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A New York man earned a nice profit by selling over 100 3D-printed lower receivers at a gun buyback event in Utica.
The man, only identified as Kem, told WKTV that he used a $200 3D printer to print the lower receivers and drove over 6 hours to sell them back to the police.
When Kem arrived, he told officers he had 110 lower receivers to turn in and had to negotiate a price for the homemade parts, which are considered a firearm by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Eventually, officials agreed to give him $21,000 in gift cards.
"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," Kem told the news station. "$21,000 in $500 gift cards."
A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James blasted Kem for taking advantage of the gun buyback event, which was sponsored by her office.
"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," the statement said.
Kem doesn't seem to care and said that gun buyback events don't do anything to reduce crime.
"I'm sure handing over $21,000 in gift cards to some punk kid after getting a bunch of plastic junk was a rousing success," Kem said. "Gun buybacks are a fantastic way of showing, number one, that your policies don't work, and, number two, you're creating perverse demand. You're causing people to show up to these events, and they don't actually reduce crime whatsoever."