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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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>before 9/11 caused them to tighten up the rules, 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 far…

It worked how I described in the late 1990s. I know someone who went through the new process and it didn't seem that onerous. As I recall it isn't that different from the process for getting Global Entry on your passport. Explosives are still heavily used in mining and construction. Many of those operations are just a couple individuals, not any kind of real company.

> I know someone who went through the new process and it didn't seem that onerous

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.

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

#183
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not like a schizo conspiracy theory? Like why would the grocery chains fund the bag bans? So they can save a tiny amount of money on paying for bags? 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 effec…

The grocery chain campaign is well documented. Just search for it. 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.

How is this damaging to them at all? They literally get to cut one item completely off their expense list.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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.

OK, then what's my plan when coyotes and mountain lions attack my child and I on our regular walks on rural property? As we build more housing and cities close in, these wild animals are being run out of their natural habitat.

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.

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

#185
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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

They could, they could also more likely buy an 80% firearm lower that does the same, this is why the ATF under Biden cracked down hard on ghost guns, to the point that one manufacturer shut down entirely. I like to watch police bodycam videos when I'm bored, there's a LOT of people who have 80% or "ghost guns" as they call them, I don't think I've ever seen someone using a 3D printed gun. Luigi Mangione was a strange out of the norm exception, he intentionally did it that way.

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.

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

#186
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He 3d printed the frame, but you need dozens of parts, milled or stamped from steel to complete it and have a working gun. Even the 3d printed frame needs steel inserts. It is like 3d printing a case, then buying a motherboard, CPU and RAM at Best Buy, and claiming your built a 3d printed computer. There is some appeal to criminals, because the frame is the part that gets the serial number and is regulated. But if yo…

Especially with "80%" gun frames out there, which aren't too hard to get, and don't require any sort of background check in many jurisdictions, since its technically not a firearm, just a block of polymer you dremel down to spec.

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

#188
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.

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...

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

#189

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 devic…

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…

> 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.

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

#190
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.

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