1. United States
2. R.I.
3. Letter

I urge you to introduce and support federal legislation preempting state laws like California’s AB 2047, which would regulate general-purpose 3D printers through mandates that are technically unworkable, constitutionally suspect, and harmful to interstate commerce, education, and American innovation. As an art educator and practicing artist, I use 3D printing to teach engineering, sculpture, rapid prototyping, design thinking, and problem-solving. Students develop skills that prepare them for careers in manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, architecture, and industrial design. Millions of students now use additive manufacturing in K-12 schools, career and technical education programs, libraries, community colleges, universities, and makerspaces nationwide. California alone has an estimated 30,000 businesses using 3D printing across healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing, education, biotechnology, entertainment, architecture, and consumer products. Because manufacturers build for a national market, not fifty different regulatory systems, a single state’s mandates inevitably affect businesses, educators, and consumers across the United States. AB 2047’s central requirement is technically impossible. A 3D printer reads G-code, machine instructions, not human intent. It cannot determine whether a shape is part of a firearm, a prosthetic limb, a robotics project, laboratory equipment, or a classroom assignment. Simple modifications, including rotating, scaling, splitting, or regenerating a model, can defeat shape-based detection while preserving function. Most educational printers also rely on open-source firmware that users may legally modify. Requiring manufacturers to certify software incapable of reliably performing the task creates an impossible regulatory mandate. The bill also raises serious constitutional concerns. Computer code and CAD files have repeatedly been recognized as protected expression. Government-mandated review of digital design files before manufacturing raises substantial First Amendment questions involving prior restraint and compelled speech. It also presents concerns involving vagueness, overbreadth, the Dormant Commerce Clause, federal preemption, due process, and privacy. The fiscal consequences are equally troubling. Independent analyses estimate that implementing AB 2047 could cost $64-$132 million during its first three years, followed by $8-$22 million annually, with total public and private economic exposure exceeding $150-$400 million. If similar laws spread nationally, taxpayers would fund duplicative bureaucracies, conflicting certification systems, years of litigation, and expensive enforcement regimes built around technology that experts have not demonstrated can reliably exist. Meanwhile, the federal government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars through programs such as America Makes and the Department of Defense to strengthen additive manufacturing because it is essential to U.S. economic competitiveness, advanced manufacturing, workforce development, and national security. Congress should not allow those investments to be undermined by conflicting state regulations. I respectfully ask Congress to enact legislation preempting state mandates requiring scientifically unvalidated detection technologies for general-purpose 3D printers, protecting interstate commerce, open-source innovation, educators, manufacturers, and the constitutional rights of Americans. Public safety deserves solutions that are technically feasible, constitutionally sound, and evidence-based, not regulations that burden innovation without achieving their intended purpose.