What's to stop anyone from driving out of state to buy the printer, or having it shipped from out of state? I swear to dog legislators are virtue signaling dip-shits.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Authoritarians just doing what authoritarians do.
I'm surprised the title wasn't sensationalized.
3D Printers getting their backdoor smashed by California lobbyists
Printing companies should stop selling in California.
Everybody should also stop considering the US like one country, because it functions less than one country than the EU and the EU isn't and the US is.
Backdoor Bill? Haven't seen that porno yet.
Aaaaah... If they were just so restrictive on gun laws.. insert image of utopian healthy world here
Can't regulate the parts as they are used in many many many devices. So as far as I'm concerned this is worthless. I can build a fucking 3d printer from an old VCR and a hot glue gun.
You can, but 90% 3D printer buyers can't, and that's a good enough amount of people to spy on.
my interest is who is PAYING to fund the bill, i wouldnt be surprised if its gun companies or palantir.
I might print some guns purely out of spite.
In Minecraft.
Everytown for Gun Safety says recoveries of 3D-printed crime guns across 20 cities have risen nearly 1,000% over the past five years,
So... They found a total of ten 3d printed guns in the last 5 years?
325 are 3D out of 350,000 guns found in CA in connection to a crime in 2024, according to random assholes on reddit.
This is a pretty dumb thing to pass legislation on considering it's still VERY easy to buy a gun even in CA, another method of getting a gun isn't making it easier in any real sense.
Now to be totally fair, 325 is 325 more than 0, which would be the ideal number of 3d printed guns used in crime... But also, how many of those 3d printed gun users had access to a different gun and simply opted for the 3d printed one? I get the feeling it was somewhere around 325 of them
This is all ignoring the fact that I'm using a very liberal definition of the phrase "3d printed gun." I doubt anyone is using Songbirds for armed robberies lmao
3d printing isnt shit except for ease of use. I can make a 12 gage slam fire shotgun in a couple hours with maybe $100 on a home depot or Lowes gift card. As a machinist and welder, I can make a whole lot more than that.
On the one hand, its moronic to think that limiting 3D printing will in any way affect ease of access to firearms. On the other hand, literally anything making it harder for people to kill or harm each other is probably for the best in the long run.
A comedian I watched a while back had a bit about if the government really wanted to stop gun violence, they'd put a massive tax on ready made ammunition. You really gotta hate a bitch to spend $5k on a bullet to kill them. Obviously this doesnt take into account making your own ammo, but the point stands.
Add to that the fact that some gun parts are not printable and have to be made out of metal. Printing an entire firearm on a $500 3D printer is possible but that gun will be good enough for 1 bullet, and probably will hurt shooter at that.
Also, if inmates can make a handgun out of whatever they have access at prison - 3d printing is the afterthought. Some parts can be bought in a department store, the others can be ordered online as a replacement parts. If someone really wants to make a gun themselves, 3D printing ban wont stop them.
Given they've postponed the standards until 2028, I am skeptical our legislators will be able to develop a viable benchmark. And then I don't imagine it's possible to enforce it.
This is likely to die in court.
It'll be enforced just like child porn laws are. If you have enough money or political power (same thing really) then you won't ever see a cop.
But us regular citizens will get fucked. Par for the course for a powerful, authoritarian government.
They'll ask chatgpt to generate it. It doesn't need to be viable, it just needs to be impossible for manufacturers to comply with
I don't think California intends to act in bad faith and try to kill the 3D printer industry (or community). I think this is due to misconceptions similar to the notion that one can create encryption with a backdoor that only the good guys can use. It just doesn't math.
And that's exactly what is going to kill the law in the courts, much the way that they've upheld strong encryption and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Allowing the law to come into effect will cause too much damage to industry and the economy.
Granted I can't be absolutely certain of that. We've had a lot of incompetent (or corrupt) judges get confirmed in recent decades, so really anything can happen. But the thing they don't want is what happened after they tried to criminalize printed gun designs in the first place, and see the already-robust 3D printing underground get another growth boost.
My first 3d printer is a RepRap running marlin firmware... They couldn't make me make that 3d printer compliant.
[edit]
I wonder if the microcenter locations in CA are suddenly going to have empty shelves where the 3d printers used to be.
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Under the proposal, printers would have to evaluate STL files, CAD files, or other geometric code using a firearm blueprint detection algorithm and block files flagged as capable of producing a firearm or illegal firearm parts, including conversion devices.
California's Department of Justice, or another relevant state agency, would have until January 1, 2028, to publish performance standards for detection algorithms and software control processes.
This is the problem when lawmakers write technical bills without speaking to technical people. They're going to publish standards for evaluating if your gcode is a firearm or firearm part? THAT'S FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE
The controller in my printer that was manufactured at mininum cost can't "analyze a part using an algorithm". Do they think it has any decent computational power?
It's not even that, building a firearm.....is legal...this shit going after printers makes no sense at all, it's fucking legal to print firearm parts.
Fun time to introduce/remind people of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing the newspaper as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about.
Same thing goes for laws and lawmakers. It's almost as if selecting our "leaders" from a narrow band of society who, for the most part, don't know shit about anything, does not lead to enlightened laws.
Lol I was just talking to my wife about that yesterday and how it's exactly like AI.
If you read something in the newspaper about your job, you're like "these fucking idiots got this all backwards." If you see AI output of an attempt at your job, it's the same thing.
But if you read an article about someone else's job, you think "that makes sense." Same about seeing AI trying to do someone else's job.
BANNED
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Jokes on you, my 3D printer is offline
Shit, same. Mine is basically a custom built Ender3 with open source firmware. I could (theoretically anyway) write my own firmware for it and ignore the law.
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