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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

#191

Post by simplyluke »

mcmcmc wrote: post #103
giancarlostoro wrote: post #81

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

As far as I've been able to find, that's basically the only documented case of a criminal use of a 3d printed gun. His also malfunctioned every shot during the crime.

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.

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

#193

Post by simplyluke »

horsawlarway wrote: post #93
aidenn0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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!)?

Washington's legislation that just passed includes a vague ban on possession of any files/instructions on 3d printing and CNC/milling/basically any manufacturing. As far as I can tell it's potentially illegal to own a book on gun manufacturing processes in the state of Washington now if you're not a federally licensed firearms manufacture.

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

#194

Post by ggreer »

mbf1 wrote: post #102

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

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-...

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

#195

Post by jlarocco »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #158
jimbob45 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The argument isn't that authoritarians can't solve problems.. It more about how they do it. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/china-still-n...

Unfortunately, America is just as bad, without the benefit of solving problems.

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-agents-are-using-family-se...

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166816

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

#196

Post by schoen »

dooglius wrote: post #178
jmyeet wrote: post #17

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 susp…

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 h…

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.

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

#197

Post by bob001 »

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.

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

#198

Post by fasterik »

jlarocco wrote: post #195
WillPostForFood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that authoritarians can't solve problems.. It more about how they do it. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/china-still-n...

Unfortunately, America is just as bad, without the benefit of solving problems. https://truthout.org/articles/ice-agents-are-using-family-se... https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166816

> America is just as bad

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...

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

#199

Post by sheikhnbake »

BoneShard wrote: post #139
iwontberude wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they don't give a shit about 3D printing, especially in CA. It's not like you're competing with a glock19 type hand gun and cornering this market.

3D gun printing has come a long way in a short amount of time. 3D printed lower receivers can weather several hundred rounds of 7.62 at this point
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