This is really just a way to save money on human moderators. I'm pretty sure Thingiverse has always forbidden functional weapons. Now they don't have to examine each one, they'll just let the machine deal with it.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Wonder how it handles nerf blasters?
My guess, and confirmed by another comment, is that the ai only flags posts for review. Then the moderators have to manually check the post.
Honestly, it's not a terrible use of AI in my opinion. Considering posts practically never change, they really only have to scan each post once. The mod can either flag it as safe or remove it. They are probably just running image and text pattern recognition on previously banned posts to flag newly submitted posts.
Finally someone using new tech tools in a sensible and useful way .
image recognition AI is notoriously bad at context, so it'll probably flag half the nerf blasters as "potential weapons" and require human review anyway lol
My money's on "poorly"
It should be noted that Thingiverse’s policy is against “firearms” and not guns in general. The company has no problem with replica props, airsoft guns, sci-fi blaster toys, or gun-like objects that shoot candy.
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“AI will be used only to flag potentially harmful designs, but a human will always be the one to decide if something should be removed,” Chapman told Tom’s Hardware. If a file is removed from Thingiverse, it will be removed by a person, not a machine.
This was my biggest worry, otherwise I see 99% of removed files just being cosplay props
So, my potato "launcher" design would be...OK?
As long as the potato isn't made of metal and uses gunpowder to propel it, sure.
No, I actually meant a potato.
Combustion assisted vegetable catapult, you mean?
...yes?
Yesss.
Can it launch a 40mm... "potato"?
It's made from PVC, so whatever a 2" potato would be. 52mm?
regardless of your stance on them, the fact of the matter is that any major 3d file hoster (Thingiverse, Printables. Cults, etc.) are not the place to get the files to print a firearm. a lot of firearms are found across the Internet and are relatively easy to find
they're perfectly legal where I live and I just think they're neat, but I'll have to destroy them if/when I move to where I want to go
In some places it's perfectly legal to manufacture guns with 3d printers. Know your local laws.
I think it is in canada or at least most of one but I'm not eager to look too closely as I don't need the scrutiny on me
I don't need the scrutiny on me
Officer, this guy right here. Lol
I thought it was allowed from what I was told, but looking it up it requires a firearms business license.
Know you're local laws
It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle...
It's not just Glocks, you can 3d print the serialized part of an AK, MP5, and lots of others.
AR needs metal still as far as I know. But for lots of serious weapons you can buy "parts kits" that sent straight to your door for 2-400.
And yet, America is still the only country with regular mass shootings.
Everyone acts like people are going to be able to start 3d printing guns and ammunition en masse, and yet it doesn't happen anywhere at any significant scale. It's just defeatist nonsense pushed by gun lovers to convince people not to act.
The gun violence is a symptom of a dysfunctional society, not the cause. If the US was more equitable for everyone in terms of money and healthcare, it would go down.
Nothing against sensible gun regulations, but even if you magically disappeared every gun in the country, the problems that mess people up so bad they get violent would remain.
The first half of your comment I agree with completely.
And even the second half I think is basically accurate, but it may also miss the point.
but even if you magically disappeared every gun in the country, the problems that mess people up so bad they get violent would remain.
So yeah, I think people would still get violent, for sure. The question is, how many people can they hurt when that happens? I mean, I recognize the impossibility of this, but if you could magically disappear every gun in the country, we would pretty quickly see a very different society begin to emerge. For starters, there would be much less murder across the board, less gang violence, less domestic violence, fewer murders by cops, no school shooting, probably even fewer suicides. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would definitely have a huge impact.
But there would be additional effects too... The relationship between cops and the general public would begin to change drastically. There would be much less anger toward the police and the police would have fewer reasons to fear the public. The current cop policy of shoot first if you feel threatened is both completely unacceptable and simultaneously totally rational (if they assume anyone could have a gun). But without guns in people's hands, (including the cops') we'd have a completely different dynamic in so many otherwise dangerous situations.
All that said, you're right that economic inequity will always lead to social interest and violence. So like I said, this wouldn't solve everything. But on the other hand, getting rid of guns entirely wouldn't be a bad way to go, it would certainly heal more than it would hurt.
This is nonsense.
The US is not the least functional nor least equal country in the world, and yet it is the only one with regular mass homicides.
It's because of wide spread access to point and click murder machines that lower the bar for massacres.
Other issues exacerbate and lead to violence, but the primary difference between the US and everywhere else is everyone carrying a pistol to Walmart like idiots.
Neither of you are talking nonsense. The US clearly has a combination of problems that combine to cause their massive problem with mass shootings.
Their limited gun control is a contributing factor, but not the only factor. Other countries have weak gun laws and don’t have nearly the same problems, the US didn’t have the same problems in the past, they’ve grown worse over time, and at this point the very concept of mass shootings in media is a major cause of them.
Removing guns (magically removing all existing guns) would certainly reduce the problem and probably would eventually fix things, but at this point the US has been broiling itself in this idea for too long and it would probably continue with knives or homemade bombs or something instead, at least for a while.
it would probably continue with knives or homemade bombs or something instead, at least for a while.
which would be an improvement. knives cause less damage and bombs require knowledge to gather materials and build which 1) increases the barrier to entry and 2) gives authorities time to detect the activity and prevent the act.
Finland has almost as many households (as a %) with guns as the U.S. (38% for Finland vs 42% for the U.S.) yet the U.S. has about 19x the per capita gun homicide rate of Finland.
Now compare the gun violence rate of both of those countries with the gun violence rate of somewhere that bans guns.
Maybe we'll see that Finland has a route to further reduce their gun violence.
Having looked into it a bit, I was essentially right. England mostly bans gun ownership, their gun violence rate is half that of Finland's. In Japan, they have even tighter controls on firearms, the gun violence rate there is 30 times lower than Finland's.
Removing guns from the situation absolutely seems makes a huge measurable difference. If you believe math.
Wikipedia says that 12% of Finns own a gun, so I'm not sure where you're getting 38% of households.
Finland also does not allow owning guns for personal protection, open or concealed carry, has mandatory military service, and most of the guns owned are long guns used for hunting and sport shooting. To get a license for a pistol you have to be over 20 and demonstrated over 2 years of experience sport shooting pistols.
I got it from Wikipedia. Households and people are different statistics. People includes children who are unlikely to own a gun.
I also prefer households as a statistic over guns per capita because it avoids the issue of gun collectors who may have hundreds of guns in one household…
Yeah but people in Finland are out raking forests all day to prevent wildfires which leaves very little time for mass shootings.
Well yeah that’s sort of the point. The presence of guns alone does not predict gun violence. You need violent people for it to happen.
counting by household is blatantly spinning the data to ignore households with more than one gun. why should we do that? even just households with two guns are not crazy outliers and vastly change the comparison.
also the US cannot require gun registration so we really have no idea how many guns are actually out there. only about 1 million guns are registered. 400 million seems to be the low estimate but could even be over 500 million. on the other hand the vast majority of finland’s firearms are registered.
also what kind of guns are we talking about? iirc Finns get a standard issue rifle for military service. Handguns are more often used in crime (and probably suicide).
Because the argument is that guns cause violent crime (specifically mass shootings) and the example of Finland shows that not to be the case. Then if guns don’t cause violent crime what is it?
The most likely explanation to me is that there is a confounder: an unknown which causes both the acquisition of (one or more) guns and the commission of crimes. A hidden criminality element which Finland seems to lack.
The alternative explanation is that the U.S. is a broken society (in one or more ways) and that this leads people to feel the desire to lash out in extremely violent ways. The availability of guns in the US offers them an easy option for inflicting mass casualties but the recent example of Michigan shows that even without a gun there is still the opportunity for mayhem.
The one physible item you can always find on on Bit Torrent.