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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

#91

Post by codedokode »

rolph wrote: post #16
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.

blackpowder is just barely chemistry, more like engineering. 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…

Making a bullet is definitely more difficult than printing a plastic gun handle (you need the bullet itself, and the cartridge fit it perfectly), and you have a non-zero chance to lose some parts of the body if you make a mistake.

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

#92

Post by kube-system »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #50
horsawlarway wrote: post #38

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 regulati…

Not that I support any of these obviously stupid bills but: > 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.

There was a panic about plastic guns back in the 80s too when the Glock came out, and Congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act.

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.

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

#93

Post by horsawlarway »

aidenn0 wrote: post #74
horsawlarway wrote: post #38

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 regulati…

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!)?

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

#94

Post by burnt_toast »

horsawlarway wrote: post #80
rolph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats special is speed and consistency. 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.

Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? 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.

> Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover?

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.

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1144

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

#95

Post by bdcravens »

akersten wrote: post #49
bdcravens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Could probably create exceptions for bullets used at the gun range, so you can become proficient and safe. 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!

To be honest I was thinking more along the lines of you either store ammo at the range, with a checkin/checkout process, or you can receive a tax receipt for number of spent casings.

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

#96

Post by dmoy »

codedokode wrote: post #82

Sorry if it is a dumb question, but why in USA people try to regulate 3D printing instead of banning sale of bullets without a firearm owner license? What stops people from buying Chinese printers or components on AliExpress? Or using an open source printer? At the same time, if you cannot buy bullets, your plastic gun is worthless.

> but why in USA people try to regulate 3D printing instead of banning sale of bullets without a firearm owner license

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.

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

#97

Post by rolph »

horsawlarway wrote: post #80
rolph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats special is speed and consistency. 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.

Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? 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.

i mean speed and consistency, compared to manually CnC [crank n curse] cutting, or printing.

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.

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

#98

Post by mothballed »

antonymoose wrote: post #85
nemomarx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The “Oklahoma City Fertilizer Bomb” style bomb is heavily watched. ANFO just isn’t a good vector for a lone wolf anymore. With that said, any GWOT veteran with explosives training could make enough HME to make a mass casualty event à la OKC all over again. Maybe not all at once, right this second, but it’s a real threat vector. Worse, these training manuals available open-source and easy to replicate. My neighbor is…

I don't think the licenses are hard to get anyway. The hardest part is satisfying the storage requirements.

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.

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

#99

Post by favorited »

horsawlarway wrote: post #38

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 regulati…

> 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.

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.

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

#100

Post by lazide »

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!)?

Because those aren't as trendy right now. This is similar to banning nunchucks and throwing stars in the 80's (yes, that was a thing).
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