The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/dangers-californias-legislation-censor-3d-printing

by salkahfi • 3 months ago

501 466 3 months ago

alterom7• 3 months ago

It's ridiculous that this is even being discussed. The people proposing the bill must have zero understanding of how a 3D printer works.

It makes as much sense as requiring saw manufacturers to implement protections that restrict what can be cut out with a saw.

Or pen manufacturers being required to enforce copyright.

Any form of this bill will 100% fail to attain its stated objective, while having horrendous not-quite-unintended consequences.

And in the end, what's to stop someone from assembling an unlicensed 3D printer to make unlicensed prints? That's how the industry literally began.

(Not to mention: what do they think would happen to the hundreds of millions of existing "dumb" 3D printers? They won't disappear because there's a law).

Sigh.

annoyingnoob• 3 months ago

what do they think would happen to the hundreds of millions of existing "dumb" 3D printers?

Hey, my printer might be going up in value.

fgfarben5• 3 months ago

Too bad you wouldn't be allowed to sell it without catching a misdemeanor or a $25,000 fine.

dabluecaboose3• 3 months ago

Any form of this bill will 100% fail to attain its stated objective, while having horrendous not-quite-unintended consequences.

California gun laws in a nutshell.

teaearlgraycold• 3 months ago

California laws in a nutshell.

max51• 3 months ago

And in the end, what's to stop someone from assembling an unlicensed 3D printer to make unlicensed prints?

You really don't have to go that far. A very high quality control board (eg. an original Prusa) is like 90$ and cheap ones go for 25$.

You could buy the licensed printer and swap the board. Or maybe even just flash the firmware on the licensed printer

alterom7• 3 months ago

Or maybe even just flash the firmware on the licensed printer

Yeah, that would also be a crime under this proposal.

Which is one of the big reasons it's problematic.

asdff4• 3 months ago

Why don't these bills go after ammo or gunpowder access? Seems as long as you have access to a cylinder, and ammunition, you can make a gun.

convolvatron• 3 months ago

I don't know the situation with the actual charge, but if you can make a gun, you can certainly make ammunition.

asdff4• 3 months ago

I guess you are right, both are pretty easy to make.

subhobroto7• 3 months ago

if you can make a gun, you can certainly make ammunition

theoretically true but having re-sleeved ammunition, the chances of injury is tremendously different. That said, a lot of people in California are having to resort to re-sleeving ammunition, not out of choice but because for all practical purposes, California has made buying ammunition impossible.

While you can crawl and bite your way through getting a horribly castrated gun in California, the real struggle begins buying affordable ammunition.

For regular people to own a gun that you can actually use in California, (not LEOs or certain other people), you either needed to have inherited them or bought them from the cartels. Otherwise you own something of limited use that insanely expensive to operate.

rolph13• 3 months ago

you need tight tolerances for modern ammo, a shotgun, or muzzle loader is more forgiveing. reloading materials are not federally regulated as firearms, you just dont want to have more than 2lbs at a time, or that could bring trouble.

you want to be able to KNOW and SEE the difference between a blackpowder, and a smokeless powder, and what not to put it in.

one thing that would add a lot of friction is if the primers are regulated.

thats the funny thing, felons cant possess firearms or ammo, however you can possess reloading materials, and be fine there until you start actually reloading, then you are in possession of ammo.

mothballed6• 3 months ago

People would probably use smuggled primers if arms were outlawed. The rest of the chemistry is easy enough to work with and the primers are small enough they'd likely flow along with fentanyl with the cartels anyway.

dabluecaboose3• 3 months ago

That was tried in Lexington and Concord circa 1775, it didn't end well for the guys trying to seize the powder.

Happy Patriot's Day this weekend (April 19th)!

7e• 3 months ago

The guns needed for the U.S. revolution came from the French. Most U.S. farmer guns were shit for actual warfare.

ahs12• 3 months ago

because gun control isn't about guns, it's about control

rolph13• 3 months ago

blackpowder is just barely chemistry, more like engineering.

carbon, sulphur, and potassium nitrate, in a particular ratio.

potassium nitrate is watched, and reported in large quantities, or particular form, but can be manufactured by most people that can follow a recipe.

regulating the propellant cant stop it from being made.

also someone really didnt think it through by regulating "receivers"

they regulated what is most often the easiest part to manufacture. the core parts [barrel, bolt, chamber] are difficult to build, require tech to build from stock, and are sold off the shelf, while receiver needs 4473 as if it was a fully functional firearm, and that is the part that can be built, from a 2x4 or a billet of material, depending how long you want it to last.

mothballed6• 3 months ago

Black powder guns, at least ones of antique design (but modern production), are federally ~unregulated already anyways. A 6 year old in North Dakota could order one mailed right now to his house, no background checks, right off the internet -- legally.

There is also the "felon carry" as its called late 19th century black powder percussion pistols, you can also order off the internet, regardless of criminal history and with no scrutiny of the chain of custody.

codedokode3• 3 months ago

Making a bullet is definitely more difficult than printing a plastic gun handle (you need the bullet itself, and the cartridge fit it perfectly), and you have a non-zero chance to lose some parts of the body if you make a mistake.

linksnapzz3• 3 months ago

Sigh. None of the ammunition used in modern (i.e. made in the past 125 years) uses black powder propellant.

bdcravens4• 3 months ago

I've always felt that it you want to really impact gun violence, tax the hell out of ammo and gunpowder. Like $20/bullet. For those who believe in self-defense, a handful of bullets is all you need your entire life, and ideally they'll go unused.

Could probably create exceptions for bullets used at the gun range, so you can become proficient and safe.

Tricky part would be hunting, but restricting such a tax to ammo used for handguns is probably an 80% solution.

151557• 3 months ago

I've always felt if you really want to impact election fraud, tax the hell out of votes. Like $1,000/vote. For those who believe in democracy, a handful of votes over a lifetime is all you need, and ideally the right candidate wins anyway.

Could probably create exceptions for local elections, so you can still participate in your community.

Tricky part would be general elections, but restricting such a tax to federal races is probably an 80% solution.

akersten• 3 months ago

Could probably create exceptions for bullets used at the gun range, so you can become proficient and safe.

Amusing to imagine the red diesel of sport shooting - better hope the tax authority doesn't find any combustion-proof dye on the self-defense shell casings!

Rebelgecko2• 3 months ago

If you care about self defense, you practice using a gun semi-regularly.

The trick is to just tax murder so people can't afford it anymore.

cucumber37328426• 3 months ago

Because the 2A and related jurisprudence exists and so that will be struck down in court in about 10wk whereas a "novel" convoluted regulation like micro managing printers will take 10yr.

WillPostForFood4• 3 months ago

Gun Control legislation is plenty slow to move through courts as well. The California magazine limits passed in 1999, it is sitting at the Supreme Court, waiting now 26 years later.

The Sullivan Act was passed in 1911, and it took 111 years to overturn (Bruen). So gun control cases move slowly like everything else.

ggreer4• 3 months ago

California already restricts access to ammunition. Only California residents can purchase ammunition in the state, and only after going through a background check. It is also illegal for a California resident to buy ammunition out of state and import it without a background check. It is legal for a non-resident to take ammo into the state, but they cannot transfer it to a California resident, and California residents cannot transfer ammo to them. This creates lots of issues for hunters. The laws are so byzantine that hunting organizations have guides about what is and isn't allowed.[1]

Even though I'd bought multiple firearms in California, this background check always rejected me, probably because my name doesn't fit in their databases. Somewhere between 10% and 16% of legal firearm owners in California are denied ammunition due to this faulty system.

1. https://calwaterfowl.org/navigating-californias-new-ammuniti...

MisterTea5• 3 months ago

The primary goal is clear and simple: to require 3D printer manufacturers to use a state-certified algorithm that checks digital design files for firearm components and blocks print jobs that would produce prohibited parts.

"state-certified algorithm" has a really nice tyrannic ring to it. I am sure once this has passed the rich people can finally sleep at night knowing they are safe from roving gangs of armed Mangiones.

qurren2• 3 months ago

A 3D printer, at least of the Prusa variety, is really just a bunch of stepper motors and a dumb motor driver executing a series of effectively "rotate by X steps" commands, which is what the gcode file is. It doesn't know what it's printing. It doesn't even know that it's a printer.

If they wanted a gate on designs it would have to happen in slicing software, not the actual printer.

MisterTea5• 3 months ago

Indeed. I grew up in a a machine shop than ran both manual and CNC machines and spent my summers in front of mills and lathes running jobs. I now do industrial automation and machine repair. With that being said, yeah, no way will this work. Ever.

And software? My Bridgeport and Logan were built before computers were available to the home consumer. Good luck stopping someone like me.

xp84• 3 months ago

Yup. Wait till our genius lawmakers figure that out! Then we'll have all software that can be used to do that job require registration and inspection to certify that it "won't print gun parts." Or maybe "all software" for good measure, in case any sneaky so-and-sos try to make an IRC client with a secret "slicing easter-egg." Better yet, all software of any kind has to be sold through an App Store so we can have Google, Microsoft and Apple gatekeep. That'll work. Gun problem solved.

Teever2• 3 months ago

They'll still need some DRM in the printer so it will only accept signed gcode that came from the the slicer.

Otherwise it's pretty trivial for someone to just bypass the slicer and hand write the gcode.

fooker2• 3 months ago

Straight out of 1984.

cucumber37328426• 3 months ago

"Error, you cannot print toiletpart.stl because there is no open permit for the the address at which this printer is registered, contact a licensed plumber during normal business hours"

Don't laugh, this sort of regulatory capture type crap is exactly where it'll trickle down to if they get what they want for guns.

alterom7• 3 months ago

Also: "I see you are trying to print a hollow cylinder. Sorry, you can't print gun barrels"

Also: "The Letter_C.stl can't be printed because it is an 88% percent match for a gun trigger"

duxup• 3 months ago

I remember the hysterical "ban algorithms" type legislation that kept showing up in states for a while.

But like all humans we're often ok as long as it is "our guy" or "our algorithm".

hahn-kev• 3 months ago

To be fair that's more or less how we prevent printers from printing counterfeit money.

ginkgotree2• 3 months ago

I'm so glad I left California 6 years ago. They are going to regulate and tax their startups and innovators away to other states. This is supremely stupid.

nradov2• 3 months ago

This is the inevitable result of having a single-party government which is no longer accountable to regular citizens.

jimbob452• 3 months ago

No it’s not. Xi has power as absolute as Newsom and manages just fine. When your country has large, but solvable problems, absolute power works great for quelling unrest by fixing problems quickly and efficiently. Newsom is just generationally incompetent.

fasterik4• 3 months ago

What you describe as "single-party government" is in fact a democracy where one party is more popular than the others. Or are you trying to imply that California's elections are not free and fair? If voters want to hold politicians accountable, they can vote out the incumbent.

I see it as a problem primarily with education and public opinion. Regular citizens routinely support bad policies across the ideological spectrum. Often we have to live with the fact that bad policies are popular; that's democracy in action.

It's also a problem of having no good alternatives. There are historical reasons, going back to the 1960s, why the Democratic party is perceived as the lesser of two evils when it comes to civil liberties.

fgfarben5• 3 months ago

Oh, you don't miss paying $800/year for the privilege of having an LLC that does literally nothing?

subhobroto7• 3 months ago

I don't understand the problem solving mindset that thinks banning guns would solve the problem of a person intent on causing harm.

In the U.K., where I feel guns are only showpieces (do even cops have them?), stabbing is a known problem.

In India, where ammo is way more expensive than machetes and knives, people are literally murdered with them.

The only argument I can understand, when it comes to banning guns, is that it reduces the blast radius that an evil person can have.

So what's next, lock down the air, radio, roads, internet, water, food supply chains because these are all attack vectors?

If that's the proposal, what's my plan when coyotes and mountain lions attack my child and I on our regular walks on rural property?

cultofmetatron2• 3 months ago

guns democratize mass murder. With a gun, I can kill a bunch of people before police can stop me. A knife? At best I can kill one or two in a public place before people run away and eventually a different group is going to stop me pretty quickly.

subhobroto7• 3 months ago

- can you build bombs to blow up an apartment complex full of 1000s of people?

- can you poison the water supply of an apartment complex full of 1000s of people?

- can you drop a harmful substance using a $50 drone onto an open area where of 1000s of people have congregated?

dole• 3 months ago

Killers are going to kill. Guns don't democratize it, just makes it easier. Maybe at best YOU could kill one or two:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/china/china-stabbing-yixing-c... (8 stabbed to death) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_Schoo... (1 killed, 24 injured)

So they should stop you from 3d-printing knives too.

themafia3• 3 months ago

As a citizen with a gun I can shoot you before the police arrive.

lynndotpy4• 3 months ago

I'm not in the interest of rehashing decades of the same arguments about guns in society on HackerNews, and per Poe's law, I can't actually tell if you're sincere or not. Assuming you are, it bears summary:

You basically have it with "it reduces the blast radius". Guns are a great tool for damaging soft tissue to the point of death. Gun control advocates believe, with less access to guns, people will kill less.

It is also worth adding that most gun deaths in thbe US are from suicides. Means reduction is well-understood as a way to decrease suicides.

So what's next, lock down the air, radio, roads, internet, water, food supply chains because these are all attack vectors?

We don't need to get stuck in a hypothetical, since we can look at other countries and see how they manage these public goods. Guns are unique in that they're exclusively for killing, and provide scant other value outside sport.

Notably, nowhere that had success in tighter gun regulation needed to censor 3D printing. This legislation is something 'both sides' of the gun debate should be able to get behind and oppose. There is very little potential benefit for the cause of "gun control", and very much potential harm.

gsck• 3 months ago

In the UK to own a gun you need to have a good reason to do so. This is usually by being a member of a gun club, and getting a license to own a gun. Once you have a club membership and a license you then need to start speaking to the police to purchase a gun alongside having a gun box that is secure and certified by the police. Its an awful lot of hassle so the only people with guns are those who are interested in it.

Police dont tend to have guns apart from specially trained units(?) so you only see these quite rarely. Northern Ireland is a bit of an exception all police in NI have a gun, and are trained to quite a high standard to just be able to use it. NI's police actually go over to England reguarly enough to help when police with guns are required.

rdtsc• 3 months ago

California's proposed legislation to put the burden of blocking 3D-printed firearms onto printer manufacturers

I can only assume California has solved all its major problems if policing 3D printers is at the top of the agenda. It's like when someone complains their neighbor can afford two yachts and they can only afford one, you know they are doing pretty well if that's their major concern.

throwatdem123112• 3 months ago

I just laugh whenever I hear “ghost gun”.

On January 13, 2014 a certain State Senator (no reason to name names) held a press conference where he held a modern rifle in his hands and stated, “This is a ghost gun. This right here has the ability with a .30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Thirty magazine clip in half a second.”

Anyone that knows even a little bit about guns knows that this is utter nonsense, and it was appropriately memed into oblivion.

Most anti-gun activists and legislators seem to have no more knowledge than this - which is to say, none.

subhobroto7• 3 months ago

Anyone that knows even a little bit about guns knows that this is utter nonsense

Most people in California who vote on these matters have not held a BB gun, let alone a semi automatic.

They have 0 idea that you just cannot buy actual guns from a grocery store in California anymore!

They think you can just buy a gun at Walmart like you can buy a can of Coke. I was able to pull up clips made in 2023 and 2025 that were literally claiming that. Hasn't been true since atleast 2009, likely even earlier.

A few years ago a local Walmart was clearing our their air gun and rifle selection after there had been a shooting on the east coast that was all over the news. Since ammo have become really expensive, I bought out the whole shelf of air rifles so I could continue to target practice with a focus on my breathing.

People called the cops on me. Multiple people verbally abused me as a gun nut and recorded me buying them on their phones. I had air guns - *children* *toys*. They thought it was the real deal!

The local sherrif's department received nearly a 100 calls that hour when we spoke. When I asked them why they even bothered to turn up because they know no Walmart in a 300 mile radius have ever sold a rifle in the last 20 years as was described to them over the phone, they just shrugged and said "politics".

bitwize• 3 months ago

Hence "assault weapons" which are not a particular type of gun but a list of scary characteristics associated with military weapons—bayonet lugs, folding stocks, and the like—used by legislators to FUD their way into being seen as "doing something" about guns.

In the United States we even have a word for an assault weapon on four legs—pitbulls. Most breed-specific legislation, where it exists, targets pitbulls which are not a single breed nor group of related breeds, but basically any large muscular dog with a short snout and blocky head. The American Pit Bull Terrier is one such breed but far from the only one targeted by BSL.

I think it was Toyotomi Hideyoshi who said something like, the law is not obligated to logic, but it still must be followed.

throwatdem123112• 3 months ago

In Canada a gun might be banned as an “assault” weapon when a slightly different version of the same gun is still legal with the only difference being that one of the guns is painted black, and the other (still legal) has a wood coloured stock. One looks like a “military” gun while the other one is a “hunting” rifle when in reality they are exactly the same weapon and the only difference is cosmetic.

I am all for sensible gun regulations but that is almost never the case in practice.

jmyeet• 3 months ago

I'm surprised the EFF didn't address the issue that traditional printer manufacturers already comply with law enforcement, specifically that a fingerprint of yellow tracking dots [1] are printed and printers will often refuse to or fail to copy images of money.

My point is there's already precedent for printers cooperating with authorities so one can see this as simply an extension to 3D printer manufacturers.

I suspect it's a losing battle for the EFF and 3D printer manufacturers to resist some kind of fingerprinting or even the prohibition of things that are guns.

I'm not saying that's right or wrong. That's just what I expect to happen. And if you want to argue against it, you should address the printer tracking dot issue or argue how this is different.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

Aspos• 3 months ago

I believe EFF did address the yellow dots but got nowhere. Yellow dot problem is decades old.

FarmerPotato• 3 months ago

That's why real hackers refurbish dot-matrix printers.

GDR

Cider9986• 3 months ago

Open source is core to 3d printing. I have never heard of an open source traditional printer. That is the difference. This is an attempt to lock down open source.

151557• 3 months ago

how this is different

From purely a technical standpoint: the printer indiscriminately adds tracking dots to all documents, the proposed 3D printer regulation requires the printer to phone home and make some dispositive call on what it's allowed to do.

dooglius2• 3 months ago

The bottom of that wiki page has links to EFF pages. However you are correct that they view it as a lost battle:

  (Added 2015) Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable. Although we still don't know if this is correct, or how subsequent generations of forensic tracking technologies might work, it is probably safest to assume that all modern color laser printers do include some form of tracking information that associates documents with the printer's serial number. (If any manufacturer wishes to go on record with a statement to the contrary, we'll be happy to publish that here.)

  (Added 2017) REMINDER: IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT ALL RECENT COMMERCIAL COLOR LASER PRINTERS PRINT SOME KIND OF FORENSIC TRACKING CODES, NOT NECESSARILY USING YELLOW DOTS. THIS IS TRUE WHETHER OR NOT THOSE CODES ARE VISIBLE TO THE EYE AND WHETHER OR NOT THE PRINTER MODELS ARE LISTED HERE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE PRINTERS THAT ARE LISTED HERE AS NOT PRODUCING YELLOW DOTS.

  This list is no longer being updated.

schoen• 3 months ago

I wrote that text when I worked for EFF!

Anyway, two things about this:

* EFF definitely did not think that the regular printer tracking dots mechanism was appropriate.

* You could probably argue this either as a modus ponens or a modus tollens -- that is, in either direction -- but one criticism that we made of the tracking dots was that they were (mostly) secret voluntary cooperation between industry and government, not an actual law. Perhaps an actual law is preferable because the public can understand in detail how it's being restricted, as well as oppose it politically and potentially challenge it in the courts.

Of course, the current 3D printing restrictions are proposed as an actual law. That does seem largely better to me than "we got most 3D printer companies to put some secret software in their printers to enforce some unspecified policies that the government asked them to, and the companies and the government don't want to talk about it", although one way it's better is simply the opportunity to oppose it in the legislature.

simplyluke4• 3 months ago

The 3d printer gun legislation has been rearing its head in a bunch of states this year, and generally with very similar patterns. I suspect some of the pro-gun-control groups have been pushing it to lawmakers given most legislation is basically copy-pastes from lobbying groups at both the state and federal level. Colorado, Washington, New York, and now California have all floated legislation attempting to make device-level restrictions around the issue. I only followed Washington's in depth, and they ended up removing all the requirements on manufactures, but did criminalize possession of files which I suspect won't hold up to a first amendment challenge.

MisterTea5• 3 months ago

I really think all of this is the result of Mangione. Regulating 3D printers has been talked about for years with no action. Then a year after the CEO of a large well known company is killed with a 3D printed gun the states are suddenly pushing highly invasive 3D printing laws. It's no coincidence NY was the first to push for such a law, the state where said CEO was killed.

WillPostForFood4• 3 months ago

No, this is Everytown USA model legislation. They wrote it, and are lobbying for it.

https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/new-everytown-report-...

throw12345678912• 3 months ago

You’d think they’d regulate guns instead.

bmurphy19762• 3 months ago

LM has a whole series of videos that touches on this (as well as some related topics): https://www.youtube.com/@LoyalMoses/videos

Louis Rossman also touched on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-9ISzMhBM

I've seen more by others but can't recall them all. Without going too far down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole, the momentum for this seems to be coming from a variety of sources:

    * New York being New York and trying to make thinking about guns a thought crime
    * There's European company (forget the name) that makes specialized software that can do this.  They're lobbying so they can inject themselves for some tasty rent seeking.
    * A variety of companies that see right-to-repair (and thus home 3D printers, CNC-milling, etc.) a threat to their bottom lines.
    * General ignorance by our law makers

Edit: And I personally think instead of doing stupid bullshit like this, we should be giving EVERY kid who wants one a free 3D Printer so they can learn to tinker, be creative, and build things. That's how we create that spark that leads to the next generation of makers. Without that our country will continue to be the country that can no longer build things.

cgannett• 3 months ago

Literally giving children the means of production is way out of line. To the corporate owned gulag with you! /s

simplyluke4• 3 months ago

we should be giving EVERY kid who wants one a free 3D Printer so they can learn to tinker, be creative, and build things

Totally agree. Ironically, I think it'd do a lot more to reduce gun violence than any of these laws given the primary factors in gun violence are 1) being poor and not having good options out of poverty and 2) being a man between the ages of like 15-25

I'm just young enough that I had a high school teacher who was able to get some level of support from the district to run an elective engineering course and had a few of the very early consumer-grade printers that were terrible compared to a modern printer. I was already down the programming rabbit hole at that point, but it was absolutely foundational in me realizing that "you can build things" didn't only apply to the digital. I really wish we'd have similar in just about every school. So many of my peers think that the ability to fabricate basic things and work on anything physical is substantially harder than it actually is (to the level of thinking they'd need similar effort it took them to learn to code to learn to work on their car), and so never do it.

If you can reason about a C compiler, you can definitely learn to do a brake job on a car or 3d print a basic coupler for a home project.

Acrobatic_Road• 3 months ago

I suspect some of the pro-gun-control groups have been pushing it to lawmakers given most legislation is basically copy-pastes from lobbying groups at both the state and federal level.

You would be correct.

https://xcancel.com/2Aupdates/status/2036437116456940001#m

dlev_pika• 3 months ago

AFAIK If I try to scan a dollar bill, both the hardware and the software won’t let me be.

How is this different?

Edit: I appreciate the responses! Thank you

Retr0id• 3 months ago

One practical difference is that you can make dollar bill detection relatively robust. Sure, you could cut it into 4 pieces and scan them separately, but you'd still get stuck when it comes time to print them. There are only finitely many dollar bill shapes. But there are infinitely many plausible gun components, and infinitely more ways to divide them into sub-assemblies.

EvanAnderson2• 3 months ago

It would be interesting to test what the minimum detectable piece of US currency is. (I wouldn't want to do it on a network-connected system, though.)

jolmg• 3 months ago

but you'd still get stuck when it comes time to print them.

It also seems a lot harder to DIY an inkjet or laser printer. The parts needed to DIY a 3d printer are a lot simpler.

EvanAnderson2• 3 months ago

US currency has machine-detectable identifying markings incorporated in the design. "Ghost gun" parts do not.

subhobroto7• 3 months ago

You cannot defend yourself from a hungry coyote or surprised mountain lion with a dollar bill but you can certainly protect yourself or your child from one with a gun

Zak• 3 months ago

Photoshop does that voluntarily; it's not required to by law. GIMP doesn't do it.

This is akin to trying to require all image editors to detect currency and refuse to process images of it. Making open source image processing software would probably have to be illegal because end users could trivially modify it to illegally process currency, or having general-purpose computers that can run software the government hasn't approved would need to be banned.

pensatoio• 3 months ago

A dollar bill is exactly the same (roughly) always. Banning models of gun parts (or anything 3D printed, for that matter) is like trying to ban the patterns of dust in the wind. There are millions of permutations and ways to slice the problem.

sunrunner2• 3 months ago

slice the problem

Pun intended

sunrunner2• 3 months ago

Having never seriously looked into 3D printing and knowing essentially nothing about firearms, a few mostly-unserious questions come to mind:

1. Is there any value in 3D printing the inverse of the shapes one would need to use as a mold?

2. How many subdivisions of gun-shaped part I wonder are needed before the ultimate intended shape is obscured without impacting the functionality

3. Given 2, is there even any value in 1.

Dove• 3 months ago

Some critical differences between the situations that come to mind:

- The problem of counterfeit currency is well acknowledged and has roots in antiquity. Reasonable people agree that currency genuinely cannot do its only job if counterfeiting is possible, and have had that agreement for thousands of years. In addition, the sole right to print currency is given to the US government in its constitution (almost certainly for this reason). These two things grant government control over printing currency both a moral and a legal legitimacy that government control over printing gun parts doesn't have.

- Because the government has control over the design of legitimate currency, it is actually practical to prevent software from reproducing it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation . Gun parts have no such distinguishing characteristic, and cannot be made to have one, since there is no authoritative body responsible for all of them. Having such a marking could be made legally mandatory, but it is not actually required for the function of the part, whereas currency needs to match the authentic design in order to be useful. It is therefore much less practical and effective to mark gun parts to prevent replication than it is to similarly mark currency.

- Creating your own guns specifically (and weapons, generally) is widely seen as a natural or God-given right. I would go so far as to say that it is intrinsically human, and that losing access to it would be as painful to some as losing access to rock 'n roll. I would say that due to this pain, losing that right is one of the chief signs of an enslaved people. While not everyone would agree with me, many would, which gives the issue a divisive moral edge. By contrast, creating your own currency might be seen as some sort of natural right by some people, but creating your own US Dollars certainly is not seen that way by anybody. Well, I'm sure you could find someone, but you know what I mean.

- As far as I know, there is no law compelling printer/photocopier manufacturers to use anti-counterfeiting software, and compliance is voluntary (but apparently pretty widespread -- though I doubt it's universal). A similar voluntary setup with 3D printer manufacturers would be less objectionable (though also much less likely to succeed). Introducing any sort of mandatory compliance regime introduces friction, slows innovation, and invites corruption.

- Manufacturing gun parts is actually pretty easy, and could be accomplished via many methods accessible to hobbyists, ranging from whittling by hand to duct taping hardware together to lost wax casting to desktop CNC to a desktop injection molding setup to metalworking on a lathe in a garage machine shop. It is in no way limited to 3D printing, though that admittedly lowers the bar a bit. Learning to work on guns is not significantly harder than learning to work on cars, though perhaps fewer people know how to do it. Thus, a focus on 3D printing seems much more driven by sensationalism, paranoia, and ignorance of this fact than it is by practical assessment of the issue. By contrast, creating even minimally recognizable counterfeit currency without the assistance of a computer is practically impossible and certainly cost-prohibitive. In manufacturing gun parts, it is perfectly practical in some cases to do the equivalent of drawing a dollar bill with a crayon -- something much less successful in the counterfeiting world.

- Adding broad pattern-recognition controls to a 3d printer is a novel and difficult problem that will likely impact innocent people doing legal things. Preventing the printing of accurate-looking currency has a much more narrow impact, and is much more focused on people doing illegal-adjacent things.

Without meaning any malice toward your question, I mention that I write because you have stepped on one of my pet peeves: it seems to me that an inability to see the difference between things that are, in fact, different, is one of the major failure modes of modern society in general. We need an appreciation for texture and nuance if we are to navigate the world rightly.

alnwlsn• 3 months ago

G0 X4.000 Y1.250

G1 Z-4.000 F100

G0 Z0.250

Here is some g-code to drill a hole. It could be drilling out a gun barrel. How can you tell?

maininformer• 3 months ago

A. What if some part looks like some other non-gun part? B. What if they can further break down the pieces to avoid detection?

tracker12• 3 months ago

So, I cannot 3d print a squirt gun or a nerf style gun either? This print looks "scary" you cannot print it.

Mashimo2• 3 months ago

I don't think anyone really knows. Might be something like the slicer is checking the file hash against a (online) list, slices it, signs it and the printer checks the .gcode file if it's signed by a known slicer. A blacklist of very specific models. Make a small change and it will not be detected any more.

Maybe the slicer is also required to upload the 3d file and some kind of "looks similar" algorithm will block your nerf gun from being sliced.

tracker12• 3 months ago

The irony, is almost anyone with a machine shop can probably fabricate a more effective weapon than a 3D printer, where you might as a gun get one or two less than accurate shots in.

horsawlarway4• 3 months ago

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns.

I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable.

So given we don't do this regulation for any of the much more reliable ways to create unregistered firearms... what's special about 3d printers?

So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact.

Either way, this is bad legislation.

tempaccount5050• 3 months ago

Not that I support any of these obviously stupid bills but:

what's special about 3d printers?

They can make guns made out of plastic and metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people.

You are probably right about the lobbying group, I agree.

Edit: I'm not saying it makes sense, but this is the angle the congress folks are taking, sheesh.

151557• 3 months ago

metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people

What are bullets and shell casings made out of again?

horsawlarway4• 3 months ago

They can make guns made out of plastic

So can many, many other things. Hell - something like this will do SO MUCH BETTER than anything I can print:

https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=pl...

It's weird because 3d printed plastic is WAY down the list of things I'd prefer to trust handling the explosion from ammunition.

Frankly - even the hobbyist CNC I have is a MUCH better method of creating a plastic gun. FDM printing is not something I'd want to trust in this case, neither is SLA printing in most materials (some of the very high end ones like nylon in a formlabs printer... maybe?).

But my point stands - guns aren't that hard to make, and we aren't trying this legislation with any of the other myriad manufacturing methods. Hell - compare to a potato cannon... (also a plastic gun, btw...)

So what's different about 3d printers?

My hunch is this has fuck-all to do with guns, and a lot to do with something else, because 3d printers ARE different in that they let me manufacturer all sorts of other, much more complex, goods much more easily and cheaply at home.

kube-system4• 3 months ago

There was a panic about plastic guns back in the 80s too when the Glock came out, and Congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act.

But it was just as misinformed as it is today -- practically speaking, only metal is suitable for the high pressure components of a gun. A common 9mm cartridge produces upwards of 35,000 psi.

mvrekic• 3 months ago

I don't care how good you are, you cannot 3D print a barrel that will withstand the pressure forces generated by a centerfire round.

jcgrillo• 3 months ago

If you're dead set on making a gun that will pass through a metal detector you don't need a 3D printer to do it.

rolph13• 3 months ago

whats special is speed and consistency.

when you manufacture a personal firearm, it is supposed to be yours, for your use. the 3d printer aspect, makes it possible for a group to print large quantities of receivers, under the radar, to be combined with "accesory parts" close to "drop-in" assembly style.

trollbridge3• 3 months ago

At issue here is that anyone can build a 3D printer. There's one in my basement a hobbyist built entirely from easily-sourced parts, and the controller is entirely open source. It never phones home and isn't really connected directly to the Internet at all.

horsawlarway4• 3 months ago

Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover?

So no - not buying it. Hell, there's not even a real price difference. I can get a Nomad3 from Carbide 3D for the same approximate cost as an H2D from bambu labs.

And I can get super cheap temu versions of either for under 500.

hypeatei2• 3 months ago

any real attempt to regulate guns

Any real attempt would need to be at the national level, not that I would advocate for it, but it's simply a pipe dream to create a "gun free zone" in a country with 100s of millions of firearms. There are plenty of gun enthusiasts in California, they just don't flaunt it or talk about it.

tylerflick• 3 months ago

I used to work in this industry and can confirm. California was by far the biggest cohort of consumers we had.

lewdev• 3 months ago

"regulate guns" does not equate to "gun free."

nine_k6• 3 months ago

A gun-free zone is not such a good idea, much like an encryption-free zone would be, or an alcohol-free zone (the latter has been tried).

I would rather go for Swiss-stye mandatory gun training, and keeping a gun in (almost) every home. But, like the Swiss, I would require not just storing the gun in a certified safe box, but also providing an ID + a proof of mental sanity, and registering the gun. That would raise a much larger wave of protest though, both from the "left" and the "right". Even though, IMHO, it's the only sane way.

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 months ago

Any real attempt would need to be at the national level

Exactly! Prohibition works really well.

Now if only we could figure out what state that coke, heroin and meth are still legal in!!

aidenn03• 3 months ago

I'm not on top of the current SOTA in 3d-printed guns, but the way it typically was done in the past is that you don't actually 3d-print all of what you or I would call a complete gun.

The barrel will be metal. In designs made for the US market, it will almost certainly be an actual manufactured gun barrel, since gun parts other than the receiver are not closely tracked in the US. In designs for Western Europe, the metal parts will be either milled or things you can buy at the hardware store[1].

The barrel and chamber being made of something tougher than you can get from an FDM machine is basically a requirement for making a gun that doesn't explode in your face when you shoot.

1: Here's an image of all of the parts going into a gun designed to be made in the EU. Per the wikipedia article, the barrel rifling can be added with electrochemical machining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Compon...

horsawlarway4• 3 months ago

yeah, but at some point you're just banning "manufacturing".

if someone wants to make a gun... they can. It's not complex to manufacturer simple firearms - we managed it as far back as the freaking 10th century.

So why freak out over this, for example, and not CNCs? Or Power tools? Or forges (CHF barrels are a thing too!)?

giancarlostoro4• 3 months ago

The only thing you need to make is the "lower" or whichever part the ATF constitutes as "the firearm" I've seen someone take a shovel and turn it into an AK. Once you have the "firearm" part of whatever gun you're building, the rest of the parts can be shipped to you in most of the country (idk about CA, and NY though) and you can easily assemble the rest of the gun.

Like you say, you just need to build a key metal piece, and voila, the rest is buying parts that can be delivered to you, in some cases fully assembled.

You could also just buy black powder guns directly to your home (idk about in CA or NY though) which are not treated as "firearms" by the ATF.

The only people shooting 3D printed guns are enthusiasts usually, who have other guns.

mcmcmc• 3 months ago

Didn’t Luigi Mangione 3D print his gun? There’s definitely an appeal for criminals

userbinator• 3 months ago

It's called the receiver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_(firearms)

favorited• 3 months ago

You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable.

Why would you buy a pipe at Home Depot? A gun barrel is not a firearm, and is not required to be registered or serialized. You can drive to Arizona or Nevada and buy an actual barrel, with rifling, manufactured to meet well-known specifications, without showing an ID. Until this year, you could have a barrel shipped to your California residence without an ID. There's no need to build the Shinzo Abe contraption.

So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact.

Occam's razor. This isn't a shadowy manufacturing cabal, threatened by 3D printing. Gun control lobbyists are trying to prevent the printing of handgun frames and Glock switches, because they're the easiest parts to print.

Either way, this is bad legislation.

California legislators haven't met a bad gun law that they don't like.

nickff• 3 months ago

The device the parent is describing has a long history, and they're known as 'zip guns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm

iwontberude• 3 months ago

Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I don’t buy for a second that this is some gun control attempt.

kevin_thibedeau• 3 months ago

For the adventurous, there may be a desire for all-plastic construction. Print a cylinder in high-temp filament, wrap it in CF tow, ream to size.

robot-wrangler2• 3 months ago

I'd guess the bring-back-DRM lobbyists are all automotive interests, whether it's OEM or the existing after-market people. Replacing mirror housings and stuff even for cheap cars has got to be one of the highest margin businesses out there, and lux cars? Insane

parineum3• 3 months ago

California legislators haven't met a bad gun law that they don't like.

California and New York have been done more for gun rights than anyone else by passing absurd laws that get struck down by the judiciary, setting precedent.

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

Nope, it is the democrats led by Michael Bloomberg...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/gun-safety-advocates-war...

raptor99• 3 months ago

Do you even realize what you just said? Oh hey why even go to a nearby Home Depot when you can drive over to an entirely different state instead. Really?

jmspring• 3 months ago

California now requires some parts of- like shotgun barrels to go through an ffl.

someguynamedq• 3 months ago

Occam's razor. This isn't a shadowy manufacturing cabal, threatened by 3D printing. Gun control lobbyists are trying to prevent the printing of handgun frames and Glock switches, because they're the easiest parts to print.

Probably more accurate to say politicians are trying to take actions which will be seen publicly as fighting against gun crime. It seems like a stretch to say anyone earnestly believes that 3D printed guns are a real problem in the landscape of existing gun crime in America

bell-cot2• 3 months ago

So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing...

I'd say the real groups behind this are the anti-gun ideologues, the "do whatever it takes to stop my panic attacks over Bad Things maybe happening" left-wing control freaks, and the old-fashioned "big state" authoritarian crowd.

And the only reason they're paying attention to 3d printers is that some pro-gun ideologues and provocative makers have been talking up the concept of 3d printing guns.

whynotmaybe• 3 months ago

Or the gun lobby isn't really happy that anyone can "print" a gun.

caconym_3• 3 months ago

Reminds me of the sUAS legislation crushing the R/C flying hobby. Vague allusions to "safety" are constantly being thrown around, but in fact it seems that big companies are lobbying to claim the airspace for drone delivery and similar autonomous BVLOS operations.

terbo• 3 months ago

And as a result there are a bunch of sub 250g long range digital builds and RTFs that achieve the same as the drones people flew pre remote ID..

jim334425• 3 months ago

Idk what law in particular, but if this is about flying drones at low altitude in places where other people didn't show up to hear drones buzzing, I'd want it banned whoever is doing it.

6510• 3 months ago

square tubes is the solution

Terr_• 3 months ago

Hmm, assuming it's part of somebody's bigger plans with an ulterior motive... The requirement to pass everything through a government watchdog module could be leveraged into DRM/copyright/patent overreach.

hacker_homie• 3 months ago

I think the real issue is that 3d printing is a direct attack on products as a service (think roomba parts, fridge parts, anything with plastic clip assembly) that are planed to break and they don't sell replacement parts.

lots of companies got fat and happy selling you plastic crap for a fortune, now 3d printers let you make plastic crap at home for pennies.

If they must pass these laws, it must include protections for printing consumer goods parts, if they won't add that I will not vote for you.

contact your state reps and tell them that.

hagbard_c• 3 months ago

No, contact your state reps and tell them you don't want these laws passed, period - they should vote against any such laws if they want to have a chance at being voted in. They won't do anything for the stated purpose while they will cripple a thriving sector.

binkHN• 3 months ago

It's total bullshit; I should be able to print all the guns I want. Prop guns, plastic replicas of my guns; I shouldn't have to go though this BS.

Aurornis4• 3 months ago

I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable.

I agree that this legislation is not good, but you apparently aren’t aware of the large communities dedicated to 3D printing guns.

The first 3D printed gun was making headlines 13 years ago and since then it’s turned into a semi-underground fascination.

You aren’t going to be fashioning a gun out of a pipe from Home Depot more easily than the designs these groups are playing with.

Many of the subreddits, Discords, Facebook groups and other communities have started to get shut down since a 3D printed gun was used in a high profile murder recently.

There are a lot of comments in this comment section from people unaware of how big these communities are. I’m not supporting these legislative attempts to interfere with 3D printers but you really should know some of the context.

sleepybrett5• 3 months ago

wasn't luigi's gun 3d printed? (if i remember right it was a glock built from ebay parts and a 3d printed frame with a can. All of those combined meant that it did not cycle properly after the initial shot)

9rx• 3 months ago

what's special about 3d printers?

They are typically stocked with material and ready to deploy at a moment's notice. When the time comes that you need a weapon, casually walking into Home Depot won't be an option.

sleepybrett5• 3 months ago

Most of the '3d printed' guns out there in the 2a community, and all the ones that actually work, require some kind of metal barrel, which might be a pipe, rifled or not.

What they actually hate is people who buy bags of glock parts from ebay (contains everything but the frame) and then print the frame. The frame being the handle part, everything below the slide but none of the internals. That's the legal 'gun' when it comes to most glocks and clones. The new ruger rmx, a newer glock clone, is different, the firing group (trigger and all the associated bits there) is the serialized part. The frame is, of course, very easy to print.

All the regulations around firearms are super fucking stupid, the way they classify different parts and try and make them illegal. Like.. in a lot of states if you have a rifle (ar or otherwise), you are not allowed to have a vertical foregrip for stabalization. However if your foregrip is like 5 degrees off pure vertical... legal.

This 3d printer 'ban' is unenforcable, it's a fucking tool, you can build anything with tools. Sure it's easier and takes less skill to download a glock 19 frame model off the internet and hit print, but there is, apparently, a lot of work that goes into making the gun work with that frame well enough for the gun to actually cycle.

ScoobleDoodle• 3 months ago

If you're a California constituent and inclined to take action you can find your California Assemblymember and Senator here ( https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ ) to voice opposition to California bill A.B. 2047 "Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology."

nullc5• 3 months ago

Alternatively, you could leave California and avoid a whole host of bad policy and legislation. Not that advocating is bad but of the two options one is guaranteed to be successful while the other is unlikely to help.

dyauspitr• 3 months ago

Your 3D printed gun still needs that metal pipe. A 3D printed gun is just a frame for those metal parts.

saltyoldman2• 3 months ago

Home depot can do better than a pipe:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ramset-MasterShot-0-22-Caliber-P...

motbus3• 3 months ago

Although people point out the occam's razor or whatever, i dont think this is true. As it happens with "protect children", "protect people" is the next blabbering speech to trick people accepting lobbied practices. Someone needs to track who is financing this stuff and I think it will make it much clearer. PS: I wouldnt be surprised if it was disney or something

nz• 3 months ago

I mean, the entanglement between technology and politics is difficult to unsee, once one sees it. And the analogy between solar power and grid power, maps cleanly onto 3d printing and manufacturing (trad-printing?). Politics is _most frequently_ about money and the economic surplus, and only rarely about justice or ideology. The funny thing is, that the adjective that is most frequently use to describe markets is "efficient". Yet, whenever technologies that threaten to erode someone's business model appear, the market starts abusing the political infrastructure to introduce inefficiencies and frictions into the adoption of the technologies.

Even though lobbying is not _technically_ illegal, we should probably learn to treat companies that engage in it (to the detriment of society) as if it were. Avoid their products if you can, and get your friend-group to do it as well. Build off-ramps. Maintain and share lists of executives who work at these companies (to put pressure on their reputations -- after all, what is wealth worth, if ordinary people refuse to take your money, or to give you any of their attention?). The market's distinctive feature is that it makes things fungible: currency, goods, and even people. Eliminate or reduce fungibility, and you get a very different kind of dynamic, one that has the potential to reverse the trend of rising inequality (and rent-seeking behavior, and unfair one-sided arrangements, etc) over night.

In fact, the strategy of any company is to find a way to make an entire class of companies/merchants (not competitors) fungible, while making themselves non-fungible. Most moats are built out of the pieces or remnants of someone else's moat.

Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too hung over to tell.

https://matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/winner-art...

https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

DoctorOetker• 3 months ago

I believe such forces are the indirect result of the structure of society and economy.

If legal arms dealers want the state to step in because of some decentralizing technology, then for the government it would be yet another cost center to combat this phenomenon. So lobbyists need to come up with a kind of reward, and design more "palatable" proposals, so that income can be derived by somehow initiating government control into the whole decentralized technology instead of just the illegitimately decentralized subsection...

but punishing "the rest" for actions of a few would mean financing it with taxes, instead of scapegoating the legitimate majority of 3D printer users.

asah• 3 months ago

Using this logic, we never address any problem until we address all problems.

Do we never patch one security hole until we patch all security holes?

(I'm not defending this particular legislation, just saying that this isn't the way to defeat it)

Tangurena2• 3 months ago

Watching what bills show up in my state's legislature, several of them are addressing "Hollywood plots" rather than real-world issues.

For example, one legislator always sponsors a bill (which goes nowhere every year) to outlaw chemtrails. This year's version[0] includes the plot from the SF novel Termination Shock[1]. The word "artillery" was not in any previous session's version, nor was sulfur.

Links:

0 - https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb60.html

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)#

jim334425• 3 months ago

Some expert can make a gun from the hardware store alone, but evidently people find 3D printing way more practical.

shevy-java2• 3 months ago

First, I agree with you, though I don't call it "bad legislation", I call it lobbyism. But there is one tiny nitpick to disagree with, aside from another user pointing out that there are even simpler ways for obtaining firearms.

If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm

While I totally agree with you that this is all about lies, there is still one difference in that most regular firearms are metal-based. With 3D printing one could print plastic or similar materials.

Again, I am not saying this is a reason to explain this lobbyism here, but we also need to be objective when debunking the lies of the other side. For instance, one difference is metal detection (naturally plastic-based weapons would also tend to break more easily, so this whole legislation is a total lie to begin with anyway; California is currently broken. I am surprised about that, usually you'd think other US states are more broken, but California is now in the top 3 lobbyist-controlled states - and from there the disease spreads slowly).

comboy• 3 months ago

We are sorry, but your print resembles random princess from Disney too much (actually, we won't tell you which). Just following the law you know..

ed_balls• 3 months ago

I could ask LLM to find me "legal" parts that are 1:1 with gun parts or even better find metal parts in craftcloud3d.com or sendcutsend.com. With big enough database it could find right items on Amazon. It's impossible to legislate.

33MHz-i486• 3 months ago

true but the government will inevitably demand their own stanza of (blocking) system prompts in the major AI services. then they will ban local LLM and foreign ones.

krunck• 3 months ago

Lets imagine a similar situation but instead of with an additive manufacturing process they try to regulate a subtractive manufacturing process: a traditional CNC machine. There is no way to prevent the CNC system from machining gun parts as along as the machining is done in discrete steps with the same work piece. The software can't know what sitting on the CNC table.

In additive manufacturing it is more difficult but not impossible to print a bunch of pieces that look nothing like a gun part but and in the end be assembled into a gun.

In both the above cases there would need to be sophisticated surveillance software to even come close to detecting "gun-ness."

While I don't have a horse in the gun control race, I do have one in the open-source, running a local OS, running what software I want, and controlling what that software does races.

bmurphy19762• 3 months ago

Some of these bills are written in such a way that they would apply to CNC manufacturing, such that they could even make building your own machine from scratch illegal. They are terribly oppressive and short-sighted.

themafia3• 3 months ago

oppressive and short-sighted.

Which usually means "we're willing to ignore short term damage to get long term results for our political patrons."

YurgenJurgensen• 3 months ago

“Short-sighted” implies that those in favour of this would see it as a bad thing, when in fact, that’s likely the real objective. This is just another shot in the war on ownership.

151557• 3 months ago

WA state's legislation includes subtractive methods, CA's omits it so that they don't have to deal with the wrath of Haas.

aidenn03• 3 months ago

Omitting subtractive methods makes it rather toothless, since there have been places you can go to push a button to start a mill making you a receiver (which is the part that is considered "the gun" to address ship-of-theseus questions aboug guns), then you can add the other parts yourself.

legohead• 3 months ago

waste of time and resources. you aren't going to win a fight against 3d printers. might as well outlaw the printers completely.

doublerabbit• 3 months ago

Next up flinging rubber bands with your two fingers to be banned.

codedokode3• 3 months ago

Sorry if it is a dumb question, but why in USA people try to regulate 3D printing instead of banning sale of bullets without a firearm owner license? What stops people from buying Chinese printers or components on AliExpress? Or using an open source printer? At the same time, if you cannot buy bullets, your plastic gun is worthless.

dmoy• 3 months ago

but why in USA people try to regulate 3D printing instead of banning sale of bullets without a firearm owner license

I mean we're talking about CA, so they kinda already tried to do that

https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/ammunition-regulat...

But, it may not be constitutional:

https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/gun-law-ammunition-ba...

So the real reason is that the ultimate law on the books on gun regulation was written by a band of, you know, armed revolutionaries, who were pretty big fans of the whole armed revolution-ing thing. And it still hasn't been amended.

I bet if you went with a simple majority vote today, you wouldn't get the 2nd amendment. But amendments are pretty difficult to pass, much higher requirements than a simple majority.

mothballed6• 3 months ago

US basically has a firearms license but by exclusion. Anyone with felonies or DV violations can't have guns, neither can illegal immigrants, neither can drug users . There are probably fewer Americans that can legally buy ammo and guns than Canadians by %.

If you use the ATFs guidelines on what is considered a prohibited person, it likely applies to about half of all US adults that are prohibited from buying ammunition. This when you consider ~30+% of US has used cannabis/fentanyl/etc or misused a prescription drug in the past year, the insane number of people we've made felons, the fact that restraining orders are now practically part and parcel of divorce negotiations as leverage (permanent restraining order bars you from owning guns), and then the fact that DV convictions are incredibly common in USA (police automatically arrest someone if they show up on a domestic complaint), then add the illegal immigrant population on top of that.

jubilanti• 3 months ago

US basically has a firearms license but by exclusion.

The essential quality of a license is that you have to affirmatively apply for it, so it operates by inclusion, not exclusion. You're like saying "We basically have an opt-in system, but it operates by opting out." I get your point that it has a similar effect, but words have meaning.

noxer3• 3 months ago

You can make bullets yourself just like you can make the gun. You may remember the assassination of Shinzo Abe.

In the US low powerd black powder is super easy to get you don't even have to take fireworks apart or do home lab chemicals stuff.

codedokode3• 3 months ago

But you need something better than a 3D printer for bullets. So if bullet sales are regulated, there is no need to regulate 3D printing.

Rebelgecko2• 3 months ago

California already has background checks for bullets, you typically can't buy ammo if you haven't bought a gun at your current address.

tekknik4• 3 months ago

Thankfully that was recently overturned.

some_random10• 3 months ago

Some states do already and it's not enough, you can manufacture cartridges as well it's just annoying.

kobalsky• 3 months ago

What stops people from buying Chinese printers

Exactly the same thing that stops you from buying a generic inkjet printers.

Go check Amazon. There are none.

Some say the inkjet printer head is the secret sauce, but then yousearch for generic laser printers and there are none either.

Is every printer technology an uncrackable tech that has resisted decades of reverse engineering?

mbf1• 3 months ago

Follow the money here. Who is actually asking for this?

ggreer4• 3 months ago

This law (along with similar ones in Washington & New York) is probably due to lobbying from Everytown, a gun control organization co-founded & mostly funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. They've sponsored summits to gather politicians & other influential people to restrict 3d printed firearms.[1]

1. https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/everytown-to-convene-...

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

Yup.

Everytown and Moms Demand Action which operates under Everytown also provide the white papers, testimony, polling, and public pressure.

These bills across multiplenstates are 100% democratic developed, sponsored, and pushed. In fact the NRA denounces Everytown and it seems unlikely they would be in cahoots behind this push.

Patrax• 3 months ago

Clearly there are not enough meaningful tasks available in society and all that's left is people in different positions of power trying to look busy.

xbar• 3 months ago

Ugh. Imagine if HP were the only "legal" 3D printer manufacturer for Californians.

fooker2• 3 months ago

This is why republicans get votes.

If you pull nonsense like this in a two party system, there are enough people with blind spots that it tilts the results against you.

My favorite example of such a blind spot is a friend being flabbergasted that someone funny could be evil.

nullc5• 3 months ago

Reason #5382 to not live in California.

tnightengale• 3 months ago

The saddest thing about regulators is often a small payment to the regulated would be more effective and less costly in achieving the same desired result.

They should simply pay people to register 3D printed guns, up to a specific amount, at which point: they should investigate them for illegally manufacturing guns.

Similarly, they should severely penalize possession of a 3D printed gun which has not been registered.

Problem solved. Good luck pretending these people are capable of regulating the compliance of 3D printing software.

What a joke.

ggreer4• 3 months ago

California already requires a license to 3d print firearms.[1] This is the same license needed to mass produce firearms, making legal individual manufacturing incredibly difficult. Also all firearms (even 3d printed ones) in California must have a metal serial number tag embedded in the frame. Given the number and manner of restrictions, I’m not aware of anyone in California who has legally printed a firearm since these laws came into effect.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

fgfarben5• 3 months ago

You used to be able to print the CAG19 carbine but now you have to carve it by hand from a block of wood. Doesn't have the same ring to it.

enahs-sf• 3 months ago

would that someone were inclined to get ahead of such legislation, what are some of the most dangerous 3D printers, just so i know which ones to avoid...

bob001• 3 months ago

I'd bet money that the gun lobby is behind this. What better way to dilute the anti-gun sentiment then to get useless legislation that targets a group that has traditionally been anti-gun. Even the EFF, which generally doesn't touch second amendment stuff, is speaking up. Massive gun lobby win right there.

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

No it is not, see my other comments

bethekidyouwant• 3 months ago

What happens if I order an upper from send cut send? does a human look at it and say oh no. or does a computer?

fgfarben5• 3 months ago

Uppers aren't regulated as firearms. Only lowers. In CA SCS might be required to ask for your ID to make sure you're not a felon to comply with AB 1263.

diego_moita• 3 months ago

I don't know the details but it is a very good idea to restrict people's access to guns.

Guns, fireworks, explosives, sulfuric acid, all sorts of bio-hazards, ... every civilized country restricts peoples' access to these things. It is a no brainier, but Americans obsessively wrap it in ideology.

fgfarben5• 3 months ago

Don't speak here.

mrsssnake• 3 months ago

Easy way to explain the absurdity of the idea is to picture how could a law be made restricting 2D printers from printing schematics of guns.

How the printer could detect it, where the censoring circuit or program would live, how effective it would be and what it means long-term.

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

Easy way to explain the absurdity of the idea is to picture how could a law be made restricting 2D printers from printing schematics of guns. > How the printer could detect it, where the censoring circuit or program would live, how effective it would be and what it means long-term.

Maybe instead of stopping you the printer could add some small almost invisible dots in a pattern to identify which printer printed the schematic.

c0rruptbytes• 3 months ago

Guns are legal, in fact building your own gun, may be the most legal thing in the history of the 2A - there's an enormous amount of "historical" context to back this

It's such a waste of time and resources - you wanna handle gun violence? handle normal violence with proven mechanisms (education, social welfare, etc...)

some_random10• 3 months ago

Everytown doesn't actually care about gun violence, they want to end civilian firearms ownership entirely.

rpmisms3• 3 months ago

As an unabashed American, guns are amazing and an insanely important part of our national culture. Any attempt to diminish this is an attack on the culture of America. We are a nation of dangerous freedoms and matching individual responsibility. In order to maintain a functional country without ruining what makes America special, we need to simply actually enforce laws and I'll take apart in making our national culture one to be proud of again.

I have been watching footage from the Apollo programs recently, and while the types of people who made that possible are very much still around, we need to encourage that sort of thinking once again. Dangerous freedoms, radical Liberty, complete responsibility.

jocular• 3 months ago

Put down the Kool-aid.

leptons• 3 months ago

I wouldn't be proud of having so many guns and the highest rate of gun deaths by far in the developed world (except maybe countries currently at war).

"Guns are amazing"? Really? Nevermind, I know someone just like you. He refuses to fly on an airplane because he can't bring his precious guns with him on the plane. So he's really never been anywhere outside of the midwest. He has no idea how other countries are. And I've never felt safer than when I lived in Europe for several months, away from all the gun maniacs.

The combination of rampant mental illness and entitled assholes and guns in America is a toxic combination. School shootings and mass shootings are things that happen all too frequently in the US, and not too much anywhere else.

But I suppose you'll handwave away all of it, and everything, so you can continue to cherish your "Amazing guns" without ever considering that maybe even more guns is not better for us as a country.

That said, I do NOT endorse this ridiculous 3D printer bill that California is trying to pass. And not because it's about guns, but because it isn't necessary.

clarionbell• 3 months ago

You may be surprised, but there are countries in Europe where gun ownership is relatively wide spread and it just works. Czech Republic for example has it access to guns guaranteed in Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms[1].

One of the reasons why it works, is that there are reasonable conditions. For example, regular health checks, strict registration, passing gun safety examination and, last but not least, not being a criminal. And it works. Despite steadily rising number of guns among people, it is one of most safe countries in the world.

Canada, Finland, Austria and many other countries, prove, that you don't have to impose blanket bans to have a safe country. You just need sensible laws.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_Czech_Republic

rpmisms3• 3 months ago

Yawn. We're a remarkably peaceful country. We should kill more of our criminals, though.

protocolture2• 3 months ago

We are a nation of dangerous freedoms

Sell some AI chips to a chinese company lmao. America wasn't even this back when everyone says America was this.

America is a bunch of slave and non slave states in a big trench coat, sharing the costs of bullying the rest of first the continent and then the rest of the planet.

Yeah some of you have guns big whoop.

lordloki• 3 months ago

Big "those grapes are probably sour anyway" vibes.

Findecanor2• 3 months ago

I used to do cosplay. Many costumes from movies, TV-series and anime are of characters that wield guns, often unique or at least quite distinctive guns. Carrying the correct gun is sometimes a thing that identifies the character, and therefore is an integral part of the cosplay.

For example, I used to cosplay for charity in the Star Wars costuming club 501'st Legion [0], where for most costumes a blaster gun of high likeness to the original is required. It has hundreds of members in California.

These days, it is very common to make cosplay accessories through 3D-printing. A ban on replica guns parts would hit the hobby hard.

[0] https://501st.com/

master-lincoln2• 3 months ago

So that law would also diminish the glorification of weapons in pop culture then. I guess that would be seen as positive side effect for the people supporting this ban.

some_random10• 3 months ago

I really want to highlight this comment to everyone who's on the fence on gun rights or still believes that compromise is possible. This is the position of hardline anti-gun people, their billionaire funded NGOs, and the politicians they finance.

It's not about reducing excess death, it's not about gun violence, it's about abolishing all civilian firearms ownership and removing any positive association of firearms or self defense from the culture. There is no compromise possible because they will never be happy with anything less.

aussieguy1234• 3 months ago

One thing not mentioned.

Forget about printing that copyrighted part for your no longer sold or supported gadget at home.

I guess you'll be forced to replace the whole thing.

lynx09• 3 months ago

They can just make it illegal to create firearms without a license. They aren’t legislating pens and paper for illegal artwork about children. Same for this.

dlcarrier3• 3 months ago

They can't, because of federal supremacy. Chances are that their regulations on 3D printers won't be allowed because federal supremacy, but they're hoping they've found a loophole.

hsuduebc2• 3 months ago

I wish to know if politicians pushing this agenta know that it would be absolutely ineffective and they are doing it solely to appease to their voters or they actually believe this would have any effect on criminals.

sharts• 3 months ago

Why not just ban people communicating with one another so bad ideas can’t be exchanged. /s

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

Why isn't EFF calling out Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for pushing this across the US?

hnburnsy7• 3 months ago

This is the organization behind this...

https://everytownresearch.org/report/printing-violence-urgen...

Lawmakers can take aggressive action to spur change in this area and help prevent the printing of 3DPFs. The most comprehensive solutions would apply nationwide, and Congress should work immediately to pass the innovative laws described here. But even without federal action, state policymakers can take meaningful action to curtail 3DPFs.

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 months ago

One of Michael Bloomberg’s groups. He has four groups or so and is the single biggest funder of anti-gun propaganda, policy, and advocacy in the world.

He does not give 1/2 a shit about the issues that would effect 3D printing industry. I love it because he was trying this before 3D printing and the genie is just so far out of the bottle that it must infuriate him that he didn’t see it earlierZ

balls187• 3 months ago

I'm a lib, but enough is enough. Let gun owners have their guns. Let 3d Printers have their prints. Neither group is the problem.

gbibas• 3 months ago

I live here in CA. If it is something that gets attention at all, whether AI or 3d printing or anything else, politicians here feel it is their duty to regulate it. If it should be regulated like politicians spending our money or insider trading, they want nothing to do with it. Less power for us, more power and money for them.

21asdffdsa12• 3 months ago

Its a reeling of the lawmakers against reality itself. If you read Jules Verne- you always could find and make dangerous chemicals from natural substances and thus by the power of chemistry - you where suddenly a owner of nitroglycerin and owner of a dangerous "substance".

So, the danger is in pre-emptive policing- aka capability reduction. In its extremes it results in what china does- which is producing dangerous objects on mass (every shop has a lathe that can make a gun) - while constantly looking over each other shoulders to see who might ferment revolution or amok. Same with chemistry. Same with software. The panopticon as patchwork counter measure to accumulating dangerous capabilities.

But it can not go much further. If you have a psychological normal individual that buckles under stress and hand it a photon torpedo- the spaceship goes boom. You need "unrealistic" humans, the angles of star trek to be able to handle that sort of capability. Its a whole group of problems, which started with nuclear power. Basically, the material science on humans and organizations is lousy - and the stress tests showed that we fall apart under duress.

Which is why california tries to limit it, while at the same time idealizing human nature as benevolent and at the same time driving onwards technologies, which wind up the lethal mouse-trap of capabilities with ever more potent dangers. Which as paradox as it is, is a expression of a inability to deal with reality.

cultofmetatron2• 3 months ago

I dont' see similar restrictions on Lathes. probably because lathes cost more (but not by much) and need some skill. unlike a 3d printer you can actually make a proper gun on one of those to much higher specs. The hypocracy is unsettling.

This is all at a time when the US desperately needs innovation. China basically owns us on raw manufacturing capability. 3d printers represent an excellent entry point for getting people into hobbyist manufacturing which will be where new ideas ultimately come from. This is just contributing to making is fall behind as a country.

lrvick• 3 months ago

To any legislators watching, if you successfully pass this I am going to give public workshops teaching people how to make 3D printers from parts found at Home Depot out of pure spite, and separately, how to make a 12 gauge shotgun with almost 0 effort from basic parts also found at Home Depot without even using the 3D printer.

Put DRM on plumbing pipes, I dare you.

ProllyInfamous• 3 months ago

Put DRM on plumbing pipes

While I generally agree, we've already reached a point where an ID is required to purchase pseudoephidine and/or facemasks.

And all the copper is already locked up, requiring an associate to help you while you loiter minutes lazenly under dozens of facial-recognition cameræ.

We live in worlds of parallel constructions.

master-lincoln2• 3 months ago

Reminds me of when we built a potato gun from pvc pipes as kids. Another villager noticed us shooting in the fields and when he saw the mechanism he called the local hardware shop and they then required you to be older than 18 to buy pvc pipes.

shevy-java2• 3 months ago

Not long ago, California rushed forward to force age sniffing, aka age verification. See systemd riding along the wave: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954

3D printing is also on a current hype run; I think a lot of this has to do with how cheap it is to print some things. So naturally some companies with overpriced shit, get nervous. So suddenly, California AGAIN, wants to censor and restrict people here.

Now - I think this will fail, 3D printing already won (IMO). It is similar to the right to repair movement. Though at an earlier stage. I am getting tired of all those lobbyists being active in California. And this is a problem that happens a LOT in the USA. This kind of lobbyism needs to go.

It is time to look at which folks act as lobbyists here, at the least at the surface level. All their communication with other organisations or companies, must be made open, so that people can look whether they are lobbyists or not. (This will not cover all lobbyists, but it will cover about 95% of them, because most lobbyists are stupid - see how EU OLAF caught some stupid EU lobbyists here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th... - so the EU is similar to the USA here, all built by lobbyists. See also how Meta bribed people for age-sniffing and similar spying tools or Jeff Grey from honor your oath point at the problem of non-stop monitoring of everyone in cars at all times)

joshstrange• 3 months ago

Why would the EFF use a AI generated image of a Dymo label printer when talking about 3D printing?

The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing

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