Just wait till they hear about my old Bridgeport!
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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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.
they took the fucking dragon slinky
It wont stop anyone looking to print a silencer. It will just make it closed source and pay per print. Its a idiots solution.
Is California just gone fucking mad after newscum? What is up with all these fucked up legislations against private freedom?
Its really, really big and populous, and also ethnically, culturally, and socially diverse. I think those combined factors lead to California passing more volume and variety of laws than any of the other American states.
Many of the laws they pass are regulation on business and consumer protection in excess of those provided by the federal government, but the socially progressive side of politics has its villains, too. Their villainy comes in the form of forced trading of freedom for security--outlawing activities that are dangerous to you, or banning objects and knowledge that have the potential to harm you or others even if they have other practical uses.
Its the main reason why it is risky to fight for the victory of one's own political "team" without further consideration. It is easy for people interested in the public good to be overzealous in enforcement of public safety.
It's hard to get broad agreement on where to draw that line. For example, I tend to lean in the "natural law" direction, where I think you should be allowed to have and do almost anything you want, so long as it doesn't materially harm anyone else, even indirectly. Most other people, even on the left, find that relatively extreme and believe in more personal regulation in the name of increased public safety. For example, most Democrats support moderate to strict restrictions on personal firearm, chemical, and encryption ownership, rather than banning the illegal uses of those things themselves. It is more dangerous for people to be able to be able to get dangerous stuff, so it makes sense people would have a lot of differing opinions on where to settle between "Mad Max" and "Minority Report".
they specifically only became supportive of restrictions on personal firearms after minorities started carrying them for protection from law enforcement overreach. It was a whole thing with then-governor Ronald Reagan
Correct. They only care about this stuff because they don't want anyone to use it on them.
If you don't believe me, just note how basically every single weapons ban written in the US magically has an exception for law enforcement carved into it. So... We (not me, but all you Californian people) can't have, say, a butterfly knife but for some reason the cops can? What do they need it for that we don't, exactly?
I don't know who newscum is but this state loves inventing new and exciting types of red tape
Gavin (fucking) Newscum.
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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.
California gave us Reagan.
Ironically wasn't America's most "prosperous" era after WW2.
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.
This is just madness. What the hell is Newsom thinking/drinking?
Back when 3D printers were brand-new, I was at a college event where the Engineering Club had one on display. I stopped to watch it, and spoke with the kid who had built it. He was a Freshman, and had built it during the previous summer, because he wanted to come to college and make an instant splash in the Engineering Department.
He certainly succeeded, because he was the one in the booth that everybody wanted to talk to, while the upperclassmen that hadn't accomplished anything, sat in the back of the booth and glowered at the Freshman upstart.
So anyway, if they ban them, we'll just build them.
I believe the entire goal of RepRap was to build a machine that could build all the parts needed to build another machine. Most of the parts for a lot of machines are either 3d printable or bog-standard off-the-shelf parts that could be used for millions of other things. I have a feeling the really scary target would be software, something similar to the draconian age-verification BS being run around.
I don't see how they could realistically target Marlin firmware. It's incredibly straightforward software/firmware that could easily be forked and duplicated. Even the old driver boards (Ramps) were originally hand-made pcb's designed by fellow hobbyists.
They make it illegal to distribute, install, use, etc. They make it illegal to sell, distribute, build, etc. any printer that can run on Marlin (hoping to force manufacturers to block anyone installing non-oem firmware on the machines at all).
I'm not saying it's reasonable or feasible, but the people making the laws clearly don't know or care about any of that.
Edit - If they make enough stuff illegal, they don't need to catch you breaking the law when they decide to arrest you. They just arrest you and then figure out which crimes you were committing.
Targetting commercial offers would not cut it though. They would have to make octoprint, open source firmware etc a crime. A lot of printer run exclusively on non-commercial software and on Chinese control boards, with or without raspberry pi.
That's kind of what they already want to do, or are trying to do with this legislation. And the age verification stuff has no exception for open-source. The people behind this stuff absolutely want to kill any and all open source, both hardware and software.
This is called the proliferation of technology, its useless to fight it, and also one of humanities greatest existential threats.
Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.
Just FYI, I am full pro 3d printer, love mine. Looking into a second one now.
Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.
No. Even if you would get your hands of enough base material (impossible and would also be bigger than your backyard in volume). The energy you need for sorting the isotopes would be more than you could pull out of your power wires.
This isnt a question about technology but physics and energy, no matter how good consumer tech gets. NO you wont build a nuke in your backyard.
The same way as you will never build a moon rocket in your backyard, some things just require a fixed amount of energy, and putting that amount of energy in your backyard just wont happen.
"Get in good trouble, necessary trouble..."
From who are these awful ideas in California governing coming from
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
That's one way do deal with the traffic: just make your state so shitty place to live that everyone moves elsewhere.
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.
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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.
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