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California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

the3dprintingnerd.com

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Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#161

Post by elzbardico »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #133
harshreality wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A law like this just passed in New York State. If this fails it'll be because the tech industry expresses disapproval too loudly to ignore. The legislators don't care about the underlying criticism. Almost no legislators have ever used a 3d printer or written any software, beyond maybe simple assigned programs if they had a required intro-to-programming course. Few are "tech" people. The rest don't understand this te…

Are these laws already on the books places like Europe, Japan with strict gun control laws?

Good laws for gun control probably are enough to cover also 3D printed guns.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#162

Post by creato »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #138
bluescrn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until people get police showing up at their door because they tried to print something harmless but gun-shaped (like a light gun for retro games, or Nerf-style toys) and were flagged by the AI 'firearm detector'?

If you want to have a voice in how the regulation is implemented, perhaps you should offer suggestions for how to implement it better. That's how it works in most industries; legislators propose to enact regulation X, manufacturers respond that X would have undesirable consequences and Y would be better, and then they discuss to figure out how to best balance all the competing interests. For reasons that aren't entir…

> For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, firearms manufacturers seem to think they're entitled to instead stomp their feet and say "no, no regulation, you have to let me do whatever I want!".

Who exactly is the "firearms manufacturer?" I've owned and used 3D printers for years. Not once has anything I've used or seen from any 3D printer manufacturer or other related supplier have anything to do with guns.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#163

Post by elzbardico »

whartung wrote: post #115
int32_64 wrote: post #74

Are 3D-printed guns even remotely reliable, or is it just a moral panic? A brass tube and a pin is probably less likely to fail than 3d printed materials.

They’re not printing the metal parts. They’re printing the frame (as in “polymer framed handgun”). The frame is the part that gets the serial number and is considered the controlled part of the gun. Rather than the trigger, the springs, the barrel, etc. Other than the frame, which requires an FFL for transfer, especially across state lines, the rest of the parts can be ordered and shipped from anywhere and are not co…

Wait. Do you mean I can simply buy barrels, a trigger mechanism, all without any special license, but not the frame?

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#164

Post by K0balt »

mrandish wrote: post #71
umvi wrote: post #28

> The required technology is not possible - 3D printers read code, not intent; they cannot tell what a shape is for. "Anthropic announces Project Disarm, a new model designed for 3d printer manufacturers to quickly infer whether the intent of an stl file is a weapon. The printer first submits the job to the cloud, and only after it's approved will it print." Not that I want this future, just that I can imagine it.

Yes, I can imagine it too. And, if such a 'safety nanny' is enacted into law, I'm confident it will A. Refuse to print a significant number of innocent projects, or B. Be trivially circumvented by bad actors. The odds are high that it will manage to do both.

Totally circumvented by everyone, basically. You can hook up an arduino to most consumer 3d printers and throw away the motherboard that comes with them. Aside from being stupid and dangerous, this is going to create some excellent makerscale marketing opportunities.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#165

Post by LorenPechtel »

giantg2 wrote: post #76

NY is pushing the same sort of stuff. The question to ask is how many people are actually being killed with 3D printed weapons? I don't have that info, but I would guess they are statistical outliers and would have been replaced by other homemade weapons if not available. Politicians love to "fix" problems that aren't really problems in the first place.

The problem is there is a lot of garbage about it. Ghost guns are a real issue, but ghost guns are not 3D printed guns.

3D printed is a very niche case. They're only good for one shot ever, they are not reliable even for that. And they're bulky. The one thing they do is make it much harder for a metal detector to find them.

Ghost guns made by CNC milling equipment are nearly identical to what you would buy from the manufacturer, except they do not have a serial number and you won't have the background check for a firearms purchase.

But politicians are reacting to the ghost guns by going after the printed guns.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#166

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

creato wrote: post #162
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have a voice in how the regulation is implemented, perhaps you should offer suggestions for how to implement it better. That's how it works in most industries; legislators propose to enact regulation X, manufacturers respond that X would have undesirable consequences and Y would be better, and then they discuss to figure out how to best balance all the competing interests. For reasons that aren't entir…

> For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, firearms manufacturers seem to think they're entitled to instead stomp their feet and say "no, no regulation, you have to let me do whatever I want!". Who exactly is the "firearms manufacturer?" I've owned and used 3D printers for years. Not once has anything I've used or seen from any 3D printer manufacturer or other related supplier have anything to do with guns.

Then I'd expect you won't be affected by this ban on manufacturing guns with 3D printers. Perhaps there's some changes we should make to better ensure you won't be affected; if so by all means you should suggest them.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#167

Post by DivingForGold »

cladopa wrote: post #151
jchw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the fact that Claude Opus 4.8 decided I needed a cybersecurity exemption to debug a stupid pure virtual call bug (basically virtual method called inside of destructor) that I had already found, oh boy, I sure would love to have my 3D prints analyzed by Anthropic safe guards. We should also ensure that nothing shaped like a dildo can be printed without scanning our face and genitalia and keeping it on file wi…

Frankly who cares about dildos when your personal freedom and private property of you and your family is at stake.You can buy uncountable dildo models in a shop. I recently was in Venezuela, I have been in Cuba. I am a native spaniard. There you have a group of people that took control of the weapons in the country and uses it to basically enslave the rest of the country. When the people in power have automatic weapo…

Ummm, well, seems in historical perspective that quite a few instances of rebels using improvised molotov cocktails against tyrannical governments. When it's a country that the US disapproves of, seems they support this activity as "freedom fighters". But when this behavior occurs in protests inside the homeland, obviously the authorities come down hard.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#168

Post by mbgerring »

In general I agree with the 3D printing and open source community that bills like these are bad ideas. However, I want to ask this question in the spirit of helping craft better arguments:

Given that it is extremely well known that most commercial printers will refuse to print anything that looks like counterfeit currency, why is this considered technically unworkable?

I agree that compliance would be onerous, but that's different from insisting that it's not possible.

Re: California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business

#169

Post by LorenPechtel »

bluescrn wrote: post #103
int32_64 wrote: post #74

Are 3D-printed guns even remotely reliable, or is it just a moral panic? A brass tube and a pin is probably less likely to fail than 3d printed materials.

In the US I believe there's many metal 'spare parts' for guns available, including the barrel, so don't need to print the whole thing. So they're usually not talking about entirely printed guns. A pure plastic gun seems more likely to blow the users hand off than hit their target. Especially if just downloaded and printed in PLA on default settings (few walls, sparse infill...)

This. Guns contain many wear items.

So what the ATF does is take an essential part not substantially influenced by wear and declare it to be the gun. Trade in anything that sufficiently resembles this part is treated as trade in guns. Other parts are not considered guns, they're just pieces of metal or plastic. Then there are the parts that you're not supposed to have. But is that an oil filter or a silencer? When it's on the gun it's obvious, when it's listed on a website as an oil filter...

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