NY Dad Faces 40 Years for Building Guns at Home

Demetrio Daga is 44, a father of two, and a resident of Albany. Last month, a New York jury convicted him on 15 state criminal charges after a seven-day trial. His sentencing is set for October 8, and he’s looking at up to 40 years in state prison. Had he lived in a free state like Florida, Texas, or Georgia, none of this would have been a crime.

The “Arsenal”

The 15 counts break down to Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the First Degree (one), the Second Degree (two), and the Third Degree (three), along with nine Criminal Possession of a Firearm charges. The case stemmed from a 15-month investigation by the New York State Police Special Investigations Unit’s Gun Trafficking Interdiction Unit — not ATF. Daga was first arrested on January 8, 2025 after a traffic stop in which troopers found a loaded 3D-printed handgun with eight rounds in his car.

Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Jessica Blain-Lewis told the jury Daga “wasn’t just someone who builds guns; he was building an arsenal.” To drive the point home, she dumped a box of ammunition out onto the courtroom floor. Blain-Lewis — a 2016 contestant on CBS’s Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X who typically works in Albany County’s Financial Crimes Unit — did not respond to reporters’ calls or emails.

That “arsenal” totaled around 55 firearms: 13 handguns prosecutors labeled “ghost guns,” 22 AR-style rifles also called “ghost guns,” another 18 serial-numbered AR-style rifles, and a pair of pump shotguns. Investigators also reported finding several 3D printers — one actively printing a lower receiver during the raid — numerous magazines they called “high-capacity,” more than 200 “3D-printed lower handgun receivers and rifle frames,” and body armor. The jury deliberated under two hours before convicting on all counts.

No Crime in a Free State

No one testified that Daga broke any firearm law. In New York, simply owning a homemade firearm is enough to be charged. Daga is the second high-profile case to make exactly this point in New York — Brooklyn software engineer Dexter Taylor was sentenced to ten years in state prison in 2024 for essentially the same conduct, and TTAG covered that case at the time. The pattern is now established: build your own guns in New York, go to prison. Build the same guns in 47 other states, carry on with your life.

The Queens-to-Albany Playbook

That’s where it gets ugly. State troopers combed through Daga’s online purchases after Queens County’s District Attorney’s Office pointed them at him. An investigator in Queens emailed Albany state police: “We’ll provide you with a list of 10-20 viable targets to focus your efforts on as we try to bring our ghost gun model to the Capital Region as a test run.”

According to Daga’s defense attorney Michael J. O’Brien, the list carried names of former elected officials and even the current sheriff’s son. According to Daga and his relatives, he was the only one of the 20 names investigated.

Daga’s defense called no witnesses. Prosecutors called 17. The jury deliberated for under two hours before convicting on all counts. One juror later told the defense attorney that, had she known Daga would face years in prison, she would not have voted as she did.

“We weren’t allowed to discuss how privately made firearms were legal in 47 other states,” Daga said from jail. “We weren’t allowed to introduce other things. That’s terrifying.”

No Way Out

The appeals clock is now running, and O’Brien told local reporters that Daga is more likely to face a maximum of 25 years rather than the full 40 at sentencing, assuming the counts run concurrently rather than consecutively. Either way, Daga could miss most of his children’s remaining youth over conduct that would draw a shrug in most of the country.

A presidential pardon isn’t an option — Daga was convicted of state charges, not federal ones. That leaves Governor Kathy Hochul, who built her political brand around aggressive gun control after Bruen and who has shown no interest in reversing course on ghost-gun prosecutions. The only realistic hope for Daga runs through the appeals courts, and New York’s judiciary hasn’t been exactly friendly to Second Amendment challenges in the post-Bruen era.

The Queens-to-Albany email makes clear this prosecution wasn’t an isolated incident. It was a pilot program. If it works, expect the “ghost gun model” to spread into every corner of the state where someone has bought gun parts online. That’s not law enforcement responding to a specific crime — it’s law enforcement running a dragnet based on legal online purchases, looking for someone they can turn into a felon.