Technology

The 3D printing lobby isn't as big as the NRA.

I don't think it has anything to do with gun manufacturers, or gun violence. Someone who wants to shoot something is going to find a way.

I'm betting it's pressure from AI companies. "We need to find a use for this product soon or we'll lose social permission" or whatever Mr. Microsoft said the other day. And suddenly a couple of states that have big AI companies in them propose legislation that could only be answered by large amounts of machine learning power.

This isn't in reaction to some shooting with a 3D printed gun, is it? I'd have heard about that, the America Bad crowd here on Lemmy wouldn't have passed up a chance to blast that from the rooftops if it had happened. School shootings have faded into the background; that's not "newsworthy" anymore because it's become normal. A shooting with a 3D printed gun would have made headlines, and it hasn't. Until we all got used to it and moved our attention elsewhere, there would be a shooting, the 24 hour tabloids would broadcast a liberal arts major's understanding of the firearms used, the bleeding heart left would call for a ban on those specific kinds of guns, the childrape right would call them retards for getting the technical details extremely wrong, a governor 3 states away would sign a ban on bayonet lugs and collapsible stocks on rifles, in time for someone to shoot up an army base with a pistol. If a 3D printed gun shooting had happened, you could get another round of that cycle going.

That's not what happened though. So what did?

Ban spears, knives, pipes, cars, fertilizer, aluminum, bows, blowguns, poison, fists.

Or, just run a decent society where nobody feels opressed, and has no desire to lash out.

Tax the billionaires out of their billions, or put a tight leash on everyone to allow the billionaires to become trillionaires. Which is it?

Let's not forget how Gavin Newsom vetoed universal healthcare in California. Also, Gavin Newsom gave prepaid phones to a bunch of CEOs and told them to call him if the CEOs need anything. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/18/newsom-ceos-burner-phones-00235044

They will need to ban breathing while poor soon the way they are going.

Can't ban your way out of the greatest wealth inequality since the Great Depression. But they will try, won't they?

It's very funny that people think they need a 3D printer to make a tube, a stock, and a trigger.

If you can make a rubber band gun, you're 70% of the way to a working firearm. And it'll be sturdier then extruded plastic.

They are essentially trying to regulate technology they know very little about.

That's not surprising, that's just what politicians do. Especially politicians who are 65+ years old and completely out of touch with technology.

This would be impossible. Orca is rhe most widely used, and many printers don't ship woth a slicer. Since Orca is FOSS, and there is no sale, there is no way to regulate that.

Firmware on the other hand, is different. The catch is just about every printer can have Klipper installed on it (most just have a modified Klipper already), which, means the law is pointless since it is also FOSS.

Wasn't there a guy who built an AK-47 out of a shovel?

Private workshop are next on the chopping block, then. Totally feasible. /s

It's not about firearms.

It's about controlling what you can 3D print.

When your 3D printer has to connect to a third party service to check if it's allowed to print what you just sent it. That's a clear vector for companies to enforce IPs.

Printing a replacement part for your appliance? Sorry, they're blocked.

Printing parts to repair part of your vehicle or snap something back on? Sorry, that's banned.

Printing something that resembles the intellectual property of any other company? Sorry, that's banned.

Can't have you cutting into the profits of corporations by self-servicing and self-repairing.

Also a mass surveillance device to produce surveillance of what people are 3D printing and report it to a central authority.

Because it makes for a good distraction from actual problems that they don't care to solve because those problems would require them to heavily tax millionaires and billionaires.

The only possible way I can think of to make this work is require the firmware to only be able to print G-code files that have a cryptographic signature from some central slicing authority that users submit models to, which then analyzes the STL file with AI or some shit for approval. The only technology that can remotely go "is this STL file a piece of a gun?" is machine learning. You're outright not going to get that done on the 3D printer locally; you'd have to increase the processing power of a 3D printer control board from "microcontroller" to "GPU" entirely for this dumbass tech. Maybe you'd run that on the user's PC but PCs aren't for sale to the public anymore so it will be done in the cloud.

It occurs to me that these initiatives are all popping up on the West coast where Microsoft, Google and OpenAI are based. The other day the CEO of Microsoft came out and said "We're going to have to figure out something for our bullshit tech to actually do before the unwashed masses riot." and what do you know, a couple states that are home to large AI firms start proposing legislation that can practically only be answered by AI out of the blue.

They upload the following meme to everyone's printer and call it a day:

Here's the thing. This isn't about banning weapons. It's about controlling access to IPs and preventing right to repair.

A forcibly Internet connected online. Only 3D printer that has to first check a public database to see if it's allowed to print the thing you just sent is most definitely going to be used to block you from printing parts to fix your appliances or devices.

And definitely going to be used to provide copyright protection and blocking to IPS of large corporations and companies.

It also violates the first and fourth. And it does nothing about gun violence.

It's also impossible to actually implement and is no more than one more privacy violation to add to the pile.

"3d printing guns" isn't about the pressure holding parts, it's about the traceable serial number holding parts. On most firearms the "lower assembly" or "receiver" (frame, trigger group, feeding assy) is legally considered the firearm and is what bears the serial. Most of those can be printed and use off the shelf hardware to work, albeit with a much lower lifespan.
Pressure containing wear parts that are meant to be exchanged (barrel and breech bolt) typically do not carry serials and are thus not normally traceable. If you eliminate the serialized, traceable part of the firearm, then any collection of parts could be used.

That said, eliminating an entire hobby and industry because gun serialization laws haven't been updated in a hundred years is probably not the right way to do it.