492
From who are these awful ideas in California governing coming from
The tech bros.
Who are owned by private equity for sovereign wealth funds pushing for nothing but returns. Hence they don't care if they sign on the line with Goebbels or enshittify their product into uselessness.
The lobbying power of tech companies that profit from proprietary technology and feel threatened by open source. The same people who are behind DRM on everything from ebooks and music to printer inks, and legal restrictions on repairing the devices you own.
This but it's not just tech companies, it's all companies and a feature of our lovely system 🙃
Anti-gun/gun control lobby would be my first guess. You can basically print all the serialized parts (the part required for registration) for most any gun then get the rest of the parts and assemble it yourself. The gun parts don't necessarily even need to be based on an actual manufactured gun, there are designs for completely homemade guns down to the barrel using parts you can easily pick up at any hardware store. Then there are also people who are printing parts that can turn some semi-automatic guns into selectable fully automatic.
Problem is the plans are already in the wild for printing gun parts and for open source printers. I don't know what good would accomplish to deter people from printing when the person targeted is already motivated enough to print one to begin with.
Making a gun is already illegal in California and Washington. This stupid law won't make any difference. If someone is willing to break the law to make a gun, they probably are not going to follow this law either. 3D printed guns are rarely used to commit crimes anyways. It takes a lot of time and effort to get one to work well.
This is probably about companies like Bamboo Labs wanting an excuse to lock down printers even more. It will also make it difficult or impossible for smaller companies to sell 3D printers in California to get rid of competition.
Yeah, kinda reminds me of when Sony music put a rootkit virus on their music CDs except this time it's going through the state governments to encrypted things. This also feels as dumb as making math illegal in terms of outlawing encryption or making some numbers illegal because when arranged in a certain way they are an .stl file for a copyrighted character or an .mp3 file for a song.
This is just making something that is already illegal more illegal and opening a massive hole for government and corpo spying.
And probably an attempt to get licensing fees from printing STL file, so you can't print any Disney figurine without paying them.
Unlike laws against making guns, this law applies to printer sellers, not to their users.
The problem with 3D printers is people are repairing things with parts made on them. We can't have that.
Nope. This is actually an anti right to repair bill. The gun narrative is just the trojan horse, just like they're doing with ID verification.
I just remember the earliest opposition to 3D printing becoming readily available to the mass public at cheap prices was the gun control lobby. They're an "old" enemy to the hobby. I think this is more of an anti-privacy issue than anti-ownership/right to repair, but it is certainly both.
Could you also just make these same parts out steel or aluminum? Seems like a weird arbitrary line to essentially say what material you can make them out of and what equipment you can use. Or are benchtop CNCs gonna be banned next?
Not sure about the California bill, but the similar shit out of Washington state does have language for subtractive manufacturing as well as additive. They basically are targeting any computer controlled manufacturing.
It all feels so obviously stupid when there are people on the internet selling partially complete metal parts with instructions for how to finish them completely unrestricted. They obviously aren't worried about stopping the "ghost gun problem", they are worried about people having the means of production and the right to repair things they own.
Ok so aluminum casting is still OK.
This is the sad state of the US I guess.
Two States, California and Washington, are not "The US" any more than France and Germany are the European Union. They are important no doubt but they do not themselves represent the entire entity.
I see this constantly on the internet. "Some backwater Podunk state puts the 10 commandments in classrooms" becomes "The US puts the 10 commandments in classrooms". It's like people don't understand how this country is architected.
Yep it's tiring but comment aged link milk because the very next day a bill was introduced to Congress.
Yes to your entire comment
Washington State. They have a identical (or at least similar) bill I heard about last month.
Do nothing about school shootings. Destroy hobbies and manufacturing instead. America is rotting from the inside.
America has been rotting from the inside since WW2 (MIC, FBI and CIA terrorism, etc), then supercharged with Reagan. Frankly, it's surprising it took this long.
Ironically wasn't America's most "prosperous" era after WW2.
Flush with cash from the military industrial complex, repurposing factories built for the war, and with its largest economic rivals lying in ruin. Yes.
California gave us Reagan.
And this is fucking progressive ass Cali.
The left and the right can't stop fucking with their bases long enough to fix real problem.
Cali was never that progressive as I mentioned in another comment the motive for their gun control was pure unadulterated racism. They were always center right neoliberal at best. Newsom fits in well with his predecessors.
But like.. are they going to prohibit all forms of melding materials into a shape? You can make a shank out of a stick rubbed on a rock ffs.
Or just use the rock.
jesus fucking christ the kind of person who has a machine dialled in enough to print a functional weapon that will actually work and not come apart in their hands or blow off their face is the sort of person who will also have the means and wherewithal to obtain a conventional weapon. And they will most likely turn to the latter if they want to do harm.
So try and ban 3D printing guns, because that's too dangerous. But still sell guns at wallmarkt to be bought without background checks? I have the feeling something is a little off here...
FFS, you still need a bg check to buy from Walmart. There's plenty of things to point out to fight for sane gun laws without making shit up.
You can’t buy guns at Walmart in California.
How the fuck is this getting upvoted when it isn't remotely based in reality?
Because you can buy guns at Walmart, maybe not in California, but they sell guns in approximately half of their stores in the US.
You can also go to gun shows and buy guns without a background check.
But of course you're correct, he was wrong, It's not as easy as going to Walmart to get a gun without a background check. It's actually MUCH EASIER than that in more than half the US. You can just go online and pay for someone to send you a gun without any background check, site unseen, from the comfort of your own home.
I'm not sure how buying a gun at a gun show sans background check is easier than if Walmart didn't require a background check, but regardless, the premise of their statement (that Walmart doesn't require background checks) is factually incorrect. You're moving the goalpost. And no, you can't just pay for a gun online and have it shipped to you. That's not how that works, not legally at least.
Wow, talk about moving goal posts... You were all enraged with his conflating Walmart and private sales, but have no problems making up stuff that I didn't say.
As for online sales:
"According to the ATF, any unlicensed person -meaning not a Federal Firearms Licensee- may transfer a firearm to another unlicensed person residing in the same state as long as that person is not barred from owning a gun.
This means it's perfectly legal under federal law to transfer your gun to another person without any extra steps as long as they are allowed to own a firearm.
There is no federal requirement for having a license to do so, and you don't need to fill out any paperwork.
As long as you're both residents of the same state, your transaction is essentially unrestricted."
So how about state laws you ask?
"Private Transfers of Firearms
Wyoming does not regulate private sales and transfers of firearms".
I didn't make anything up, but it looks like misread your comment. My bad, but when you start throwing out shit that didn't have anything to do with the comment I replied to, that can easily happen. Regardless, neither of those links say you can purchase a gun online and have it shipped directly to you. I'm not aware of that happening anywhere or any mechanisms to facilitate that anywhere. That's not a thing that happens.
Because guns are bad, mmmkay?
/s
This is just madness. What the hell is Newsom thinking/drinking?
That's one way do deal with the traffic: just make your state so shitty place to live that everyone moves elsewhere.
they took the fucking dragon slinky
Just wait till they hear about my old Bridgeport!
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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