This first bill allows the state of California to regulate and oversee all 3D prints in the name of public safety.
What does this accomplish?
In the USA it’s easier to buy an ar-15 than configuring a multi material 3d printer to print a fidget spinner
And btw if someone really needs to 3d print a weapon they would CNC a receiver from a metal block using a $500 AliExpress contraption rather than making a single use plastic thingy that will probably amputate your fingers at first shot
What does this accomplish?
Spies on people who are printing large quantities of whistles.
This is America, wouldn’t it be easier just to buy a gun? I get that 3D printers can make ghost guns that aren’t traceable but how many crimes have occurred where that is the murder weapon?
One CEO. More important than every dead schoolchild.
They asked about crimes.
Thats the neat part: they can make weapons the same way I can theoretically make a bomb from enriched uranium in my backyard.
Agreed. Every time I’ve looked into printing one I look at the process and just buy it. All the ghost guns I’ve made were from hollowed-out 80% lowers. And one time a hardware store slamfire shotgun.
I fully support one’s right to print a gat, but it sure ain’t for me.
Proposal: All elected officials must install Corruption Blocking Software that scans all their communications, financial records and assets, and uses advanced Corruption Pattern Matching Algorithms to determine if they might be taking bribes from industry lobbyists, pumping up their own investments, or secretly serving special interest groups, or if they’re just general nutjobs.
Honestly though… What’s the process for a regular idiot to try and suggest or propose new bills? I think I’d like to actually propose such a bill
That’s what “representative government” is all about. I’ve never tried to do this but theoretically you could write to your representative or senator and try to impress them with your idea. You’d probably get more traction by starting local with a city or town ordinance, or by creating a campaign on social media and in person - rally an impressive number of people to stand around city hall with signs requesting/demanding this kind of action, get noticed on news media, and build it into a credible movement. In many states citizens who collect enough signatures can place proposed legislation on ballots during regular elections.
Why stop at elected officials any company has to do this. If they can infringe our rights why not make sure everyone has their rights taken away.
Why are they so scared of us that they must enslave us?
Because we could fuck up their shit pretty easily with just the slightest mass motivation.
So…maybe let’s get some of that, before we can’t.
Okay, I’ll meet you there! I’m sure everyone else will also show up after seeing this exchange. Let’s gooooooo! This is iiiiiit!
We need to organize a group that can show tangible benefits to its members for joining.
And retain member engagement when it’s inevitably attacked and it costs members something to continue.
It’s also pretty much a technical impossibility if you know anything about 3D printers.
3D printers can’t read CAD. They aren’t fed STLs or any other kind of 3D model. They’re fed G-Code, which contains no geometrical details. It’s a list of instructions saying “turn these 4 motors this speed this for this amount of time while heating that part to this temperature and turning this other motor this speed, then heat this part while tunlrning that motor that fast…” with hundreds or thousands of instructions, and then new instructions for the next layer.
In order to print a model, you first have to run it through a program called a slicer that generates that G-code by slicing it into layers with instructions for how to move, heat and cool the nozzle, build plate, and chamber, feed the filament, etc.
The printers just follow those instructions with minimal on-board processing and zero information regarding the final model’s structure.
to comply, vendors would need to require printers sold in california to be locked (presumably by encryption) to a proprietary slicer with ai vision that could try to determine if the thing being printed looked like a gun. Maybe if there was a bullet sized barrel and access around the striker area.
Makerbot more or less did this. It was a pain in the ass to use a non-makerbot-desktop slicer with a 2/2x series.
But that actually wouldn’t meet the law. The law requires the printer to do the check.
The software becomes part of the printer. They are linked in a way that one cannot operate without the other.
I didn’t say the law was well written, I find the the most likely way to comply.
I wouldn’t be that hard to read the g-code and reconstruct the model programatically checking for bores and firing pin access, feed that data into a model with some RAG about internal gun dimensions, but the printers are generally too underpowered to do such a calculation.
it’s all a fools errand really, guns can be made out of a handfull of hardware store parts and a drill.
Those instructions can be translated into the final product. It isn’t hard when you know what each instruction produces…
It’s pretty hard when you have to also account for extra printing to conceal the item. You can render a result, but if it just looks like a box with convenient breakaway pieces that snap to leave behind just the part, you’ll need some more complex work than simple pattern matching. And even then each piece of a gun isn’t a really a unique shape only used for firearms.
Assuming there is extra printing. That wastes resources and your iterative designs are also captured in sequence, which reveals the direction of your efforts.
Right, but it’s not something the printer does at all right now, I assume. Someone gives me Russian text to retype, I retype the letters, but I don’t speak Russian so I can’t be meaningfully asked to specifically not retype anything about highway design.
True but if you’re an organization tasked with spying of what ppl to make sure they aren’t innovating, or whatever, it isn’t hard to setup, it being in gcode isn’t a big hurdle here.
But the most popular brand right now forces server interaction.
Only if you want to use cloud printing. I print on my A1 using Orca all the time.
Speaking as someone that knows basically nothing about 3d printing (though has done similar with CNC), do you think it’d be possible to reverse-engineer the code in some way? I’m thinking something like a simulated 3d printer 🤷♀️
You can, sure. but then you have a new file that is entirely distinct from the original model (as far as computer hashing is concerned). So you have to do several steps to legally comply with this:
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Receive gcode file
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use costly ai to convert the gcode to a 3d model.
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use costly ai to try to figure out what the 3d model is.
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do all of this either via a remote connection, or on a processor weaker than the median game console from the 1990s.
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repeat for every single attempted print, which can be several dozen per completed product depending on how annoying the calibration was that day
So if you’re a 3d printing business you now have to have your own data center basically dedicated to the tens of millions of potential prints you’re going to receive, because it’s near impossible to fingerprint g-code as it’s dynamically generated from each different CAD software differently based on thousands of settings.
Essentially any 3d printer manufacturer is going to just say “not for use in california” instead of paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to try to comply with this.
I don’t think you would have to use AI to convert gcode into a 3d model. The way I would approach it is basically run the gcode and take all the 3-D coordinates you get for where to print, then maybe run it through a filter or some such to extract just the outermost wall passes for each layer. Stack those up, do some sort of automated linking to create your triangles, and ship it off to the recognition AI.
it’s possible you could run that on a printer processor but unlikely.
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there are many open sourced software applications than can produce G-Code for any printer. All of it can be done offline.
I’m sorry you can’t print a garden hose nozzle because AI thinks it is a gun.
I’m sorry you can’t print a caulking gun because AI thinks it is a gun.
I’m sorry you can’t print a water pistol because it’s a gun.
I have a stupid glock fidget toy that would almost certainly set this thing off. God forbid I make myself a toy.
I read the article and what a load of shit. So you can’t 3D print a cosplay gun? How far will this go? Water pistols? Ray gun props? Children’s toys. Plastic guns are not illegal, just certain ones.
If I lived in California, I think I would invest in a really good 3d printer now-ish and just never update the software. Big brother is watching everything.
Guns are just a weak excuse, as if it’s hard to get a gun in the US.
They want to monitor what you print. This means trademarked toys and figures, or copies of parts used in self-repair projects. The next stage is to charge fees to print copyright, or patented objects, or parts to repair. This also means they can spy on your designs and intellectual property.
It’s almost like governments of all sizes have been captured by companies and now protect them against the evil consumer which is completely backwards to what governmental organizations were originally created for.
My favorite irony of all of this is that it’s very possible to build a 3D printer from scratch (hell that’s how the hobby got started in the first place) with open source software that never talks to the Internet. It’s more work, but not to the extent that it’d stop anybody determined.
Sure, one of the best printers is a Voron. People build those all of the time.
They really must take every single last one source of joy from everyone who hasn’t turned into sheep at this point.
Same California that is supposedly against the federal government’s assaults on people’s rights and freedoms…?
Same California governor that wants to run for president to end fascism in the country…?
The real fascists are usually the ones calling everyone else fascists, as that in itself is a means of control.
It’s two right wing parties who are both heavily engaged in fascism. The average American democrat is right wing by the European standards.
We need an international industry of dis-enshittifiers
What’s to stop anyone from driving out of state to buy the printer, or having it shipped from out of state? I swear to dog legislators are virtue signaling dip-shits.
Eventually they will all fall in line.
Authoritarians just doing what authoritarians do.
Can’t regulate the parts as they are used in many many many devices. So as far as I’m concerned this is worthless. I can build a fucking 3d printer from an old VCR and a hot glue gun.
my interest is who is PAYING to fund the bill, i wouldnt be surprised if its gun companies or palantir.
You can, but 90% 3D printer buyers can’t, and that’s a good enough amount of people to spy on.
90%?
More like 99.999%
Including op.
There’s a difference between building a pile of crap and actually building something that works effectively. It’s a difficult hardware and software problem.
https://www.reprap.org/wiki/RepRap
The work has all been done long time ago.
The designs and software are all open source at this point.
exactly but that’s also good fuel to defeat the bill.
Everytown for Gun Safety says recoveries of 3D-printed crime guns across 20 cities have risen nearly 1,000% over the past five years,
So… They found a total of ten 3d printed guns in the last 5 years?
325 are 3D out of 350,000 guns found in CA in connection to a crime in 2024, according to random assholes on reddit.
This is a pretty dumb thing to pass legislation on considering it’s still VERY easy to buy a gun even in CA, another method of getting a gun isn’t making it easier in any real sense.
and to be clear to naive: you can’t actually 3D print a gun. You can make parts that can be smithed together with metal parts to make a working gun. There are some fully plastic designs, but no way would I shoot those twice.
with metal parts to make a working gun.
That’s always convention “forgotten” in all these breathless “think of the children” arguments.
You can’t fully 3-d print a working gun that isn’t as dangerous to the user as it is to the target.
Now to be totally fair, 325 is 325 more than 0, which would be the ideal number of 3d printed guns used in crime… But also, how many of those 3d printed gun users had access to a different gun and simply opted for the 3d printed one? I get the feeling it was somewhere around 325 of them
This is all ignoring the fact that I’m using a very liberal definition of the phrase “3d printed gun.” I doubt anyone is using Songbirds for armed robberies lmao
3d printing isnt shit except for ease of use. I can make a 12 gage slam fire shotgun in a couple hours with maybe $100 on a home depot or Lowes gift card. As a machinist and welder, I can make a whole lot more than that.
On the one hand, its moronic to think that limiting 3D printing will in any way affect ease of access to firearms. On the other hand, literally anything making it harder for people to kill or harm each other is probably for the best in the long run.
A comedian I watched a while back had a bit about if the government really wanted to stop gun violence, they’d put a massive tax on ready made ammunition. You really gotta hate a bitch to spend $5k on a bullet to kill them. Obviously this doesnt take into account making your own ammo, but the point stands.
Add to that the fact that some gun parts are not printable and have to be made out of metal. Printing an entire firearm on a $500 3D printer is possible but that gun will be good enough for 1 bullet, and probably will hurt shooter at that.
Also, if inmates can make a handgun out of whatever they have access at prison - 3d printing is the afterthought. Some parts can be bought in a department store, the others can be ordered online as a replacement parts. If someone really wants to make a gun themselves, 3D printing ban wont stop them.
Percentages without a baseline are useless.
You can find more magnet fishing.
Printing companies should stop selling in California.
Everybody should also stop considering the US like one country, because it functions less than one country than the EU and the EU isn’t and the US is.