> The state should prosecute people who make illegal thing, not add useless surveillance software on every tool in every classroom, library, and garage in the state.
This bill 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.
1st Amendment + 2nd Amendment == The Right to 3D Print and Bear Arms
Moreover, how could this be implemented? Determining the 3D volume which a given G-code file will result in is something which the industry would find very useful, but no one has yet achieved. Doing so would probably simultaneously result in the folks doing so being awarded a Fields Medal and the Turing Award (in addition to making a boatload of money licensing the resultant software/patent).
On top of that, how does one resolve the matter of the same G-code file (for two nested circles plus some machine-specific codes) resulting in either a metal washer, or a lamp base, depending on whether run on a machine set to metric w/ a coolant system, or Imperial w/ a tool changer?
Lastly, who creates the list of forbidden parts? How will it be curated? And most importantly, how will it be secured that it isn't a set of blueprints which are then used to make firearms?
A more reasonable bit of legislation would be one which required folks who are barred by statute from owning firearms (convicted felons (who have not had their rights restored)/convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse) to approve with their parole officer any file for a part/object made by a 3D printer or CNC machine before submitting it to the machine.
I'll be honest, I've always been mixed on prohibiting parolees and ex-cons from owning firearms in the first place. I think the right itself as part of self-defense is pretty clear and self-evident. I also don't like secondary crimes in general.
Killing is bad... killing because you don't like $group is double-bad. Speeding is bad, speeding without a seatbelt is double-bad. etc.
If you are such a danger to society that you shouldn't be allowed to be armed in case of defense, then you probably shouldn't be in society and remain locked up. That's just my take on it. I feel similarly on taking away voting rights after prison as well. I may not like how you vote, but I'm just not a fan of taking away people's rights outside prison/jail.
I agree about the guns. The second amendment doesn't say "except felons". It says "shall not be infringed".
Possibly, if there are enough armed felons running about, we might be able to get both sides to the table and admit that maybe there should be some limits. Until then it does us no good to exclude some groups just because we don't like them, while still enduring school shootings.
In 1700s terminology, the process of regulating (training) the militia has to take place after first gathering the 'irregular' militia, whose members bring their own weapons. This was established even in colonial times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_Movement_in_North_Ca... You'll recall the Baker Street Irregulars, and Paul Revere's "You know the rest, in the books you have read, how the British Regulars fired and fled." The 2A's 'Arms' also covers non-gunpowder weapons. The right of the People to keep arms comes prior to issues related to their use.
The point about militia is a short statement for why the right to bear arms is important, rather than trying to restrict or qualify the right.
The ability to form militias is so important, that everyone should have the right to bear arms, in order to enable this.
The idea is that it prevents the idea of a "special militia" having some selection criteria, so the government of the day cant make qualifying for its group a requirement to own guns.
I agree, that clause is there to explain why. To my eye, Madison appears to have been thinking mostly about state militias versus a standing (national) army. We obviously don't muster any of those today, I suppose the closest we come is the National Guard.
According to the first militia act, which defines the militia ss every able bodied male over 18... everyone is required to own a firearm... yeah, it's a musket, but it was the most common weapon of the time, today it would likely be a 9mm handgun and an AR-15.
It would also mean having regular meetups in your community to discuss any coordination necessary in times of emergency... Where to show up with your gun(s), who is in charge, who to communicate with, etc.
The "well-regulated militia" bit is given as the rationale behind the amendment. That does not therefore mean that the right codified by the amendment only applies to those who are a part of a militia.
Too expensive/punitive, and note that there is an option to be restored to full citizenship after time served/restitution is made.
My take on it is that if your judgement is so twisted that you are able to commit a felony and not be able to successfully petition for rights restoration, then you are not suited to deciding by whom the country should be governed.
I haven't had my firearm rights restored since I caught my (non-violent, bullied into a plea deal) felony over 20 years ago because I have not yet managed to fully pay restitution to a large insurance company. Despite having paid more than the original judgement, interest is a killer and my current balance stands at over $130k (original judgement for $33k).
No, but the felony involved damage to property and so there was a civil penalty involved and where I live my criminal status is linked to whether or not I've paid that off. They did restore my voting rights after my parole was up, though, and I don't care to own a gun, so I've made peace with the situation.
I was trying to get ahead of the debt for awhile but I realized that's a sucker's game and now I just pay the minimum that keeps them from confiscating parts of my paycheck or other assets.
Doesn't the law include that devices which fail to implement such checks are barred from sale?
>In addition, knowingly disabling or circumventing the blocking software is a misdemeanor.
The inobvious thing is that that aspect of the law cannot be applied to felons or persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, since like failing to pay the tax stamp on a Class-III firearm or accessory, it would require self-incrimination, which thus far, is still illegal.
Have you actually looked into what it takes to restore full citizenship in many places? In some locations it means having to get the Governor to act on your behalf. Imagine what it would take to even get in contact with the Governor of a largely populated state, let alone trying to convince them that you should have your rights restored.
Your judgement is twisted if you think that's a reasonable expectation for anyone who has served their time.
Yes, I have experience of this, having known a person for decades who has done this --- if a person can't manage it, they shouldn't be voting, and they shouldn't be allowed to own firearms as I reasoned/rationalized above.
Just to confirm your meaning --- if a person has demonstrated such poor judgement as to be convicted of a felony, and then cannot trouble themselves to then recant this judgement and argue that they are now capable of making responsible decisions, then they should be allowed to vote and own firearms despite not being willing to make an effort to state that their character has changed?
So because someone gets railroaded into a plea deal that includes a felony, they should never be able to vote or protect themselves again unless they can form the connections and/or the ultra-wealth to coopt a seated governor of that state?
I'd be more inclined to see an English language and American history/civics test as a requirement to vote. Not that I'm advocating for this, but it would be just as justified by your logic.
If you've served your time, you've served your time... I wouldn't even mind a reasonable parole term (something up to even a decade) after release... but at least some limit on the restriction(s). I'm also opposed to private prisons for similar reasons... you shouldn't incentivize restricting/removing people's rights. If you're too much of a danger to society, you should remain locked up.
It's not interesting because it's not representative. Pair this with some stat that shows it happens the same way most of the time and then it's interesting.
They said exactly that they do not think these are double bad.
They are presenting them as examples of things that a lot of people do say, and many laws are written this way, and many cops, prosecutors, & judges treat them as double bad.
Speeding without a seatbelt is two separate infractions so it should be double bad. Just like robbing a bank and shooting someone is double bad compared to either individually.
And intentional killing is generally considered worse because it means you thought about it and then did it, vs when it's due to acute emotional disorder. Intentional crimes are usually treated more harshly
I'm not talking about two crimes together... I'm talking specifically about changing the punishment based on intent or secondary effects.
Owning a gun is legal, but if you've ever smoked weed it's illegal for you... murder is bad, but if it's because you hate a protected group it's a much harsher punishment... in some places, you can't be pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, but you can be charged with it if you're pulled over for anything else. It's just to attach additional charges for prosecution.
I don't like the idea of excessive charges as part of the prosecution process in general. It creates/extends what I consider an unfair asymmetry between the state (prosecution) and the individual. That's not to say there aren't similar examples in the other direction, such as a clerical error resulting in dismissed charges altogether.
Arguably it is, see my observation about self-incrimination elsethread --- I just didn't carry things forward on that basis, nor work up a clever way to include that number as well --- anyone have any ideas along those lines?
> Lastly, who creates the list of forbidden parts? How will it be curated? And most importantly, how will it be secured that it isn't a set of blueprints which are then used to make firearms?
My conspiracy theory is that these laws (there have been a rash of them lately, and that feels off) are being promoted by some of the cloud-based 3d printer manufacturers. In other words, an attempt at regulatory capture.
As you note, determining from gcode whether the print is a gun is effectively impossible, and hiding the blocklist is hard anyway. Thus, the only way that could possibly work technically is with those cloud printers that take a .STL as input, routed through the printer manufacturer's servers.
Discriminating between "gun" and "not gun" from the .STL is still hard, but vastly easier than inferring from gcode. The blocklist story becomes at least coherent, if still highly suspect, to anyone who knows anything about computer security.
3d printing is also a creative expression and part of free speech. However principles don't matter to authoritarians, and really the only defense is constant political pressure and civil disobedience.
The model files and designs are protected speech, yes.... but free speech doesn't really follow the transitive property. Just because you can have a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook doesn't mean that building the things in the book are protected speech.
The state applying strict scrutiny is an intimidation tactic that infringes legitimate speech. We also know very well that none of these systems will work well and that the DOJ will be happy to apply bans as far as they can get away with. It will be the no fly list for physical objects, and we won't even be told what is explicitly banned. We'll just not be able to print something. It will be very hard to argue to argue to the courts and at that point the harm is done, and there is no real effective remedy. They've already blocked and discouraged a legitimate right.
Which physical objects that you make in your home, are actively monitored by the police as you make them? When I bake something in my oven, would it be reasonable for the DEA to have a camera in my kitchen to ensure I do not make weed brownies?
I think you are a little confused because the title is a little bit editorialized, but, this law doesn’t monitor anything in anyone’s home. It controls the commercial sales of 3d printers.
"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."
This in my opinion is the state monitoring me in my own home. You can split hairs on semantics, but the effect is the same if machine learning or a person does it.
Not in California but generally 3d printing or otherwise self-manufacturing firearms is legal per the 2nd amendment, and publishing files is protected expressive activity (I bet there are some ITAR cutouts for weapons but I suspect that doesn't come into play here).
Self-manufacturing is definitely federally legal by statute but I don't think it is entirely clear that a constitutional right to self-manufacturing is incorporated to states or localities. Heller never mentioned manufacturing.
And on top of that, there is no protected right to 3d printers.
Regardless, it is 1000% more clear that states can't ban you from sending around gun design files.
This reflects a lack of technical understanding of the subject. The proposal is not enforceable, as there is no control over the end user’s networking stack. E.g. you can't actually rely on "3D printers that report themselves". The law makers need our help and some technical consultation.
The manufacturer can simply require that all prints go through their proprietary software, or better, cloud service for validation before the printer will accept them.
The person proposing this, and/or their staff certainly knows this.
It's okay, we just need a new tax to cover the mandatory sim chips that will need to be installed in compliant printers (which will not be permitted to be operated in metal buildings or basements, of course.)
This policy has existed for (non-3D) printers and image editing programs for decades now. They will refuse to print currency or anything with a specific watermark.
The irony isn't lost on me that it's the USA, the country with some of the most permissive gun laws in the world, that's imposing these draconian rules on 3D printed guns - or is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby?
Politically the US is very much not a monolith on this topic and many states and localities have passed laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional. This is a bill in California, which does have about the strictest laws that the federation allows them to have, and they would place even stronger restrictions on guns if they could. This is not really ironic as much as it is pushing the envelope for gun control as far as they legally can.
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.
> strictest laws that the federation allows them to have
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.
It was confirmed for the previous ~130 or so, at least, since United States v. Cruikshank... although I certainly wouldn't want to go back to those days before the Bill of Rights were incorporated against state/local governments... Basically it was a blank check for racists to suppress minorities.
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.
The gun manufacturer's trade association has consistently said that 3D-printed "ghost guns" are more fantasy than reality, and that legal designs don't cause any more trouble than other legal guns: https://www.nssf.org/articles/3d-printers-cannot-produce-und... .
> is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby
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.
I have three guns. One I inherited, two I bought right before California turned up gun restrictions. Possibly the greatest time for gun makers was when Hilary Clinton had a clear lead in the race for president.
A democratic governor/president is the greatest salesman for the gun industry. When a Dem is in office, the right wing comes out with all of the "they're coming for your guns" which is followed by a spike in gun sales.
The latter doesn't make the former untrue. There are plenty of people that want to eliminate all private gun ownership altogether, even if their public speech is more moderate.
I bought my three when I saw videos of the ATF under Biden start random "knock and talk" sessions for those who recently bought more than one firearm. They're all in a friend's gun safe as I have had bouts of depression, so I won't keep it in my home... I know it kind of defeats the purpose... but I'm very much a supporter of all of my civil rights, including and especially 2A.
No conspiracy required. There's a lot of money to be made lobbying against guns - in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year - regardless of efficacy.
There are dumb arguments on both sides of this debate, but "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!" is definitely one of the weaker arguments... pretty much all state-level gun control is worthless when there is no border control at state lines.
> states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime
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".
It is hard to police guns when there is free travel between the US states, yet only individual states can be relied upon to pass any reform. A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes. States are often forced to recognize rights granted by other states because such an interstate jurisdictional question naturally bubbles up to the aforementioned dysfunctional federal system.
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.
That wasn't the objective fact in question, and I think you know that. A humorous one to contest anyway, given it is well known most Americans take a dim view of federal politics, especially when their favored party is out of power. This is a country where national elections are routinely decided by roughly a percentage point.
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"?
> Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States?
No -- nor am I willing to assert the opposite, because I have no knowledge of the topic. I will ask, though: why is the place of manufacturer of guns used by criminals is Mexico something worth worrying about?
> 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?
Well, yes, of course. But I assume that this will be the case regardless of any attempted policy at any level of government, because I do not believe suppressing the movement of firearms is an attainable goal at any scale in the first place.
Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily. But you're not interested. So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business. I appreciate the lack of vulgarity but I'm not going to attempt to make you interested in something. In my mind it's not a very compelling argument or reason to have replied to me, despite the fact you've left me sort of vaguely intrigued by the boundaries of your intellectual curiosity. But suit yourself. Have a nice day.
> Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Yes, all of that is correct.
> Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily.
I could, but I could also spend my time learning about many other topics which would yield useful insights, develop skills, help me understand the world better in ways that actually matter, among many other things. Why would I then spend time studying something for which the outcome would be the same regardless?
> So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business.
Well, no, it's not just that I don't give a fuck, but rather that I think the entire line of inquiry is a waste of time in itself, in that all it will do is provide a rationalization for one normative position or another, and offers little utility to anyone beyond that. Arguing over it is like arguing over how many peanuts are in a particular jar -- yes, there's an objectively correct answer, but the question itself is of no importance, and not worth bothering to answer.
> A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes
So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?
> 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
I couldn't give less of a fuck if this were true "research" or not: this isn't my problem, nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights.
Also, please: a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise can't build or buy a machine shop and enslave or hire some machinists? They can build submarines and drones, but just couldn't possibly operate without US firearms? What reality do you live in?
The 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2024 were: Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Maryland.
Not seeing this so much lower crime rate in red states here.
Until knife killings start to rise (UK). Beyond this, I've seen several interventions of armed citizens stopping a crime in progress, when the police are still in route. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
My dad was ex-army, retired PD (detective, undercover) and a heavy 2A advocate. I grew up with guns around so it wasn't some weird, scary thing to see. I have many friends who also are heavy 2A who also grew up with guns in the home. It's first a matter of familiarity and second a matter of civil defense. I'm not a fan of "must flea" laws, and not a fan of restricting gun rights at all.
And yeah, if you can afford a tank and the ammo for it, as far as I'm concerned, you should be able to own and operate it. I would draw the line at nuclear weapons and materials.
It is, in fact, legal (but very expensive) to own a tank ( https://www.drivetanks.com/ , yes, that's a company, but a rich enough motivated person could fill out the same paperwork). Apparently each exploding shell is a NFA taxed destructive device ( https://youtu.be/GW2U0qORdLE ).
Who do you think makes the tanks? It's typically corporations, but could just as easily be a person... It isn't a socialist/communist company doing the work.
It's pretty much already the case that people can have access to these weapons, I'm just being explicit.
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.
Same thing with anything in regards to drug use in the United States. Dr Carl Hart talks about how hard it is to get anything that doesn't show harm published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart
I'm responding to someone making assertions with zero cites, and I cite a source. If anyone has a cite showing that loose gun policies results in lower rates of gun deaths, they're free to present that.
I'm impugning the entire field of research, why would I then provide an opposing citation? My own claim should lead you to not trust it. I'm also not making any particular directional claim that would require such a citation.
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.
I didn't say it was strong evidence or that one should just accept my claim, but regardless you have to agree it would be weird for me to say "the entire field is untrustworthy....but here is a paper anyways".
Your entire position is weird. The claim that there isn't a single source worth citing strains credulity. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
"there isn't a single source worth citing" is not my claim. It's that the field has a very high amount of highly politicized dreck and it can't be _generally_ trusted. I'm sure there are good citations. But one can't know if any particular citation is a good one without diving into the details (probably while having some degree of subject matter expertise), and any randomly selected article is more likely than not to be bad. As such, most people should not take the existence of a citation as proof of very much since it is more likely than not to be borderline useless. Especially given that the worst, most politically motivated articles (again: in both directions) are likely to be the ones that tell the strongest stories and have the least nuance and are therefore likely to be the most often cited.
This is an area where lay people should stay out of it, and should _definitely_ not be making strong claims like "documented, empirical fact" based on a shallow reading of someone else's summary of the literature.
I would dispute your source just by look at my own state, which has incredibly open gun laws, including free open carry and having had these laws since before anyone here was born, and a massive hunting population, and yet is claimed to be in the top half of strong gun laws. It is ranked significantly above Texas, and yet I know for a fact that my state has way more permissible gun laws than Texas, both historically and currently.
So I already know they are fudging the numbers, presumably because my state usually votes democrat and they want us to look good.
Hell its got Vermont as #17, but it has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation.
Isn't the validity and credibility of the source critical to it being supportive of your argument? Seems like a reasonable counter-argument in my opinion.
I provided a source, and so far all those who’ve disagreed have only provided opinions. No one has cited anything that contradicts my source, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the validity and credibility of my source has been impeached. ‘I don’t like it’ is not a valid criticism of a source.
Not only the source, but the specific repoprting has been refuted already by others.
So you have failed to present an argument, and then continued to fail to support it. So all you have done is express an opinion. Those are fine and allowed, but of no significance to anyone else.
They do get included by anti-gun people who want to pump up the numbers. You can't trust anything but the government statistics broken out by type of death.
“Common sense” is a red flag for me. Obama (who I voted for twice, don’t come at me) pitched revoking second amendment rights for people on the Do Not Fly list as “common sense”. My common sense says we shouldn’t use a secret, extrajudicial government watch list with documented problems with false positives to revoke constitutional rights.
Yet another lie by ommision. Violent deaths by guns have no relation to strength of gun laws. What your link 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.
> 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.
According to the first militia act, every able bodied male over 18 is what defines a qualified individual. Beyond that, you're actually required to own a firearm in that case.
So are you advocating to outlaw alcohol? I mean, since people get depressed and drink which drives more depression and kill themselves... I guess you're suggesting that all depressants should be outlawed.
On the other hand, no one from the pro-gun camp is involved with or wants to involve themselves with drafting common-sense gun regulations to reduce the impact of mass shootings while respecting Constitutional rights. Everything from that side seems to revolve around arming schoolteachers and permitting more guns in more spaces.
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.
If somebody has a really stupid proposal -- such as "make all 3D printers refuse to print guns" -- I don't see why I have any obligation to "compromise" with them. Or to talk with them at all. Other than, perhaps, explain that they ought to learn about the things they want to regulate before they start making proposals. The fact that they have an incredibly long track record of bad proposals, and many strongly-held opinions based mostly in ignorance, is just entertaining.
You don't cooperate with abolitionists using compromise. You will never come to an agreement that satisfies both parties. By definition it is impossible.
Interests are also not always clear, any movement that wants to restrict activities using the law, is going to attract opportunistic power-seeking individuals. There's always crazy carve out exceptions in these proposals that allow the wealthy and the powerful to use and possess firearms that regular people cannot reasonably expect to have. It's laws to protect the powerful from the everyone else. Billionaires are creating armed doomsday compounds in countries like New Zealand, while supporting legislation that makes it harder to own a gun for self defense.
Also mass shootings are statistically the least likely cause of a gun related death. They are in the news because they are novel, not because they are likely to happen to most people.
I have an inalienable right to not be shot in public. So do my kids. The right to live should be paramount, far and above any excuses one might make about billionaires controlling all the guns.
Maybe we should enshrine that right in the Constitution as the Zeroth Amendment, because it is seriously being trampled as of late.
Unfortunately the constitution has never been the reason or means for protecting our rights. It is only an after the fact acknowledgement of them. It doesn't secure them, we do.
Define "common-sense gun regulations", because every time someone tries explaining what that means it is almost always the exact opposite of common sense. Is restricting suppressors common sense? Because some of the nations with the most restrictive gun laws advocate for the usage of suppressors. Or bans on the scary AR-15, which is less powerful than most 60 year rifles which nobody cares about, especially when the vast majority of gun crime is committed with handguns. How about bans on gun accessories like types of stocks, slings, or bayonet lugs? How about sawed off shotguns which are less powerful than many "pistols" that shoot rifle rounds? Or shotgun/rifle combinations which were once a popular hunting combination for small game.
Either we should be allowed whatever semi-auto gun, or we should be allowed zero. Everything in between is a complete waste of time and effort and just leads to fucking over poor people for judicial profit because they can't afford $10,000+ lawyer that gets everybody with any money off of such charges.
Calling anything about gun control laws "common sense" is disingenuous at best. I'm coming at this from the "you go left enough and you get your guns back" side of the whole debate, but it's extremely difficult to solve a problem that consists of "tool used for its intended purpose, but in the wrong context".
Guns kill things. That's their primary purpose, it's why they exist. The people who aren't interested in guns for that purpose are easy to please: they don't really care about gun laws except in so much as they stop them from buying fun toys. They'd probably be fine with wildly invasive processes (being put on lists, biometric safeties, whatever), so long as they were given something in return. Something like, "You can have machine guns, but they need to be kept locked up at a licensed gun range".
People who just want guns for hunting are likewise easy to please. I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
The problem is people who want guns because of their utility against people, whether that means self defense, community defense, or national defense, fundamentally need the same things ( a need that is very expressly protected by the second amendment) as the person who wants to shoot a bunch of innocents. The militia folk might be fine with restrictions on handguns, but handguns are bar none the best choice for the self defense folk. The self defense folk might be fine with the existing machine gun ban, or other restrictions on long guns, but the militia folk need those for their purposes. The self dense folk are probably fine with being put on a list, but the militia folk who are concerned about the holders of that list are rightfully opposed to that.
IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide. That's a good thing. Requiring sellers to not sell to people under 18, or those who are obviously a threat to themselves and others is also largely unobjectionable. Punishing parents who fail to secure their weapons from their children, also a good thing.
No one's in favor of mass shootings, but it's not anywhere as simple as saying "common sense gun regulations".
Regarding your statement about the guns used against animals being different than the ones used against people is just wrong. The AR-15 is about the perfect choice against wolves or wild boar, just as a single example.
As far as the waiting period, there's a perfectly valid reason against that as well... if you are under eminent threat of violence from someone and want to be able to defend yourself/family/home today... it stops you from being able to do so.
I am okay with the (relatively quick) background check... when I bought my first guns a few years ago, I had to wait about an hour in the store for the results to come back (Phoenix). Even then, I'm not okay with secondary offense restrictions (weed, etc) as a restriction.
> IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide
If I own many firearms already, what exactly does a waiting period do besides infringe upon my rights?
If you own many firearms already, how is a 30 day wait preventing you from bearing them?
But yeah, the benefit does mostly arise for first time gun buyers. But that would require a master list of all gun owners. I'd prefer the wait per gun.
Which "schoolchildren" died because of a firearm that was purchased inside of a 30 day window? None of the famous massacres would fit this bill; did you have an actual, documented event in mind or just feelings?
All of the gun grabbers I am aware of that are in favor of waiting periods try to make this infringement justified based on "crimes of passion" and other "heat-of-the-moment" nonsense - not "schoolchildren."
It's just an example, you're refusing any kind of gun regulation, doesn't matter what it is, dead kids is not a factor.
Casual gun ownership is the difference. In Europe you can get guns, but you do it for a purpose like hunting or sports, license and training is required.
In the US one of the best demographic predictor of homicide rates is skin color. For instance, super white places like New Hampshire with the ~loosest gun laws in the country have extremely low murder rates.
If you take a look at say a heat map of the US where homicide is[1], it tracks extremely closely to where the black population is (New Mexico an outlier despite having stronger gun laws than most the surrounding states besides Colorado).[2]
What's also fascinating is that this metric is consistent even when controlling for socioeconomic status - ruling out "unfair circumstances! less opportunities!" arguments.
Would you be okay with a 30 day waiting period for posing a news article, that included strict penalties for misinformation/disinformation? Since you have to wait to publish, you have less reason to get things wrong.
A 30-day waiting period on news articles _should_ meaningfully reduce misinformation. A lot of lives are ruined by misinformation/leaks in early news articles that are later disproven and those retractions are rarely covered as widely as the original false news.
> I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
If you talk to hunters, they'll give you a long list of annoying laws.
California requires a background check to buy ammunition and prohibits state residents from importing ammunition. If you are a non-resident, you can bring ammunition in, but you cannot give it to your hunting buddies and you cannot buy ammunition in California. This is such a common problem that many hunting organizations have guides explaining the issue.[1] When I lived in California, I was unable to buy ammunition despite legally buying several firearms. Around 1 in 6 legal gun owners in California are incorrectly denied when purchasing ammunition.
California (along with several other states) bans civilian ownership of silencers. Hunters need to be able to hear when searching for game, and they rarely have time to don hearing protection before taking a shot. So the net effect of this restriction is to give hunters hearing damage and create more noise pollution. It's also a problem for anyone in rural areas who wants to dispatch pests, as gunshots annoy neighbors and can even result in the police being called.
California requires that long guns be unloaded when transported, but the definition of "unloaded" states that ammunition be stored separately. If ammunition is readily available near the firearm, California counts that as loaded, and you are committing a crime. If you have cartridge holder loops on your rifle's stock, they must be empty during transport even if the firearm is in a locked case.
California requires that hunters use lead-free ammunition. Lead-free ammo is more expensive and less available than typical lead ammunition, especially if you're not hunting with a common caliber. Many hunters zero their rifle using leaded practice ammo, and are generally less experienced with their hunting ammo. This makes hunters more likely to miss an animal's vitals, prolonging its suffering. Lead-free birdshot makes sense, but considering how few rifle rounds are expended while hunting, and how it's legal to use leaded ammo for target shooting in the wilderness, the lead restriction on rifle ammo serves no useful purpose.
It's been years since I lived in California, so I'm probably forgetting some other laws that annoy hunters. But believe me: hunters are not happy with the current laws.
> The irony isn't lost on me that it's the USA, the country with some of the most permissive gun laws in the world, that's imposing these draconian rules on 3D printed guns - or is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby?
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.
It's not the most "permissive gun laws in the world". In Norway you can buy a suppressor off the shelf with little to no paperwork.
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.
I'm pretty much a gun control maximalist, but I would be more than happy to barter suppressor restrictions for pretty much anything else, since I agree with you that there's a good non-shooting-other-people reason to want to have them and I doubt they're actually that relevant to murder stats.
I think the current government of California would significantly regulate firearms if they could. It’s prevented from passing more restrictive laws due to the US constitution and a Supreme Court which takes an extremely broad interpretation of the rights derived from the second amendment.
^ This. The Feds are so utterly gridlocked in culture war nonsense and whatever dumb bullshit Trump is up to that they cannot effectively govern. States and activists groups are trying to address actual problems the country has, instead of just playing political games on Twitter.
To be fair, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group was murdered with a 3D-printed handgun. He made $10 million in 2023, or about 100 times the median salary of a UnitedHealth employee.
This bill is performative legislature not because of pipes and nails, but because professionally manufactured guns are widespread in the US. Criminals in the US overwhelmingly choose this option.
Criminals have tons of options, including straw purchasing a CA compliant gun, straw purchasing a non-CA-compliant gun from Nevada, or just throwing a brick through the window of the nearest pickup truck with a Glock sticker on it.
I know no such thing. The number one type of gun death is by far, suicide. When a gun owner takes a gun home (or in this case, prints one) statistically speaking they are more likely to use it to end their own lives or harm themselves more than anything else.
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.
> The forced changeover from coal gas to natural gas is largely credited with a reduction of suicide by 40% after it was done.
The mechanism of that reduction very well could be reducing the level of depression in the populace and thus suicidal ideation, rather than just making the means less handy (or of course, some combination). Coal gas, like any other gas used for combustion, doesn't burn perfectly and UK homes likely had persistent amounts of carbon monoxide roughly all the time since heat gets used not-quite-year-round.
> What historical precedent is there for infringement of Constitutionally-enumerated rights of others based on suicides?
There is no requirement that a precedent exist for limiting personal freedoms for the sake of safety. We infringe personal rights in the name of public safety all the time, not the least of which is current, existing gun regulations, all the way down to far more benign shit like speed limits, and not letting people scream "fire" in a theater. The 2nd Amendment was itself a modification to the constitution, ratified some time after the constitution itself. Hence the "amendment" part.
And as numerous gun activists have pointed out before me: The individual ownership interpretation goes only back to the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, and is not itself law, merely judicial precedent. The right for every single American to own a gun is not enshrined in any law, merely an interpretation of a law, and the law itself was written in an era of single‑shot, muzzle‑loading firearms, not modern semiautomatic rifles, and further, it was written to promote the creation of, and I quote, "well-regulated Militas," not "Ted up the street who owns the gas station."
Further, even if it was spelled out, in the 2nd Amendment, in clear words, that every single American had the innate right to buy and use an AR15, that does not make it unimpeachable or forever carved in stone: We can change that. We can amend the amendment, hell, we could reverse it entirely. The problem of gun violence is a hard nut to crack, and the culture of American gun ownership is long standing and on the whole I myself quite like guns. That said, I think they're far too easy to get right now, and I am far from alone in that opinion.
The "fire in a crowded theater" line is by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenck v United States.[1] During the first World War, he ruled that it was constitutional to send socialists to prison for distributing leaflets that protested the draft.
The judicial precedent set in that case was overturned in Brandenburg v Ohio.[2]
As far as I understand it, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater has not actually been legally tested. This was a non-binding analogy used in the decision of a supreme court case that found it was not a violation of the 2nd amendment to prosecute someone for speaking out against the draft (which was later overturned for obvious reasons).
The fact that the federal government is unwilling to restrict guns and other real causes of ongoing public health crises (such as massive passenger cars and trucks) even as the deaths pile up does not mean that any level of government should be piling onerous regulations onto other things that demonstrably cause essentially zero harm at the macro scale, such as 3D printers, non-commercial/non-military UAVs, and so on.
If the number of people killing themselves with 3D printed guns is not literally zero or vanishingly small at most, I would be very surprised.
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...)
It’s pressure from the anti gun obsessed nonprofits on the left like Everytown. Bloomberg has nowhere else to waste money and there are legislators willing to present bills authored by Everytown blindly. But in many cases gun control bills are known to be unconstitutional and pushed through anyways. It takes years for laws to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and even if they are, states like Washington or California or Oregon will just pass the next Everytown authored unconstitutional bill with a slight variation.
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.
If by "the left" you mean the DNC, then sure. Otherwise, Marxists, Socialists, and other far left groups are perfectly fine with guns. Hell Vermont has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation, while having Bernie Sanders as a senator.
> 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.
It's the anti-gun lobby. Bloomberg's band of morons who believe a government monopoly on force is good.
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.
No amount of FBI stats about how often "assault" rifles are used will change people's minds. They don't like them and so want to take them away.
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.
I can't square people who think owning a gun will stop or prevent a tyrannical government. Especially when the tyrannical government just leverages its supporters as a vigilante force.
An armed populace creates a huge risk for a federal paramilitary force descending on a municipality with the intent to terrorize the citizens. They're not rolling in with tomahawks and tanks, they're coming in with assault rifles and window breakers.
The problem with that thinking is that you have to have the will to act to stop tyranny, and no amount of armament will give you the will or the foresight to see it.
It won't "stop" them but having to treat everyone like they might shoot back and show up with a 10:1 manpower advantage and armed to the teeth every time you wanna subject someone to state violence really puts a damper on your ability to do tyrannical government things.
Not at all true. I haven't yet witnessed armed resistance to ICE, but it's in the cards, if the government wants to push. Given the number of veterans and folks that actually have skill with guns in the civilian populace, and the hiring standards of ICE, I think the civilian population, properly mobilized, would be incredibly effective at putting a damper on their illegal behavior.
It's an extremely dangerous line to cross, and it should be avoided if at all possible. At the same time, when no other options are available, it's better to be armed than not. I hope you never have to learn this first-hand.
It kind of is in that they're picking the easy targets. They're not being sloppy in places where wrong address has an unacceptably high (but still small) chance of having them confused for the DEA and shot back at by someone who isn't going to prison one way or another.
Long gun homicides (justified and unjustified, "assault weapons" and grandpa's 30-06 combined) are typically sub-500 per year, see: FBI crime stats for the last N decades.
Pick whatever demise: falling off of ladders, roofs, etc. - it's not hard to exceed this number in any given year.
> In 2023, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 53% of the 13,529 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 4% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (42%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”
Interesting findings:
Most gun deaths are suicides with handguns.
Assault weapons are used in less than 5% of deaths.
So basically the comparison to foreign body objects (of any type) to a single type of gun- which represents a tiny fraction of all gun deaths- is not a convincing comparison.
The point was that all the regulation on assault weapons doesn't have a meaningful effect. At best, you could reduce gun violence by 4%.
I wouldn't over-rotate on the comparison to foreign body objects: the point is, if you rely purely on the media to inform you about gun violence, you're going to get a funhouse mirror version of reality. It's way more exciting to write about the 40 school children killed in the last two years in mass shootings than the 16,000 depressed dads that blew their heads off in their garage with a handgun in the last 12 months (spitballing a bit, but 40,000 deaths, 50% of which are suicides, 80% of those are men).
I disagree- this subthread was not about assault weapons, it was about gun-control laws. But yes, if you limit yourself to assault weapons (itself a somewhat nebulous term that just muddies the discussion IMHO), then yes, you're not going to have a huge impact.
No argument that the media produces inaccurate representations about guns. I spend a fair amount of time reading articles and also spend a lot of time reading into the facts that they report.
Upvoted; I think this is a case where we are genuinely focusing on different aspects, and I see your point. My concern is that laws are often too performative. There's probably a lot to discuss there, but I suspect we largely agree.
> 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.
I’ve seen this claim from a few people in this thread but everytime I look up gun deaths per capita Massachusetts and California are low on the list and both have strict gun laws compared to red states
It's mostly the same Karens that want to outlaw guns altogether so come up with burdensome rules to inhibit gun ownership. I've always been pretty libertarian on 1A and 2A myself.
It is pressure from the gun control lobby. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, is the brains behind it. The states moving this legislation (California, Washington) are very hostile to gun ownership, and already have bans on assault rifles and printed guns. This is just another step in tightening the noose.
It's important to note that the USA also has some of the fiercest opponents of private gun ownership in the world.
The most important thing to note here is that a majority of the support for gun control in America is cultural. Even the loud-and-proud pro-gun people got extremely shy about their own principles once the Black Panthers started packing heat. On the flipside, it's also not hard to find gun control supporting Democrats that happen to own firearms in their house. There's a related cultural argument over "assault weapons", or "black guns" - i.e. the ones that look like military weapons rather than hunting tools.
The result of all this confusion - and, for that matter, any culture war fight - is a lot of stupid lawmaking designed specifically to work around the edges of 2A while ignoring how guns actually work or how gun laws are normally written. Like, a while back there were bans on purely cosmetic features of guns. Things like rail attachments, that do not meaningfully increase the lethality of the weapon, but happen to be preferred by a certain crowd of masculinity-challenged right-wingers. In other words, a ban on scary-looking guns.
What's going on here is that someone figured out how to make a 3D printed gun that will not immediately explode in your hand on first firing. In the US it's legal to manufacture your own guns, and there's no requirement to serial-number such a gun, which makes it more difficult to trace if that gun is used to commit a crime. You can't really stop someone from making such a "ghost gun" (practically, not legally), so they want to take a page out of the DMCA 1201 playbook and just ban all the tools used to make such a thing possible.
Personally, I don't think that will pass constitutional muster - but that also relies heavily on existing culture-war brained nonsense that happens to be standing constitutional principle. 2A itself can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways. The original interpretation was "no interfering with state-run slave catching militias", and then later that turned into "everyone has the right to own firearms". Nothing stops it from changing again.
California has lots of restrictions on firearms. When I lived in the state, I had to get a firearm safety certificate (which involved paying some money and taking a multiple choice test), present my ID for a background check, get my thumb print taken, submit two forms of proof of my address (such as utility bills), demonstrate safe handling of a firearm, and wait 10 days. A cell phone bill didn't count as proof of address, only fixed utilities like water & electricity. I'm sure this denied many renters the ability to purchase firearms. Also I could only purchase firearms on California's roster (a whitelist of firearm makes and models). Popular firearms such as 4th generation Glocks were not on the roster, though cops were allowed to buy them. Also firearms couldn't have threaded barrels (it's a felony to put one on your gun) and magazines were limited to a capacity of 10 rounds.
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 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.
You have described the lawmaking process of basically any country. We can't actually write laws to solve real problems because real problems are hard and you can actually tell whether they've been solved or not, but we can write laws to solve imaginary problems and then when nothing changes declare victory.
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.
> Both things happen to a vanishingly small degree that it's not worth taking any action on either
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.
You're right it's a very obvious thing that you should have to show your government issued ID to verify who you are to a civic function, and that relying on the honor system is something that seems like it could never work because elections are serious and people have vested interest in particular outcomes and so would obviously look to cheat.
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.
I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that this thing that we can’t really verify (because we can’t make sure <person voting> = <person registered> at the polls) isn’t happening, precisely because we can’t accurately verify it. It’s not a theoretical concern that voter rolls can be stale (because of not removing dead people or people who have moved in a timely manner) or otherwise inaccurate. And attempts to actually purge voter rolls always meet stiff resistance as some nefarious ploy to disenfranchise voters. There is at any time a non-zero chance that you could vote using the name of someone who’s either dead or not around any more. So why so much resistance to safeguarding against that? Nevermind the added benefit that a national ID card could be used as a real replacement for Social Security numbers. But again, so much resistance to something that every other country thinks is a good idea. Which is even more assuming since we point to “well everyone else does it that way” for so many issues. But voter ID? Oh, well that’s complicated, couldn’t possibly work here.
They meet stiff resistance because they're always done at election time and only selectively.
Voter ID laws are a non-starter because historically they've been used, along with literacy tests and civics tests, to disenfranchise people who can't get an ID. For example, in Idaho you must have "proof of your identity and age" like a birth certificate or citizenship certificate, plus proof of residency like a utility bill or rental agreement or employment record.
These things are easy for most people to provide, but people who are in unstable living situations may find these things impossible to provide. Requiring those people to provide ID at the polls would effectively disenfranchise them.
Who is verifying the documents? If the names have to match, what about people who change their names? What documents should they present to prove that that's their real name? How will the election worker actually verify that the documents are correct?
Women who have changed their names after getting married have a higher burden of proof than people that have not changed their name. The folks who wrote this act are aware of this.
The SAVE Act, in particular, puts in place criminal and civil penalties for election workers that fail to properly identify someone. But a random election worker is not equipped to make that judgment perfectly and is going to end up making mistakes, since document verification for things like birth certificates is completely manual.
Young voters are more likely to have the documents like a birth certificate back at their parents' house and they're not likely to yet have a passport. Likewise, poorer voters do not have the resources to easily obtain these documents. Passport costs over $100 in the United States and for someone that doesn't travel often is not a very good investment. Just because you can't afford an expensive government document does not mean you're not entitled to your vote.
If Silicon Valley has taught me anything, it's every time you add friction to a process, fewer people have the resources and/or are willing to go through it as they drop off the funnel. In this case, it's targeted at the young, the poor, and the women. We used to be a nation that would say: get out and vote! Participate in our democracy! Now we're looking for excuses to not let citizens vote if they can't prove on the spot that they're a citizen. Papers, please.
And all that for what? Multiple institutions, including the Cato Institute and the U.S. Department of Justice, have found no evidence of meaningful voter fraud. This is because identification is required during voter registration, which is effective in preventing illegal immigrants from voting. This is why we tie voter registration to things like getting a driver's license at the DMV. You already have all your documents prepared that you gathered for that visit, and so that's the right time to be checking all of them.
It would be easier to buy the "I just like the stock" argument for voter id despite the absence of a concrete problem if…
1. Voter turnout wasn't already shit and we're about add friction for very little practical gain.
2. The people pushing for voter id laws also pushed for things that reduced the disparity like a national id, a program to get it in the hands of every American, automatic registration when interacting with the government, literally anything.
It's unfortunate that we can't work up mechanisms to encourage and reward voter registration and participation as well as make the process a bit more dynamic, say have a 100 day window for primaries and caucuses, states/districts get to pick a day in order (with no two picking the same day, not picking adjacent days if possible to not) based on voter registration and turnout for the previous election.
> We can't actually write laws to solve real problems because real problems are hard.
Not making excuses for politicians, but nearly all big bureaucracies start exhibiting this same behavior. It is the lamp post fallacies of problem solving.
> Regulating actual guns that are frequently used in crime? Unlikely.
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.
> Which makes the kind of regulations they _want_ around firearms (i.e., regulate/tax them out of existence) kind of tricky.
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.
There also exists a pesky fourth amendment that should protect people from laws like this but unfortunately it doesn't have the industry and lobbing that the second amendment has.
I feel like kits for the purpose of assembling a printer would also be subject to regulation and attack... and open-source printer firmware... and related guides or resources... and related hardware platforms, like CNC and laser cutting...
i think it can go further than that, such as circular scenarios, what portion of the item, is the part to worry about.
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.
This reminds me of Ken Thompson’s speech on trusting trust. The recursive/meta nature of it all has helped me explain to those unfamiliar that this is such a waste of time. Education is where it’s at, but I’m preaching to the choir here on HN.
Trying to restrict the non-printed ICs you'd connect to your 3D printed parts would be even dumber. There's a zillion things that can slam out bits and control a stepper motor.
you can build a 3d printer out of general-purpose electronic bits, anything they tried to ban would send ripples into countless other industries that are completely unrelated to each other or 3d printing.
By "general-purpose" I mean that there's no components that are 3d-printer specific; motor controllers and microcontrollers and voltage regulators and all the various jellybean parts. And even if there were any, they could easily be replaced with general-purpose components.
It's legal to manufacture your own firearms. Putting limitations on 3d printers just makes people who want to this's lives harder and stifles innovation.
California law prohibits anyone from 3D printing a firearm (or most firearm parts) without first getting a manufacturing license from the state[1]:
> (b) A person, firm, or corporation shall not use a three-dimensional printer to manufacture any firearm, including a frame or receiver, or any firearm precursor part, unless that person, firm, or corporation is licensed pursuant to Chapter 2 (commencing with Section 29030).
To get a license from the state, you must first have a federal firearms manufacturing license. California has additional requirements such as fees ranging from $250-600, yearly background checks of any employees who handle guns, a CA DOJ certificate of eligibility for every business owner, stricter building security measures than a FFL type 07, records of the serial numbers of all firearms produced, and allowing the local police to inspect the facility regularly. Firearm manufacturers are not allowed to sell guns to individuals, so you would not be able to take possession of your 3D printed gun until you got the model approved on California's roster, transferred it to a firearm dealer, then went through California's standard process for buying a gun, which I describe here.[2]
To be fair, there is a decent chance that law would be deemed unconstitutional in federal court. The only problem is nobody making their own guns at home has the capital to try and bring this case to any larger court. The ones with capital to do so, established gun manufacturers, have no incentive to fight it, a couple hundred bucks is literally nothing to them. They spend more money on office coffee each day.
This is sad to hear. My knowledge of the situation was out of date of what things were like around 2020 in California. Many firearms companies today started off with one person creating an innovative design and then scaling that up. All of these barriers to entry just lock out hobbyists and potential disrupters out of the market.
It's legal insofar that if you want to exercise your rights expect to sit in Jail until your lawyer can take it to the Supreme Court. At which point CA will slightly reword the law to intentionally circumvent the Constitutional rights of its citizens.
I have no idea about CA but this is absolutely the case in NYC.[] Dexter Taylor is sitting in jail for a decade for making personal use firearms without a license. No other alleged criminal activity and they never even left his house. During trial, the judge said "the second amendment isn't allowed in my courtroom."*
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.
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law out of all other freedom struggles."
Of course the second amendment isn't allowed in his courtroom. It's literally not allowed in any courtroom in the country. It's a courtroom. The only people permitted to have guns in a courtroom in the US are the bailiffs and the judge. Was that a reading comprehension issue, or are you just trying to rile people up?
Sports Arenas and Jails are two other places you might be surprised to learn don't allow the second amendment.
Weird. I have seen a bunch of people repeating that quote, but not a single source for the full court transcript. Court transcript are public record, available for request by anyone. So it's real strange no one seems to have a source reference, no? Did you read the transcript? Happen to have a reference?
IMO, it depends on the events in court; if there was extensive argumentation about that and the judge is finally saying that it's been discussed to death and there's no point bringing it up, that seems fine. (I don't want to read the actual court transcripts to figure out what the attorney is referring to, so this comment is intentionally inconclusive.)
No, what the judge is saying is that just arguing that you're allowed to do whatever "gun things" you want because of the 2nd amendment in a state district court is specious. You can argue the merits of the specific case based on the precedent in that and other courts that have jurisdiction but simply standing up and arguing baldly that the 2nd amendment lets you make guns and sell them without a serial number doesn't carry water. To make that argument you'd first have to take the F out of ATF and roll back a lot of case law that exists at the federal level that does give states the right to enact some controls.
It's a gross oversimplification of what the judge was trying to say to imply that they don't care about the 2nd amendment or the constitution.
This has nothing to do with the federal laws that are enforced by ATF ... what he did was totally legally federally.
And he didn't sell them, you pulled that out of your ass.
It doesn't appear you have any familiarity with the case yet you purport to understand what the judge was saying by completely mischaracterizing the case with outright falsehoods. But I suppose if you just tell straight up lies confidently enough, someone will believe you!
the caveat is it has to be your personal product and you cant sell it, probably cant "loan" it, and it would be questionable if you were found letting your buddy try a few shots.
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.
[addndm] "Requirements for Individuals
For individuals who already possess a PMF or an unfinished receiver for personal use, the rule does not require retroactive serialization. However, if that individual decides to sell or transfer a privately made firearm to another person, the transaction must be conducted through an FFL. The FFL must then apply a serial number to the weapon and complete the required background check and record-keeping procedures before the transfer can legally occur."
Might be true in California, but this is almost entirely false at a federal level.
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).
>[addndm] "Requirements for Individuals
Yeah that's an uncited bit of misinformed nonsense, it's totally false. If there is a law or ruling they surely could have cited it, in fact what they did was apparently trawl forums or something repeating that myth and just regurgitated it out. Here is the actual rule they claim they are referring to[] I challenge anyone to find that nonsense in there.
In fact, it says the exact opposite, as I will cite the actual rule publication that those morons are pretending to refer to but yet won't cite themselves:
At the same time, neither the GCA nor the proposed or final rule prohibits unlicensed individuals from marking (non-NFA) firearms they make for their personal use, or when they occasionally acquire them for a personal collection, or sell or transfer them from a personal collection to unlicensed in-State residents consistent with Federal, State, and local law. There are also no recordkeeping requirements imposed by the GCA or the proposed or final rule upon unlicensed persons who make their own firearms, but only upon licensees who choose to take PMFs into inventory. In sum, this rule does not impose any new requirements on law-abiding gun owners.
Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning requirements on people's phones for CSAM.
I happened to remember reading about how the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement would have ruined EARN IT Act's implementation had it passed [1]:
> When a private entity conducts a search because the government wants it to, not primarily on its own initiative, then the otherwise-private entity becomes an agent of the government with respect to the search. (This is a simplistic summary of “government agent” jurisprudence; for details, see the Kosseff paper.) And government searches typically require a warrant to be reasonable. Without one, whatever evidence the search turns up can be suppressed in court under the so-called exclusionary rule because it was obtained unconstitutionally. If that evidence led to additional evidence, that’ll be excluded too, because it’s “the fruit of the poisonous tree.”
> Fourth Amendment government agency doctrine is why lawmakers and law enforcement must tread very carefully when it comes to CSAM scanning online. Many online service providers already choose voluntarily to scan all (unencrypted) content uploaded to their services, using tools such as PhotoDNA. But it must be a voluntary choice, not one induced by government pressure. (Hence the disclaimer in the federal law requiring providers to report CSAM on their services that they know about, which makes clear that they do not have to go looking for it.) If the provider counts as a government agent, then its CSAM scans constitute warrantless mass surveillance. Whatever CSAM they find could get thrown out in court should a user thus ensnared raise a Fourth Amendment challenge during a resulting prosecution. But that’s often a key piece of evidence in CSAM prosecutions; without it, it’s harder to convict the accused. In short, government pressure to scan for CSAM risks letting offenders off the hook.
> Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning requirements on people's phones for CSAM
Don’t we have something similar with how pretty much all copiers/printers wont print currency?
> Don’t we have something similar with how pretty much all copiers/printers wont print currency?
The short answer is yes, but I'm not sure how similar.
Copiers/printers that refuse to print money detect a pattern designed in the original physical currency note (as with the EURion constellation [1], with emphasis on the fact that currency is printed by the government) or a digital watermark placed in digital images of money (as with the Counterfeit Deterrence System voluntarily developed by banks [2]).
18 U.S. Code § 474A makes controlling or possessing "any essentially identical feature or device adapted to the making of" counterfeit money a felony [3]. What happens if I make a single "simple" printer for my own use that prints anything I tell it to because I "simply" didn't include any scanning or blocking functions in the printer design, and I never intend to print copy/counterfeit money? Is such a printer "adapted to the making of" counterfeit money? I don't know. If I instead make or transfer such a printer for any purpose other than my own personal use, the answer might move toward yes, but maybe it was already yes. Does the US require all copiers and printers to include at least one feature that prevents copying or counterfeiting of money? I don't know.
US requires only the serialized part of a firearm treated as guns. For the AR-15, which is like PC/AT of guns, it's a nearly cosmetic part of it, sort of a motherboard backplate. Or like, a collar for a dog rather than the heart of a dog. As such, that part reportedly can be printed and used to shoot live rounds fine. Most other guns apart for AR-15 don't even matter, like how an E-ATX motherboard with dual PowerPC hardly matter in any talks concerning a PC - if you'd be wondering what about Raspberry Pi, that would be SIG P320 or something like that.
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.
> (d) “Three-dimensional printer” means a computer-aided manufacturing device capable of producing a three-dimensional object from a three-dimensional digital model through an additive manufacturing process that involves the layering of two-dimensional cross sections formed of a resin or similar material that are fused together to form a three-dimensional object.
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.
> 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.
Requiring people to drive to Nevada to buy a real 3DP?
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.
Yes, we have a gun violence problem. But notably, we do not have a heavy weapons problem. By and large, gun crimes are committed with guns that can be purchased legally somewhere inside the US.
So if the silver bullet to the gun violence problem is taking away all the guns (please do not misunderstand me, I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT TO BE THE CASE), then step 1 is to limit what guns can be purchased anywhere in the US.
But this whole 3d printer farse reveals something we sort of already knew: if people want to have guns (or have weapons in general), they're going to find a way. If you want to address the gun violence problem, you have to find a way to make people not want to kill, nor own guns, that's unrelated to how difficult/expensive it is to get guns. And you're going have to do that in the shadow of the constitution.
Yea, they never mention that Europe also has way better social safety nets, mental healthcare, etc.
I do think gun control can work, but these kinds of legislation feel like the "paper straw" kind of regulation - ie alienating some people who'd otherwise agree with you on many things.
It's anyone who manufactures plastic or parts. 3D Printers are the wild west of printing your own replacement parts and soon the goal will to ban these things, unless there is right to repair.
Legislators are incentivized to push whatever sounds good to their voters and donors, their job is to do something, none of them have anything to gain from sitting on the sideline, even if they are powerless to effectively solve the issue. So they make something up. Both major parties push stupid shit that panders to their base whether or not it actually solves anything.
Feckless democrats who want to appear tough on guns. Instead of taking on the NRA or lobbying groups they go after low hanging fruit to tout as victories to their base. It generates votes and wealth for the rep. Same thing with anti-trans bills from the right. Legislation that can pass through targeting small enough collectives that they don't have to worry about bad press.
All the news stories about ghost guns being 3D printed didn't hurt either. So they can sell a narrative of protecting people.
> Rebecca Beth Bauer-Kahan (née Bauer; born October 28, 1978) is an American attorney and politician who has served as a member of the California State Assembly from the 16th district since 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, her district extends from Lamorinda to the Tri-Valley region of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been described as a women's rights advocate.
The real truth? Nonprofits like Everytown, funded fully by billionaires like Bloomberg, who are effectively bribing/coercing legislators with their money and power. They supply identical bills into many deep blue states. They’re all extremely invasive in this way.
In any other context when someone tries to demand the impossible from me, I just say "you show me how to do it". But all the time politicians prestidigitate directives without any clue how it might be actually done. It's like that guy that tried to decree that pi=3.
The irony is that the pi == 3 argument comes from failing to read correctly/follow directions accurately for 1 Kings 7:23 --- the ratio of 3 to the diameter is for the _inner_ circumference --- when one includes the thickness of the wall, then it comes out to 3.14 which is a workable approximation.
Is there evidence that shows a trend in increased violent crime committed using 3D-printed weapons?
I’ve certainly seen projects and models demonstrating the ability to create firearms with the help of a 3D printer, but I’m not aware of anyone using one to commit a crime…
Bambu Lab A1 Mini is around $200 here in Europe and as long as you can fit into the 180mm cube print volume, it is wonderful. Requires zero configuration and zero prior knowledge. Calibrates itself, reminds you about maintenance. Looks as unthreatening as a 3D printer can. Supports offline/LAN mode.
The Elegoo Centauri Carbon (~$300) is the best value for single filament (their promised Filament Switching System has yet to be released despite being promised for Q3 last year), since DJI revenge-invested in them for the sake of the engineers who left that company to start Bambu Labs. It has an enclosure and heated bed which are helpful for printing specialty/engineering filaments.
Flashforge AD5X (also ~$300) is the best value for single extruder multi-filament since it forgoes the expense of material to enclose it which works well for PLA (an enclosure is easily fabricated and installed). Note that they had a recent social media gaffe where they claimed that they would report manufacture of weapons, but have since walked that back.
I own both of the above, and print from USB sticks w/o connecting to my network --- I'm pretty sure that's possible with most if not all printers.
The Snapmaker U1 (~$1,000) is the most striking value for multi-filament since it minimizes "poop" (extra filament extruded when changing colours).
If you want to support opensource, then one of Prusa's (they cover a wide range of price points) --- they have been pushing the "INDX" printhead technology which allows fast/efficient switching between different filaments.
Snuck in my Bambu P1S. Won't be upgrading that firmware hahaha! I've had it for a few months now and it's a good consumer-grade easy-to-use 3d printer.
This is so dumb. It isn't the printers where you could solve this but the slicers and slicers are for the most part open source. Effectively this is another ban on particular numbers. The printers just execute G-code and to make a printer aware of what it is that it is printing requires a completely different level of processing than what is normally present in the printers. Besides that, you could break anything up into parts that don't necessarily look like the complete article.
This is an idiotic feel-good bill being pushed by political opportunists who want to look like they're taking action against a flood of illicit plastic guns. In a sane world, it would be shut down before anyone even wasted the time to print it.
A 3D printer being able to identify what it's actually printing is much harder than it seems. Also, the majority of what gets printed are parts - how do you distinguish between a legal gun owner printing accessories and parts that go towards a ghost gun?
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.
Thing is you can make a 3d printer; it's basically CNC stuff with a different tool. I suppose fabricating your own 3D printer needs to be legally ensnarled as well.
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 lobbyists milk both sides. Everyone mouthing obligatory moral panic narratives to keep the money flowing.
> Thing is you can make a 3d printer; it's basically CNC stuff with a different tool.
Yes, but no too. I've built and purchased many 3d printers. You can make a 3d printer, but can you make one that works reliably as something like a washing machine with little to no tinkering or adjustment? Bambu Lab can sell you that for less than three hundred bucks. Just give it a file, feed it plastic, and it will rip.
I can now build a 3d printer that reliable, but only with parts and tools from other people and only after experience. Realistically not being able to buy a 3d printer off the shelf means it's going to be inaccessible for most people.
From the country where guns are sold? I don't get it. What is the point?
Not even being ironic. I don't understand the point.
If you tell me that this can make an untracked weapon, I will tell you that probably an untracked weapon can be done with anything, and surprise surprise, even without 3d printed parts.
Imagine the amount of false positives and inquiries on unprovable things.
Soon this will also be used for copyright or whatever, and that will be the sole purpose
> Not even being ironic. I don't understand the point
Because there is a significant part of the country that would love to ban guns completely but they currently don't, and perhaps won't ever, have quite enough support to make a change to the constitution to allow them to. In the absence of that, and given they do have plenty of support to create local law many places, the strategy seems to have become to create a regulatory regime that technically still allows guns while making it as impractical as possible for anyone to actually do so.
> Because there is a significant part of the country that would love to ban guns completely but they currently don't, and perhaps won't ever, have quite enough support to make a change to the constitution to allow them to.
Both, though I don't know the breakdown. I'm confident saying there's absolutely some people who seem to see onerous regulation as a path to a de facto ban, though.
I'd be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to those pushing regulations if the regulations themselves seemed well thought out and drafted rather than leaning on kneejerk "guns bad, rules good" reactions from voters to get passed. Unfortunately the actual situation seems to be that left-leaning areas where it's easy to push anti-gun law lean farther and farther into restricting both first and second amendment rights without meaningful impact, while the right-leaning areas that actually could use some additional regulation over the perhaps overly lax federal level laws can't or won't do anything.
This is bullshit. It's a clear power grab to re-seize democratized means of production, and added surveillance. Both suck. The proposed bill in Washington is even worse, and blanket bans nearly any kind of machining or manufacturing that doesn't use surveillance. I'm going to have to actually write letters to lawmakers now as if there wasn't enough bullshit happening already.
It's highly misleading to call a bill that was introduced a couple of days ago by one Assembly member "California's new bill". Bills aren't laws and most bills go nowhere.
The type of bad bills that DO go somewhere are the ones that the public doesn't hear about until it's too late. I don't know why this being reported on is a bad thing.
Well, it's a new bill. What is misleading about it? Is there a special term for "a bill that was introduced a couple of days ago by one Assembly member" ?
It's like calling "a bill recently introduced by Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan" ... "California's new bill". It's not California's anything, and won't be unless/until it becomes part of California's legal code.
Most "progressive" policies are, and have always been, scams aimed at tricking people into allowing the state to consolidate more power to use for ulterior purposes.
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.
I wonder how "significant technical skill" will be interpreted in practice. That phrase likely means something different to the average HN reader than to the average congressman.
Not really. It only applies to machines whos "sole or primary" ability is to manufacture firearms.
I'm not sure even one such machine exists. Some companies market benchtop or small lathes as "gun lathes" but that is marketing fluff not a technical description. Any lathe can be used to make weapons. They have tons of round parts and parts with drilled holes. So does everything else that gets manufactured.
I am not aware of any machine tool company that manufactures lathes, mills, etc explicitly designed just for manufacturing firearms.
So in that sense the law you reference is typical of performative legislation. You have angry idiots pestering you to Do Something(TM). So you pass a do-nothing bill. You get to say you banned a thing that never existed. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt or bother anyone because it applies to no one. That's the best of both worlds! Do nothing while looking busy! Take action without actually hurting anyone.
Is it silly? Yes. But I'd rather they do stuff like that then actually try to regulate 3d printers.
The law was targeted against Cody Wilson's "Ghostrunner" CNC machine, but c.f., the "Coastrunner" (the same machine painted vivid colours and marketed for general usage so as to get around this law).
"primary function of manufacturing firearms" effectively targets that "marketing fluff". As the other person mentioned it was a reaction to the ghostgunner mill.
That's an illegal tube is what you've got right there... Hay wait _I_ could be an illegal tube at any point, either by choice or at the mercy of a lawmakers writing tools.
This is remarkably similar to the fight over feed vs seed nanotech in The Diamond Age novel.
The Feed was a centralized matter distribution network under strict control of what could be created and by whom. The Seed was a completely self contained system that could bootstrap from raw materials.
i am well-aware that what follows is a rant, but i really do feel boxed in from every moral angle from my upbringing. from surveilled e2e communication from the "conservatives", to surveilled 3d printers from the "liberals", and watching the political pendulum ratchet a rope around my throat with increasingly fascist tooling, i am given to wonder if I am not a side character in 1984.
so i don't mind if you downvote me. but if you care to listen to a man rant:
we have an incredibly sycophantic doj which selectively enforces the law according to socioeconomic status, so it boggles the mind that some of us in this thread maintain that this issue is partisan alone ("oh you liberals"). this line of thinking is a trap.
is it really the dems in california? is it really trump's doj? or, taking a step back and looking at fascist trends worldwide in aggregate, don't these policies benefit those groups who operate and lobby above common law? those groups of people who we magically let slide time and time again after committing gross misconduct? those companies whose monopolies fundamentally destroy free trade?
so much tribalism.
conservative or liberal, once the pendulum swings maybe consider what happens when your phantom political 'enemies' on the other side of the aisle can monitor what you create in your home, what queries you toss into your AI assistant, who you talk to on social media, what you are buying, or where your location is on the cell tower map.
then if you have a second brain cell, maybe consider whether those enemies on the other side of the aisle are struggling to feed kids and make shelter just the same as you, whether they are as much the rabble as those goliaths who dictate what the topics of division -are-
who benefits most from your fear of the other but those groups who lobby both sides??
isn't it would be better to have a world of celebrated differences and rules of decorum that instill trust and foster co-operation? isn't that the world that we want, so that we may put the monsters at epstein island, sarajevo, (and so many other places) in prison? maybe it is time to rise up and hold our leaders accountable, on the left and the right!
"oh this is just political posturing, those lawmakers are rewarded merely for doing 'something'" yes-- this is true. but from the outset, whose political posturing is it really? because the end result for every one of these laws that come to pass don't seem to prevent the folks up top from getting away scott-free.
just remember that with all illegal files (violations of copyright law, banned books, etc): it is easy to determine whether you are in possession of them. whether it is enforced against you is a matter of convenience and leverage, your personal value (and optic value as a victim in the political theatre). be value-less.
rant aside. obvious, stupid questions to the topic at hand:
- (yes, shooting people is bad).
- what is the definitive geometry of a gun?
- who arbitrates that?
- is it a crime to print a rubber band gun? a toy gun?
- what about parts for a gun? how is that known?
- who do we register our printers to?
- what mechanisms are in place to side channel whether a person purchases tools such that we can detect whether they own an unregistered 3d printer?
- how do we deal with false positives?
- if I have a novel prototype of a non-gun which I would like to patent in a highly litigious first-to-file country, how can I guarantee that the file in question is submitted only to the government entity or API endpoint in question?
- do we ban chinese printers? whose companies form the superset of allowable printers? how do smaller manufacturers join in?
- what happens when the printer EOLs and software updates for the device stop (and therefore can't update the API endpoint)?
- will open source printers be illegal?
- what else should our government forbid us for printing: cock rings and contraceptive devices? emblems associated with religious groups (modernly) associated with hate speech?
i am sorry if you read this much and are from elsewhere. watch that it does not happen to your country. my heart goes out to you.
This is coming from California, a distinctly capitalist state, and refers to a list published by the US Federal Department of Justice, which reports to a distinctly capitalist (or... at a minimum, a distinctly non-communist) administration.
It also doesn't get in the way of the US's (already extraordinarily loose) firearms sale and acquisition doctrine which regularly costs innocent lives with the pretext of resisting a tyrannical government (which, it appears, people aren't actually that interested in doing now that one's in power).
I don't know what language you speak but here is a part of the bill in English
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.
> 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.
Clearly this is mostly security theatre (see eg comment about proving that them printer can't print a printer that can print a gun).
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?
> (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.
I do agree, there are a lot of federalism concerns. That said, there are a lot of things which are illegal for sale at a state/city/county level that vary across state/county/city lines. Its not entirely a new domain.
Sure, but those local laws have no relevance outside their jurisdiction. In this case, it's not clear that California isn't trying to extend its reach beyond its own borders.
I still don't see what's you're saying. California's bill is requiring their DoJ to approve 3D printers for sale or transfer within the state of California.
Yes but most designs still require metal bits. Typically the frame will be 3d printed and then you rely on machined components for things like slides and rails.
I feel like the core issue here is accessibility. It’s always been possible to machine your own gun, but that required technical skill. Now the skill lies in the designing of the models, not the manufacturing, so it may be more practical to go after model distribution. But that ship might have already sailed with the advent of AI model creators.
Going after model distribution is by far the least practical option. Speech is protected by law that California can not change, and the flow of information is ridiculously difficult to control even if it were legally permissible to do.
The irony is that these printers are all coming from China where even thinking about printing a gun is illegal. In comparison, America has a massive consumer gun production industry that wouldn’t survive if a significant share of that production wasn’t smuggled into Latin America.
that wouldn’t survive if a significant share of that production wasn’t smuggled into Latin America
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.
It’s not even close to 0.3%, the last time the Obama administration tried to get accurate numbers the republicans blew a head gasket. The fact that supposedly every American owns 4 or 5 guns should hint at how bad the smuggling problem is, and Americans are supporting it with a wink and cooked statistics, they are basically willingly exporting death.
0.03% is ten times less than 0.3%, so I agree it is not even close. The money to manufacturers from smuggling is a rounding error. The numbers are from anti-gun activists, so they are incentivized to over state, not understate the smuggling.
The fact that supposedly every American owns 4 or 5 guns should hint at how bad the smuggling problem is
I think it shows how disconnected non-gun owners are from people who own guns. None of my liberal gun owning friends in California have fewer than 4-5 guns. My conservative gun owning friends in Texas have 20-30 guns. I've never met a gun owner that had 1-2.
I know people who don't like guns don't want to hear it, but guns are tools. You wouldn't ask a carpenter if the only tool he needed was one saw. You don't just need a saw, you need a hammer, a screwdriver, a drill. And you don't just need one saw, you need a few specialized saws, and many screwdrivers. Maybe one hammer is enough.
I am #3 and there are a lot of us (every close friend I have is #3). we don't talk about them publicly so every non-close friend I have would lose a house betting against me owning a gun (I am as non-conservative politically as it gets)
> The state should prosecute people who make illegal thing, not add useless surveillance software on every tool in every classroom, library, and garage in the state.
This bill 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.
1st Amendment + 2nd Amendment == The Right to 3D Print and Bear Arms
Moreover, how could this be implemented? Determining the 3D volume which a given G-code file will result in is something which the industry would find very useful, but no one has yet achieved. Doing so would probably simultaneously result in the folks doing so being awarded a Fields Medal and the Turing Award (in addition to making a boatload of money licensing the resultant software/patent).
On top of that, how does one resolve the matter of the same G-code file (for two nested circles plus some machine-specific codes) resulting in either a metal washer, or a lamp base, depending on whether run on a machine set to metric w/ a coolant system, or Imperial w/ a tool changer?
Lastly, who creates the list of forbidden parts? How will it be curated? And most importantly, how will it be secured that it isn't a set of blueprints which are then used to make firearms?
A more reasonable bit of legislation would be one which required folks who are barred by statute from owning firearms (convicted felons (who have not had their rights restored)/convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse) to approve with their parole officer any file for a part/object made by a 3D printer or CNC machine before submitting it to the machine.
I'll be honest, I've always been mixed on prohibiting parolees and ex-cons from owning firearms in the first place. I think the right itself as part of self-defense is pretty clear and self-evident. I also don't like secondary crimes in general.
Killing is bad... killing because you don't like $group is double-bad. Speeding is bad, speeding without a seatbelt is double-bad. etc.
If you are such a danger to society that you shouldn't be allowed to be armed in case of defense, then you probably shouldn't be in society and remain locked up. That's just my take on it. I feel similarly on taking away voting rights after prison as well. I may not like how you vote, but I'm just not a fan of taking away people's rights outside prison/jail.
I agree about the guns. The second amendment doesn't say "except felons". It says "shall not be infringed".
Possibly, if there are enough armed felons running about, we might be able to get both sides to the table and admit that maybe there should be some limits. Until then it does us no good to exclude some groups just because we don't like them, while still enduring school shootings.
It does mention "a well-regulated militia" though, and oddly legal gun owners don't belong to one of those.
In 1700s terminology, the process of regulating (training) the militia has to take place after first gathering the 'irregular' militia, whose members bring their own weapons. This was established even in colonial times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_Movement_in_North_Ca... You'll recall the Baker Street Irregulars, and Paul Revere's "You know the rest, in the books you have read, how the British Regulars fired and fled." The 2A's 'Arms' also covers non-gunpowder weapons. The right of the People to keep arms comes prior to issues related to their use.
The point about militia is a short statement for why the right to bear arms is important, rather than trying to restrict or qualify the right.
The ability to form militias is so important, that everyone should have the right to bear arms, in order to enable this.
The idea is that it prevents the idea of a "special militia" having some selection criteria, so the government of the day cant make qualifying for its group a requirement to own guns.
I agree, that clause is there to explain why. To my eye, Madison appears to have been thinking mostly about state militias versus a standing (national) army. We obviously don't muster any of those today, I suppose the closest we come is the National Guard.
"Well-regulated" in the context of 18th Century American English refers to the object's character, not to a system of regulations.
You might say that a farmer runs a "well-regulated farm" because things run smoothly. Or that the windmill was a "well-regulated machine."
According to the first militia act, which defines the militia ss every able bodied male over 18... everyone is required to own a firearm... yeah, it's a musket, but it was the most common weapon of the time, today it would likely be a 9mm handgun and an AR-15.
It would also mean having regular meetups in your community to discuss any coordination necessary in times of emergency... Where to show up with your gun(s), who is in charge, who to communicate with, etc.
I'd be a proponent of returning to this norm.
The "well-regulated militia" bit is given as the rationale behind the amendment. That does not therefore mean that the right codified by the amendment only applies to those who are a part of a militia.
Too expensive/punitive, and note that there is an option to be restored to full citizenship after time served/restitution is made.
My take on it is that if your judgement is so twisted that you are able to commit a felony and not be able to successfully petition for rights restoration, then you are not suited to deciding by whom the country should be governed.
I haven't had my firearm rights restored since I caught my (non-violent, bullied into a plea deal) felony over 20 years ago because I have not yet managed to fully pay restitution to a large insurance company. Despite having paid more than the original judgement, interest is a killer and my current balance stands at over $130k (original judgement for $33k).
I feel like there is important context missing here. I don't think not paying insurance is a felony (if it is, I think it should be changed)
No, but the felony involved damage to property and so there was a civil penalty involved and where I live my criminal status is linked to whether or not I've paid that off. They did restore my voting rights after my parole was up, though, and I don't care to own a gun, so I've made peace with the situation.
I was trying to get ahead of the debt for awhile but I realized that's a sucker's game and now I just pay the minimum that keeps them from confiscating parts of my paycheck or other assets.
It’s political theater. Not intended to actually accomplish much except “See!? We did something! Now vote for us again.”
Meanwhile, open source printers can and will just bypass it.
Doesn't the law include that devices which fail to implement such checks are barred from sale?
>In addition, knowingly disabling or circumventing the blocking software is a misdemeanor.
The inobvious thing is that that aspect of the law cannot be applied to felons or persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, since like failing to pay the tax stamp on a Class-III firearm or accessory, it would require self-incrimination, which thus far, is still illegal.
Have you actually looked into what it takes to restore full citizenship in many places? In some locations it means having to get the Governor to act on your behalf. Imagine what it would take to even get in contact with the Governor of a largely populated state, let alone trying to convince them that you should have your rights restored.
Your judgement is twisted if you think that's a reasonable expectation for anyone who has served their time.
Yes, I have experience of this, having known a person for decades who has done this --- if a person can't manage it, they shouldn't be voting, and they shouldn't be allowed to own firearms as I reasoned/rationalized above.
Just to confirm your meaning --- if a person has demonstrated such poor judgement as to be convicted of a felony, and then cannot trouble themselves to then recant this judgement and argue that they are now capable of making responsible decisions, then they should be allowed to vote and own firearms despite not being willing to make an effort to state that their character has changed?
So because someone gets railroaded into a plea deal that includes a felony, they should never be able to vote or protect themselves again unless they can form the connections and/or the ultra-wealth to coopt a seated governor of that state?
I'd be more inclined to see an English language and American history/civics test as a requirement to vote. Not that I'm advocating for this, but it would be just as justified by your logic.
If you've served your time, you've served your time... I wouldn't even mind a reasonable parole term (something up to even a decade) after release... but at least some limit on the restriction(s). I'm also opposed to private prisons for similar reasons... you shouldn't incentivize restricting/removing people's rights. If you're too much of a danger to society, you should remain locked up.
You should consider that this process varies wildly in different locales and sometimes even case by case.
"such poor judgement as to be convicted of a felony"
I think we know all we need to know.
Here's an interesting story about a non-violent felon becoming violent in my city. Not all felons are this way, but this one was.
Oh and yeah, people are allowed to open carry guns in the statehouse here.
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/boise-mall-shooter-d...
It's not interesting because it's not representative. Pair this with some stat that shows it happens the same way most of the time and then it's interesting.
It is representative because people died.
People die everywhere, at all times, doing everything. "people died" does not make an event interesting.
"People lived" during the same event. In fact even more people lived. Was that interesting?
> Killing is bad... killing because you don't like $group is double-bad. Speeding is bad, speeding without a seatbelt is double-bad.
Why would either of those be double-bad? They're the same thing as the original.
If you don't want to wear your seatbelt and you like to risk your own life, then that's on you. Just like riding a motorcycle.
They said exactly that they do not think these are double bad.
They are presenting them as examples of things that a lot of people do say, and many laws are written this way, and many cops, prosecutors, & judges treat them as double bad.
Speeding without a seatbelt is two separate infractions so it should be double bad. Just like robbing a bank and shooting someone is double bad compared to either individually.
And intentional killing is generally considered worse because it means you thought about it and then did it, vs when it's due to acute emotional disorder. Intentional crimes are usually treated more harshly
I'm not talking about two crimes together... I'm talking specifically about changing the punishment based on intent or secondary effects.
Owning a gun is legal, but if you've ever smoked weed it's illegal for you... murder is bad, but if it's because you hate a protected group it's a much harsher punishment... in some places, you can't be pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, but you can be charged with it if you're pulled over for anything else. It's just to attach additional charges for prosecution.
I don't like the idea of excessive charges as part of the prosecution process in general. It creates/extends what I consider an unfair asymmetry between the state (prosecution) and the individual. That's not to say there aren't similar examples in the other direction, such as a clerical error resulting in dismissed charges altogether.
> I've always been mixed on prohibiting parolees and ex-cons from owning firearms
That’s valid. But if we literally can’t keep them from having guns, I’d want longer sentences for violent crimes and a default of life for gun crimes.
> 1st Amendment + 2nd Amendment == The Right to 3D Print and Bear Arms
I'm surprised this is not a 4th Amendment issue.
Arguably it is, see my observation about self-incrimination elsethread --- I just didn't carry things forward on that basis, nor work up a clever way to include that number as well --- anyone have any ideas along those lines?
> Lastly, who creates the list of forbidden parts? How will it be curated? And most importantly, how will it be secured that it isn't a set of blueprints which are then used to make firearms?
My conspiracy theory is that these laws (there have been a rash of them lately, and that feels off) are being promoted by some of the cloud-based 3d printer manufacturers. In other words, an attempt at regulatory capture.
As you note, determining from gcode whether the print is a gun is effectively impossible, and hiding the blocklist is hard anyway. Thus, the only way that could possibly work technically is with those cloud printers that take a .STL as input, routed through the printer manufacturer's servers.
Discriminating between "gun" and "not gun" from the .STL is still hard, but vastly easier than inferring from gcode. The blocklist story becomes at least coherent, if still highly suspect, to anyone who knows anything about computer security.
We have a winner:
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/08/any-user-who-has-a-3d-p...
3d printing is also a creative expression and part of free speech. However principles don't matter to authoritarians, and really the only defense is constant political pressure and civil disobedience.
The model files and designs are protected speech, yes.... but free speech doesn't really follow the transitive property. Just because you can have a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook doesn't mean that building the things in the book are protected speech.
The state applying strict scrutiny is an intimidation tactic that infringes legitimate speech. We also know very well that none of these systems will work well and that the DOJ will be happy to apply bans as far as they can get away with. It will be the no fly list for physical objects, and we won't even be told what is explicitly banned. We'll just not be able to print something. It will be very hard to argue to argue to the courts and at that point the harm is done, and there is no real effective remedy. They've already blocked and discouraged a legitimate right.
There are thousands of physical objects for which possession is already controlled.
Which physical objects that you make in your home, are actively monitored by the police as you make them? When I bake something in my oven, would it be reasonable for the DEA to have a camera in my kitchen to ensure I do not make weed brownies?
I think you are a little confused because the title is a little bit editorialized, but, this law doesn’t monitor anything in anyone’s home. It controls the commercial sales of 3d printers.
No, I am not.
"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."
This in my opinion is the state monitoring me in my own home. You can split hairs on semantics, but the effect is the same if machine learning or a person does it.
Not in California but generally 3d printing or otherwise self-manufacturing firearms is legal per the 2nd amendment, and publishing files is protected expressive activity (I bet there are some ITAR cutouts for weapons but I suspect that doesn't come into play here).
Self-manufacturing is definitely federally legal by statute but I don't think it is entirely clear that a constitutional right to self-manufacturing is incorporated to states or localities. Heller never mentioned manufacturing.
And on top of that, there is no protected right to 3d printers.
Regardless, it is 1000% more clear that states can't ban you from sending around gun design files.
Bruen requires a historical analogue: home manufacture of arms is practically an American tradition.
This reflects a lack of technical understanding of the subject. The proposal is not enforceable, as there is no control over the end user’s networking stack. E.g. you can't actually rely on "3D printers that report themselves". The law makers need our help and some technical consultation.
The manufacturer can simply require that all prints go through their proprietary software, or better, cloud service for validation before the printer will accept them.
The person proposing this, and/or their staff certainly knows this.
It's okay, we just need a new tax to cover the mandatory sim chips that will need to be installed in compliant printers (which will not be permitted to be operated in metal buildings or basements, of course.)
This policy has existed for (non-3D) printers and image editing programs for decades now. They will refuse to print currency or anything with a specific watermark.
The irony isn't lost on me that it's the USA, the country with some of the most permissive gun laws in the world, that's imposing these draconian rules on 3D printed guns - or is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby?
Politically the US is very much not a monolith on this topic and many states and localities have passed laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional. This is a bill in California, which does have about the strictest laws that the federation allows them to have, and they would place even stronger restrictions on guns if they could. This is not really ironic as much as it is pushing the envelope for gun control as far as they legally can.
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.
> strictest laws that the federation allows them to have
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.
It was confirmed for the previous ~130 or so, at least, since United States v. Cruikshank... although I certainly wouldn't want to go back to those days before the Bill of Rights were incorporated against state/local governments... Basically it was a blank check for racists to suppress minorities.
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.
> Gun manufacturers are likely against these types of regulations because many of them would affect manufacturers and the tools they use too.
No chance. For them compliance is the easiest thing in the world to law like that
Well, the NRA has come out against all of these proposed bills and has mentioned concerns about requirements that they may place on manufacturers.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260218/washington-action-a...
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260112/bans-for-3d-bluepri...
The gun manufacturer's trade association has consistently said that 3D-printed "ghost guns" are more fantasy than reality, and that legal designs don't cause any more trouble than other legal guns: https://www.nssf.org/articles/3d-printers-cannot-produce-und... .
> is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby
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.
Ironically the anti-gun lobby seems to drive a lot of gun sales, perhaps it is not what it says on the tin?
I have three guns. One I inherited, two I bought right before California turned up gun restrictions. Possibly the greatest time for gun makers was when Hilary Clinton had a clear lead in the race for president.
A democratic governor/president is the greatest salesman for the gun industry. When a Dem is in office, the right wing comes out with all of the "they're coming for your guns" which is followed by a spike in gun sales.
The latter doesn't make the former untrue. There are plenty of people that want to eliminate all private gun ownership altogether, even if their public speech is more moderate.
I bought my three when I saw videos of the ATF under Biden start random "knock and talk" sessions for those who recently bought more than one firearm. They're all in a friend's gun safe as I have had bouts of depression, so I won't keep it in my home... I know it kind of defeats the purpose... but I'm very much a supporter of all of my civil rights, including and especially 2A.
I do some range days a couple times a year.
No conspiracy required. There's a lot of money to be made lobbying against guns - in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year - regardless of efficacy.
There are dumb arguments on both sides of this debate, but "one more bill that this time will actually change violent crime statistics, we promise!" is definitely one of the weaker arguments... pretty much all state-level gun control is worthless when there is no border control at state lines.
> states that already have the most restrictive gun control already, yet to nobody's surprise, hasn't done much to curb violent crime
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".
Its just a political wedge issue in the US, its not really "about" guns anyway
It is hard to police guns when there is free travel between the US states, yet only individual states can be relied upon to pass any reform. A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes. States are often forced to recognize rights granted by other states because such an interstate jurisdictional question naturally bubbles up to the aforementioned dysfunctional federal system.
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.
> These are objective facts.
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.
That wasn't the objective fact in question, and I think you know that. A humorous one to contest anyway, given it is well known most Americans take a dim view of federal politics, especially when their favored party is out of power. This is a country where national elections are routinely decided by roughly a percentage point.
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"?
> Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States?
No -- nor am I willing to assert the opposite, because I have no knowledge of the topic. I will ask, though: why is the place of manufacturer of guns used by criminals is Mexico something worth worrying about?
> 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?
Well, yes, of course. But I assume that this will be the case regardless of any attempted policy at any level of government, because I do not believe suppressing the movement of firearms is an attainable goal at any scale in the first place.
Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily. But you're not interested. So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business. I appreciate the lack of vulgarity but I'm not going to attempt to make you interested in something. In my mind it's not a very compelling argument or reason to have replied to me, despite the fact you've left me sort of vaguely intrigued by the boundaries of your intellectual curiosity. But suit yourself. Have a nice day.
> Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Yes, all of that is correct.
> Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily.
I could, but I could also spend my time learning about many other topics which would yield useful insights, develop skills, help me understand the world better in ways that actually matter, among many other things. Why would I then spend time studying something for which the outcome would be the same regardless?
> So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business.
Well, no, it's not just that I don't give a fuck, but rather that I think the entire line of inquiry is a waste of time in itself, in that all it will do is provide a rationalization for one normative position or another, and offers little utility to anyone beyond that. Arguing over it is like arguing over how many peanuts are in a particular jar -- yes, there's an objectively correct answer, but the question itself is of no importance, and not worth bothering to answer.
> A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes
So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?
> 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
I couldn't give less of a fuck if this were true "research" or not: this isn't my problem, nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights.
Also, please: a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise can't build or buy a machine shop and enslave or hire some machinists? They can build submarines and drones, but just couldn't possibly operate without US firearms? What reality do you live in?
The 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2024 were: Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Maryland.
Not seeing this so much lower crime rate in red states here.
>So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?
The welfare states have higher murder rates.
[flagged]
> hasn't done much to curb violent crime.
> 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]
[1] https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/
Until knife killings start to rise (UK). Beyond this, I've seen several interventions of armed citizens stopping a crime in progress, when the police are still in route. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
My dad was ex-army, retired PD (detective, undercover) and a heavy 2A advocate. I grew up with guns around so it wasn't some weird, scary thing to see. I have many friends who also are heavy 2A who also grew up with guns in the home. It's first a matter of familiarity and second a matter of civil defense. I'm not a fan of "must flea" laws, and not a fan of restricting gun rights at all.
And yeah, if you can afford a tank and the ammo for it, as far as I'm concerned, you should be able to own and operate it. I would draw the line at nuclear weapons and materials.
I was with you until the whole tank thing.
Where's the line you're drawing between tanks + everything else up until nuclear weapons?
It is, in fact, legal (but very expensive) to own a tank ( https://www.drivetanks.com/ , yes, that's a company, but a rich enough motivated person could fill out the same paperwork). Apparently each exploding shell is a NFA taxed destructive device ( https://youtu.be/GW2U0qORdLE ).
Who do you think makes the tanks? It's typically corporations, but could just as easily be a person... It isn't a socialist/communist company doing the work.
It's pretty much already the case that people can have access to these weapons, I'm just being explicit.
"documented, empirical fact"
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.
Same thing with anything in regards to drug use in the United States. Dr Carl Hart talks about how hard it is to get anything that doesn't show harm published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart
I'm responding to someone making assertions with zero cites, and I cite a source. If anyone has a cite showing that loose gun policies results in lower rates of gun deaths, they're free to present that.
I'm impugning the entire field of research, why would I then provide an opposing citation? My own claim should lead you to not trust it. I'm also not making any particular directional claim that would require such a citation.
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.
> My own claim should lead you to not trust it.
Your own completely unsupported claim?
No, that's not how it works.
I didn't say it was strong evidence or that one should just accept my claim, but regardless you have to agree it would be weird for me to say "the entire field is untrustworthy....but here is a paper anyways".
Your entire position is weird. The claim that there isn't a single source worth citing strains credulity. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
"there isn't a single source worth citing" is not my claim. It's that the field has a very high amount of highly politicized dreck and it can't be _generally_ trusted. I'm sure there are good citations. But one can't know if any particular citation is a good one without diving into the details (probably while having some degree of subject matter expertise), and any randomly selected article is more likely than not to be bad. As such, most people should not take the existence of a citation as proof of very much since it is more likely than not to be borderline useless. Especially given that the worst, most politically motivated articles (again: in both directions) are likely to be the ones that tell the strongest stories and have the least nuance and are therefore likely to be the most often cited.
This is an area where lay people should stay out of it, and should _definitely_ not be making strong claims like "documented, empirical fact" based on a shallow reading of someone else's summary of the literature.
I would dispute your source just by look at my own state, which has incredibly open gun laws, including free open carry and having had these laws since before anyone here was born, and a massive hunting population, and yet is claimed to be in the top half of strong gun laws. It is ranked significantly above Texas, and yet I know for a fact that my state has way more permissible gun laws than Texas, both historically and currently.
So I already know they are fudging the numbers, presumably because my state usually votes democrat and they want us to look good.
Hell its got Vermont as #17, but it has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation.
"a source" - You "cited" the most left-leaning, well-funded anti-gun lobby in the United States. Is that who passes for a "source" these days?
Attack the source as much as you like, it's not refuting the point in any way.
Isn't the validity and credibility of the source critical to it being supportive of your argument? Seems like a reasonable counter-argument in my opinion.
I provided a source, and so far all those who’ve disagreed have only provided opinions. No one has cited anything that contradicts my source, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the validity and credibility of my source has been impeached. ‘I don’t like it’ is not a valid criticism of a source.
No, you don't want criticism except on your own terms, but that's not the same as convincing people you are correct.
Not only the source, but the specific repoprting has been refuted already by others.
So you have failed to present an argument, and then continued to fail to support it. So all you have done is express an opinion. Those are fine and allowed, but of no significance to anyone else.
Do you have a source that isn't the anti-pickle alliance's statistics on anti-pickle laws proving why you should implement their anti-pickle laws?
"gun deaths."
You ever wonder _why_ they state the problem in such an abstract way?
It's because that statistic is an abstract itself. It combines, in my view inappropriately, suicide, murders, and accidental injuries.
There are 2x as many suicides every year over murders.
Anyone bandying about the "gun deaths" statistic has either been misled or is attempting to mislead others.
Not only that, the vast majority of gun related killings are with handguns, but they keep trying to outlaw the "scary" rifles.
The most common gun death is suicide so that tracks pretty well.
But I doubt most people count suicide as “violent crime”.
They do get included by anti-gun people who want to pump up the numbers. You can't trust anything but the government statistics broken out by type of death.
“Common sense” is a red flag for me. Obama (who I voted for twice, don’t come at me) pitched revoking second amendment rights for people on the Do Not Fly list as “common sense”. My common sense says we shouldn’t use a secret, extrajudicial government watch list with documented problems with false positives to revoke constitutional rights.
"Common sense" is an oft-used tactic in this space: if what I am pushing is common sense, whatever you are pushing is senseless.
Garbage methodology, state by state policies need to use something like a difference in difference study measure actual effect sizing
It's also a documented empirical fact that arresting the criminals in DC has reduced shootings to virtually zero.
https://www.criminalattorneycincinnati.com/comparing-gun-con...
Yet another lie by ommision. Violent deaths by guns have no relation to strength of gun laws. What your link 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.
> 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.
Well, Canada is trying to keep guns away from you but is also perfectly willing to help you kill yourself.
> Not so fun fact, the person most likely to be killed by a gun in your home is you.
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.
> 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.
According to the first militia act, every able bodied male over 18 is what defines a qualified individual. Beyond that, you're actually required to own a firearm in that case.
Can you show me where the right to drive a car is Constitutionally-protected?
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.)
> Also, what a shitty analogy: suicide is by definition a self-harmful act, DUI is almost always a socially-harmful act on its own.
"59% of people who died in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2022 were the alcohol-impaired drivers themselves"[1]
Also, people who commit suicide with their firearms typically have families who suffer.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/impaired-driving/facts/index.html
So are you advocating to outlaw alcohol? I mean, since people get depressed and drink which drives more depression and kill themselves... I guess you're suggesting that all depressants should be outlawed.
On the other hand, no one from the pro-gun camp is involved with or wants to involve themselves with drafting common-sense gun regulations to reduce the impact of mass shootings while respecting Constitutional rights. Everything from that side seems to revolve around arming schoolteachers and permitting more guns in more spaces.
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.
If somebody has a really stupid proposal -- such as "make all 3D printers refuse to print guns" -- I don't see why I have any obligation to "compromise" with them. Or to talk with them at all. Other than, perhaps, explain that they ought to learn about the things they want to regulate before they start making proposals. The fact that they have an incredibly long track record of bad proposals, and many strongly-held opinions based mostly in ignorance, is just entertaining.
You don't cooperate with abolitionists using compromise. You will never come to an agreement that satisfies both parties. By definition it is impossible.
Interests are also not always clear, any movement that wants to restrict activities using the law, is going to attract opportunistic power-seeking individuals. There's always crazy carve out exceptions in these proposals that allow the wealthy and the powerful to use and possess firearms that regular people cannot reasonably expect to have. It's laws to protect the powerful from the everyone else. Billionaires are creating armed doomsday compounds in countries like New Zealand, while supporting legislation that makes it harder to own a gun for self defense.
Also mass shootings are statistically the least likely cause of a gun related death. They are in the news because they are novel, not because they are likely to happen to most people.
I have an inalienable right to not be shot in public. So do my kids. The right to live should be paramount, far and above any excuses one might make about billionaires controlling all the guns.
Maybe we should enshrine that right in the Constitution as the Zeroth Amendment, because it is seriously being trampled as of late.
Unfortunately the constitution has never been the reason or means for protecting our rights. It is only an after the fact acknowledgement of them. It doesn't secure them, we do.
Indeed. Liberia had almost the same constitution.
Give a different or changing culture the same constitution, they can turn things into/remain a shithole very quickly.
Define "common-sense gun regulations", because every time someone tries explaining what that means it is almost always the exact opposite of common sense. Is restricting suppressors common sense? Because some of the nations with the most restrictive gun laws advocate for the usage of suppressors. Or bans on the scary AR-15, which is less powerful than most 60 year rifles which nobody cares about, especially when the vast majority of gun crime is committed with handguns. How about bans on gun accessories like types of stocks, slings, or bayonet lugs? How about sawed off shotguns which are less powerful than many "pistols" that shoot rifle rounds? Or shotgun/rifle combinations which were once a popular hunting combination for small game.
Either we should be allowed whatever semi-auto gun, or we should be allowed zero. Everything in between is a complete waste of time and effort and just leads to fucking over poor people for judicial profit because they can't afford $10,000+ lawyer that gets everybody with any money off of such charges.
Calling anything about gun control laws "common sense" is disingenuous at best. I'm coming at this from the "you go left enough and you get your guns back" side of the whole debate, but it's extremely difficult to solve a problem that consists of "tool used for its intended purpose, but in the wrong context".
Guns kill things. That's their primary purpose, it's why they exist. The people who aren't interested in guns for that purpose are easy to please: they don't really care about gun laws except in so much as they stop them from buying fun toys. They'd probably be fine with wildly invasive processes (being put on lists, biometric safeties, whatever), so long as they were given something in return. Something like, "You can have machine guns, but they need to be kept locked up at a licensed gun range".
People who just want guns for hunting are likewise easy to please. I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
The problem is people who want guns because of their utility against people, whether that means self defense, community defense, or national defense, fundamentally need the same things ( a need that is very expressly protected by the second amendment) as the person who wants to shoot a bunch of innocents. The militia folk might be fine with restrictions on handguns, but handguns are bar none the best choice for the self defense folk. The self defense folk might be fine with the existing machine gun ban, or other restrictions on long guns, but the militia folk need those for their purposes. The self dense folk are probably fine with being put on a list, but the militia folk who are concerned about the holders of that list are rightfully opposed to that.
IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide. That's a good thing. Requiring sellers to not sell to people under 18, or those who are obviously a threat to themselves and others is also largely unobjectionable. Punishing parents who fail to secure their weapons from their children, also a good thing.
No one's in favor of mass shootings, but it's not anywhere as simple as saying "common sense gun regulations".
Regarding your statement about the guns used against animals being different than the ones used against people is just wrong. The AR-15 is about the perfect choice against wolves or wild boar, just as a single example.
As far as the waiting period, there's a perfectly valid reason against that as well... if you are under eminent threat of violence from someone and want to be able to defend yourself/family/home today... it stops you from being able to do so.
I am okay with the (relatively quick) background check... when I bought my first guns a few years ago, I had to wait about an hour in the store for the results to come back (Phoenix). Even then, I'm not okay with secondary offense restrictions (weed, etc) as a restriction.
> IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide
If I own many firearms already, what exactly does a waiting period do besides infringe upon my rights?
If you own many firearms already, how is a 30 day wait preventing you from bearing them?
But yeah, the benefit does mostly arise for first time gun buyers. But that would require a master list of all gun owners. I'd prefer the wait per gun.
"A right delayed is a right denied" (*except when it's a right protected by the Second Amendment, I guess.)
"doesn't matter how many schoolchildren die if I can't buy my weapon right away"
Which "schoolchildren" died because of a firearm that was purchased inside of a 30 day window? None of the famous massacres would fit this bill; did you have an actual, documented event in mind or just feelings?
All of the gun grabbers I am aware of that are in favor of waiting periods try to make this infringement justified based on "crimes of passion" and other "heat-of-the-moment" nonsense - not "schoolchildren."
It's just an example, you're refusing any kind of gun regulation, doesn't matter what it is, dead kids is not a factor.
Casual gun ownership is the difference. In Europe you can get guns, but you do it for a purpose like hunting or sports, license and training is required.
They don't have any evidence because they are appeals to emotion.
If you look at the people doing the shooting you get a much better correlation but no-one wants to go there.
No evidence? Just look at Europe or Australia.
the places where they put you in prison for tweets ?
Are you sure it's a gun problem?
2021 - Ethnic minorities represent over 50% of Birmingham’s population - [0]
2022 - Birmingham overtakes London as 'gun capital' of Britain with huge surge in gang violence - [1]
[0] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/birmingham-overtakes-l...
[1] https://www.birminghamworld.uk/news/ethnic-minorities-repres...
Are you suggesting its a skin color problem?
Going from 0.05 to 0.06 is also a "big surge".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
I'm not suggesting it, I'm asserting it.
In the US one of the best demographic predictor of homicide rates is skin color. For instance, super white places like New Hampshire with the ~loosest gun laws in the country have extremely low murder rates.
If you take a look at say a heat map of the US where homicide is[1], it tracks extremely closely to where the black population is (New Mexico an outlier despite having stronger gun laws than most the surrounding states besides Colorado).[2]
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Ho...
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Af...
What's also fascinating is that this metric is consistent even when controlling for socioeconomic status - ruling out "unfair circumstances! less opportunities!" arguments.
Would you be okay with a 30 day waiting period for posing a news article, that included strict penalties for misinformation/disinformation? Since you have to wait to publish, you have less reason to get things wrong.
A 30 day waiting period on news articles doesn't meaningfully reduce actual suicides. One on guns _does_, without a corresponding harm to the buyer.
A 30-day waiting period on news articles _should_ meaningfully reduce misinformation. A lot of lives are ruined by misinformation/leaks in early news articles that are later disproven and those retractions are rarely covered as widely as the original false news.
I'm talking about saving people's lives here.
> I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.
If you talk to hunters, they'll give you a long list of annoying laws.
California requires a background check to buy ammunition and prohibits state residents from importing ammunition. If you are a non-resident, you can bring ammunition in, but you cannot give it to your hunting buddies and you cannot buy ammunition in California. This is such a common problem that many hunting organizations have guides explaining the issue.[1] When I lived in California, I was unable to buy ammunition despite legally buying several firearms. Around 1 in 6 legal gun owners in California are incorrectly denied when purchasing ammunition.
California (along with several other states) bans civilian ownership of silencers. Hunters need to be able to hear when searching for game, and they rarely have time to don hearing protection before taking a shot. So the net effect of this restriction is to give hunters hearing damage and create more noise pollution. It's also a problem for anyone in rural areas who wants to dispatch pests, as gunshots annoy neighbors and can even result in the police being called.
California requires that long guns be unloaded when transported, but the definition of "unloaded" states that ammunition be stored separately. If ammunition is readily available near the firearm, California counts that as loaded, and you are committing a crime. If you have cartridge holder loops on your rifle's stock, they must be empty during transport even if the firearm is in a locked case.
California requires that hunters use lead-free ammunition. Lead-free ammo is more expensive and less available than typical lead ammunition, especially if you're not hunting with a common caliber. Many hunters zero their rifle using leaded practice ammo, and are generally less experienced with their hunting ammo. This makes hunters more likely to miss an animal's vitals, prolonging its suffering. Lead-free birdshot makes sense, but considering how few rifle rounds are expended while hunting, and how it's legal to use leaded ammo for target shooting in the wilderness, the lead restriction on rifle ammo serves no useful purpose.
It's been years since I lived in California, so I'm probably forgetting some other laws that annoy hunters. But believe me: hunters are not happy with the current laws.
1. https://calwaterfowl.org/navigating-californias-new-ammuniti...
> The irony isn't lost on me that it's the USA, the country with some of the most permissive gun laws in the world, that's imposing these draconian rules on 3D printed guns - or is this pressure from the gun manufacturing lobby?
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.
It's not the most "permissive gun laws in the world". In Norway you can buy a suppressor off the shelf with little to no paperwork.
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.
I'm pretty much a gun control maximalist, but I would be more than happy to barter suppressor restrictions for pretty much anything else, since I agree with you that there's a good non-shooting-other-people reason to want to have them and I doubt they're actually that relevant to murder stats.
I mean on Amazon you can buy them too, you just might have to look for something like a "lawnmower muffler for 9mm exhausts".
That’s a felony everywhere though
Sure, if you're a big fan of getting your dog shot and yourself thrown in federal prison for 10 years.
I think the current government of California would significantly regulate firearms if they could. It’s prevented from passing more restrictive laws due to the US constitution and a Supreme Court which takes an extremely broad interpretation of the rights derived from the second amendment.
In the US there is a certain class of politician that considers poor people being able to exercise their rights a problem that needs to be solved.
Is that really limited to the US though?
It is both the USA and California. California doesn't allow most guns that other states allow and there is a lot of friction between CA and the USG.
This is a reaction to the inability to accomplish anything at the federal level in the "we have to do SOMETHING" vain.
^ This. The Feds are so utterly gridlocked in culture war nonsense and whatever dumb bullshit Trump is up to that they cannot effectively govern. States and activists groups are trying to address actual problems the country has, instead of just playing political games on Twitter.
Ah yes, the actual problem facing America right now... unsanctioned 3d printers.
Thank you California for acting on this, our top national priority.
To be fair, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group was murdered with a 3D-printed handgun. He made $10 million in 2023, or about 100 times the median salary of a UnitedHealth employee.
More people have been murdered with sharpened sticks. I'm eagerly awaiting the anti-whittling laws.
Yes, but this murdered person was important, you see.
You can make a gun with a piece of pipe and a nail. It's performative legislature.
This bill is performative legislature not because of pipes and nails, but because professionally manufactured guns are widespread in the US. Criminals in the US overwhelmingly choose this option.
Criminals have tons of options, including straw purchasing a CA compliant gun, straw purchasing a non-CA-compliant gun from Nevada, or just throwing a brick through the window of the nearest pickup truck with a Glock sticker on it.
The actual problem is gun violence which you absolutely, 100% know.
Which this bill will do nothing to solve, which you absolutely 100% know.
I know no such thing. The number one type of gun death is by far, suicide. When a gun owner takes a gun home (or in this case, prints one) statistically speaking they are more likely to use it to end their own lives or harm themselves more than anything else.
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.
> The forced changeover from coal gas to natural gas is largely credited with a reduction of suicide by 40% after it was done.
The mechanism of that reduction very well could be reducing the level of depression in the populace and thus suicidal ideation, rather than just making the means less handy (or of course, some combination). Coal gas, like any other gas used for combustion, doesn't burn perfectly and UK homes likely had persistent amounts of carbon monoxide roughly all the time since heat gets used not-quite-year-round.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning#Chro... :
> Chronic exposure to relatively low levels of carbon monoxide may cause persistent headaches, [...], depression [...].
> statistically speaking they are more likely to use it to end their own lives
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?
> What historical precedent is there for infringement of Constitutionally-enumerated rights of others based on suicides?
There is no requirement that a precedent exist for limiting personal freedoms for the sake of safety. We infringe personal rights in the name of public safety all the time, not the least of which is current, existing gun regulations, all the way down to far more benign shit like speed limits, and not letting people scream "fire" in a theater. The 2nd Amendment was itself a modification to the constitution, ratified some time after the constitution itself. Hence the "amendment" part.
And as numerous gun activists have pointed out before me: The individual ownership interpretation goes only back to the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, and is not itself law, merely judicial precedent. The right for every single American to own a gun is not enshrined in any law, merely an interpretation of a law, and the law itself was written in an era of single‑shot, muzzle‑loading firearms, not modern semiautomatic rifles, and further, it was written to promote the creation of, and I quote, "well-regulated Militas," not "Ted up the street who owns the gas station."
Further, even if it was spelled out, in the 2nd Amendment, in clear words, that every single American had the innate right to buy and use an AR15, that does not make it unimpeachable or forever carved in stone: We can change that. We can amend the amendment, hell, we could reverse it entirely. The problem of gun violence is a hard nut to crack, and the culture of American gun ownership is long standing and on the whole I myself quite like guns. That said, I think they're far too easy to get right now, and I am far from alone in that opinion.
The "fire in a crowded theater" line is by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenck v United States.[1] During the first World War, he ruled that it was constitutional to send socialists to prison for distributing leaflets that protested the draft.
The judicial precedent set in that case was overturned in Brandenburg v Ohio.[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
As far as I understand it, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater has not actually been legally tested. This was a non-binding analogy used in the decision of a supreme court case that found it was not a violation of the 2nd amendment to prosecute someone for speaking out against the draft (which was later overturned for obvious reasons).
The fact that the federal government is unwilling to restrict guns and other real causes of ongoing public health crises (such as massive passenger cars and trucks) even as the deaths pile up does not mean that any level of government should be piling onerous regulations onto other things that demonstrably cause essentially zero harm at the macro scale, such as 3D printers, non-commercial/non-military UAVs, and so on.
If the number of people killing themselves with 3D printed guns is not literally zero or vanishingly small at most, I would be very surprised.
> that's imposing these draconian rules on 3D printed guns
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.
No, this is probably an illegal CA law.
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...)
It’s pressure from the anti gun obsessed nonprofits on the left like Everytown. Bloomberg has nowhere else to waste money and there are legislators willing to present bills authored by Everytown blindly. But in many cases gun control bills are known to be unconstitutional and pushed through anyways. It takes years for laws to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and even if they are, states like Washington or California or Oregon will just pass the next Everytown authored unconstitutional bill with a slight variation.
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.
If by "the left" you mean the DNC, then sure. Otherwise, Marxists, Socialists, and other far left groups are perfectly fine with guns. Hell Vermont has some of the highest gun ownership rates and most permissive gun laws in the nation, while having Bernie Sanders as a senator.
> 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?
If someone prevents you from exercising your right to vote, would you be angry?
This only benefits expensive proprietary enterprise 3D print makers..
It's the anti-gun lobby. Bloomberg's band of morons who believe a government monopoly on force is good.
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.
No amount of FBI stats about how often "assault" rifles are used will change people's minds. They don't like them and so want to take them away.
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.
I can't square people who think owning a gun will stop or prevent a tyrannical government. Especially when the tyrannical government just leverages its supporters as a vigilante force.
An armed populace creates a huge risk for a federal paramilitary force descending on a municipality with the intent to terrorize the citizens. They're not rolling in with tomahawks and tanks, they're coming in with assault rifles and window breakers.
The problem with that thinking is that you have to have the will to act to stop tyranny, and no amount of armament will give you the will or the foresight to see it.
It won't "stop" them but having to treat everyone like they might shoot back and show up with a 10:1 manpower advantage and armed to the teeth every time you wanna subject someone to state violence really puts a damper on your ability to do tyrannical government things.
The current time period is not proving that out. These are just ammosexual fantasies.
Not at all true. I haven't yet witnessed armed resistance to ICE, but it's in the cards, if the government wants to push. Given the number of veterans and folks that actually have skill with guns in the civilian populace, and the hiring standards of ICE, I think the civilian population, properly mobilized, would be incredibly effective at putting a damper on their illegal behavior.
Have yet to see that so I'm not putting stock in a hypothetical armed uprising.
It's an extremely dangerous line to cross, and it should be avoided if at all possible. At the same time, when no other options are available, it's better to be armed than not. I hope you never have to learn this first-hand.
It kind of is in that they're picking the easy targets. They're not being sloppy in places where wrong address has an unacceptably high (but still small) chance of having them confused for the DEA and shot back at by someone who isn't going to prison one way or another.
Do you have a reference or at least some hard numbers for your "fun fact"?
Long gun homicides (justified and unjustified, "assault weapons" and grandpa's 30-06 combined) are typically sub-500 per year, see: FBI crime stats for the last N decades.
Pick whatever demise: falling off of ladders, roofs, etc. - it's not hard to exceed this number in any given year.
Can you redo your "fun fact" but include all types of guns?
Pew does what they can:
> In 2023, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 53% of the 13,529 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 4% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (42%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”
Interesting findings:
Most gun deaths are suicides with handguns.
Assault weapons are used in less than 5% of deaths.
Handguns account for 53% of the deaths.
Shotguns are negligable.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...
So basically the comparison to foreign body objects (of any type) to a single type of gun- which represents a tiny fraction of all gun deaths- is not a convincing comparison.
The point was that all the regulation on assault weapons doesn't have a meaningful effect. At best, you could reduce gun violence by 4%.
I wouldn't over-rotate on the comparison to foreign body objects: the point is, if you rely purely on the media to inform you about gun violence, you're going to get a funhouse mirror version of reality. It's way more exciting to write about the 40 school children killed in the last two years in mass shootings than the 16,000 depressed dads that blew their heads off in their garage with a handgun in the last 12 months (spitballing a bit, but 40,000 deaths, 50% of which are suicides, 80% of those are men).
I disagree- this subthread was not about assault weapons, it was about gun-control laws. But yes, if you limit yourself to assault weapons (itself a somewhat nebulous term that just muddies the discussion IMHO), then yes, you're not going to have a huge impact.
No argument that the media produces inaccurate representations about guns. I spend a fair amount of time reading articles and also spend a lot of time reading into the facts that they report.
Upvoted; I think this is a case where we are genuinely focusing on different aspects, and I see your point. My concern is that laws are often too performative. There's probably a lot to discuss there, but I suspect we largely agree.
Well there is a lot of weird focus on entirely the wrong things when criticizing guns.
Your fun fact is misleading because it's specific to AR-15s. A better comparison would be all types of guns.
> 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.
I’ve seen this claim from a few people in this thread but everytime I look up gun deaths per capita Massachusetts and California are low on the list and both have strict gun laws compared to red states
It's mostly the same Karens that want to outlaw guns altogether so come up with burdensome rules to inhibit gun ownership. I've always been pretty libertarian on 1A and 2A myself.
California isn't really the USA anymore, so please don't associate them with the rest of us!
They’re more American than whatever the fuck you are to have that thought
It is pressure from the gun control lobby. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, is the brains behind it. The states moving this legislation (California, Washington) are very hostile to gun ownership, and already have bans on assault rifles and printed guns. This is just another step in tightening the noose.
It's important to note that the USA also has some of the fiercest opponents of private gun ownership in the world.
The most important thing to note here is that a majority of the support for gun control in America is cultural. Even the loud-and-proud pro-gun people got extremely shy about their own principles once the Black Panthers started packing heat. On the flipside, it's also not hard to find gun control supporting Democrats that happen to own firearms in their house. There's a related cultural argument over "assault weapons", or "black guns" - i.e. the ones that look like military weapons rather than hunting tools.
The result of all this confusion - and, for that matter, any culture war fight - is a lot of stupid lawmaking designed specifically to work around the edges of 2A while ignoring how guns actually work or how gun laws are normally written. Like, a while back there were bans on purely cosmetic features of guns. Things like rail attachments, that do not meaningfully increase the lethality of the weapon, but happen to be preferred by a certain crowd of masculinity-challenged right-wingers. In other words, a ban on scary-looking guns.
What's going on here is that someone figured out how to make a 3D printed gun that will not immediately explode in your hand on first firing. In the US it's legal to manufacture your own guns, and there's no requirement to serial-number such a gun, which makes it more difficult to trace if that gun is used to commit a crime. You can't really stop someone from making such a "ghost gun" (practically, not legally), so they want to take a page out of the DMCA 1201 playbook and just ban all the tools used to make such a thing possible.
Personally, I don't think that will pass constitutional muster - but that also relies heavily on existing culture-war brained nonsense that happens to be standing constitutional principle. 2A itself can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways. The original interpretation was "no interfering with state-run slave catching militias", and then later that turned into "everyone has the right to own firearms". Nothing stops it from changing again.
the goal is you cant sell a 3D printer without attestation that it is anti firearm compliant.
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 actual guns that are frequently used in crime? Unlikely.
Regulating theoretical guns? No requirement is too draconian.
California has lots of restrictions on firearms. When I lived in the state, I had to get a firearm safety certificate (which involved paying some money and taking a multiple choice test), present my ID for a background check, get my thumb print taken, submit two forms of proof of my address (such as utility bills), demonstrate safe handling of a firearm, and wait 10 days. A cell phone bill didn't count as proof of address, only fixed utilities like water & electricity. I'm sure this denied many renters the ability to purchase firearms. Also I could only purchase firearms on California's roster (a whitelist of firearm makes and models). Popular firearms such as 4th generation Glocks were not on the roster, though cops were allowed to buy them. Also firearms couldn't have threaded barrels (it's a felony to put one on your gun) and magazines were limited to a capacity of 10 rounds.
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 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_...
You have described the lawmaking process of basically any country. We can't actually write laws to solve real problems because real problems are hard and you can actually tell whether they've been solved or not, but we can write laws to solve imaginary problems and then when nothing changes declare victory.
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.
> Both things happen to a vanishingly small degree that it's not worth taking any action on either
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.
You're right it's a very obvious thing that you should have to show your government issued ID to verify who you are to a civic function, and that relying on the honor system is something that seems like it could never work because elections are serious and people have vested interest in particular outcomes and so would obviously look to cheat.
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.
I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that this thing that we can’t really verify (because we can’t make sure <person voting> = <person registered> at the polls) isn’t happening, precisely because we can’t accurately verify it. It’s not a theoretical concern that voter rolls can be stale (because of not removing dead people or people who have moved in a timely manner) or otherwise inaccurate. And attempts to actually purge voter rolls always meet stiff resistance as some nefarious ploy to disenfranchise voters. There is at any time a non-zero chance that you could vote using the name of someone who’s either dead or not around any more. So why so much resistance to safeguarding against that? Nevermind the added benefit that a national ID card could be used as a real replacement for Social Security numbers. But again, so much resistance to something that every other country thinks is a good idea. Which is even more assuming since we point to “well everyone else does it that way” for so many issues. But voter ID? Oh, well that’s complicated, couldn’t possibly work here.
They meet stiff resistance because they're always done at election time and only selectively.
Voter ID laws are a non-starter because historically they've been used, along with literacy tests and civics tests, to disenfranchise people who can't get an ID. For example, in Idaho you must have "proof of your identity and age" like a birth certificate or citizenship certificate, plus proof of residency like a utility bill or rental agreement or employment record.
These things are easy for most people to provide, but people who are in unstable living situations may find these things impossible to provide. Requiring those people to provide ID at the polls would effectively disenfranchise them.
The plan is not coherent. Some items to consider:
Who is verifying the documents? If the names have to match, what about people who change their names? What documents should they present to prove that that's their real name? How will the election worker actually verify that the documents are correct?
Women who have changed their names after getting married have a higher burden of proof than people that have not changed their name. The folks who wrote this act are aware of this.
The SAVE Act, in particular, puts in place criminal and civil penalties for election workers that fail to properly identify someone. But a random election worker is not equipped to make that judgment perfectly and is going to end up making mistakes, since document verification for things like birth certificates is completely manual.
Young voters are more likely to have the documents like a birth certificate back at their parents' house and they're not likely to yet have a passport. Likewise, poorer voters do not have the resources to easily obtain these documents. Passport costs over $100 in the United States and for someone that doesn't travel often is not a very good investment. Just because you can't afford an expensive government document does not mean you're not entitled to your vote.
If Silicon Valley has taught me anything, it's every time you add friction to a process, fewer people have the resources and/or are willing to go through it as they drop off the funnel. In this case, it's targeted at the young, the poor, and the women. We used to be a nation that would say: get out and vote! Participate in our democracy! Now we're looking for excuses to not let citizens vote if they can't prove on the spot that they're a citizen. Papers, please.
And all that for what? Multiple institutions, including the Cato Institute and the U.S. Department of Justice, have found no evidence of meaningful voter fraud. This is because identification is required during voter registration, which is effective in preventing illegal immigrants from voting. This is why we tie voter registration to things like getting a driver's license at the DMV. You already have all your documents prepared that you gathered for that visit, and so that's the right time to be checking all of them.
It would be easier to buy the "I just like the stock" argument for voter id despite the absence of a concrete problem if…
1. Voter turnout wasn't already shit and we're about add friction for very little practical gain.
2. The people pushing for voter id laws also pushed for things that reduced the disparity like a national id, a program to get it in the hands of every American, automatic registration when interacting with the government, literally anything.
It's unfortunate that we can't work up mechanisms to encourage and reward voter registration and participation as well as make the process a bit more dynamic, say have a 100 day window for primaries and caucuses, states/districts get to pick a day in order (with no two picking the same day, not picking adjacent days if possible to not) based on voter registration and turnout for the previous election.
I’ve observed this behavior, but never came up with such a succinct (perhaps pithy) way of describing it.
How about "when your career depends on appearing to solve problems, fake ones are much easier than real ones".
> but never came up with such a succinct (perhaps pithy) way of describing it.
Here's one.
"Life is complicated, so is rule-making."
This is indeed pithy, but does not capture the contrast of the great-grandparent comment.
> We can't actually write laws to solve real problems because real problems are hard.
Not making excuses for politicians, but nearly all big bureaucracies start exhibiting this same behavior. It is the lamp post fallacies of problem solving.
> Regulating actual guns that are frequently used in crime? Unlikely.
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.
> Which makes the kind of regulations they _want_ around firearms (i.e., regulate/tax them out of existence) kind of tricky.
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.
There also exists a pesky fourth amendment that should protect people from laws like this but unfortunately it doesn't have the industry and lobbing that the second amendment has.
The 28th amendment: right to keep and bare 3D printers
I feel like kits for the purpose of assembling a printer would also be subject to regulation and attack... and open-source printer firmware... and related guides or resources... and related hardware platforms, like CNC and laser cutting...
80% kits are already illegal in California (as are 0% kits, if a solid rectangle of aluminum is marketed as being suitable for milling into a firearm)
The real question is, if I buy 80% of a 3d printer to be finished on my own, does it need a Prop 65 sticker?
(The answer is actually "yes, several".)
i think it can go further than that, such as circular scenarios, what portion of the item, is the part to worry about.
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.
Do you have to prove that your 3D printer cannot print a 3D printer which can print a gun?
This reminds me of Ken Thompson’s speech on trusting trust. The recursive/meta nature of it all has helped me explain to those unfamiliar that this is such a waste of time. Education is where it’s at, but I’m preaching to the choir here on HN.
Did you mean this one (PDF)? https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
Not OP but yeah that's the one!
when offspring are forbidden, only outlaws will have in-laws
only when they start printing ICs
Trying to restrict the non-printed ICs you'd connect to your 3D printed parts would be even dumber. There's a zillion things that can slam out bits and control a stepper motor.
you can build a 3d printer out of general-purpose electronic bits, anything they tried to ban would send ripples into countless other industries that are completely unrelated to each other or 3d printing.
By "general-purpose" I mean that there's no components that are 3d-printer specific; motor controllers and microcontrollers and voltage regulators and all the various jellybean parts. And even if there were any, they could easily be replaced with general-purpose components.
Well, you can print out of conductive materials.
Like the printers that won't do prints of money that's money-size
It's legal to manufacture your own firearms. Putting limitations on 3d printers just makes people who want to this's lives harder and stifles innovation.
California law prohibits anyone from 3D printing a firearm (or most firearm parts) without first getting a manufacturing license from the state[1]:
> (b) A person, firm, or corporation shall not use a three-dimensional printer to manufacture any firearm, including a frame or receiver, or any firearm precursor part, unless that person, firm, or corporation is licensed pursuant to Chapter 2 (commencing with Section 29030).
To get a license from the state, you must first have a federal firearms manufacturing license. California has additional requirements such as fees ranging from $250-600, yearly background checks of any employees who handle guns, a CA DOJ certificate of eligibility for every business owner, stricter building security measures than a FFL type 07, records of the serial numbers of all firearms produced, and allowing the local police to inspect the facility regularly. Firearm manufacturers are not allowed to sell guns to individuals, so you would not be able to take possession of your 3D printed gun until you got the model approved on California's roster, transferred it to a firearm dealer, then went through California's standard process for buying a gun, which I describe here.[2]
1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47079461
To be fair, there is a decent chance that law would be deemed unconstitutional in federal court. The only problem is nobody making their own guns at home has the capital to try and bring this case to any larger court. The ones with capital to do so, established gun manufacturers, have no incentive to fight it, a couple hundred bucks is literally nothing to them. They spend more money on office coffee each day.
This is sad to hear. My knowledge of the situation was out of date of what things were like around 2020 in California. Many firearms companies today started off with one person creating an innovative design and then scaling that up. All of these barriers to entry just lock out hobbyists and potential disrupters out of the market.
It's legal insofar that if you want to exercise your rights expect to sit in Jail until your lawyer can take it to the Supreme Court. At which point CA will slightly reword the law to intentionally circumvent the Constitutional rights of its citizens.
I have no idea about CA but this is absolutely the case in NYC.[] Dexter Taylor is sitting in jail for a decade for making personal use firearms without a license. No other alleged criminal activity and they never even left his house. During trial, the judge said "the second amendment isn't allowed in my courtroom."*
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.
Respect.
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law out of all other freedom struggles."
NYC, California... they're the same picture
Of course the second amendment isn't allowed in his courtroom. It's literally not allowed in any courtroom in the country. It's a courtroom. The only people permitted to have guns in a courtroom in the US are the bailiffs and the judge. Was that a reading comprehension issue, or are you just trying to rile people up?
Sports Arenas and Jails are two other places you might be surprised to learn don't allow the second amendment.
The full quote is.
>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.
Weird. I have seen a bunch of people repeating that quote, but not a single source for the full court transcript. Court transcript are public record, available for request by anyone. So it's real strange no one seems to have a source reference, no? Did you read the transcript? Happen to have a reference?
Interesting point. The quote appears to be the defense attorney's interpretation of the judge's statements.
https://scnr.com/article/hobby-gunsmith-in-nyc-convicted-aft...
IMO, it depends on the events in court; if there was extensive argumentation about that and the judge is finally saying that it's been discussed to death and there's no point bringing it up, that seems fine. (I don't want to read the actual court transcripts to figure out what the attorney is referring to, so this comment is intentionally inconclusive.)
Me either, that's why I replied opened endedly since I didn't have the full context.
No, what the judge is saying is that just arguing that you're allowed to do whatever "gun things" you want because of the 2nd amendment in a state district court is specious. You can argue the merits of the specific case based on the precedent in that and other courts that have jurisdiction but simply standing up and arguing baldly that the 2nd amendment lets you make guns and sell them without a serial number doesn't carry water. To make that argument you'd first have to take the F out of ATF and roll back a lot of case law that exists at the federal level that does give states the right to enact some controls.
It's a gross oversimplification of what the judge was trying to say to imply that they don't care about the 2nd amendment or the constitution.
> arguing baldly that the 2nd amendment lets you make guns and sell them without a serial number
I'm not familiar with the details of the case but, reading the thread, it seems this didn't occur if the guns "never even left his house".
Such a thing could have been phrased better by the judge in such a scenario. I personally feel the statement that was made was unprofessional at best.
This has nothing to do with the federal laws that are enforced by ATF ... what he did was totally legally federally.
And he didn't sell them, you pulled that out of your ass.
It doesn't appear you have any familiarity with the case yet you purport to understand what the judge was saying by completely mischaracterizing the case with outright falsehoods. But I suppose if you just tell straight up lies confidently enough, someone will believe you!
the caveat is it has to be your personal product and you cant sell it, probably cant "loan" it, and it would be questionable if you were found letting your buddy try a few shots.
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.
[addndm] "Requirements for Individuals
For individuals who already possess a PMF or an unfinished receiver for personal use, the rule does not require retroactive serialization. However, if that individual decides to sell or transfer a privately made firearm to another person, the transaction must be conducted through an FFL. The FFL must then apply a serial number to the weapon and complete the required background check and record-keeping procedures before the transfer can legally occur."
https://legalclarity.org/supreme-court-ghost-gun-decision-cu..
Might be true in California, but this is almost entirely false at a federal level.
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).
>[addndm] "Requirements for Individuals
Yeah that's an uncited bit of misinformed nonsense, it's totally false. If there is a law or ruling they surely could have cited it, in fact what they did was apparently trawl forums or something repeating that myth and just regurgitated it out. Here is the actual rule they claim they are referring to[] I challenge anyone to find that nonsense in there.
In fact, it says the exact opposite, as I will cite the actual rule publication that those morons are pretending to refer to but yet won't cite themselves:
[] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/04/26/2022-08...Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning requirements on people's phones for CSAM.
I happened to remember reading about how the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement would have ruined EARN IT Act's implementation had it passed [1]:
> When a private entity conducts a search because the government wants it to, not primarily on its own initiative, then the otherwise-private entity becomes an agent of the government with respect to the search. (This is a simplistic summary of “government agent” jurisprudence; for details, see the Kosseff paper.) And government searches typically require a warrant to be reasonable. Without one, whatever evidence the search turns up can be suppressed in court under the so-called exclusionary rule because it was obtained unconstitutionally. If that evidence led to additional evidence, that’ll be excluded too, because it’s “the fruit of the poisonous tree.”
> Fourth Amendment government agency doctrine is why lawmakers and law enforcement must tread very carefully when it comes to CSAM scanning online. Many online service providers already choose voluntarily to scan all (unencrypted) content uploaded to their services, using tools such as PhotoDNA. But it must be a voluntary choice, not one induced by government pressure. (Hence the disclaimer in the federal law requiring providers to report CSAM on their services that they know about, which makes clear that they do not have to go looking for it.) If the provider counts as a government agent, then its CSAM scans constitute warrantless mass surveillance. Whatever CSAM they find could get thrown out in court should a user thus ensnared raise a Fourth Amendment challenge during a resulting prosecution. But that’s often a key piece of evidence in CSAM prosecutions; without it, it’s harder to convict the accused. In short, government pressure to scan for CSAM risks letting offenders off the hook.
[1] Ignoring EARN IT's Fourth Amendment Problem Won’t Make It Go Away - https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2022/03/ignoring-earn-its...
> Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning requirements on people's phones for CSAM
Don’t we have something similar with how pretty much all copiers/printers wont print currency?
> Don’t we have something similar with how pretty much all copiers/printers wont print currency?
The short answer is yes, but I'm not sure how similar.
Copiers/printers that refuse to print money detect a pattern designed in the original physical currency note (as with the EURion constellation [1], with emphasis on the fact that currency is printed by the government) or a digital watermark placed in digital images of money (as with the Counterfeit Deterrence System voluntarily developed by banks [2]).
18 U.S. Code § 474A makes controlling or possessing "any essentially identical feature or device adapted to the making of" counterfeit money a felony [3]. What happens if I make a single "simple" printer for my own use that prints anything I tell it to because I "simply" didn't include any scanning or blocking functions in the printer design, and I never intend to print copy/counterfeit money? Is such a printer "adapted to the making of" counterfeit money? I don't know. If I instead make or transfer such a printer for any purpose other than my own personal use, the answer might move toward yes, but maybe it was already yes. Does the US require all copiers and printers to include at least one feature that prevents copying or counterfeiting of money? I don't know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deter...
[3] 18 U.S. Code § 474A - Deterrents to counterfeiting of obligations and securities - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/474A
US requires only the serialized part of a firearm treated as guns. For the AR-15, which is like PC/AT of guns, it's a nearly cosmetic part of it, sort of a motherboard backplate. Or like, a collar for a dog rather than the heart of a dog. As such, that part reportedly can be printed and used to shoot live rounds fine. Most other guns apart for AR-15 don't even matter, like how an E-ATX motherboard with dual PowerPC hardly matter in any talks concerning a PC - if you'd be wondering what about Raspberry Pi, that would be SIG P320 or something like that.
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.
"3D Printer" is a broad term. Would this apply to HAAS automated CNC machines? They can "3D Print" things from billet.
> (d) “Three-dimensional printer” means a computer-aided manufacturing device capable of producing a three-dimensional object from a three-dimensional digital model through an additive manufacturing process that involves the layering of two-dimensional cross sections formed of a resin or similar material that are fused together to form a three-dimensional object.
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.
> 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.
Yep
https://www.reddit.com/r/Advanced_3DPrinting/comments/1qsy6v...
-resin or similar material
Or just start printing them out of something useful like metal
Good point. Is metal powder "similar material"? What's the cheapest laser sinterer?
The recently-introduced WA legislation also covers subtractive methods; I imagine CA omitted that specifically because of Haas.
Requiring people to drive to Nevada to buy a real 3DP?
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.
I've been saying this for years.
Yes, we have a gun violence problem. But notably, we do not have a heavy weapons problem. By and large, gun crimes are committed with guns that can be purchased legally somewhere inside the US.
So if the silver bullet to the gun violence problem is taking away all the guns (please do not misunderstand me, I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT TO BE THE CASE), then step 1 is to limit what guns can be purchased anywhere in the US.
But this whole 3d printer farse reveals something we sort of already knew: if people want to have guns (or have weapons in general), they're going to find a way. If you want to address the gun violence problem, you have to find a way to make people not want to kill, nor own guns, that's unrelated to how difficult/expensive it is to get guns. And you're going have to do that in the shadow of the constitution.
Yea, they never mention that Europe also has way better social safety nets, mental healthcare, etc.
I do think gun control can work, but these kinds of legislation feel like the "paper straw" kind of regulation - ie alienating some people who'd otherwise agree with you on many things.
who is sponsoring and pushing these bills?
It's anyone who manufactures plastic or parts. 3D Printers are the wild west of printing your own replacement parts and soon the goal will to ban these things, unless there is right to repair.
Authoritarians, as always.
Legislators are incentivized to push whatever sounds good to their voters and donors, their job is to do something, none of them have anything to gain from sitting on the sideline, even if they are powerless to effectively solve the issue. So they make something up. Both major parties push stupid shit that panders to their base whether or not it actually solves anything.
Feckless democrats who want to appear tough on guns. Instead of taking on the NRA or lobbying groups they go after low hanging fruit to tout as victories to their base. It generates votes and wealth for the rep. Same thing with anti-trans bills from the right. Legislation that can pass through targeting small enough collectives that they don't have to worry about bad press.
All the news stories about ghost guns being 3D printed didn't hurt either. So they can sell a narrative of protecting people.
Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan
From wiki:
> Rebecca Beth Bauer-Kahan (née Bauer; born October 28, 1978) is an American attorney and politician who has served as a member of the California State Assembly from the 16th district since 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, her district extends from Lamorinda to the Tri-Valley region of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been described as a women's rights advocate.
The real truth? Nonprofits like Everytown, funded fully by billionaires like Bloomberg, who are effectively bribing/coercing legislators with their money and power. They supply identical bills into many deep blue states. They’re all extremely invasive in this way.
In any other context when someone tries to demand the impossible from me, I just say "you show me how to do it". But all the time politicians prestidigitate directives without any clue how it might be actually done. It's like that guy that tried to decree that pi=3.
The irony is that the pi == 3 argument comes from failing to read correctly/follow directions accurately for 1 Kings 7:23 --- the ratio of 3 to the diameter is for the _inner_ circumference --- when one includes the thickness of the wall, then it comes out to 3.14 which is a workable approximation.
Fascinating parallel with this thread regarding regulating AI bots:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47066567
Nice sentiments, but totally impractical.
Is there evidence that shows a trend in increased violent crime committed using 3D-printed weapons?
I’ve certainly seen projects and models demonstrating the ability to create firearms with the help of a 3D printer, but I’m not aware of anyone using one to commit a crime…
The Brian Thompson murder was with a 3D printed firearm.
A single crime isn't a trend.
Guess this is as good an excuse as any.
What are the recommendations for printers now? Bucket it by price range, so $0-200, $200-400, $400-800, $800+
Any notable features which can be a big value add? Offline is obviously a requirement given how the winds are blowing.
Bambu Lab A1 Mini is around $200 here in Europe and as long as you can fit into the 180mm cube print volume, it is wonderful. Requires zero configuration and zero prior knowledge. Calibrates itself, reminds you about maintenance. Looks as unthreatening as a 3D printer can. Supports offline/LAN mode.
The Elegoo Centauri Carbon (~$300) is the best value for single filament (their promised Filament Switching System has yet to be released despite being promised for Q3 last year), since DJI revenge-invested in them for the sake of the engineers who left that company to start Bambu Labs. It has an enclosure and heated bed which are helpful for printing specialty/engineering filaments.
Flashforge AD5X (also ~$300) is the best value for single extruder multi-filament since it forgoes the expense of material to enclose it which works well for PLA (an enclosure is easily fabricated and installed). Note that they had a recent social media gaffe where they claimed that they would report manufacture of weapons, but have since walked that back.
I own both of the above, and print from USB sticks w/o connecting to my network --- I'm pretty sure that's possible with most if not all printers.
The Snapmaker U1 (~$1,000) is the most striking value for multi-filament since it minimizes "poop" (extra filament extruded when changing colours).
If you want to support opensource, then one of Prusa's (they cover a wide range of price points) --- they have been pushing the "INDX" printhead technology which allows fast/efficient switching between different filaments.
Snuck in my Bambu P1S. Won't be upgrading that firmware hahaha! I've had it for a few months now and it's a good consumer-grade easy-to-use 3d printer.
Yummy yummy user 3D model data
Hey if we can train LLMs to generate 3D prints I wouldn’t have to struggle through CAD and could just vibe-CAD what I need…
Image -> 3D model software already works really well for decorative models, though I would imagine not so much for things with precise measurements
There already is some intelligence fed back to the police somewhere in the 3d printed guns supply chain.
You see it a lot on crime investigation shows. Pretty sure I've seen it on 24 hours in police custody and at least one other show or documentary.
edit: police acting on a source, a lead or some other un-named entity.
I think this isn't about guns but more about seeing and controlling what people are printing. Guns is just the excuse to monitor.
"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."
LOL...you do have a point, but not sure what makes them think...I would let my 3d printer talk to the outside...ever. But yeah, this bill is such BS.
This is so dumb. It isn't the printers where you could solve this but the slicers and slicers are for the most part open source. Effectively this is another ban on particular numbers. The printers just execute G-code and to make a printer aware of what it is that it is printing requires a completely different level of processing than what is normally present in the printers. Besides that, you could break anything up into parts that don't necessarily look like the complete article.
This is an idiotic feel-good bill being pushed by political opportunists who want to look like they're taking action against a flood of illicit plastic guns. In a sane world, it would be shut down before anyone even wasted the time to print it.
WE DO NOT LIVE IN THAT WORLD.
I don't even think plastic guns are very viable as it is, they're pretty shitty guns and this is pretty much a nerd hobby currently.
just wait until some enterprising irresponsibility, starts spreading knowledge of microwave beam weapons, and the associated kit/files.
just as deadly, harder to trace when there is no ballistic evidence, maybe an RF signature that FCC monitors will record.
OK, fine. Can I at least use a resin printer to create printing plates?
What’s the point of this law in a country where you can get an AR15 as a side order at Cracker Barrel.
A 3D printer being able to identify what it's actually printing is much harder than it seems. Also, the majority of what gets printed are parts - how do you distinguish between a legal gun owner printing accessories and parts that go towards a ghost gun?
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.
If this happens I'm gonna buy one of these printers and exclusively print dicks with it.
that is prone as well, consider what if printing CSAM related items becomes a wide spread problem, that begs for considerations.
Sorry, I forgot to specify: adult dicks.
yeah you know what i mean :)
and it doesnt have to be a sexual endeavor, it could be transgressional art, for example a series of insect inspired sculputres of genitalia.
as soon as someone starts printing/distributing materials that cater to a CSAM genre, then those cornflakes are no longer edible.
Price surge for old 3d printers ;)
Thing is you can make a 3d printer; it's basically CNC stuff with a different tool. I suppose fabricating your own 3D printer needs to be legally ensnarled as well.
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 lobbyists milk both sides. Everyone mouthing obligatory moral panic narratives to keep the money flowing.
> Thing is you can make a 3d printer; it's basically CNC stuff with a different tool.
Yes, but no too. I've built and purchased many 3d printers. You can make a 3d printer, but can you make one that works reliably as something like a washing machine with little to no tinkering or adjustment? Bambu Lab can sell you that for less than three hundred bucks. Just give it a file, feed it plastic, and it will rip.
I can now build a 3d printer that reliable, but only with parts and tools from other people and only after experience. Realistically not being able to buy a 3d printer off the shelf means it's going to be inaccessible for most people.
I fully expect California's maker scene to push hard against this.
From the country where guns are sold? I don't get it. What is the point? Not even being ironic. I don't understand the point.
If you tell me that this can make an untracked weapon, I will tell you that probably an untracked weapon can be done with anything, and surprise surprise, even without 3d printed parts.
Imagine the amount of false positives and inquiries on unprovable things. Soon this will also be used for copyright or whatever, and that will be the sole purpose
> Not even being ironic. I don't understand the point
Because there is a significant part of the country that would love to ban guns completely but they currently don't, and perhaps won't ever, have quite enough support to make a change to the constitution to allow them to. In the absence of that, and given they do have plenty of support to create local law many places, the strategy seems to have become to create a regulatory regime that technically still allows guns while making it as impractical as possible for anyone to actually do so.
> Because there is a significant part of the country that would love to ban guns completely but they currently don't, and perhaps won't ever, have quite enough support to make a change to the constitution to allow them to.
Ban guns, or regulate them, and their owners?
> Ban guns, or regulate them, and their owners?
Both, though I don't know the breakdown. I'm confident saying there's absolutely some people who seem to see onerous regulation as a path to a de facto ban, though.
I'd be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to those pushing regulations if the regulations themselves seemed well thought out and drafted rather than leaning on kneejerk "guns bad, rules good" reactions from voters to get passed. Unfortunately the actual situation seems to be that left-leaning areas where it's easy to push anti-gun law lean farther and farther into restricting both first and second amendment rights without meaningful impact, while the right-leaning areas that actually could use some additional regulation over the perhaps overly lax federal level laws can't or won't do anything.
This is bullshit. It's a clear power grab to re-seize democratized means of production, and added surveillance. Both suck. The proposed bill in Washington is even worse, and blanket bans nearly any kind of machining or manufacturing that doesn't use surveillance. I'm going to have to actually write letters to lawmakers now as if there wasn't enough bullshit happening already.
these laws are wild , and it's super easy to make 3d printers now ... it seems like more security theater
It's highly misleading to call a bill that was introduced a couple of days ago by one Assembly member "California's new bill". Bills aren't laws and most bills go nowhere.
The type of bad bills that DO go somewhere are the ones that the public doesn't hear about until it's too late. I don't know why this being reported on is a bad thing.
I don't know why people attack strawmen that no one said. (Well, actually, I do know.)
Well, it's a new bill. What is misleading about it? Is there a special term for "a bill that was introduced a couple of days ago by one Assembly member" ?
It has no cosponsors and hasn’t been presented to a committee yet. It’s like calling a bowl of flour, water, and yeast a “new bread”
Bill is to law as dough is to bread.
Wouldn't the process of following the due process before it can be voted upon essentially the same of combining ingredients to make dough?
I don't know but a loaf of bread is a completed product and a bill certainly isn't. Beyond that the analogy probably isn't very helpful.
It's like calling "a bill recently introduced by Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan" ... "California's new bill". It's not California's anything, and won't be unless/until it becomes part of California's legal code.
Obviously, it's not "California's" anything, and won't be until/unless it becomes part of California's legal code.
California is no longer progressive.
Most "progressive" policies are, and have always been, scams aimed at tricking people into allowing the state to consolidate more power to use for ulterior purposes.
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.
What a ridiculous overreach
I wonder how "significant technical skill" will be interpreted in practice. That phrase likely means something different to the average HN reader than to the average congressman.
Who is going to tell them about lathes? They are much more practical for machining useful firearms. Good luck with all of that, I guess, California.
CNC mills are already controlled in CA:
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-pen/part-6/titl...
Not really. It only applies to machines whos "sole or primary" ability is to manufacture firearms.
I'm not sure even one such machine exists. Some companies market benchtop or small lathes as "gun lathes" but that is marketing fluff not a technical description. Any lathe can be used to make weapons. They have tons of round parts and parts with drilled holes. So does everything else that gets manufactured.
I am not aware of any machine tool company that manufactures lathes, mills, etc explicitly designed just for manufacturing firearms.
So in that sense the law you reference is typical of performative legislation. You have angry idiots pestering you to Do Something(TM). So you pass a do-nothing bill. You get to say you banned a thing that never existed. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt or bother anyone because it applies to no one. That's the best of both worlds! Do nothing while looking busy! Take action without actually hurting anyone.
Is it silly? Yes. But I'd rather they do stuff like that then actually try to regulate 3d printers.
The law was targeted against Cody Wilson's "Ghostrunner" CNC machine, but c.f., the "Coastrunner" (the same machine painted vivid colours and marketed for general usage so as to get around this law).
"primary function of manufacturing firearms" effectively targets that "marketing fluff". As the other person mentioned it was a reaction to the ghostgunner mill.
What about intelligent lathes? "Woa hold it, it looks like you're making a barrel. Now, let's report this first before I restore power!"
That's an illegal tube is what you've got right there... Hay wait _I_ could be an illegal tube at any point, either by choice or at the mercy of a lawmakers writing tools.
Well this bill looks regressive enough for Newsome to sign.
Such freedom.
And I thought here in Argentina we had the most retard politicians that try to control anything in their eyes reach...
This is remarkably similar to the fight over feed vs seed nanotech in The Diamond Age novel.
The Feed was a centralized matter distribution network under strict control of what could be created and by whom. The Seed was a completely self contained system that could bootstrap from raw materials.
i am well-aware that what follows is a rant, but i really do feel boxed in from every moral angle from my upbringing. from surveilled e2e communication from the "conservatives", to surveilled 3d printers from the "liberals", and watching the political pendulum ratchet a rope around my throat with increasingly fascist tooling, i am given to wonder if I am not a side character in 1984.
so i don't mind if you downvote me. but if you care to listen to a man rant:
we have an incredibly sycophantic doj which selectively enforces the law according to socioeconomic status, so it boggles the mind that some of us in this thread maintain that this issue is partisan alone ("oh you liberals"). this line of thinking is a trap.
is it really the dems in california? is it really trump's doj? or, taking a step back and looking at fascist trends worldwide in aggregate, don't these policies benefit those groups who operate and lobby above common law? those groups of people who we magically let slide time and time again after committing gross misconduct? those companies whose monopolies fundamentally destroy free trade?
so much tribalism.
conservative or liberal, once the pendulum swings maybe consider what happens when your phantom political 'enemies' on the other side of the aisle can monitor what you create in your home, what queries you toss into your AI assistant, who you talk to on social media, what you are buying, or where your location is on the cell tower map.
then if you have a second brain cell, maybe consider whether those enemies on the other side of the aisle are struggling to feed kids and make shelter just the same as you, whether they are as much the rabble as those goliaths who dictate what the topics of division -are-
who benefits most from your fear of the other but those groups who lobby both sides??
isn't it would be better to have a world of celebrated differences and rules of decorum that instill trust and foster co-operation? isn't that the world that we want, so that we may put the monsters at epstein island, sarajevo, (and so many other places) in prison? maybe it is time to rise up and hold our leaders accountable, on the left and the right!
"oh this is just political posturing, those lawmakers are rewarded merely for doing 'something'" yes-- this is true. but from the outset, whose political posturing is it really? because the end result for every one of these laws that come to pass don't seem to prevent the folks up top from getting away scott-free.
just remember that with all illegal files (violations of copyright law, banned books, etc): it is easy to determine whether you are in possession of them. whether it is enforced against you is a matter of convenience and leverage, your personal value (and optic value as a victim in the political theatre). be value-less.
rant aside. obvious, stupid questions to the topic at hand: - (yes, shooting people is bad). - what is the definitive geometry of a gun? - who arbitrates that? - is it a crime to print a rubber band gun? a toy gun? - what about parts for a gun? how is that known? - who do we register our printers to? - what mechanisms are in place to side channel whether a person purchases tools such that we can detect whether they own an unregistered 3d printer? - how do we deal with false positives? - if I have a novel prototype of a non-gun which I would like to patent in a highly litigious first-to-file country, how can I guarantee that the file in question is submitted only to the government entity or API endpoint in question? - do we ban chinese printers? whose companies form the superset of allowable printers? how do smaller manufacturers join in? - what happens when the printer EOLs and software updates for the device stop (and therefore can't update the API endpoint)? - will open source printers be illegal? - what else should our government forbid us for printing: cock rings and contraceptive devices? emblems associated with religious groups (modernly) associated with hate speech?
i am sorry if you read this much and are from elsewhere. watch that it does not happen to your country. my heart goes out to you.
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>>Thanks Lefties!
What lefties? From my non-US perspective, all people supporting this are definitely on the right, including the democrats pushing for this.
Also literally no idea what this has to do with communism, care to enlighten us? Or is it just a catch-all phrase for anything bad?
Disarming the masses is Communism 101.
It's also a common right wing tactic. It's really just an authoritarian action in general, separate from left or right.
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." -Karl Marx
This is coming from California, a distinctly capitalist state, and refers to a list published by the US Federal Department of Justice, which reports to a distinctly capitalist (or... at a minimum, a distinctly non-communist) administration.
It also doesn't get in the way of the US's (already extraordinarily loose) firearms sale and acquisition doctrine which regularly costs innocent lives with the pretext of resisting a tyrannical government (which, it appears, people aren't actually that interested in doing now that one's in power).
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Can you clarify what you mean?
Title: "California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves"
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.)
"to be able to get a 3D printer" is implied in the "requires" wording. There's no problem with that part.
I don't know what language you speak but here is a part of the bill in English
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.
Clearly this is mostly security theatre (see eg comment about proving that them printer can't print a printer that can print a gun).
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?
> prevent off the shelf printers to print well known gun parts?
> copy or print known currency bills
Currency explicitly embeds detectable patterns to make software detection easy - firearm 3D models don't have any such feature.
Actual text from your link is:
> (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.
I do agree, there are a lot of federalism concerns. That said, there are a lot of things which are illegal for sale at a state/city/county level that vary across state/county/city lines. Its not entirely a new domain.
Sure, but those local laws have no relevance outside their jurisdiction. In this case, it's not clear that California isn't trying to extend its reach beyond its own borders.
> It seems pretty clear this would prohibit the sale of 3D printers that are not approved by the California DoJ.
Note the difference w.r.t. the ridiculous "California's New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers".
I still don't see what's you're saying. California's bill is requiring their DoJ to approve 3D printers for sale or transfer within the state of California.
I wonder what your first language is.
If they are worried about firearms, why don't they target CNC mills rather than 3d printer? Can you even make a firearm in plastic?
Some US company specialize in selling CNC mills specifically for firearms.
Ex: https://realghostguns.com/product/gg3-s-cnc-deposit/
Article says:
So CNCs might be part of it. But I didn't check the actual bill text.> Can you even make a firearm in plastic?
Yes but most designs still require metal bits. Typically the frame will be 3d printed and then you rely on machined components for things like slides and rails.
Theres also electrochemical machining which is rather easy to do at home
I feel like the core issue here is accessibility. It’s always been possible to machine your own gun, but that required technical skill. Now the skill lies in the designing of the models, not the manufacturing, so it may be more practical to go after model distribution. But that ship might have already sailed with the advent of AI model creators.
Going after model distribution is by far the least practical option. Speech is protected by law that California can not change, and the flow of information is ridiculously difficult to control even if it were legally permissible to do.
Then the AI hallucinates a plausible model that explodes in your hands.
The irony is that these printers are all coming from China where even thinking about printing a gun is illegal. In comparison, America has a massive consumer gun production industry that wouldn’t survive if a significant share of that production wasn’t smuggled into Latin America.
that wouldn’t survive if a significant share of that production wasn’t smuggled into Latin America
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-...
It’s not even close to 0.3%, the last time the Obama administration tried to get accurate numbers the republicans blew a head gasket. The fact that supposedly every American owns 4 or 5 guns should hint at how bad the smuggling problem is, and Americans are supporting it with a wink and cooked statistics, they are basically willingly exporting death.
Have you actually looked up any of the numbers you're writing here?
It seems like the USA has about 393.4MM civilian firearms, which is ~1.2 per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
About 32% of Americans say they personally own one or more guns, and most of those people own multiple weapons. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts...
Where are the 'cooked statistics'?
0.03% is ten times less than 0.3%, so I agree it is not even close. The money to manufacturers from smuggling is a rounding error. The numbers are from anti-gun activists, so they are incentivized to over state, not understate the smuggling.
The fact that supposedly every American owns 4 or 5 guns should hint at how bad the smuggling problem is
I think it shows how disconnected non-gun owners are from people who own guns. None of my liberal gun owning friends in California have fewer than 4-5 guns. My conservative gun owning friends in Texas have 20-30 guns. I've never met a gun owner that had 1-2.
There are three types of people:
1. people who don't have a gun
2. "gun owners"... who have them as a hobby and have a bunch of guns
3. people who just happen to have a gun at home. you don't hear about these people because they aren't "into" guns and don't talk about them.
I know people who don't like guns don't want to hear it, but guns are tools. You wouldn't ask a carpenter if the only tool he needed was one saw. You don't just need a saw, you need a hammer, a screwdriver, a drill. And you don't just need one saw, you need a few specialized saws, and many screwdrivers. Maybe one hammer is enough.
Yes, and while most people aren't carpenters, some people are interested in carpentry, and some people just need to cut one board.
I am #3 and there are a lot of us (every close friend I have is #3). we don't talk about them publicly so every non-close friend I have would lose a house betting against me owning a gun (I am as non-conservative politically as it gets)
Liberals and guns are like conservatives and abortions. They both have them they just don't talk about them.