Seeing an advertisement from New York State Attorney General Letitia James asking for “unwanted” firearms, a courageous man named “Kem” put his thinking cap on and got to work. He used a $200 3D printer to “print” plastic “guns” to turn in at a Utica, New York gun buyback very recently. After all, ol’ Letitia was offering up to $250 each for the guns.
What Letitia James had surely not planned upon was buying plastic blasters.
Mr. Kem printed and gave them 110 “unwanted” firearms and they gave him 42 $500 gift cards for a total of $21,000. That’s a good day’s work.
At the same time, it seems quite likely that probably more than one person in Letitia James’ office is probably considering referring the ATF to make an example of Mr. Kem for unlawful manufacture of firearms to “sell” to a gun “buyback.”
It’s not the first instance of a brave individual printing guns on their 3D printer and turning them in at a “buybacks.” In Houston, the government changed the rules after one man nicked them $3,100. But this one, at $21,000, seems to set a new gold standard in fleecing do-gooers. It sets a very high bar to others to surpass.
As Kem told WKTV . . .
“I 3D-printed a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms,” said Kem.
Then, he drove six hours to Utica.
“And he sees the tote and says, ‘how many firearms do you have?’ And I said, ‘110,’” said Kem.
That’s when the organizers of the “buyback” realized they hadn’t thought the whole thing through.
This began a haggling and negotiating session with Attorney General’s Office staff that lasted all day long.
“And it ended with the guy and a lady from the budget office finally coming around with the 42 gift cards and counting them in front of me,” said Kem. “$21,000 in $500 gift cards.”
Amen, brother. A rousing success indeed.
Yet strangely, the Attorney General’s office didn’t include the 3D “ghost guns” in the promotional photos of the day’s haul.
Most of the stuff there is obviously trash or close to it. Including a black powder revolver, a couple of Hi-Points, and revolvers as old as (if not older) that our hair-sniffer President Joey Biden. What’s more, they probably work about as well too.
In the WKTV interview, Kem said that it “was the greatest thing that Letitia James could have done. She literally put a bounty on 3-D printed guns. She said, ‘I will give you extra money if it doesn’t have a serial number on it.’”
Preach it!
Asked where he got the idea, he told the local media outlet he saw people on Twitter talking about using 3D printers to make big bucks by printing guns for buyback programs.
Perhaps he was referring to the story of a man who recently turned in 62 3D-printed guns to Houston’s buyback program and collected $3,100.
Kem provided a master’s thesis on gaming the gun buyback scheme. Look for them to make changes in the rules for their future “successes.” Meanwhile, the New York AG was not amused.
“It’s shameful that this individual exploited a program that has successfully taken thousands of guns off the streets to protect our communities from gun violence. We have partnered with local police throughout the state to recover more than 3,500 guns, and one individual’s greedy behavior won’t tarnish our work to promote public safety. We have adjusted our policies to ensure that no one can exploit this program again for personal gain.”
At the Guns Save Life organization in Illinois, we’ve collected our fair share from Windy City taxpayers over the years. However, the best we ever did was about $6240 using real, albeit mostly non-functional junk “turned in” at a Murder City “buyback” in 2012. The ensuing international publicity proved such a black eye for the City of Chicago that they ended the program for about three years. And then when they brought it back, they held it at just one or two locations instead of forty.
Using creativity and their own “gun buyback” rules against them – Alinsky style – to gig them for $21,000 is truly epic trolling.
Well done, Kem. Well done.