Dexter Taylor is serving 10 years for doing so in NYC without a license[]. The guns were never used or even left his home, and he is not otherwise involved in crime.
Also in NY it's illegal to make an unserialized firearm. I have no idea what the serialization requirements are there, but what California did was require you report them to DROS.
Also, federally, not legal advice -- but I'm not aware there's any law against selling it. You just can't manufacture it for the purpose of sale or transfer. If it is incidentally sold later it's just like any other firearm without a serial number that's also legal (namely those manufactured commercially before the GCA, or those manufactured non-commercially by private persons after the GCA). I've seen the claim "can't transfer or sell it" over and over on all kind of gun forums etc but no one has ever been able to point where that is blanket illegal.
If I recall correctly, this is state-dependent. Some states just say you can't sell it, some require you to serialize anything you make even if you won't sell (the process of serialization isn't specified), and some ban self-made firearms completely. If you cross state lines with something you've made, you need to make sure you're following laws in both states just to be safe.
SCOTUS has ruled before that 2A does not afford freedom to own any kind of weapon. There are limits on explosives for example.
They tend to lean on whether it is reasonable that the Founders might have had access to such a weapon with their technology. Machine gun is just a rifle with automatic rechamber. Not an unreasonable upgrade for 1700s technology. Maybe, I dunno; political people don't have to actually care about the details.
There are limits. And if cases like this made it there they might rule that no Founder was smelting the materials. That they would have had to collaborate, in some "market dictates options" ruling to limit hermits going in a rampage. Also everyone a weapons assembly line in their home is anti-corporate capitalism.
"George Washington understood the value of civic life and sound economics! He would not have tolerated such insular selfishness! He did not make his own weapons! He engaged in trade!"
Not saying it's realistic but politics is not never controlled by people living in reality. Making shit up seems as reasonable as anything.
Sawed off shotguns seems arbitrary and that was ultimately my (pre-coffee) point; government is fine with coming up with an arbitrary restriction when they want.
They could outlaw the means of production. Gen pop is not allowed to own that.
The only weapon class I know of that's outright illegal to own is anti-aircraft missiles. That carries life imprisonment just for possession, with no violent intent. Because the government never wants to give up its air supremacy. This is why whenever you hear of feds concocting an international weapons conspiracy they always have to add anti-air bazookas to the charges because it's the only thing that actually can unequivocally be proven as illegal to own[0].
Basically everything else can be owned with an NFA tax stamp. Nuclear weapons my understanding is the difficulty is more with laws on handling the material than specifically owning one as a weapon, so I'm unsure those are even outright illegal either.
Explosives are actually one of the ones with looser restrictions. Even felons can own and re-instate their explosives rights, because bafflingly when congress de-funded the firearms rights restoration process for felons they forgot to do the one for explosives. Felons can also own and manufacture explosive black powder without scrutiny or paperwork, even ones intended to go in a black powder gun.
Here the law https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g it says "shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment not less than 25 years or to imprisonment for life." Even conspiring to acquire them is as illegal as possession!
Fully automatic assault rifles, anti-aircraft guns (that still operate), anti-aircraft missiles (that still operate), land mines over a certain size, or any Comp B. Those are on the naughty list.
There’s a whole community of folks building semi-automatic auto-return triggers that are “technically” semi automatic, but with just a gentle squeeze, fire off another. If you maintain that grip, the return mechanism engages, returning the trigger to firing position, where your pressure causes it to fire again… it’s called a Forced Reset Trigger.
When and where can I buy a cannon with grapeshot? They had that during the revolutionary war, and the founding fathers probably owned at least one, so I want to be able to yell "Tally Ho!" too.
A large fraction of the harm from firearms comes from their ability to fire rapidly which didn’t exist when the constitution was written. As such it was making a very different balance of risk between the general public and individuals.
1. The second amendment wasn't written because the authors thought guns were inert. It was written precisely because they could impart deadly force.
2. As someone else pointed out, early repeating rifles did exist then.
3. If the meaning of the constitution is only to be evaluated against the technology available at the time -- what does that say about the validity of the 1st or 4th amendments with modern technology?
The Girardoni repeating air rifle predates the ratification of the constitution by ~11 years and was taken on the Lewis and Clark expedition ~13 years later. Really the whole discussion around 2A is usually nonsense because it ignores the context that the entire Bill of Rights had a completely different meaning prior to the 14th amendment leading to incorporation over the last century (and other expansions of federal power via commerce clause); that is, the Bill of Rights originally did not apply to the states.
Very obviously individuals were expected to be part of the militia, which was the military at the time (c.f. the Militia Acts 2 years after ratification requiring individual gun ownership and very clearly laying out that all able-bodied white male citizens aged 18-45 were part of the militia), but also states could regulate weapons if they wanted.
I didn’t say we could ban compressed air powered guns, I specifically said percussion caps. The Girardoni was way less dangerous than a modern handgun.
Crime exited when the constitution was written, suggesting the framers were only concerned with interactions at the state level is to insult their intelligence. Not to mention specific text like people’s rights to a jury trial etc.
Their proposal is about getting lines like this ratified:
"No person, firm or corporation shall sell or deliver any three-dimensional printer in the state of New York unless such printer is equipped with blocking technology,"
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S9005
They don't like firearms in the hands of the public.
The goal is to be an indirect ban that's hard to challenge. California has had significant success with strategies such as requiring "microstamping technology" (but it could be anything - it's just a limiting mechanism) in conjunction with an approved handgun roster to limit handgun sales in the state. This is almost certain to be a similar strategy.
What's "blocking technology", then? I'm repeating an argument from the article, which itself is an argument older than the microprocessor:
> But the answer to misuse isn’t surveillance built into the tool itself. We don’t require table saws to scan wood for weapon shapes. We don’t require lathes to phone home before turning metal. We prosecute people who make illegal things, not people who own tools.
I’d be careful with that. Much as I think we should regulate firearms, I despise how the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause has been horribly abused to cover intrastate ownership. See, by making your own gun, you didn’t import one from another state, so therefore the Feds should be involved because it involves interstate commerce now.
For example[0]:
> Filburn was penalized under the Act. He argued that the extra wheat that he had produced in violation of the law had been used for his own use and thus had no effect on interstate commerce, since it never had been on the market. In his view, this meant that he had not violated the law because the additional wheat was not subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause.
…
> The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
So don’t assume that just because it never crosses state lines that it escapes federal law, however utterly freaking ridiculous that may be.
The actual wording of the law, and the way it was interpreted when I was young was that a person who does not hold an FFL may not make a firearm with the intention of selling it, but after making it, they could change their mind and then sell it.
Since, the BATF decided to interpret the prohibition as a thought-crime, enforcing a prohibition making such sales illegal, since like The Shadow, they know what lurks in the hearts of men.
The one transfer which has not yet been tested in the courts to my knowledge is an individual having made firearms, passing away, then leaving them in their will to their heirs....
Also in NY it's illegal to make an unserialized firearm. I have no idea what the serialization requirements are there, but what California did was require you report them to DROS.
Also, federally, not legal advice -- but I'm not aware there's any law against selling it. You just can't manufacture it for the purpose of sale or transfer. If it is incidentally sold later it's just like any other firearm without a serial number that's also legal (namely those manufactured commercially before the GCA, or those manufactured non-commercially by private persons after the GCA). I've seen the claim "can't transfer or sell it" over and over on all kind of gun forums etc but no one has ever been able to point where that is blanket illegal.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Taylor