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

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

#31

Post by rolph »

convolvatron wrote: post #4
asdff wrote: post #3

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.

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

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.

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

#32

Post by bdcravens »

asdff wrote: post #3

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.

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.

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

#33

Post by EvanAnderson »

Retr0id wrote: post #27
dlev_pika wrote: post #20

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

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.

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.)

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

#34

Post by Zak »

dlev_pika wrote: post #20

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

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.

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

#35

Post by pensatoio »

dlev_pika wrote: post #20

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

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.

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

#36

Post by subhobroto »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #23
subhobroto wrote: post #8

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 t…

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.

- 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?

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

#37

Post by [deleted] »

pensatoio wrote: post #35
dlev_pika wrote: post #20

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

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.

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by horsawlarway »

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.

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

#39

Post by 15155 »

bdcravens wrote: post #32
asdff wrote: post #3

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.

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 u…

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.

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

#40

Post by nemomarx »

subhobroto wrote: post #36
cultofmetatron wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- 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?

We also restrict the components of those pretty heavily, though. Try buying too much fertilizer without a farm and see who shows up.

This isn't a judgement on your general point, but I think bombs and bioweapons and etc are very bad examples for you here.

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