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The Most Brutal Underwater Weapon of WW2
California has passed AB 2047, the California Firearm Printing Prevention Act, and the bill is now on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk.
The measure, authored by Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, would eventually require consumer 3D printers sold or transferred in the state to include “firearm blocking technology” intended to identify and stop print jobs for firearms and certain illegal parts, including machine-gun conversion devices. After weeks of amendments, the Legislature sent the enrolled bill to the governor in the closing hours of the 2026 session. Newsom has until the end of September to sign or veto it.
The version that reached his desk is far narrower than the bill that first cleared the Assembly in May. The Senate stripped several of the most aggressive enforcement tools after lawmakers and industry groups argued they were technologically infeasible or overbroad. Gone are the original criminal misdemeanor for disabling the software, the $25,000-per-violation civil penalties, the mandatory manufacturer self-attestation process, and a public roster of “compliant” models.
The final text keeps an exemption for printers used exclusively to make entertainment-industry props and lets the California Department of Justice create additional exceptions by regulation. It also shields people who share digital firearm files solely to test or develop blocking software.
What remains is a delayed, contingent mandate. Beginning no later than July 1, 2027, the DOJ must check quarterly whether ASTM International has published industry standards for firearm-blocking technology on 3D printers. If ASTM issues qualifying standards, the department then has 24 months to publish its own written guidance or regulations describing minimum performance requirements. One year after those state standards appear, it would become unlawful to sell, offer for sale, or transfer a 3D printer in California that lacks compliant blocking technology. If ASTM has not published standards by July 1, 2029, the department is relieved of further duties under the act, and the sales restriction may never take effect.
The bill does not operate in a vacuum. California already prohibits unlicensed people from using a 3D printer or CNC mill to manufacture a firearm under Penal Code § 29185. Separate statutes restrict machines whose “sole or primary function” is to make guns and create civil liability for distributing “digital firearm manufacturing code” to unlicensed persons. AB 1263 and related 2025–26 measures further expanded definitions of firearm manufacturing machines and accessories effective January 1, 2026. AB 2047 tries to move one step upstream by making the printer itself refuse certain files.
California is not the first state down this path. New York enacted a similar blocking-technology law earlier this year. Sacramento modeled AB 2047 on that approach, then made the California version more conditional after the Senate rewrite.
Critics say the concept still fails on both technology and law. 3D-printing companies, the ACLU of California, Hollywood prop shops, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and gun-rights groups argue that detection algorithms are easy to evade with slightly modified files, offline machines, older printers already in circulation, or out-of-state purchases. They also raise First Amendment concerns about treating design files as something the state can force hardware makers to censor, and they warn that unreliable software would burden schools, small businesses, and hobbyists. Several analyses noted that the Senate rewrite left the actual sales ban hanging on a private standards body that may never act.
Supporters, including Everytown for Gun Safety and the bill’s author, frame AB 2047 as a response to recovered 3D-printed guns and unfinished frames. They describe it as a way to cut off a pipeline for untraceable weapons before a file becomes a firearm.
Even if Newsom signs the bill, nothing changes at the store counter tomorrow. The mandate is years away, if it arrives at all. The practical fight now is whether ASTM writes a standard the state can adopt—and whether software that must inspect every print job can ever work well enough to survive both evasion and a courtroom.
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WWII 30 Cal Machine Gun
Jannetje Johanna Schaft was born on 16 September 1920, in Haarlem, a city in northern Netherlands. As a child, she went by Jo. Her mother was a devout Mennonite, while her father taught school. When the little girl was seven, her older sister Anna succumbed to diphtheria. Her parents were exceptionally protective of her as a result.
Table of contents
Jo’s father was a member of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and politics was a common topic of conversation around the home. When she came of age, Jo enrolled in law school intending to become a human rights lawyer. While studying law she developed friendships with several Jewish students. In the late 1930’s with persecution of the Jews on the rise across Europe, Jo felt energized to support them.
The World Goes to Hell
The Germans seized the Netherlands in 1940 as part of the overarching Operation Fall Gelb (Case Yellow). Thus began a brutal occupation that stretched until the country was finally liberated by the Allies in 1945. For five long years, the Germans as well as their Dutch collaborators tirelessly battled resistance forces. Jannetje Johanna Schaft found herself right in the middle of all of that chaos.
In 1943, the Germans demanded that university students sign a declaration of allegiance to the Nazis. Jo refused, as did roughly 80% of her fellow students. She was subsequently ejected from school before graduation. Jo then moved back in with her parents in Haarlem. However, she brought two of her Jewish university friends along with her and hid them from the hated occupiers.
The Law Student Goes to War
Now with a little time on her hands, Jo sought out the Resistance. Once established, she was given the codename Hannie. She became known for her fiery red locks.
Hannie started out small, stealing ID cards for her Jewish friends and working as a courier. However, in short order she developed a proclivity for wet work. Hannie’s true calling was sabotage and assassination. Lots of folks talked about killing Nazis. Hannie Schaft actually did something about it.
Her weapon of choice was a Browning M1922 pistol in .380ACP. Trim, reliable, and concealable, the FN M1922 saw widespread distribution both within the Underground and as a service pistol among Nazi forces. Hannie Schaft put hers to exceptionally good use.
You Never Forget Your First
Hannie’s introduction to the dark, shadowy world of targeted assassination was remarkable. After training in basic weapons maintenance and marksmanship, she was assigned her first live hit–the targeted killing of a local villain rumored to be an SD officer. As part of a two-person hit team along with a fellow Resistance operative named Cor Rusman, Hannie made her approach to the target. When the time was right, she presented her handgun, leveled it at the man, and squeezed the trigger. Next came a sickening click. The weapon was unloaded.
The SD man then calmly introduced himself as Frans van der Wiel, the commander of the local Resistance cell. Hannie had passed her test. While she had clearly demonstrated her dedication and willingness, she was furious about having been put through it. However, she was now cleared for field ops.
Schaft Had Many Superpowers
Over time, Schaft learned to speak German fluently. She cultivated relationships with Nazi soldiers so as to get closer to her targets. She and her young female friends would put on bright red lipstick and frequent local watering holes looking to pick up German soldiers. They would feign drunkenness and then invite the men out into the woods for a little off-the-books fun before cutting them down and stashing the bodies. Being an attractive woman is like having a superpower. Hannie Schaft used hers to kill Nazis.
Time has muted the extent of her operational history. Nobody had time to keep detailed records. However, her personal tally was nonetheless impressive. She was eventually spotted at the site of one of her hits and reported to the authorities. No one knew her identity, but her appearance was distinctive. The Nazis subsequently placed, “The Girl with the Red Hair” on their most-wanted list.
No Shortage of Business
On 21 June 1944, Hannie and a fellow Resistance shooter named Jan Bonekamp undertook the targeted killing of a Dutch police officer collaborator named Willem Ragut. Hannie shot the man in the back with her .380ACP Browning. However, Ragut returned fire, striking Bonekamp in the gut before succumbing to his wounds.
Bonekamp’s injury was lethal, but he survived long enough to make it to the local hospital. There he inadvertently identified Hannie to Nazi sympathizer nurses after they claimed to be with the Resistance. The Nazis were unable to locate Schaft, but they arrested her parents and dispatched them to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp near Den Bosch. The trauma of these events pushed Hannie underground for a time. Miraculously, her parents were safely released after two months.
Schaft and Her Next Level Killing
From this point forward, Hannie dyed her hair black and tried to be careful. She helped plan the killing of a collaborator policeman named Fake Krist in October of 1944. On 1 March 1945, Hannie and Truus Oversteegen killed another Nazi policeman named Willem Zirkzee.
Two weeks later they wounded Ko Langendijk, a local hairdresser who worked as an informant for the German SD. Langendijk survived both this attack and the war only to be sentenced to life in prison for supporting the Nazis during the occupation. However, by now Hannie Schaft was developing a well-earned reputation.
Catastrophe
Hannie Schaft was arrested at a German checkpoint on 21 March 1945, for illicitly distributing an illegal communist newspaper called de Waarheid (“The Truth”). In reality, the paper was just her cover. She was actually actively moving secret messages for the Resistance. The newspaper thing was incriminating, but was not the sort of infraction the Germans automatically just flat-out killed you over. Hannie was remanded to a German-run prison in Amsterdam for interrogation and torture.
Hannie successfully resisted her captors’ efforts to extract information. However, over time her hair inevitably grew out. When the Germans recognized her red roots they knew they had finally captured the master assassin Hannie Schaft. Though the war was just weeks from ending, the Nazis decided that Schaft must die.
Hannie Schaft: Defiant to the End
On 17 April 1945, two Dutch Nazis named Mattheus Schmitz and Maarten Kuiper transported Hannie to the dunes of Overveen near Bloemendaal on the direct orders of Willy Lages. Lages headed up the SD in Amsterdam during WW2 and was a proper monster. The young firebrand Resistance fighter was only 24 years old at the time. The two turncoat Dutchmen forced Hannie to kneel, and Schmitz shot her in the back of the head at near-contact range. What happened next made Hannie Schaft a legend.
Many of the compact service pistols used by the Germans and their minions were pathetic little .32-caliber pocket guns. In this case, the round deflected off of Hannie’s skull. She then purportedly turned to her executioners and said, “Ik schiet beter!” This translates to, “I shoot better!” Kuiper then stepped forward and killed the woman with a burst of fire from his submachine gun.
The Aftermath
There is no record of Mattheus Schmitt ever having been prosecuted after the war. However, Maarten Kuiper and Willy Lages were both brought up on charges for war crimes. Kuiper was sentenced to death and executed in 1948. Lages was similarly sentenced. However, in a profoundly controversial move, the Dutch Queen Juliana refused to sign his death warrant. His sentence was commuted to life in 1952.
Lages was eventually freed in 1966 due to poor health. His release sparked widespread public protests. Lages eventually returned to Germany where he died of natural causes in 1971.
Ruminations
The Bloemendaal dunes where Hannie Schaft died was the location of a large number of German executions during the war. Once the dust settled, Dutch authorities exhumed the bodies buried there. They found 421 men and one woman–Hannie Schaft. She was re-interred with honors at a ceremony attended by the Dutch Queen and her husband.
Hannie Schaft’s reputation waxed and waned through the years. Queen Juliana unveiled a large bronze commemorative statue in her honor in the Kenau Park in Haarlem near where she was born. She was posthumously awarded the Dutch Cross of Resistance as well as the Medal of Freedom by General Eisenhower. However, she was also an avowed communist. During the Cold War, veneration by the Dutch communist party took the shine off of her exploits.
Hannie Schaft Legacy
Tens of thousands of Dutch communists visited Hannie’s grave until 1951, when such celebrations were forbidden. One event had to be broken up by several hundred riot police backed up by four tanks. It was a weird time.
Eventually, with the Cold War won and communism in decline in the Netherlands, interest in Hannie Schaft’s exploits was kindled anew. Books and movies about her life followed. There is now an annual event staged in Haarlem in her honor. The last Sunday of each November is set aside as a day of remembrance in the Netherlands for Hannie’s life, work, and martyrdom.
Unlike movie depictions, killing at close quarters is reliably hard. It requires resolve, nerve, technical skill, the right tools, and no small amount of raw unfiltered hate. Hannie Schaft had all of these in abundance. In her brief life and gory death, we see resistance personified. At a time when she could have simply stood aside and let the war pass her by, Hannie took up arms and killed Nazis. She was a patriot of the highest order.
Massachusetts cannot make a Second Amendment lawsuit disappear simply by issuing carry permits after it has already kept lawful citizens disarmed for months.
That is the central takeaway from a federal judge’s refusal to dismiss the core claims in Lawson v. Campbell, a lawsuit brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners Action League, and three nonresident gun owners challenging Massachusetts’ burdensome License to Carry process.
Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper allowed the plaintiffs’ as-applied Second Amendment claim and their Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection claim to proceed. The decision is not a final ruling that Massachusetts violated the Constitution, but it is a significant procedural victory that moves the case toward discovery—and forces the Commonwealth to defend how its licensing system actually operates.
Massachusetts may call its system “shall issue.” According to the lawsuit, however, the state’s one-year nonresident licenses, recurring delays, and refusal to provide a renewal grace period leave lawful gun owners unable to carry for extended periods year after year.
That is not a minor administrative inconvenience. It is government-imposed disarmament.
One-Year Permits and Months of Waiting
Massachusetts treats nonresident gun owners far more harshly than its own residents.
A resident License to Carry can remain valid for six years. A nonresident generally receives a temporary license lasting only one year. Both are charged a $100 application or renewal fee, meaning a nonresident may pay the same amount every year that a resident pays once every six years.
New nonresident applicants must also appear in person at the Firearms Records Bureau in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Applicants face background checks, fingerprinting, training requirements, and other bureaucratic demands before receiving government permission to exercise a right protected by the Constitution.
Massachusetts law generally requires a licensing authority to approve or deny an application within 40 days. The state’s own website reportedly warns nonresidents that processing may take as long as 90 days. The plaintiffs allege even longer delays.
Brian Burns, a Florida resident who maintains a home in Massachusetts, has held at least four nonresident licenses. According to the complaint, one timely renewal was delayed so badly that his new license was not issued until nearly six months after the previous license expired.
Christopher Penta, a New Hampshire resident who frequently travels into Massachusetts for work and family visits, has maintained a nonresident license since 2018. He alleges that one renewal was issued almost two months after his existing license expired.
Russell Lawson Jr., a New York resident who owns a Massachusetts hunting cabin, applied for his first nonresident license in January 2025. His earliest interview was scheduled for June. Lawson missed that appointment because of an unexpected work obligation, and the state rescheduled him for October. Officials subsequently requested information concerning an undisclosed out-of-state charge. He eventually received his license in March 2026.
Although Lawson’s individual application involved additional complications, the court found that the plaintiffs collectively alleged a recurring licensing problem sufficient to keep the lawsuit alive.
Late Approval Does Not Erase the Injury
Massachusetts argued that the case was moot because the individual plaintiffs eventually received their licenses. Judge Casper rejected that position.
The court recognized that sufficiently long licensing delays can themselves constitute constitutional injuries. A citizen who cannot legally carry a firearm for self-defense while Massachusetts sits on his application has lost the exercise of that right during the delay. A permit issued months later cannot restore the days when he was forced to travel disarmed.
The judge also found that the delays could qualify as “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” Nonresident licenses must be renewed annually, the individual plaintiffs intend to continue traveling to Massachusetts, and Burns and Penta allege that they have already experienced recurring renewal delays.
Massachusetts cannot run out the clock, issue the permit after a lawsuit begins, and then claim there is nothing left for a federal court to review.
That point reaches beyond this case. AmmoLand recently covered similar permit-delay litigation involving the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Anti-gun jurisdictions lost their ability to demand a special need for self-defense after New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Bureaucratic delay cannot become the replacement for the discretionary carry bans that Bruen struck down.
Second Amendment Claim Moves Forward
The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the Massachusetts licensing system. A facial challenge requires showing that the law is unconstitutional in every application, and Judge Casper concluded that the plaintiffs had not cleared that demanding hurdle.
The as-applied challenge is another matter. The judge found that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged delays extending well beyond Massachusetts’ 40-day statutory period. When those delays are combined with one-year licenses and no grace period, the system can deprive nonresidents of their right to carry.
The court declined to establish a bright-line rule defining exactly when a licensing delay becomes unconstitutional. It did, however, reject Massachusetts’ argument that only delays lasting 18 months or several years can implicate the Second Amendment.
Most importantly under Bruen, Massachusetts did not identify a historical tradition supporting the alleged delays. The as-applied Second Amendment claim therefore survived the motion to dismiss.
Nonresidents Face Arrest While Residents Receive Protection
The plaintiffs’ equal-protection claim also survived. Massachusetts residents receive a grace period when they submit timely renewal applications. Nonresidents do not. When a temporary nonresident license expires, its holder can be forced to choose between entering Massachusetts disarmed or carrying under threat of arrest and prosecution.
The court found that this alleged distinction could penalize the constitutional right to interstate travel. Because the plaintiffs plausibly alleged an underlying Second Amendment injury, Judge Casper considered the application of strict scrutiny rather than automatically accepting any justification Massachusetts could invent.
The Commonwealth identified its general interest in public safety and verifying applicants’ eligibility. It did not explain why denying nonresidents a grace period—or subjecting them to delays beyond the statutory deadline—was narrowly tailored to serve that interest.
The judge consequently refused to dismiss the equal-protection claim.
Rights Do Not Stop at State Lines
The Second Amendment Foundation correctly described the ruling as a major procedural advance.
“Massachusetts begrudgingly makes carry permits available for out-of-state residents,” SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack said, while making the annual process unconstitutionally burdensome.
SAF founder Alan Gottlieb put the larger principle more plainly: “The Constitution doesn’t know state lines, and neither do our rights.”
AmmoLand has previously warned that forcing Americans to obtain separate government permission from every hostile jurisdiction they might visit turns interstate travel into a legal minefield. Massachusetts’ treatment of nonresidents has already produced extensive litigation, including the cases discussed in our earlier coverage of the Commonwealth’s cross-border carry restrictions and its supposedly reformed nonresident licensing system.
The court also dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim under the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause. That loss and the dismissal of the facial Second Amendment claim should not be ignored. But neither changes the importance of what survived.
A permit does not create the right to bear arms. The right existed before Massachusetts imposed its application, fee, fingerprinting, interview, and annual renewal requirements.
When the government prevents a qualified citizen from carrying for months, the constitutional injury occurs during every day of forced disarmament. Massachusetts will now have to defend that conduct instead of burying the case under a stack of late-issued permits.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy.
Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.