A puppet technician with the Broadway production of The Lion King was using a 3D printer to print a gun at the theater, police say.

Officers were called to Manhattan's Minskoff Theater on Friday, where they say they found 47-year-old puppet technician Ilya Vett in the process of printing a handgun.

New York City police Officer James Taylor says that when he arrived at a production and prop room for the musical, he saw a 3D printer producing a hard black plastic object "shaped like a revolver in that the object has a hand grip and a pointed, snub-nosed nozzle" and "an empty space where it is customary for a cylinder holding live rounds of ammunition to be placed."

Printed guns have been in the headlines recently, as several states moved to block a Texas-based company from posting and selling plans for the guns online. Last month, a federal judge in Seattle granted a preliminary injunction preventing the publication of online blueprints for the guns.

Vett was arrested and charged with attempted criminal possession of a firearm. According to the criminal complaint, he told a detective that he was making the gun as a gift for his brother, who lives upstate and has a firearms license. Vett said the 3D printer was his own and he had brought it to work because his own workshop was too dusty, the complaint says.

The defendant reportedly explained that he found the plans for the gun online and downloaded them to a memory card. The card was inserted into the printer, which police say was powered on, moving and in operation when they arrived.