now they have to do 80% printers, kits composed of not a printer subunits, to be assembled on site.
then DIY sources must be dealt with:
https://pea3d.com/en/how-to-build-your-own-3d-printer/
it looks like mole whackings, all the way down.
Regulating theoretical guns? No requirement is too draconian.
You can pretty much tell when any given administration has run out of ideas once they start making a huge amount of noise about laws that affect to first and second order literally nobody. 3-D printed guns is basically California's version of illegal immigrants voting in elections. Both things happen to a vanishingly small degree that it's not worth taking any action on either, but you can make them sound like they're the greatest threat to America if you have a megaphone loud enough.
Here's one.
"Life is complicated, so is rule-making."
Eh, small thing there. Ever notice how when discussion about voter ID laws in the US come up that commenters from other countries are absolutely blown away by the idea of not having to show an ID when you vote? Because it’s such an obvious thing to not just leave up to the honor system, like we do? Point being, everyone else seems to think this “thing that could never happen” is worth safeguarding against.
But this is what I'm talking about it being a theoretical problem. It's so obvious that this could be an issue but it's not an actual issue and the USA stands as an example that, counterintuitively, you actually can rely on the honor system. And so because the system currently works as it is and there's no real problem to point to I think it is reasonable to be inherently suspicious of the motives of a government that wants to make a thing harder without being able to point to a concrete problem.
A less controversial example on hacker news would be having to show your government ID to access porn. We are all rightfully suspicious of the motives of a government that wants that when to most Americans it is plainly obvious that there is not a real problem being solved. It's so obvious that you should have to show proof that you're 18 in order to access 18 and up material but we have more than two decades of proof that just asking them if they're 18 and up works well enough.
Well, two things. First, your phrasing implies there’s no regulations around firearm ownership at all, which is not true.
Second, much to the chagrin of California and similar states, that pesky second amendment exists. Which makes the kind of regulations they _want_ around firearms (i.e., regulate/tax them out of existence) kind of tricky. But presumably regulations around what you can do with a 3D printer are much easier to handle from a constitutional perspective.
Not really. They do whatever regulations they want all the time. It's just sometimes federal government steps in and forces certain local laws to not be enforced.
I was able to get CCW permit in LA only due to such intervention.
Carrying a handgun for self-defense was impossible, as the local authorities only gave out permits to those with political connections. This caused a scandal in 2020 when the Santa Clara County Sheriff was caught issuing concealed carry permits to some bodyguards at Apple in exchange for iPads.[1] Thanks to Bruen[2] it is now possible for any law-abiding citizen to get a permit if they jump through all the hoops (which includes fingerprinting, a psych eval, and examination of your social media posts), though it can take over a year to process the application and costs can exceed $1,000.
At some point the law changed to require a background check to buy ammunition, which always failed for me. I never figured out why, but my guess is that my name didn't fit in the state's database. This sort of thing happened to around 10% of legal gun owners in the state. I never got it sorted out before I moved away.
1. https://www.reuters.com/business/apples-security-chief-accus...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_&_Pistol_...
(The answer is actually "yes, several".)
if a printing or milling job, or some combination of both, is split into many portions, until each portion is such a jigsaw puzzle, [perhaps literally] that it cant be filtered as its so non specific in form, that it could be anything.
All the news stories about ghost guns being 3D printed didn't hurt either. So they can sell a narrative of protecting people.
But also, California regulators likely see the regulatory landscape as the reason this law is needed rather than in spite of it.
Gun manufacturers are likely against these types of regulations because many of them would affect manufacturers and the tools they use too.
Note that "the federation" allowed states to have stricter gun laws until recently when we got a new partisan supreme court that is out of step with the previous 200 years of jurispudence.
The result of United States v. Cruikshank was that southern states were allowed to to prohibit black individuals from owning firearms to defend themselves from the KKK. Not exactly a great example of gun control.
What's also crazy it is that it is also relatively recently that the first amendment was incorporated against states and localities as well.
No chance. For them compliance is the easiest thing in the world to law like that
Definitely not, it's pressure from the anti-gun lobby that keeps pushing "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!"
These bills are being introduced in the states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime. But the lobby groups and candidates campaign and fundraise on the issue so they have to keep the boogeyman alive rather than admit that the policies have been a failure.
Similarly to how many (most?) guns used criminally in Mexico actually come from the United States.
Edit: I'm not surprised by the downvotes, but I am amused. These are objective facts. Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States. Americans love the boogeyman of dangerous Mexican cartels so much they never seem to ask themselves where these guns come from in the first place. Hint: look in the mirror.
The characterization of the federal government as "broken" (at least in this capacity) and "dysfunctional" is a normative judgment you're making based on your own subjective value preferences.
Some -- perhaps most -- Americans regard the federal constitution's ability to restrain states from enacting policies that transgress against generally accepted individual rights as desirable, and working as intended.
Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States? That would be a question of fact, not characterization. And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states? Or are you going to invent some other strawman to attack in your defense of your "individual rights"?
The "most restrictive gun control" states in the US would still be generally by far the least restrictive gun control states in the rest of the developed world (you know, where gun-related deaths are a small fraction of here?).
Your answer smacks of "well, they tried and surprise surprise it doesn't work so why are we doing it?", i.e. "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".
> they have to keep the boogeyman alive rather than admit that the policies have been a failure.
It's a documented, empirical fact that there is a marked correlation between common-sense gun laws and reduced rates of gun deaths.[1]
I won't try to make as strong a claim as the person you are responding to, but unfortunately, the politicized nature of the topic makes research on gun violence, especially as it relates to gun laws in the US, extremely fraught. The vast majority of research articles are plagued with issues. One should not just blanket trust the research (in either direction, and there are definitely peer reviewed journal articles pointing in different directions).
The claim you responded to was too strong, but for similar reasons, yours is also far far too confident.
I'm arguing that your statement, citation supported or otherwise, was stronger than I believe is warranted. You (correctly) criticized the original comment for making a stronger claim than they were able to support. You then technically did a better job in supporting your own claim (in the sense that you made any attempt to support it at all), but, in my opinion, you still made the same mistake of making a claim that was much stronger than warranted.
Yet another lie by ommision. Violent deaths by guns have no relation to strength of gun laws. What that measures is the number of accidental deaths by guns. If gun owners want to kill themselves it's not my job to keep them safe.
Not so fun fact, the person most likely to be killed by a gun in your home is you.
Some places deal with that reality head on, and it has an outcome that a lot of people are okay with.
No shit: people commit suicide (which your "statistic" you lifted from Everytown, Giffords, or VPC - anti-gun lobbies includes.)
Suicidal people aren't a valid reason for my rights to be restricted, sorry.
You also have a right to travel around the country, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to drink and drive. There are plenty of valid, constitutional reasons for firearm ownership to be restricted to qualified individuals. When these restrictions are in place, many fewer people die. It is what it is.
Also, what a shitty analogy: suicide is by definition a self-harmful act, DUI is almost always a socially-harmful act on its own.
(And in many states, you can DUI on private property, by the way.)
But I doubt most people count suicide as “violent crime”.
So of course you're going to have wildly-overreaching proposals making it through committees and put to the vote, because no one from the other side is there to compromise with. Americans prefer to debate on the news circuit instead of the committee floor.
Thank you California for acting on this, our top national priority.
You could make a similar case for this as was made for the banning of highly toxic coal gas in the UK in the 1960's. Most suicides are acts of distressed individuals who have quick, easy access to means of ending their own lives. The forced changeover from coal gas to natural gas is largely credited with a reduction of suicide by 40% after it was done. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/
I don't think 3d printed guns have been around long enough to really provide meaningful data on whether this law will be effective, and on the whole, I'm not thrilled about it. But again, as was originally commented: this is an issue where states are, perhaps ineffectively and ineptly, attempting to solve what they see as problems, under a federal government that has shown itself incredibly resistant to common sense gun regulation that virtually everyone, including the gun owning community, thinks is a good idea.
What historical precedent is there for infringement of Constitutionally-enumerated rights of others based on suicides?
Why is this somehow a "gotcha" that would justify these infringements, in your mind?
These bans are almost exclusively in states with already extremely strict (high rated by the gifford's law people) gun laws.
So far, there is zero evidence in the last 30 years more strict gun laws have curbed crime. The states with the strictest laws conveniently have the highest proportion of gun crime. The same people writing these laws don't understand what "per capita " means. Nor are they willing to confront the reality of what the data shows. The calculus for these petty tyrants has changed from banning guns wholesale to lawfare. Make owning and purchasing firearms so burdensome the market dies, and with it, the rights. This is just another play in that strategem.
Fun fact: More people died last year putting foreign objects in their rears than by AR-15s. That is how insane the anti-gun lobby has become. They are literally barking at their own shadow these days.
I don't know how to square the same people saying we're living under a tyrannical government also pushing legislation that makes sure said tyrannical government is the only one with guns.
Pick whatever demise: falling off of ladders, roofs, etc. - it's not hard to exceed this number in any given year.
If you live in CA and don't want to experience permanent hearing damage from shooting, you'll catch a Felony for simply possessing one. It's a big middle finger like the rest of California's gun laws.
It's like saying "I am baffled by Europe, look at what Hungary is doing ..."
For example, some states don't need any permit to open or conceal carry, some have no minimum age requirements to buy guns, and the majority don't have any mention of 3D printed guns.
Federal law applies then about untraceable guns and or arms that cannot be detected by metal detectors. But those predate 3D printers as we know them today.
The real fix is that we need to get rid of immunity for legislators. When they violate the civil rights of the constitutional rights of citizens through their actions, they must be held personally liable and must go to jail.
Why are you so angry about this?
This is a bill with no votes - the first committee hearing is in March.
The purpose of the bill seems to be have some controversy & possibly raise the profile of the proposer.
The bill is written very similarly to how we enforce firmware for regular printers and EURion constellation detection.
I'm a strong believer in 2a rights. However I think every type of weapon might require a license. So if you 3d print a gun that you would be allowed to own if you had already completed your background check, then you're gold.
If you end up 3d printing a nuclear bomb, the licensing requirements for that would be a billion times harder. (secure facilities, 24/7 guards, blood oath to the United States etc...)
Let's look at actual numbers. ATF says 50,000 guns were smuggled into latin america between 2015 and 2022. So about 7,200 a year. There are about 15-20 million new firearm sales per year in the US.
So assume ~.03% of production gets smuggled out. I think the industry would survive if that was cut that off. It actually would be better for them because it would make lies and slanders about the industry harder to make.
https://www.thetrace.org/2024/06/atf-gun-trafficking-report-...
WE DO NOT LIVE IN THAT WORLD.
just as deadly, harder to trace when there is no ballistic evidence, maybe an RF signature that FCC monitors will record.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47066567
Nice sentiments, but totally impractical.
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-civ/division-3/...
I expect someone to get around this by modifying the slicing software to use a different algorithm that doesn't rely strictly on layering 2D cross sections.
Or just start printing them out of something useful like metal
Purely performative power grabbing. There is no epidemic of ghost gun violence. These measures would not stop it if there were. The new legal thicket this creates will exclusively harm innocent people.
This is about notching a victory: making others bend the knee to the prerogatives of some pressure group. Nothing more. Behind it are wealthy pearl clutching virtue signalers. In front of it there are non-profit grifters and politicians with campaigns to fund, and in the middle we have lobbyists milking both sides. Everyone mouthing obligatory moral panic narratives to keep the money flowing.
In most place of the world, including where I am, pressure bearing parts such as the barrel, the bolt that locks onto the end of the barrel to seal it as it fires, the firing pin that ignites the cartridge, the live cartridge containing gunpowder, etc etc, rather than the part that merely carries its nameplate, are controlled. It is illegal in such places to buy or possess functionally relevant parts of a gun, at least without a license, and/or prior approvals. This is more like buying a CPU or motherboards would be controlled rather than cases and faceplates. In some places, what is considered a gun in US hardly qualify as such, even almost slipping through customs(allegedly).
You guys gotta fix that broken classification before trying to offload onus onto the global 3D printing community. Or drop it altogether.
I'm a long time shooter of all kinds of firearms (bolt actions to full-autos).
What people don't realize is that gun control works, but only when it's very controlled - i.e. full registration, deep checks, mandatory training, strict storage, no handguns, etc.
You need to do it across the whole country, as a real customs border can cut guns significantly, but in the US you can do still do a private party (person to person with no dealer) transfer in many states, making gun running pretty trivial.
None of this will happen anytime soon in the US, and the ghost guns, etc. thing will keep happening.
This is the pattern with most hardware regulation attempts: the compliance burden falls on the people already operating in the open, while the actual threat model (someone with intent) routes around it by switching tools or buying across state lines.
A great deal of regulation is sold to the public in the name of "safety", "equality", etc., but actually functions to entrench vested interests or inhibit competition in various industries.
Political solutions to social problems will always be turned to the advantage of whomever has the most political influence -- and that's always some narrow faction, and not the public at large.
"Hey I see your printing a replacement part for you washer. Well that is a patent part and you will need to pay to print that."
His lawyer knows they are going to lose all the appeals in New York but basically he has to sit in jail for 3-4 years through the state court system until it can hit federal courts where there is a good chance his case will eventually get overturned.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Taylor
* Response to below (my comments are throttled): The argument/reference in his defense, not actual guns.
Sports Arenas and Jails are two other places you might be surprised to learn don't allow the second amendment.
>Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.
This is not about guns in the courtroom. This is a claim that the 2nd amendment of the constitution does not apply to the state of New York.
you have to be an FFL to legally transfer a nonserialized firearm, and part of that includes endowing the firearm with a serial, and completing the 4473.
if the firearm is already serialized you can do private sale from person to person, in a casual non business context, you cant privately transfer a "ghost" it has to be serialized and go through 4473 transfer then it can go through private sale.
You can't make it for the purposes of sale, but you can sell or loan it as part of trading your personal collection. I've heard the myth about not being able to sell over and over but no one has ever been able to point out a federal law against selling a privately manufactured firearm incidentally later as part of trade in their collection, with or without a serial number. All successful prosecutions I've read involved people making them for the purpose of sale or transfer and then getting caught doing that -- for that you need an FFL.
You do not have to be a FFL to transfer a nonserialized firearm. In fact tons of guns made before the GCA had no serial number, as there was no blanket requirement before 1968, they are legally sold privately all the time (as are PMF / "ghost guns" that people no longer want).
This is analogous to requiring text editors to verify that a document does not contain defamation, fraud, incitement, fighting words, child porn, etc., before it saves the file. In first amendment terms that led to the conclusion that prior restraint on publication is incompatible with the amendment. The same doctrine should be extended to the second amendment for the same reasons. The alternative is intolerable surveillance.
Also, good luck farming off the job to the DOJ right now. The ATF has already mostly shrugged at the prospect of 3D printed guns, and that was before the administration gutted it. I don't think they have any interest/ability to cooperate with tech regulation at this time.
This, like every other bill on the subject that has been attempted from around the country, is bound for a quiet death by committee.
chrisjj•2h ago
Of course the Bill does not require DOJ-approved 3d printers.
zachrip•1h ago
alisonkisk•39m ago
Actual fact: California’s New Bill Requires that 3D Printers Get DOJ Approval as Firearm-Blocking"
(The "report on themselves" is fiction invented by Adafruit.)
vel0city•1h ago
This bill would require, on or before July 1, 2028, any business that produces or manufactures 3-dimensional printers for sale or transfer in California to submit to the department an attestation for each make and model of printer they intend to make available for sale or transfer in California, confirming, among other things, that the manufacturer has equipped that make and model with a certified firearm blueprint detection algorithm. If the department verifies a printer make and model is properly equipped, the bill would require the department to issue a notice of compliance, as specified. The bill would require, on or before September 1, 2028, the department to publish a list of all the makes and models of 3-dimensional printers whose manufacturers have submitted complete self-attestations and would require the department to update the list no less frequently than on a quarterly basis and to make the list available on the department’s internet website. The bill, beginning on March 1, 2029, would prohibit the sale or transfer of 3-dimensional printers that are not equipped with firearm blocking technology and that are not listed on the department’s list of manufacturers with a certificate of compliance verification, except as specified. The bill would authorize a civil action to be brought against a person who sells, offers to sell, or transfers a printer without the firearm blocking technology.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Let me point out the statement:
> The bill, beginning on March 1, 2029, would prohibit the sale or transfer of 3-dimensional printers that are not equipped with firearm blocking technology and that are not listed on the department’s list of manufacturers with a certificate of compliance verification, except as specified.
It seems pretty clear this would prohibit the sale of 3D printers that are not approved by the California DoJ.
It's not nice to lie about extremely obvious things.
chrisjj•52m ago
Note the difference w.r.t. the ridiculous "California's New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers".
e12e•32m ago
On the other hand - it would be low hanging fruit to prevent off the shelf printers to print well known gun parts? Much like photocopiers and scanners and printers won't scan, copy or print known currency bills?
Gormo•26m ago
> (a) Any business that produces or manufactures three-dimensional printers for sale or transfer in California shall take both of the following steps
This is worded a bit ambiguously: it's not clear whether it's meant to be "manufactures ... in California" or "for sale or transfer in California". IANAL, but wouldn't the latter be unconstitutional inasmuch as it conflicts with federal jurisdiction over interstate commerce? It seems unlikely that California would be able to enforce this against businesses that have no operational presence there, and are merely shipping 3D printers to California from other states.
And if that's the case, the only meaningful effect of this bill passing will be to further motivate anyone making or selling 3D printers to leave California for other states.