Obviously the law is stupid. But states passing their own regulations isn't on its face.
really? what percentage of Americans can't afford a bus ticket to the nearest city in an adjacent state?
Why do the pols feel like they have to pick fights in so many places? I doubt there’s a majority of voters who want this.
Some made life hard for Californians like the CARB gasoline blend requirement but I think if you proposed removing any of those laws you'd find yourself downvoted here and called a corporate bootlicker on Reddit - which is not a poll of all people but should give you an idea of the fact that they're not unpopular.
https://spreadthesignal.com/files
Note that in particular banning of 3d printing severely decreases chances for bringing back manufacturing - high labor and other costs makes domestic manufacturing feasible only when it is highly automated and highly customizable.
My bet is the US militaro-industrial complex is busy preparing juicy contracts to sell shitload of drones and drones-related tech to the US government now that they understood that drones in warfare were a thing (Ukraine vs Russia showed it and Iran-vs-the-world showed it too).
The US has something like 12 tech companies in the top 20 biggest companies by market cap in the world: do you really think the US is "falling behind in drone tech" because a country that has never invented anything (besides mass killings of their own citizens) since religious extremists took over managed to fly a few low-tech drones into US military assets?
That a country bent on violence (including towards its own citizens) where pick-up trucks armed with .50 cal, AK47s and explosive are the norm can slap explosive on DJI drones is resourceful but I wouldn't exactly call it "passing ahead in drone tech".
I don't gamble but I'd make an exception and bet big that the US is going to end up right next to China, at the very top, when it comes to drone tech. While I fully expect the EU to fall behind in drone tech.
And de-facto won the war as a result. That is reality. That is the power of that weaponry, and that is the falling behind. And that after 4 years of such a war in Ukraine.
I agree it is very possible that US would be at some point able to build up those capabilities. Though, limited to established players, it most probably would be very expensive and thus go against the key feature - cheapness - which in itself allows for the other key feature- mass scale of the drone weapons.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/santa-rosa-167-gun...
https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/da-task-force-seizes-ghost-g...
https://www.vvng.com/3d-printed-firearm-recovered-after-man-...
And in places where guns are tightly regulated, most people couldn't get hold of ammo even if they did build a printed gun, so it's not a big problem. (And the bad guys just use kitchen knives)
"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.
I'm not mad at you for suggesting this, you're right, I'm just generally aimlessly angry and ready for this world to burn.
The tracking dots that some printers put in everything (not just suspicious stuff) can contain the timestamp and the serial number of the printer. So if the regime doesn't like your printed flyer, they call a buddy at Microsoft and now they know exactly which computer and IP address checked in as having that printer attached at that time.
All democrats present voted yes. All republicans voted no.
* Dr. Darshana R. Patel (D)
* Tim Grayson (D)
In this case you can say
“You need a license to do this activity”
[adds all the requirements in the bill to the licensing authority]
“Unlicensed activity is forbidden”
so now you can get your tiny LLMs added to 3D printers so that license holders can operate again, without specifically mandating unworkable technology or getting a freedom of expression challenge from the manufacturers you just invented court standing for
This works under every governance system
do you guys even America? catch up
Or you just 3d print the "receiver" for something like an Ar-15, which isn't load bearing. If you use the right materials and the beefier designs it will lats hundreds to thousands of rounds. The rest of the parts can be bought through the mails unregulated.
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...)
(But doesn't the bill also cover subtractive manufacturing?)
It seems more precise to say that 3D printers sold/transferred in California would need built-in anti-firearm-printing controls?
I don't see how this directly bans students/teachers/businesses from owning 3d printers, which is what the title seems to say.
I believe the answer to both of those is yes, which leads to my next question, which is, do you think that's also absurd?
States in the US were modeled after sovereign nations, perhaps even more loosely connected than the EU is today. They didn’t even share a currency.
Eventually the federal government became more important and powerful, and there are many federal laws now, but states are fundamentally still their own thing with the rights to do certain things that are more like a sovereign nation than a province.
There is a reason why California is leading the nation in migration out of the 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 technology, or any technology really, beyond it being a black box for specific purposes. They see 3d printing and plastic guns and think something must be done, because the 3d printing black boxes are producing dangerous weapons.
The only thing that's different about this one is that it mentions a technology geeks care about. But I doubt that's enough. As another commenter noted, you can no longer hide behind "we have no technology to distinguish between guns and non-guns". We have AI that's supposedly PhD-level and will soon automate all jobs. Looking at STL files sounds like a job.
That's actually one of my fears about LLMs: they make thought policing cheap. There are profound privacy and cost barriers to having a Facebook employee review all your private messages. There are no such barriers to having a robot watch all your IMs in real time.
Or your literal thoughts depending on how far we're able to push neuralink type technology.
That said these politicians have pushed:
The ban on disinfectant soaps
Stop Shirley bill (charge you for public records in order to suppress access to public information)
Effort to sideline charter schools by teachers unions
Reduced sentences for murderers (this isn't unarmed robbery, etc., rather murderers)
Per mile traveled tax (for a state with the highest gas prices in the lower 48)
Sanction unsafe needle litter (as if there weren’t enough in playgrounds already)
Strangers can assume custody of children without parental consent
Allow politicians to dip into taxpayer money to fund campaigns.
Leniency towards solicitation of minors(!) this was unbelievably passed.
So, I suppose the answer to your original question is: they're slowly grinding forward on a progressive-politics agenda in a public and straightforward manner that's generally popular among the electorate.
All they have to do if frame it as an unnecessary freedom that only conservatives and wackos want to keep and they will 100% support it.
They see their state as a sort of oasis in the country and will do whatever it takes to keep the guns out. They really believe they’re just a few laws away from solving any issue a “reasonable” American could face.
There is a law in California that has been interpreted to mean that all clubbing weapons are illegal. So if you by a length of pipe and keep it around (e.g. under your bed) explicitly for self-defense purposes, you have committed a crime.
IANAL, but as far as I can tell, keeping a shotgun in your home for self-defense purposes would be fine, as long as you aren't planning ahead of time to use it as a club.
[edit]
My information is slightly out-of-date; there was an injunction against enforcement in 2024 from Fouts v Bonta. I have no clue the injunction is or is not still in effect, so ask your lawyer before carrying a club.
This is why many may have heard lawyers say "if you're going to carry a baseball bat in your car, make sure to also carry a ball and mitt"
https://legalclarity.org/is-it-legal-to-have-a-baseball-bat-...
I think so many people in the US are so focused on the topic of guns as weapons that we sometimes forget that we have laws regarding other weapons as well.
Maybe they'll ban Github, too - as it hosts unregulated open source software that can power these scary tools.
Blocking the printing of parts of mechanisms is a completely different beast, because the functionality is only discernible after final assembly of the individual parts, which can be shaped in a variety of ways. Most of these parts are unique to guns or at least usable in other kinds of designs. E.g. the same trigger lever design could be used for a ghost gun or a nerf gun or a water pistol. So where would yiu draw the line of all the classifier sees is G code that combines support structures, the actual surfaces and infill of some arbitrary collection of parts?
I'm against guns in generally, but this classification problem seems particularly ill posed and I don't want it to result in tamper-resistant printers stopping people from tinkering and taking the fun out of printing. The US should just outlaw the casual carrying of guns of individuals in public. That's not a violation of the second amendment.
Money anti-counterfeiting is trivial, it's just 5 dots arranged in a specific pattern. Deciding what is a gun part is impossible, even for an expert human.
I will also be bringing an ergonomic grip for my camera.
My email is in my profile.
Like, it's true that refrigerators don't maintain a completely uniform temperature, meaning there's some philosophical wiggle room in what it means for a health department to say that raw meat must be stored at 41F. But it would be absurd for a meatpacker to declare that this means food safety is "impossible", and outrageous for them to conclude that they're just not going to bother refrigerating their meat at all.
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!". I'm never quite sure why they think this foot-stomping would be at all persuasive to people who don't manufacture firearms. Again, I imagine you don't see things this way and I'd be happy to learn more about what I've gotten wrong here.
Go solve gun crime with boots on the ground instead
Some crimes are not worth it to eliminate, and western liberal society should just accept that the optimal amount of crime is non zero.
You can no longer just buy a tool and use it.
Echoes of Network Neutrality problems, where BigCo is permitted to block or degrade sites about how to cancel your BigCo service.
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 controlled.
Mind, that’s changing, again notably in CA, as they now talk about “gun pre-cursor” parts.
The 3D printed frames are similar to the “80% lowers” which are aluminum blocks that are “80%” complete AR-15 lowers (the lower receiver, again, the controlled part of an AR-15).
With straight forward machining and some jigs, those chunks of metal can be finished into an operational lower receiver, and the rest of the rifle can be assembled from disparate parts ordered from anywhere.
The original “ghost gun” before 3D printers enabled folks to assemble Glocks in their garage.
Fwiw, when I paid attention to my local police department's released body cam vids, maybe around 1/3 of the guns they showed as evidence were polymer80s (edit: which I mistakenly assumed were 3d printed, but it turns out they aren't so feel free to disregard that fun fact)
Polymer80 is defunct but still sold under a slightly different modified mold that someone mysterious somewhere owns and is selling through some other companies("76%" instead of 80%)
LinuxAmbulance•1h ago
A grim day for 3D printing if so.
miohtama•1h ago
Legend2440•1h ago
calgoo•1h ago
cortesoft•1h ago
vor_•1h ago
Legend2440•1h ago
EmbarrassedHelp•1h ago
greenavocado•58m ago
Rebelgecko•40m ago