California’s new bill requires DOJ-approved 3D printers that report on themselves targeting general-purpose machines.
Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan introduced AB-2047, the “California Firearm Printing Prevention Act,” on February 17th. The bill would ban the sale or transfer of any 3D printer in California unless it appears on a state-maintained roster of approved makes and models… certified by the Department of Justice as equipped with “firearm blocking technology.” Manufacturers would need to submit attestations for every make and model. The DOJ would publish a list. If your printer isn’t on the list by March 1, 2029, it can’t be sold. In addition, knowingly disabling or circumventing the blocking software is a misdemeanor.
If they were smarter, which they are not, they would look to place restrictions on the slicer software. I doubt the printers even have the capability to recognize what is being printed. Most of them are like move left 3 steps, extrude .1mm of filament, move right 1 step…. yada yada yada.
This is just insanely dumb. They are essentially trying to regulate technology they know very little about.
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.
That’s not surprising, that’s just what politicians do. Especially politicians who are 65+ years old and completely out of touch with technology.
The only thing they are in touch with is little kids. The Epstein Class !
I am reminded of a senator from Alaska trying to describe the internet as a series of tubes.
I mean, not to defend that idiot because he was voting against net neutrality and obviously had no idea how technology works…
… But we do call some connections “tunnels”.
And the inside of a fiber optic cable is sort of a bunch of tubes, if you’re feeling a bit loose about descriptions.
That was way more accurate and intelligent than this. Like orders of magnitude.
Sen Ted Stevens, rest in piss.
“The internet would be a series of tubes if we rolled out fiber, but as the literal chairman of the Senate committee regulating the internet I’m somehow against that.”
Isn’t most fiber optics solid glass? So more a series of rods.
Well, tubes from light’s perspective.
I mean…replace the word “tubes” with “cables” and it’s apparent it’s not completely wrong. he’s reasonably correct on an ELI5 level I would say.
Except the tubes he was talking about could get clogged. He wasn’t really correct. He had no idea what he was talking about.
Clogged…like a broadcast storm? IDK, I can see the analogy working, but I don’t doubt that any resemblance of correctness was purely coincidental.
https://youtu.be/_cZC67wXUTs
I know I’m not supposed to attribute to malice that which could be attributed to stupidity, but sometimes I think the legislators’ ignorance is actually a front, and their real goal is just even more surveillance.
Stopping terrorists is hard. Pretending to stop terrorists, that’s super easy barely an inconvenience.
Frankly it seems more like a mild inconvenience then actual prevention. I don’t really care how smart a software gets, it can’t predict and prevent all possible configurations of prints that could possibly be used to create functioning guns without being so overly restrictive that even perfectly innocent prints would get flagged constantly in which case they simple won’t sell to normal users.
It would be a constant game of whack a mole with new creative designs, using multiple printers or with non-printed parts in the design. But no hardware or software that a smart enough engineer has their hands on is impervious to mods either, especially if they’re motivated like someone seeking to produce firearms would be.
It’s an overreaching law that will likely solve little to nothing, but might make 3d printers in general a bit more annoying to work with. “Sorry, you can’t make your dice tower because there’s a 16 percent change that it could be capable of firing an RPG out of the dragon’s mouth. Please make your design at least 12 percent less gun-ish and try again.”
The only way these things could be implemented is if they phone home to some “AI” model. Printers themselves do not have anywhere near enough power to do any kind of analysis like that. Mine crashes if my microsteps are too high.
So its pretty obvious that the goal of this is to invade people’s privacy and will likely try to use it to block copyrighted material if it built. It’s the age verification BS all over.
Wow. I hadn’t even thought about some of these ways around this. Excellent points!!
So in other words, what else is new?
The danger if this passes isn’t that someone will be able to successfully implement some manner of system for identifying gun parts which will, apparently, rely on pixie dust and magic. In reality this will effectively prohibit 3D printer sales in California entirely because compliance is literally impossible. And it’ll and give overreaching cops and prosecutors yet another nonsense charge they can arbitrarily slap people with over “circumventing” this mystical technology which does not in fact exist if they, ye gods forbid, build their own printer.
It’s the same horseshit rationale as the spent casing “microstamping” fantasy that legislators have been salivating about for decades. It doesn’t work, it’ll never work, but that’s not going to stop them from wishing it does and therefore turning it into a defacto ban.
Keep in mind, California also has the precedent of their infamous approved handguns list, which notoriously does things like arbitrarily declaring that the black version of some model of gun is legal, but possession of the stainless version of the exact same gun is a felony. We’re not dealing with people in possession of any type of rationality, here.
It seems they are rationally putting pressure upon those willing to own guns or 3d printers.
Like most of rifle shots fired in WWI didn’t kill anyone and were meant for suppression.
Making you afraid of everything that can be a legal trap. Thus possibly dropping the thought of even owning this or that thing.
Except for the fact that this doesn’t put any pressure on anyone who wants a gun (those are still really easy to get in California, just not as easy as most other states). But those who benefit the most from this law are gun manufacturers, and not long after when this bill is extended to printing replacement parts for anything, all companies that charge inflated prices for repair parts or design their products to be unrepairable entirely.
What people who print “guns” are actually printing is gun furniture. Custom grips and the like, either for comfort/aesthetics or so they can take cheaper gun parts and use them to build a clone of a similar gun from a company that charges more. They still use legally purchased gun internals.
The gun that Luigi Mangione supposedly used was a Glock, legally purchased and one of the most ubiquitous pistols in the world, with a 3d printed grip on it. Every other part of that gun came from the manufacturer.
The gun used to kill Shinzo Abe, however, was made entirely out of simple materials readily available at any hardware store and is completely legal in all 50 states. Because a gun like that is considered a “garage gun” and those are legal under federal law because it’s essentially impossible to stop somebody from gluing together a pipe and a nail to strike the bullet with and fire it down the pipe barrel. But 3d printed gun parts don’t fall under the same regulations and those who stand to lose the most from people 3d printing are those who charge unreasonable prices.
You know who else would benefit from this law? Games Workshop, who sells many miniature figures for $40+ each, and a few for over one thousand dollars.
I live in Russia and here this is very illegal. It can suddenly become where you live too.
I haven’t read the bill, but from the description I think you could actually get around this by building your own. They can’t sell a printer that doesn’t have this, and you can disable it, but it doesn’t say here that you can’t build your own that never had the software. In that case, I assume we’ll see kits that are totally not meant to be assembled into printers with all their parts you need, and then unrelated documentation online somewhere on how to assemble it.
I was just talking with a friend about the microstamping idea. I’d never heard of it before.
This is why politicians should be automatically retired at 65. We shouldn’t be allowing people who grew up without seatbelts to make any decisions involving technology.
FWIW, the person that proposed this legislation is 47: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Bauer-Kahan
Maybe have an exit poll, if they deserve retirement or must do community service to clean up the damage they have done…
Slicers are open source so anyone can and will remove surveillance malware from it.
Require printers to check digital signatures on STL files and have only approved slicers add those
Print the parts for a new printer on a cheap one, buy the hardware at a local hardware store or electronics store (or even strip the cheap one for most of the parts), and start printing in your favorite flavor of open source software. Or buy the printed pieces from someone or online and then buy and assemble the rest. That’s what they do with guns to circumvent some of the gun laws, because the not quite finished pieces are not legally considered a gun.
All this would do is make people buy printers the way that they buy guns, ironically. And it still won’t do anything about the so-called “ghost guns” anyway, because those are either legally bought guns with the serial number shaved off, or they’re garage guns like the one used to assassinate Shinzo Abe.
So we’re back to placing restrictions on the printers…
You’re surprised that law makers are trying to regulate things they know nothing about? Oh…oh I have like 2000 years worth of news for you…
Not surprised. Just frustrated.
Laws are much older than 2000 years. To be more specific, at least about double that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu
This is a lost battle either way but a non-lost opportunity to acquire some power