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.
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.
> Out come the zip guns. Homemade gun. You pull the hook back, catch that bullet square, ping. Hit you in the head, man, you got serious problems.
The gun lobby has a long history of trying to ban low cost market entrants.
But having to bring your own bags limits how much you can buy. If someone has a plan to just use their own bags, they will likely forgo purchases at a higher rate than if the bag is not in the equation for them.
It's not obvious to me that the buying limit effect sales decrease would not outweigh the savings on physical bag purchases. Maybe I'm not following?
The short answer is that bags are a non-trivial cost for the larger chains. Now, they get to charge for them at an astounding markup and no longer have to compete with any grocery store on this point. All grocery stores are affected equally, which means it is disproportionately damaging to mom-and-pop stores and smaller chains.
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.
There is some appeal to criminals, because the frame is the part that gets the serial number and is regulated. But if you want to attack this problem, the 3d printer is a backwards way to do it.
Legislators point towards the rise of "ghost guns" in crimes, but then you dig into that and they include every criminal who files off the serial number on a stolen gun in the stats, which is by far the more common circumstance along with being much easier, more reliable, and cheaper for a criminal than 3d printing a lower and assembling it.
there was no nelson device, he would have been better off with an empty soda bottle.
In reality, a 3D printed gun is not reliable, the filament will melt and nobody wants to have a melted gun while in the middle of a shoot out with other criminals or law enforcement.
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.
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...
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!)?
While poetically consistent, it enlarges the crater around these bad laws if they are passed and enforced. Basically all new manufacturing setups will need to stop and reprogram to stop and start according to fluctuating rules designed by committee, and will need to be made brittle to prevent circumvention.
It is a debacle.
Or just move to Texas. Or even Idaho or Dakotas. Which, under a certain angle, is good, it would lessen the wealth and expertise disbalance between states.
I still hope that California comes to senses before they would need to accept the moniker The Footgun State.
Still a thing in Australia.
If you've ever been a kid copying TMNT Michelangelo with home made nunchucks you've almost certainly smacked yourself in the face.
Y'know what's martially better than two sticks with a string between them? A single big stick.
That's kind of the point. Look at the way industry is regulated in any "high touch" state. Beyond the most basic of home businesses just about everything industrial is "illegal without a license".
Like I can't just park a tub grinder on my property and start taking tree waste from tree services and landscapers and selling truck loads of chips to the local pulp mill. I need to bend over and spread 'em for a state license.
They would be overjoyed for all manufacturing to be like that. They would love to ban your CNC plasma table or laser cutter and then sell you back the right to use it so long as you shell out $$$ to some compliance industry (that invariably is owned by a bunch of people well connected to the legislature, if environmental and weed are anything to go by).
> 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.
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.
What are bullets and shell casings made out of again?
If you want something resembling an actual gun (more than one shot, won’t blow up in your hand, some reasonable chance of accuracy, etc), then you’re going to be using multiple metal components (including the bullets of course) all of which would show up on a metal detector.
If you have a capable VMC, you can make the die and other equipment necessary to stamp shell casings from commonly-available parts and machinery.
From there, with a modern Dillon or Hornady reloading press, you can crank out thousands of rounds per day without issue.
Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture, but (good-enough) bullets, casings, etc. are completely doable.
thats a problem that may not endure. if a firearm is reengineered to use an electrode to detonate charge rather than a chemical primer, there is no need for murcury fulminate, just a piezo electric spark generator, and a few square cm of cerebral cortex.
It is a mature technology. The main issue is cost and simplicity, since it often requires adding electronics to weapons that normally would not require them. The military uses electronically primed cartridges for things like chain guns and autocannons, since those require electronics to fire regardless of how it is primed.
yes the very nature of a chain cannon, makes electronic priming,the easier way to go.
so far we can still go to the store with 20$ and come back with a 200pk of 209s, someday that might be not so easy, and electronic is the better/only way.
when you have a chain cannon rof 100 rnds per second, it gets intense.
a spark discharge solves a lot of kinetic issues with engineering the mechanism and its timing.
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.
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.
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.
Not just because of random strangers. I went through a mental health crisis, and there was a dark time where if I had had a gun I would be dead now. No amount of lockers or safe boxes or mental health tests would have saved me from that gun.
And wtf do you need a gun for anyway? I have never, not once, been in a situation where having a gun would have improved it. Why do you think giving everyone guns would be a good thing?
Before crystallizing strong opinions about guns I suggest you spend some time learning to wield them. It's trivial to travel to a place that embraces guns and engage in a training session. A lot of people are surprised that the reality of it is very different than they imagined. It's not like in the movies. Kind of like how driving a car is not like in the movies. I have many friends who have no interest in guns who I have introduced to shooting, and even though they have not changed their opinions they told me they enjoyed the experience. With enough familiarity guns are not feared, but respected, similar to driving a car makes first time drivers nervous. We are surrounded daily by miriad tools we take for granted daily that have awesome lethal power within them, we'd all be wise to remember.
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.
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.
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.
Other states like Colorado have similar bills that define a "3d printer" as a computer aided machine that uses additive or subtractive manufacturing processes so CNC machines likely aren't safe either.
if you set up your job so that you print a block of, lets say 4 lower receivers for a stoner style firearm. and you ran a number of printers, you start an arsenal, for a fire team, not just a lonewolf, and that scares people.
"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.
If they wanted a gate on designs it would have to happen in slicing software, not the actual printer.
Otherwise it's pretty trivial for someone to just bypass the slicer and hand write the gcode.
And software? My Bridgeport and Logan were built before computers were available to the home consumer. Good luck stopping someone like me.
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.
https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/new-everytown-report-...
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
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.
You would be correct.
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.
Which usually means "we're willing to ignore short term damage to get long term results for our political patrons."
> An FFL or unlicensed machine shop may also desire to make available its machinery (e.g., a computer numeric control or "CNC" machine), tools, or equipment to individuals who bring in raw materials, blanks, unfinished frames or receivers and/or other firearm parts for the purpose of creating operable firearms. Under the instruction or supervision of the FFL or unlicensed machine shop, the customers would initiate and/or manipulate the machinery, tools, or equipment to complete the frame or receiver, or entire weapon. The FFL or unlicensed machine shop would typically charge a fee for such activity, or receive some other form of compensation or benefit. This activity may occur either at a fixed premises, such as a machine shop, or a temporary location, such as a gun show or event.
> A business (including an association or society) may not avoid the manufacturing license, marking, and recordkeeping requirements under the GCA simply by allowing individuals to initiate or manipulate a CNC machine, or to use machinery, tools, or equipment under its dominion or control to perform manufacturing processes on blanks, unfinished frames or receivers, or incomplete weapons. In these cases, the business controls access to, and use of, its machinery, tools, and equipment. Following manufacture, the business "distributes" a firearm when it returns or otherwise disposes a finished frame or receiver, or complete weapon to its customer. Such individuals or entities are, therefore, "engaged in the business" of manufacturing firearms even though unlicensed individuals may have assisted them in the manufacturing process.
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/
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.
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.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47771707 for the rest.
This doesn't even address the constitutional right. You can't ban the printing press and claim it doesn't affect the freedom of speech.
19th century revolvers tended to require separate blasting caps, but you still had to buy them even if you could make the bullets.
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.
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.
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.
It's such a waste of time and resources - you wanna handle gun violence? handle normal violence with proven mechanisms (education, social welfare, etc...)
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.
PS Nobody in their right mind thinks the Dems support civil liberties. You just wish that was true and/or live in a bubble.
https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/
Before the recent wave of gerrymandering started by Texas, California had an independent, non-partisan redistricting committee.
Could you provide a source for the claim that before 2025, there was significant gerrymandering in California?
As I said about civil liberties, there is a perception that Democrats are the lesser of two evils, given the realignment of the parties around segregation and civil rights in the 1960s. The Dixiecrats who were in favor of segregation left the Democratic party, while Republicans who favored racial integration joined the Democratic party. Then the Republican presidential campaigns of Goldwater, Nixon, and Regan shifted the party line to appeal more to the former Dixiecrats in the South. I'm agnostic about which party is better on civil liberties in 2025; I'd be interested in any research on the topic.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/china-still-n...
https://truthout.org/articles/ice-agents-are-using-family-se...
The Human Rights Index for the United States dropped from 0.93 to 0.83 in 2025, which is concerning. Meanwhile, China scores 0.18, which is significantly worse. For comparison, countries that score higher than China include Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.
Globally, China is 6th percentile on the Human Rights Index. The United States is 65th percentile. That puts the U.S. well below most developed countries, but it's nowhere close to "just as bad."
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-index-vdem?t...
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.
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...
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.
The guy who killed Shinzo Abe didn't need any of these things and still shot him.
Good luck banning that in any meaningful form.
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.
Happy Patriot's Day this weekend (April 19th)!
The Sullivan Act was passed in 1911, and it took 111 years to overturn (Bruen). So gun control cases move slowly like everything else.
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.
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.
pellet guns have low spin per inch, and use drag to add extra stability. and keep velocity below that trans-sonic shock range.
if you went to a reloading shop, and purchased some .177, or .22 projectiles, trimmed them down, or core them to about half wieght, and it will perform like a small rifle.
or, you can just break these stupid, unenforceable laws and buy out of state or just "uncastrate" it yourself.
no idea why so many people get their panties in a twist everytime California passes an unenforceable law. they're unenforceable.
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.
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.
You don’t even have to go that far. $10 and a trip to the DMV is apparently an insurmountable barrier.
I can sort of buy the ID argument from places like Vermont but the arguments in many/most states are just complete bullshit where they've worked backwards to rationalize it and that's why there is no consistency for ID gating of rights within even the same state.
The trick is to just tax murder so people can't afford it anymore.
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!
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.
1. https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/everytown-to-convene-...
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.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
How is this different?
Edit: I appreciate the responses! Thank you
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.
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.
Pun intended
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.
Far easier to dump the firmware and NOOP out that algo.
- 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.
> 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.
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.
I am all for sensible gun regulations but that is almost never the case in practice.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Traditionally, arson was the means of mass killing, as it didn't have either problem. That's gotten much more difficult due to fire safety.
- 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?
This isn't a judgement on your general point, but I think bombs and bioweapons and etc are very bad examples for you here.
Before 9/11 caused them to tighten up the rules, buying high explosives in the US was cash-and-carry. You could walk in and select different kinds of high explosives from a giant menu. If you wanted something unusual they could special order it. The only real requirement was that you had a non-sparking container for it (basically, no exposed metal) when you carried it away. Most people aren't familiar with this because most regions of the US don't have much need for these types of stores.
It still isn't difficult today from my understanding, there is just more paperwork. The more practical hurdle is complying with safe storage regulations since they want some distance between where you store it and the neighbors. You can't just stash a few hundred pounds in your suburban garage.
You mean "before the Weather Underground blew up a bunch of random shit with hardware store dynamite in the 1970s".
>It still isn't difficult today from my understanding, there is just more paperwork.
The paperwork and compliance is enough of an expensive PITA it precludes everyone who isn't a regular commercial user, which is exactly the point.
It used to be that farmers just cleared forest and blew stumps and rocks up. This might sound absurd but when you start looking at the cost of doing that job with equipment it's preferable if you're rural enough to not endanger anything.
Explosives are still heavily used in mining and construction. Many of those operations are just a couple individuals, not any kind of real company.
My understanding is that it's nigh on impossible as an individual now but I may be wrong.
>Many of those operations are just a couple individuals, not any kind of real company.
In my limited experience the guys who do the explosives have typically made a business out of it and get subcontracted to many mines and jobsites to blow this or that up.
My neighbor is retired EOD, he has all Federal licenses manufactures explosives for the purpose of stump removal, if you can believe it, I’ve seen the process. It’s so easy a caveman could do it. Thankfully, no one really seems to do so. Mostly because manufactured firearms are easier to get ahold of. Or in Europe, smuggled weapons.
We cannot forget what insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan did. It’s hubris to say “can’t happen here.”
As a bit of trivia, when congress defunded the ability for felons to restore their firearm rights, they actually forgot part of it. By an accident of history, felons can still get an explosives license.
At the moment the 3D printing crowd are pretty savvy I’m sure many could hook up a new controller or flash their existing one.
Is the answer "dont be on rural property!" or are there real practical solutions?
> but I think bombs and bioweapons and etc are very bad examples for you here
Are there better examples?
Also, I for one don't undermine the drive and tenacity of an evil person and to what extent they are willing to cause harm.
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.
California gun laws in a nutshell.
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
Hey, my printer might be going up in value.
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.
(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.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.
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.
GDR