This first bill allows the state of California to regulate and oversee all 3D prints in the name of public safety.
“Uhoh, can’t 3d print a gun. Guess I’ll just go to Walmart.”
More like “Guess I’ll just print this file labeled ‘hyper realistic movie prop lazer blaster’.”
Me when I walk 30 feet to the east and buy a gun under the table with no paperwork for less than the cost of a 3d printer
Jokes aside it’s to prevent having one that’s not registered
Under the proposal, printers would have to evaluate STL files, CAD files, or other geometric code using a firearm blueprint detection algorithm and block files flagged as capable of producing a firearm or illegal firearm parts, including conversion devices.
California’s Department of Justice, or another relevant state agency, would have until January 1, 2028, to publish performance standards for detection algorithms and software control processes.
This is the problem when lawmakers write technical bills without speaking to technical people. They’re going to publish standards for evaluating if your gcode is a firearm or firearm part? THAT’S FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE
It’s not even that, building a firearm…is legal…this shit going after printers makes no sense at all, it’s fucking legal to print firearm parts.
BANNED
I bet they end up using a fucking llm
Cosplayers are going to be pissed.
That’s a whole section on OnlyFans
That’s the point. This is just a foot in the door to block your access to print things that might be trademarked copyrighted or affiliated with your corporate overlords.
And a foot in the door to start blocking your right to repair your own things.
Guaranteed.
Yes they have no idea what they are asking. Stl is just gcode how do you look for a gun out of coordinates.
Kinda, render a few images from the gcode, use a CV algorithm to identify the object.
On device it’ll be slow or expensive.
Your faith in this mystery algorithm is stronger than mine. Here’s a diagram of the parts in an AR-15:
So we need an algorithm that renders the gcode I’m printing, then compares it to… something?
Look, I was just saying, it could be done, train it on current real and 3d printable gun parts and there, you did your best to create algorithmic gun filtering. I wasn’t saying that it would be good or accurate.
Printer: “not a hot dog”
Theres countless gcode use in the world, much of it is offline
Doesn’t matter. Has nothing to do with online.
You can run OpenCV on an RPi, it’s just super slow, and you could probably use a cheap GPU chip to do it faster. You store the pretrained model on the device.
You may even get away with an asic designed for the model, though with that one I’m talking out my ass.
That would makes printers more expensive and my guess is that they’ll prefer to force online connectivity
100%
Supporters say the measure tackles the problem before a downloadable file becomes an untraceable weapon. Everytown for Gun Safety says recoveries of 3D-printed crime guns across 20 cities have risen nearly 1,000% over the past five years, and argues that cheaper, more capable printers are already being used in illegal ghost gun operations.
Ooooh, that’s two large red flags for me (disregarding the litany of red flags the concept in general has). Every town being involved makes me question the data on its face, given the number of times I saw gang violence near a school out of school hours listed as a school shooting in their database, as does a large percentage increase with no hard numbers. If they recovered 1 gun last year and 11 this year, that’s a 1000% increase, but the percentage sounds so much worse than the real number.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can find more magnet fishing.
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.
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.
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 🤷♀️
there are many open sourced software applications than can produce G-Code for any printer. All of it can be done offline.
Those instructions can be translated into the final product. It isn’t hard when you know what each instruction produces…
Register as a manufacturer of 3D printers
Government gives you an updated, comprehensive archive of STL files your firmware must reject
???
Profit
I suppose my old Prusa just jumped a bit in value.
You can use a 3d printer to build a 3d printer. When they figure that out, will they try to stop those parts from being printed too?
Who did they consult on this, and did that person or persons purposely lead them astray, or were the consultants equally ignorant?
Given they’ve postponed the standards until 2028, I am skeptical our legislators will be able to develop a viable benchmark. And then I don’t imagine it’s possible to enforce it.
This is likely to die in court.
They’ll ask chatgpt to generate it. It doesn’t need to be viable, it just needs to be impossible for manufacturers to comply with
I don’t think California intends to act in bad faith and try to kill the 3D printer industry (or community). I think this is due to misconceptions similar to the notion that one can create encryption with a backdoor that only the good guys can use. It just doesn’t math.
And that’s exactly what is going to kill the law in the courts, much the way that they’ve upheld strong encryption and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Allowing the law to come into effect will cause too much damage to industry and the economy.
Granted I can’t be absolutely certain of that. We’ve had a lot of incompetent (or corrupt) judges get confirmed in recent decades, so really anything can happen. But the thing they don’t want is what happened after they tried to criminalize printed gun designs in the first place, and see the already-robust 3D printing underground get another growth boost.
It’ll be enforced just like child porn laws are. If you have enough money or political power (same thing really) then you won’t ever see a cop.
But us regular citizens will get fucked. Par for the course for a powerful, authoritarian government.
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.
Time to stop buying American printers.
I might print some guns purely out of spite.
In Minecraft.
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.
Backdoor Bill? Haven’t seen that porno yet.
