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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
59 comments
[ 27.9 ms ] story [ 1979 ms ] threadnow 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.
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-pen/part-6/titl...
WE DO NOT LIVE IN THAT WORLD.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47066567
Nice sentiments, but totally impractical.
In most place of the world, including where I am, pressure bearing parts such as the barrel, the bolt that locks onto the end of the barrel to seal it as it fires, the firing pin that ignites the cartridge, the live cartridge containing gunpowder, etc etc, rather than the part that merely carries its nameplate, are controlled. It is illegal in such places to buy or possess functionally relevant parts of a gun, at least without a license, and/or prior approvals. This is more like buying a CPU or motherboards would be controlled rather than cases and faceplates. In some places, what is considered a gun in US hardly qualify as such, even almost slipping through customs(allegedly).
You guys gotta fix that broken classification before trying to offload onus onto the global 3D printing community. Or drop it altogether.
I'm a long time shooter of all kinds of firearms (bolt actions to full-autos).
What people don't realize is that gun control works, but only when it's very controlled - i.e. full registration, deep checks, mandatory training, strict storage, no handguns, etc.
You need to do it across the whole country, as a real customs border can cut guns significantly, but in the US you can do still do a private party (person to person with no dealer) transfer in many states, making gun running pretty trivial.
None of this will happen anytime soon in the US, and the ghost guns, etc. thing will keep happening.
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.
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.
"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."