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.
How does this “firearm blocking technology” even work? How does a 3d printer id whatever code the slicer sends it as a gun part?
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.
Banning guns is so easy. But dealing with the systemic problems that lead people to guns who definitely should t have them seems impossible to grasp.
printers can literally be built with dumb electronics, some pieces of metal and an arduino.
juat saying.
My main printer up until last month was powered by an Arduino Mega. Like not even an “Arduino-compatible ATMEGA 2560-based 3D printer control board” an Arduino Mega, with the infinity ± logo. Reprap style.
my current printer is powered by an arduino mega, and it’s staying that way while i can. the best appliances are the ones you can control and replace yourself if you need to. 😉
all parts you can find at a hardware store + some 3d printed pieces. repraps and foss printers are the best period.
I am the owner of a brand new Prusa MK4S. A lot of its components aren’t open source, but it’s an i3, I can keep it running, and I can hit its wifi module with a hammer if I want to.
Are you suggesting ghost printers? Lol
i’m suggesting regular, non-enshitified printers.
Until they make that illegal.
oh, i would bet on it.
i wanna see them try to enforce it though.
Well the answer is banning Arduinos, obviously 🧐
Sooooo you want to stop gun violence in the US so your first instinct is to fuck over 3D printers because gun violence is okay as long as the guns are bought from the normal vendors?
This paw isn’t about lowering gun violence, this is something pushed to protect the gun manufacturers
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?
They know they can’t take the gun industry head on, so they chip at the margins. They figure hobbyists aren’t numerous enough to fight back, while the real gun owners shrug.
I honestly wonder if this might be held unconstitutional if challenged.
Because it’s not about stopping gun violence, it’s about ensuring the state has the final say over who gets a firearm, and keeps them out of the hands of people who might genuinely need them for self and community defense by any means possible
Nope, it is about competition with the firearms industry.
This
Can have the military complex lose money.
Someone more eloquent than I am needs to craft a compelling argument that this violates the 2nd amendment.
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.
Any proper printer should work offline.
Any normal printer doesn’t have nearly enough processing power to run analysis on bgcode/instruction files (it’s nor needed for normal operation).Good luck idiot lawmakers
Knowing the internet, I also assume that a custom firmware or some other workaround would be released in about a week anyway, making the whole thing utterly pointless.
This is what I’m talking about. We are stating to get to a cojent argument that I can call my representatives with and bitch them out, politely.
Am a Californian by choice.
This is going to make life hard for hobbyists not criminals.
Silly woman who proposed that bill, if passed the law will only create a black market for 3D printers.
And largely unenforceable. Like, it can only really block the sale of prebuilt, proprietary crap like Bamboo, but most of these things are built out of common parts that are used for a verity of applications and there are countless completely open source printers you can just built from sourced parts that this literally cannot apply to.
Even for most of the prebuilt or kits you get you put open source firmware on it. They can boot lock the board that comes with it, technically, but the board is easy enough to replace on most printers and it’s a standard micro controller and/or raspberry pi nowadays.
Half the time people who get those kits end up replacing various components to customize for their use case. I have a Sovol SV08 that I put stock Klipper on and want to do the multi-print-head mod someday. I’ve even considered replacing the main board with a more powerful one so I can run higher microsteps without overloading the processor.
Wow…they got us, no way we can print an STL from a USB stick.
Imagine the processing power needed to analyse bgcode for gun or gun part-like shapes!
Not to mention it’s easier to make a pipe gun than to learn 3d printing
This is so fucking dumb. Anyone can Smith a gun at any hardware store.
What the “ban” is trying to achieve. Is prevention of firearms undetectable by metal detectors.
Though I’m not sure why that is important seeing as the bullet (as a whole) consists of lead, copper, and brass. But I suppose it can be argued it’s a lot easier to sneak through a bullet than a firearm.
Fuuuq gotta buy a printer before this shit
Just avoid Bambu. Everything you do goes through their servers.
Bauer-Kahan is a Democrat, if you wonder.
If the bill is passed, I’d be surprised if Newsom didn’t sign it.
What kind. Because I’m well aware of how bad democrats can be even if they aren’t as bad as the literal fascists.
At best this is a grossly uninformed position. At worst she is pushing this to add it to the pile of privacy violations or because a system like this, if it could actually work, would have an end goal to block people printing copyrighted objects.
This is all politics is, convincing morons to vote for puppets of the ruling class.
I imagine it wouldn’t really be too difficult to design parts in a way that they would be completely inconspicuous until trimmed and assembled
Even if this could actually be enforced you have the issue that if they go too far you suddenly have it blocking a cylinder because it thinks you are trying to print a gun barrel.
Not that I don’t think they would care about that, but it would certainly cause even more of a backlash.
You wouldn’t do the barrel anyway. You’d use tube stock instead
The plastic would be too fragile to handle the heat and pressure that it’d likely be worse than a barrel-less design.
This is the lie, that a complete gun is printed, as in Sci fi movies.
It’s just the parts that are typically wood or plastic on factory made guns.
I bet the code is cracked within the hour of every update from now until eternity. It’s like the shit physical locks we put on everything. Nothing but a display of safety.
or a 3D printer that doesn’t call the FBI
Btw, this doesn’t include 3D-printer parts?
Wow a great bill to stop people from making weapons. Y’all gonna ban pipes and steel ball bearings next?
The fuck is our country coming to man.
It is specifically trying to prevent people from making firearms that is not detectable with a metal detector. You are allowed to create your own firearm. As long as it is detectable with a metal detector.
I’m not here to argue their method of enforcement. I’m just saying what the purpose is.
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.
I would like some regulation of middle aged men with beards 3D printing excessive numbers of Magic the Gathering characters.
Hold up. I’m not sure if we want to crash the filament market.
