not the only 3D-printer surveillance bill in play. The New York State budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 included provisions that would require all 3D printers sold in New York to run print-blocking censorware and would create felony charges for possessing or sharing certain design files. EFF's Rory Mir and Nathan Sheard flagged the New York bill in a separate April 16, 2026 deeplinks post titled "Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing."[4]
California and New York are running parallel tracks. California's bill started in February 2026, cleared the Assembly on May 26, and is now advancing through the state Senate. New York's version rode through the state budget in spring 2026. The two states' approaches are not identical: New York's felony language is more aggressive on design-file possession, California's is more aggressive on the printer-as-surveillance-device architecture. Both proposals treat the 3D printer as a fabrication tool the state has the authority to certify, register, and remotely surveil. The combined track is the structural event: 3D-printer surveillance legislation is no longer a one-state story.
The pattern matches the consumer age-verification buildout. The 19 US states with social-media or feed laws for minors, the 20+ US states with adult-content age-verification laws, the UK Online Safety Act, the EU platform rules, the Australian under-16 ban: each is a different statute in a different jurisdiction, all built on the same underlying identity-verification-as-surveillance architecture. AB 2047 is the 3D-printer instance of the same pattern: state-by-state, mandate-by-mandate, the surveillance infrastructure is built out one approval roster at a time.
What Happens Next in Sacramento
The amended AB 2047 is now advancing through the California State Senate, having cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2026. EFF's action call targets the Senate-stage window before the bill reaches the Senate Appropriations Committee.[1] The standard California fiscal calendar: committee referral, committee hearing, Appropriations review, floor vote, second-house concurrence if amended, governor signature. EFF's structural bet is that the open-source carveout, the performance-standard downgrade, and the third-party-standards mechanism are the three points that can break the bill before it gets to a floor vote, on the argument that each one is so badly drafted it would not survive a future court challenge even if the bill passes.
EFF's structural critique of the third-party-standards mechanism is the most court-actionable. A standard that is set by a non-governmental third party and self-policed by the manufacturer and the reseller is structurally a delegation problem: California is delegating the surveillance standard to private actors and the enforcement to other private actors. The amended bill's open-source carveout is the most politically actionable. The carveout names the open-source category and excludes it unless the project ships the surveillance. The carveout can be read as an admission that the surveillance is the point: the bill is not regulating 3D printers, it is regulating the open-source community that builds 3D-printer software.
The Assembly's downgrade of the performance standard from "effectively prevent" to "substantially reduce" is the most rhetorically vulnerable. The downgrade is a public admission that the bill's surveillance mechanism does not work as advertised. EFF's read: the amended bill is "no amendment that can change this reality" plus "simply drops the pretense."[1] A floor-vote argument that the amended bill admits the surveillance is theatrical and the costs are real is a clean vote-positioning argument for a state senator in a contested district.
What to Do
EFF's ask is direct: California residents should call their state senator before the bill moves through Senate Appropriations. The action page is eff.org/3DPrintCA, which links to the action form and to the bill's current text. EFF's framing of the call: "Demand your senator oppose AB 2047. This updated version of AB 2047 downgrades performance standards and removes oversight while still threatening privacy and choice for users of 3D printers. A printer surveillance system won't work for its intended purpose, and will only harm law abiding users. Act now to demand your senators to vote no on this ineffective and invasive bill."[1]
For non-California residents, the structural action is the same one EFF ran for the New York budget bill: track the parallel legislation in your state. The same Bauer-Kahan office and the same advocacy groups are working on the New York and Washington state versions. The 3D-printer surveillance beat is a multi-state story now, and the only way to stop it is to kill the bills in state Senates and state budget committees before they reach floor votes.
For 3D printer owners and operators, the practical action is the same one the maker community has been running since the bill was introduced in February 2026: document what you print, why you print it, and how the bill would affect your work. The legislative-record filings in California and New York are the surface where the structural cost gets measured. EFF's submission portal at eff.org/3DPrintCA is the funnel.
References
- EFF Deeplinks, Rory Mir and Cliff Braun: We Can Still Stop California's 3D Printer Surveillance Scheme (June 26, 2026)
- State of Surveillance: California Wants Your 3D Printer to Report to the DOJ (February 2026)
- State of Surveillance: Persona's Government Surveillance System Exposed (the verification-as-surveillance pattern, the same vendor the Anthropic July 8 rollout uses)
- EFF Deeplinks, Rory Mir and Nathan Sheard: Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing (April 16, 2026, the New York parallel budget bill)
- California Legislature: AB-2047 Bill Text (February 2026, with amendments through June 2026)
- EFF Action Page: Tell CA Senators to Stand with Creators (the Senate-stage action form)