9 ms·

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns. I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something rese

Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns. I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. So given we don't do this regulation for any of the much more reliable ways to create unregistered firearms... what's special about 3d printers? So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact. Either way, this is bad legislation.

tempaccount5050 6mo ago
Not that I support any of these obviously stupid bills but: > what's special about 3d printers? They can make guns made out of plastic and metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people. You are probably right about the lobbying group, I agree. Edit: I'm not saying it makes sense, but this is the angle the congress folks are taking, sheesh.
- 15155 6mo ago
  > metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people What are bullets and shell casings made out of again?
  - Kirby64 6mo ago
    More importantly, what is the barrel made out of? Yes, I know there’s some fully printed guns… but my understanding is that those are basically 1-time use and even then it’s questionable how reliable that single use actually is… If you want something resembling an actual gun (more than one shot, won’t blow up in your hand, some reasonable chance of accuracy, etc), then you’re going to be using multiple metal components (including the bullets of course) all of which would show up on a metal detector.
  - captaincrisp 6mo ago
    And importantly the barrel. Plastic cannot contain the pressure required to fire a bullet.
  - trollbridge 6mo ago
    And I'd argue that shell casings are probably harder to manufacture than a fully working firearm. The equipment needed to manufacture working ammunition end-to-end is pretty serious.
    - 15155 6mo ago
      All of these manufacturing equipment and processes existed more than a century ago. If you have a capable VMC, you can make the die and other equipment necessary to stamp shell casings from commonly-available parts and machinery. From there, with a modern Dillon or Hornady reloading press, you can crank out thousands of rounds per day without issue. Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture, but (good-enough) bullets, casings, etc. are completely doable.
      - rolph 6mo ago
        [Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture] thats a problem that may not endure. if a firearm is reengineered to use an electrode to detonate charge rather than a chemical primer, there is no need for murcury fulminate, just a piezo electric spark generator, and a few square cm of cerebral cortex.
        jandrewrogers 6mo ago
        Electronic primers are a thing that already exists commercially. In the early 2000s, Remington sold electronically primed hunting rifles next to their non-electronic equivalent (see: "EtronX"). It is a mature technology. The main issue is cost and simplicity, since it often requires adding electronics to weapons that normally would not require them. The military uses electronically primed cartridges for things like chain guns and autocannons, since those require electronics to fire regardless of how it is primed.
        rolph 6mo ago
        yes ive seen them they are called exotic by most people around me. yes the very nature of a chain cannon, makes electronic priming,the easier way to go. so far we can still go to the store with 20$ and come back with a 200pk of 209s, someday that might be not so easy, and electronic is the better/only way.
  - michaelt 6mo ago
    In the movies, you hide the bullets in a pen or something, and it bypasses the metal detector along with the keys, phones and watches.
    - ancientorange 6mo ago
      rabbits' foot, iIrc.
  - esseph 6mo ago
    > What are bullets and shell casings made out of again? Usually non-ferrous metals like brass, lead, and copper unless you live closer to Russia, then you may end up with steel-case. That's besides the point though, the barrel of the gun will be steel.
    - 15155 6mo ago
      Ferrous metals aren't required for any modern security-screening metal detectors: these materials are still highly electrically conductive, and therefore easily-detectable eddy currents are still inducible.
      - esseph 6mo ago
        Oh, that's right! I remember reading somewhere about this a few years back. Might have even been here on HN. For some reason I hear "metal detector" and my brain goes right to magnetism.
- horsawlarway 6mo ago
  > They can make guns made out of plastic So can many, many other things. Hell - something like this will do SO MUCH BETTER than anything I can print: https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=plastic+pipe https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=pl... It's weird because 3d printed plastic is WAY down the list of things I'd prefer to trust handling the explosion from ammunition. Frankly - even the hobbyist CNC I have is a MUCH better method of creating a plastic gun. FDM printing is not something I'd want to trust in this case, neither is SLA printing in most materials (some of the very high end ones like nylon in a formlabs printer... maybe?). But my point stands - guns aren't that hard to make, and we aren't trying this legislation with any of the other myriad manufacturing methods. Hell - compare to a potato cannon... (also a plastic gun, btw...) So what's different about 3d printers? My hunch is this has fuck-all to do with guns, and a lot to do with something else, because 3d printers ARE different in that they let me manufacturer all sorts of other, much more complex, goods much more easily and cheaply at home.
- kube-system 6mo ago
  There was a panic about plastic guns back in the 80s too when the Glock came out, and Congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act. But it was just as misinformed as it is today -- practically speaking, only metal is suitable for the high pressure components of a gun. A common 9mm cartridge produces upwards of 35,000 psi.
  - saltyoldman 6mo ago
    Aren't there metals that are undetectable/less detectable, like titanium or even stainless steel?
    - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
      No, it doesn’t work like that in the modern world. The nature of the materials are pretty obvious to a remotely competent sensor.
      - RugnirViking 6mo ago
        using what physical process? How exactly do they detect any metal? A genuine question.
        kube-system 6mo ago
        You can detect nonferrous metals by inducing eddy currents in them, then they become magnetic.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago
  [dead]
- mvrekic 6mo ago
  I don't care how good you are, you cannot 3D print a barrel that will withstand the pressure forces generated by a centerfire round.
  - Aurornis 6mo ago
    Kind of interesting how many of these comments are confidently denying what the 3D printed gun nuts already pulled off 13 years ago. I would never in a million years want to be around one being fired, but there have been big internet communities pulling this off going back a long time https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/feds-get-in-on-3d-printed-firearm-game-but-one-gun-exploded-instantly/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/feds-get-in-on-3...
    - imtringued 6mo ago
      You just linked an article that shows that entirely 3D printed guns don't work.
- jcgrillo 6mo ago
  If you're dead set on making a gun that will pass through a metal detector you don't need a 3D printer to do it.
rolph 6mo ago
whats special is speed and consistency. when you manufacture a personal firearm, it is supposed to be yours, for your use. the 3d printer aspect, makes it possible for a group to print large quantities of receivers, under the radar, to be combined with "accesory parts" close to "drop-in" assembly style.
- trollbridge 6mo ago
  At issue here is that anyone can build a 3D printer. There's one in my basement a hobbyist built entirely from easily-sourced parts, and the controller is entirely open source. It never phones home and isn't really connected directly to the Internet at all.
  - GenerocUsername 6mo ago
    Careful. Or they will try to regulate ghost printers.
- horsawlarway 6mo ago
  Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? So no - not buying it. Hell, there's not even a real price difference. I can get a Nomad3 from Carbide 3D for the same approximate cost as an H2D from bambu labs. And I can get super cheap temu versions of either for under 500.
  - burnt_toast 6mo ago
    > Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? Other states like Colorado have similar bills that define a "3d printer" as a computer aided machine that uses additive or subtractive manufacturing processes so CNC machines likely aren't safe either. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1144 https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1144
  - rolph 6mo ago
    i mean speed and consistency, compared to manually CnC [crank n curse] cutting, or printing. if you set up your job so that you print a block of, lets say 4 lower receivers for a stoner style firearm. and you ran a number of printers, you start an arsenal, for a fire team, not just a lonewolf, and that scares people.
hypeatei 6mo ago
> any real attempt to regulate guns Any real attempt would need to be at the national level, not that I would advocate for it, but it's simply a pipe dream to create a "gun free zone" in a country with 100s of millions of firearms. There are plenty of gun enthusiasts in California, they just don't flaunt it or talk about it.
- tylerflick 6mo ago
  I used to work in this industry and can confirm. California was by far the biggest cohort of consumers we had.
- lewdev 6mo ago
  "regulate guns" does not equate to "gun free."
  - Ferret7446 6mo ago
    And "gun free" does not equate to "gun free" either, it equates to "only criminals have guns"
- nine_k 6mo ago
  A gun-free zone is not such a good idea, much like an encryption-free zone would be, or an alcohol-free zone (the latter has been tried). I would rather go for Swiss-stye mandatory gun training, and keeping a gun in (almost) every home. But, like the Swiss, I would require not just storing the gun in a certified safe box, but also providing an ID + a proof of mental sanity, and registering the gun. That would raise a much larger wave of protest though, both from the "left" and the "right". Even though, IMHO, it's the only sane way.
  - marcus_holmes 6mo ago
    I have never lived in a country where people are allowed to keep guns. That scares the crap out of me. Not just because of random strangers. I went through a mental health crisis, and there was a dark time where if I had had a gun I would be dead now. No amount of lockers or safe boxes or mental health tests would have saved me from that gun. And wtf do you need a gun for anyway? I have never, not once, been in a situation where having a gun would have improved it. Why do you think giving everyone guns would be a good thing?
aidenn0 6mo ago
I'm not on top of the current SOTA in 3d-printed guns, but the way it typically was done in the past is that you don't actually 3d-print all of what you or I would call a complete gun. The barrel will be metal. In designs made for the US market, it will almost certainly be an actual manufactured gun barrel, since gun parts other than the receiver are not closely tracked in the US. In designs for Western Europe, the metal parts will be either milled or things you can buy at the hardware store[1]. The barrel and chamber being made of something tougher than you can get from an FDM machine is basically a requirement for making a gun that doesn't explode in your face when you shoot. 1: Here's an image of all of the parts going into a gun designed to be made in the EU. Per the wikipedia article, the barrel rifling can be added with electrochemical machining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Components.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Compon...
- horsawlarway 6mo ago
  yeah, but at some point you're just banning "manufacturing". if someone wants to make a gun... they can. It's not complex to manufacturer simple firearms - we managed it as far back as the freaking 10th century. So why freak out over this, for example, and not CNCs? Or Power tools? Or forges (CHF barrels are a thing too!)?
  - lazide 6mo ago
    Because those aren't as trendy right now. This is similar to banning nunchucks and throwing stars in the 80's (yes, that was a thing).
    - mjmas 6mo ago
      > was a thing Still a thing in Australia.
      - _carbyau_ 6mo ago
        I never understood banning nunchucks. They kind of ban themselves. If you've ever been a kid copying TMNT Michelangelo with home made nunchucks you've almost certainly smacked yourself in the face. Y'know what's martially better than two sticks with a string between them? A single big stick.
giancarlostoro 6mo ago
The only thing you need to make is the "lower" or whichever part the ATF constitutes as "the firearm" I've seen someone take a shovel and turn it into an AK. Once you have the "firearm" part of whatever gun you're building, the rest of the parts can be shipped to you in most of the country (idk about CA, and NY though) and you can easily assemble the rest of the gun. Like you say, you just need to build a key metal piece, and voila, the rest is buying parts that can be delivered to you, in some cases fully assembled. You could also just buy black powder guns directly to your home (idk about in CA or NY though) which are not treated as "firearms" by the ATF. The only people shooting 3D printed guns are enthusiasts usually, who have other guns.
- mcmcmc 6mo ago
  Didn’t Luigi Mangione 3D print his gun? There’s definitely an appeal for criminals
  - mystraline 6mo ago
    Allegedly. And was an illegal search as well, with the contents of the bag was prior to the court order.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
  - WillPostForFood 6mo ago
    He 3d printed the frame, but you need dozens of parts, milled or stamped from steel to complete it and have a working gun. Even the 3d printed frame needs steel inserts. It is like 3d printing a case, then buying a motherboard, CPU and RAM at Best Buy, and claiming your built a 3d printed computer. There is some appeal to criminals, because the frame is the part that gets the serial number and is regulated. But if you want to attack this problem, the 3d printer is a backwards way to do it.
    - giancarlostoro 6mo ago
favorited 6mo ago
> You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. Why would you buy a pipe at Home Depot? A gun barrel is not a firearm, and is not required to be registered or serialized. You can drive to Arizona or Nevada and buy an actual barrel, with rifling, manufactured to meet well-known specifications, without showing an ID. Until this year, you could have a barrel shipped to your California residence without an ID. There's no need to build the Shinzo Abe contraption. > So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact. Occam's razor. This isn't a shadowy manufacturing cabal, threatened by 3D printing. Gun control lobbyists are trying to prevent the printing of handgun frames and Glock switches, because they're the easiest parts to print. > Either way, this is bad legislation. California legislators haven't met a bad gun law that they don't like.
- nickff 6mo ago
  The device the parent is describing has a long history, and they're known as 'zip guns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
  - echelon_musk 6mo ago
    From Carlito's Way: > Out come the zip guns. Homemade gun. You pull the hook back, catch that bullet square, ping. Hit you in the head, man, you got serious problems.
  - engineer_22 6mo ago
    Yes and the response is telling you that you can build something orders of magnitude more sophisticated without any trouble. The point is, the firearm is not the tube the projectile comes out of. Firearm is closely defined and not intuitive to the general public.
  - robot-wrangler 6mo ago
    Quite a page. Featuring the work of ted k and a toy pop-gun that's un-toyed
bell-cot 6mo ago
> So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing... I'd say the real groups behind this are the anti-gun ideologues, the "do whatever it takes to stop my panic attacks over Bad Things maybe happening" left-wing control freaks, and the old-fashioned "big state" authoritarian crowd. And the only reason they're paying attention to 3d printers is that some pro-gun ideologues and provocative makers have been talking up the concept of 3d printing guns.
- whynotmaybe 6mo ago
  Or the gun lobby isn't really happy that anyone can "print" a gun.
  - rpmisms 6mo ago
    Yeah, no. I have shot 3D printed firearms with the head of the FPC, the most active gun lobby organization in the country.
caconym_ 6mo ago
Reminds me of the sUAS legislation crushing the R/C flying hobby. Vague allusions to "safety" are constantly being thrown around, but in fact it seems that big companies are lobbying to claim the airspace for drone delivery and similar autonomous BVLOS operations.
- terbo 6mo ago
  And as a result there are a bunch of sub 250g long range digital builds and RTFs that achieve the same as the drones people flew pre remote ID..
  - caconym_ 6mo ago
    Flying BVLOS is still illegal (including using goggles without a spotter) and basically nobody in the FPV hobby (non part 107) runs remoteid or registers their drones, even if they're over 250g. IDK what the AMA club field guys are doing, but they've all got FRIAs anyway. In the FPV hobby, interest in smaller drones has increased, but I'm not really sure whether to attribute that more to regulations or just the fact that more components are available now to build smaller drones that can fly in public spaces without interfering with other people's usage, or even inside your own home. Overall it feels like the main impact of the regulations is to keep people away from the hobby entirely, since people who get into it inevitably start ignoring the more onerous rules sooner or later. I'm expecting it to get worse, anyway. And the guys who fly DJI-style consumer drones are fucked, sub250 or not.
- jim33442 6mo ago
  Idk what law in particular, but if this is about flying drones at low altitude in places where other people didn't show up to hear drones buzzing, I'd want it banned whoever is doing it.
  - caconym_ 6mo ago
    No, the regulations I'm referencing have nothing to do with where (in the local sense) you can and can't fly drones. Even if I owned a thousand square miles in the middle of nowhere and wanted to fly a 75mm tinywhoop in the center of my own property, these regulations would affect me exactly the same as they would some jackass taking video of women sunbathing on a crowded beach with an 8" cinelifter. Typically local laws provide the recourse you're looking for.
6510 6mo ago
square tubes is the solution
Terr_ 6mo ago
Hmm, assuming it's part of somebody's bigger plans with an ulterior motive... The requirement to pass everything through a government watchdog module could be leveraged into DRM/copyright/patent overreach.
hacker_homie 6mo ago
I think the real issue is that 3d printing is a direct attack on products as a service (think roomba parts, fridge parts, anything with plastic clip assembly) that are planed to break and they don't sell replacement parts. lots of companies got fat and happy selling you plastic crap for a fortune, now 3d printers let you make plastic crap at home for pennies. If they must pass these laws, it must include protections for printing consumer goods parts, if they won't add that I will not vote for you. contact your state reps and tell them that.
- hagbard_c 6mo ago
  No, contact your state reps and tell them you don't want these laws passed, period - they should vote against any such laws if they want to have a chance at being voted in. They won't do anything for the stated purpose while they will cripple a thriving sector.
binkHN 6mo ago
It's total bullshit; I should be able to print all the guns I want. Prop guns, plastic replicas of my guns; I shouldn't have to go though this BS.
Aurornis 6mo ago
> I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. I agree that this legislation is not good, but you apparently aren’t aware of the large communities dedicated to 3D printing guns. The first 3D printed gun was making headlines 13 years ago and since then it’s turned into a semi-underground fascination. You aren’t going to be fashioning a gun out of a pipe from Home Depot more easily than the designs these groups are playing with. Many of the subreddits, Discords, Facebook groups and other communities have started to get shut down since a 3D printed gun was used in a high profile murder recently. There are a lot of comments in this comment section from people unaware of how big these communities are. I’m not supporting these legislative attempts to interfere with 3D printers but you really should know some of the context.
- sleepybrett 6mo ago
  wasn't luigi's gun 3d printed? (if i remember right it was a glock built from ebay parts and a 3d printed frame with a can. All of those combined meant that it did not cycle properly after the initial shot)
9rx 6mo ago
> what's special about 3d printers? They are typically stocked with material and ready to deploy at a moment's notice. When the time comes that you need a weapon, casually walking into Home Depot won't be an option.
sleepybrett 6mo ago
Most of the '3d printed' guns out there in the 2a community, and all the ones that actually work, require some kind of metal barrel, which might be a pipe, rifled or not. What they actually hate is people who buy bags of glock parts from ebay (contains everything but the frame) and then print the frame. The frame being the handle part, everything below the slide but none of the internals. That's the legal 'gun' when it comes to most glocks and clones. The new ruger rmx, a newer glock clone, is different, the firing group (trigger and all the associated bits there) is the serialized part. The frame is, of course, very easy to print. All the regulations around firearms are super fucking stupid, the way they classify different parts and try and make them illegal. Like.. in a lot of states if you have a rifle (ar or otherwise), you are not allowed to have a vertical foregrip for stabalization. However if your foregrip is like 5 degrees off pure vertical... legal. This 3d printer 'ban' is unenforcable, it's a fucking tool, you can build anything with tools. Sure it's easier and takes less skill to download a glock 19 frame model off the internet and hit print, but there is, apparently, a lot of work that goes into making the gun work with that frame well enough for the gun to actually cycle.
ScoobleDoodle 6mo ago
If you're a California constituent and inclined to take action you can find your California Assemblymember and Senator here ( https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ ) to voice opposition to California bill A.B. 2047 "Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology."
- nullc 6mo ago
  Alternatively, you could leave California and avoid a whole host of bad policy and legislation. Not that advocating is bad but of the two options one is guaranteed to be successful while the other is unlikely to help.
dyauspitr 6mo ago
Your 3D printed gun still needs that metal pipe. A 3D printed gun is just a frame for those metal parts.
saltyoldman 6mo ago
Home depot can do better than a pipe: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ramset-MasterShot-0-22-Caliber-Powder-Actuated-Tool-PAT-40088/202046595 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ramset-MasterShot-0-22-Caliber-P...
motbus3 6mo ago
Although people point out the occam's razor or whatever, i dont think this is true. As it happens with "protect children", "protect people" is the next blabbering speech to trick people accepting lobbied practices. Someone needs to track who is financing this stuff and I think it will make it much clearer. PS: I wouldnt be surprised if it was disney or something
nz 6mo ago
I mean, the entanglement between technology and politics is difficult to unsee, once one sees it. And the analogy between solar power and grid power, maps cleanly onto 3d printing and manufacturing (trad-printing?). Politics is _most frequently_ about money and the economic surplus, and only rarely about justice or ideology. The funny thing is, that the adjective that is most frequently use to describe markets is "efficient". Yet, whenever technologies that threaten to erode someone's business model appear, the market starts abusing the political infrastructure to introduce inefficiencies and frictions into the adoption of the technologies. Even though lobbying is not _technically_ illegal, we should probably learn to treat companies that engage in it (to the detriment of society) as if it were. Avoid their products if you can, and get your friend-group to do it as well. Build off-ramps. Maintain and share lists of executives who work at these companies (to put pressure on their reputations -- after all, what is wealth worth, if ordinary people refuse to take your money, or to give you any of their attention?). The market's distinctive feature is that it makes things fungible: currency, goods, and even people. Eliminate or reduce fungibility, and you get a very different kind of dynamic, one that has the potential to reverse the trend of rising inequality (and rent-seeking behavior, and unfair one-sided arrangements, etc) over night. In fact, the strategy of any company is to find a way to make an entire class of companies/merchants (not competitors) fungible, while making themselves non-fungible. Most moats are built out of the pieces or remnants of someone else's moat. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too hung over to tell. https://matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/winner-artifacts.pdf https://matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/winner-art... https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf
DoctorOetker 6mo ago
I believe such forces are the indirect result of the structure of society and economy. If legal arms dealers want the state to step in because of some decentralizing technology, then for the government it would be yet another cost center to combat this phenomenon. So lobbyists need to come up with a kind of reward, and design more "palatable" proposals, so that income can be derived by somehow initiating government control into the whole decentralized technology instead of just the illegitimately decentralized subsection... but punishing "the rest" for actions of a few would mean financing it with taxes, instead of scapegoating the legitimate majority of 3D printer users.
asah 6mo ago
Using this logic, we never address any problem until we address all problems. Do we never patch one security hole until we patch all security holes? (I'm not defending this particular legislation, just saying that this isn't the way to defeat it)
Tangurena2 6mo ago
Watching what bills show up in my state's legislature, several of them are addressing "Hollywood plots" rather than real-world issues. For example, one legislator always sponsors a bill (which goes nowhere every year) to outlaw chemtrails. This year's version[0] includes the plot from the SF novel Termination Shock[1]. The word "artillery" was not in any previous session's version, nor was sulfur. Links: 0 - https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb60.html https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb60.html 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)#
jim33442 6mo ago
Some expert can make a gun from the hardware store alone, but evidently people find 3D printing way more practical.
shevy-java 6mo ago
First, I agree with you, though I don't call it "bad legislation", I call it lobbyism. But there is one tiny nitpick to disagree with, aside from another user pointing out that there are even simpler ways for obtaining firearms. > If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm While I totally agree with you that this is all about lies, there is still one difference in that most regular firearms are metal-based. With 3D printing one could print plastic or similar materials. Again, I am not saying this is a reason to explain this lobbyism here, but we also need to be objective when debunking the lies of the other side. For instance, one difference is metal detection (naturally plastic-based weapons would also tend to break more easily, so this whole legislation is a total lie to begin with anyway; California is currently broken. I am surprised about that, usually you'd think other US states are more broken, but California is now in the top 3 lobbyist-controlled states - and from there the disease spreads slowly).

tempaccount5050 6mo ago

Not that I support any of these obviously stupid bills but: > what's special about 3d printers? They can make guns made out of plastic and metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people. You are probably right about the lobbying group, I agree. Edit: I'm not saying it makes sense, but this is the angle the congress folks are taking, sheesh.

15155 6mo ago
> metal detectors are kind of the primary way we try to find guns on people What are bullets and shell casings made out of again?
- Kirby64 6mo ago
  More importantly, what is the barrel made out of? Yes, I know there’s some fully printed guns… but my understanding is that those are basically 1-time use and even then it’s questionable how reliable that single use actually is… If you want something resembling an actual gun (more than one shot, won’t blow up in your hand, some reasonable chance of accuracy, etc), then you’re going to be using multiple metal components (including the bullets of course) all of which would show up on a metal detector.
- captaincrisp 6mo ago
  And importantly the barrel. Plastic cannot contain the pressure required to fire a bullet.
- trollbridge 6mo ago
  And I'd argue that shell casings are probably harder to manufacture than a fully working firearm. The equipment needed to manufacture working ammunition end-to-end is pretty serious.
  - 15155 6mo ago
    All of these manufacturing equipment and processes existed more than a century ago. If you have a capable VMC, you can make the die and other equipment necessary to stamp shell casings from commonly-available parts and machinery. From there, with a modern Dillon or Hornady reloading press, you can crank out thousands of rounds per day without issue. Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture, but (good-enough) bullets, casings, etc. are completely doable.
    - rolph 6mo ago
      [Primers are a legitimately difficult thing to manufacture] thats a problem that may not endure. if a firearm is reengineered to use an electrode to detonate charge rather than a chemical primer, there is no need for murcury fulminate, just a piezo electric spark generator, and a few square cm of cerebral cortex.
      - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
        Electronic primers are a thing that already exists commercially. In the early 2000s, Remington sold electronically primed hunting rifles next to their non-electronic equivalent (see: "EtronX"). It is a mature technology. The main issue is cost and simplicity, since it often requires adding electronics to weapons that normally would not require them. The military uses electronically primed cartridges for things like chain guns and autocannons, since those require electronics to fire regardless of how it is primed.
        rolph 6mo ago
        yes ive seen them they are called exotic by most people around me. yes the very nature of a chain cannon, makes electronic priming,the easier way to go. so far we can still go to the store with 20$ and come back with a 200pk of 209s, someday that might be not so easy, and electronic is the better/only way.
- michaelt 6mo ago
  In the movies, you hide the bullets in a pen or something, and it bypasses the metal detector along with the keys, phones and watches.
  - ancientorange 6mo ago
    rabbits' foot, iIrc.
- esseph 6mo ago
  > What are bullets and shell casings made out of again? Usually non-ferrous metals like brass, lead, and copper unless you live closer to Russia, then you may end up with steel-case. That's besides the point though, the barrel of the gun will be steel.
  - 15155 6mo ago
    Ferrous metals aren't required for any modern security-screening metal detectors: these materials are still highly electrically conductive, and therefore easily-detectable eddy currents are still inducible.
    - esseph 6mo ago
      Oh, that's right! I remember reading somewhere about this a few years back. Might have even been here on HN. For some reason I hear "metal detector" and my brain goes right to magnetism.
horsawlarway 6mo ago
> They can make guns made out of plastic So can many, many other things. Hell - something like this will do SO MUCH BETTER than anything I can print: https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=plastic+pipe https://www.mcmaster.com/products/pipe/carbon-fiber-1~/?s=pl... It's weird because 3d printed plastic is WAY down the list of things I'd prefer to trust handling the explosion from ammunition. Frankly - even the hobbyist CNC I have is a MUCH better method of creating a plastic gun. FDM printing is not something I'd want to trust in this case, neither is SLA printing in most materials (some of the very high end ones like nylon in a formlabs printer... maybe?). But my point stands - guns aren't that hard to make, and we aren't trying this legislation with any of the other myriad manufacturing methods. Hell - compare to a potato cannon... (also a plastic gun, btw...) So what's different about 3d printers? My hunch is this has fuck-all to do with guns, and a lot to do with something else, because 3d printers ARE different in that they let me manufacturer all sorts of other, much more complex, goods much more easily and cheaply at home.
kube-system 6mo ago
There was a panic about plastic guns back in the 80s too when the Glock came out, and Congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act. But it was just as misinformed as it is today -- practically speaking, only metal is suitable for the high pressure components of a gun. A common 9mm cartridge produces upwards of 35,000 psi.
- saltyoldman 6mo ago
  Aren't there metals that are undetectable/less detectable, like titanium or even stainless steel?
  - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
    No, it doesn’t work like that in the modern world. The nature of the materials are pretty obvious to a remotely competent sensor.
    - RugnirViking 6mo ago
      using what physical process? How exactly do they detect any metal? A genuine question.
      - kube-system 6mo ago
        You can detect nonferrous metals by inducing eddy currents in them, then they become magnetic.
redsocksfan45 6mo ago
[dead]
mvrekic 6mo ago
I don't care how good you are, you cannot 3D print a barrel that will withstand the pressure forces generated by a centerfire round.
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  Kind of interesting how many of these comments are confidently denying what the 3D printed gun nuts already pulled off 13 years ago. I would never in a million years want to be around one being fired, but there have been big internet communities pulling this off going back a long time https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/feds-get-in-on-3d-printed-firearm-game-but-one-gun-exploded-instantly/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/feds-get-in-on-3...
  - imtringued 6mo ago
    You just linked an article that shows that entirely 3D printed guns don't work.
jcgrillo 6mo ago
If you're dead set on making a gun that will pass through a metal detector you don't need a 3D printer to do it.

rolph 6mo ago

whats special is speed and consistency. when you manufacture a personal firearm, it is supposed to be yours, for your use. the 3d printer aspect, makes it possible for a group to print large quantities of receivers, under the radar, to be combined with "accesory parts" close to "drop-in" assembly style.

trollbridge 6mo ago
At issue here is that anyone can build a 3D printer. There's one in my basement a hobbyist built entirely from easily-sourced parts, and the controller is entirely open source. It never phones home and isn't really connected directly to the Internet at all.
- GenerocUsername 6mo ago
  Careful. Or they will try to regulate ghost printers.
horsawlarway 6mo ago
Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? So no - not buying it. Hell, there's not even a real price difference. I can get a Nomad3 from Carbide 3D for the same approximate cost as an H2D from bambu labs. And I can get super cheap temu versions of either for under 500.
- burnt_toast 6mo ago
  > Cool - you mean like the CNC I have sitting next to the printers? Which this legislation doesn't cover? Other states like Colorado have similar bills that define a "3d printer" as a computer aided machine that uses additive or subtractive manufacturing processes so CNC machines likely aren't safe either. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1144 https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1144
- rolph 6mo ago
  i mean speed and consistency, compared to manually CnC [crank n curse] cutting, or printing. if you set up your job so that you print a block of, lets say 4 lower receivers for a stoner style firearm. and you ran a number of printers, you start an arsenal, for a fire team, not just a lonewolf, and that scares people.

hypeatei 6mo ago

> any real attempt to regulate guns Any real attempt would need to be at the national level, not that I would advocate for it, but it's simply a pipe dream to create a "gun free zone" in a country with 100s of millions of firearms. There are plenty of gun enthusiasts in California, they just don't flaunt it or talk about it.

tylerflick 6mo ago
I used to work in this industry and can confirm. California was by far the biggest cohort of consumers we had.
lewdev 6mo ago
"regulate guns" does not equate to "gun free."
- Ferret7446 6mo ago
  And "gun free" does not equate to "gun free" either, it equates to "only criminals have guns"
nine_k 6mo ago
A gun-free zone is not such a good idea, much like an encryption-free zone would be, or an alcohol-free zone (the latter has been tried). I would rather go for Swiss-stye mandatory gun training, and keeping a gun in (almost) every home. But, like the Swiss, I would require not just storing the gun in a certified safe box, but also providing an ID + a proof of mental sanity, and registering the gun. That would raise a much larger wave of protest though, both from the "left" and the "right". Even though, IMHO, it's the only sane way.
- marcus_holmes 6mo ago
  I have never lived in a country where people are allowed to keep guns. That scares the crap out of me. Not just because of random strangers. I went through a mental health crisis, and there was a dark time where if I had had a gun I would be dead now. No amount of lockers or safe boxes or mental health tests would have saved me from that gun. And wtf do you need a gun for anyway? I have never, not once, been in a situation where having a gun would have improved it. Why do you think giving everyone guns would be a good thing?

aidenn0 6mo ago

I'm not on top of the current SOTA in 3d-printed guns, but the way it typically was done in the past is that you don't actually 3d-print all of what you or I would call a complete gun. The barrel will be metal. In designs made for the US market, it will almost certainly be an actual manufactured gun barrel, since gun parts other than the receiver are not closely tracked in the US. In designs for Western Europe, the metal parts will be either milled or things you can buy at the hardware store[1]. The barrel and chamber being made of something tougher than you can get from an FDM machine is basically a requirement for making a gun that doesn't explode in your face when you shoot. 1: Here's an image of all of the parts going into a gun designed to be made in the EU. Per the wikipedia article, the barrel rifling can be added with electrochemical machining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Components.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#/media/File:FGC-9_Compon...

horsawlarway 6mo ago
yeah, but at some point you're just banning "manufacturing". if someone wants to make a gun... they can. It's not complex to manufacturer simple firearms - we managed it as far back as the freaking 10th century. So why freak out over this, for example, and not CNCs? Or Power tools? Or forges (CHF barrels are a thing too!)?
- lazide 6mo ago
  Because those aren't as trendy right now. This is similar to banning nunchucks and throwing stars in the 80's (yes, that was a thing).
  - mjmas 6mo ago
    > was a thing Still a thing in Australia.
    - _carbyau_ 6mo ago
      I never understood banning nunchucks. They kind of ban themselves. If you've ever been a kid copying TMNT Michelangelo with home made nunchucks you've almost certainly smacked yourself in the face. Y'know what's martially better than two sticks with a string between them? A single big stick.

giancarlostoro 6mo ago

The only thing you need to make is the "lower" or whichever part the ATF constitutes as "the firearm" I've seen someone take a shovel and turn it into an AK. Once you have the "firearm" part of whatever gun you're building, the rest of the parts can be shipped to you in most of the country (idk about CA, and NY though) and you can easily assemble the rest of the gun. Like you say, you just need to build a key metal piece, and voila, the rest is buying parts that can be delivered to you, in some cases fully assembled. You could also just buy black powder guns directly to your home (idk about in CA or NY though) which are not treated as "firearms" by the ATF. The only people shooting 3D printed guns are enthusiasts usually, who have other guns.

mcmcmc 6mo ago
Didn’t Luigi Mangione 3D print his gun? There’s definitely an appeal for criminals
- mystraline 6mo ago
  Allegedly. And was an illegal search as well, with the contents of the bag was prior to the court order.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- WillPostForFood 6mo ago
  He 3d printed the frame, but you need dozens of parts, milled or stamped from steel to complete it and have a working gun. Even the 3d printed frame needs steel inserts. It is like 3d printing a case, then buying a motherboard, CPU and RAM at Best Buy, and claiming your built a 3d printed computer. There is some appeal to criminals, because the frame is the part that gets the serial number and is regulated. But if you want to attack this problem, the 3d printer is a backwards way to do it.
  - giancarlostoro 6mo ago

favorited 6mo ago

> You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. Why would you buy a pipe at Home Depot? A gun barrel is not a firearm, and is not required to be registered or serialized. You can drive to Arizona or Nevada and buy an actual barrel, with rifling, manufactured to meet well-known specifications, without showing an ID. Until this year, you could have a barrel shipped to your California residence without an ID. There's no need to build the Shinzo Abe contraption. > So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact. Occam's razor. This isn't a shadowy manufacturing cabal, threatened by 3D printing. Gun control lobbyists are trying to prevent the printing of handgun frames and Glock switches, because they're the easiest parts to print. > Either way, this is bad legislation. California legislators haven't met a bad gun law that they don't like.

nickff 6mo ago
The device the parent is describing has a long history, and they're known as 'zip guns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
- echelon_musk 6mo ago
  From Carlito's Way: > Out come the zip guns. Homemade gun. You pull the hook back, catch that bullet square, ping. Hit you in the head, man, you got serious problems.
- engineer_22 6mo ago
  Yes and the response is telling you that you can build something orders of magnitude more sophisticated without any trouble. The point is, the firearm is not the tube the projectile comes out of. Firearm is closely defined and not intuitive to the general public.
- robot-wrangler 6mo ago
  Quite a page. Featuring the work of ted k and a toy pop-gun that's un-toyed

bell-cot 6mo ago

> So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing... I'd say the real groups behind this are the anti-gun ideologues, the "do whatever it takes to stop my panic attacks over Bad Things maybe happening" left-wing control freaks, and the old-fashioned "big state" authoritarian crowd. And the only reason they're paying attention to 3d printers is that some pro-gun ideologues and provocative makers have been talking up the concept of 3d printing guns.

whynotmaybe 6mo ago
Or the gun lobby isn't really happy that anyone can "print" a gun.
- rpmisms 6mo ago
  Yeah, no. I have shot 3D printed firearms with the head of the FPC, the most active gun lobby organization in the country.

caconym_ 6mo ago

Reminds me of the sUAS legislation crushing the R/C flying hobby. Vague allusions to "safety" are constantly being thrown around, but in fact it seems that big companies are lobbying to claim the airspace for drone delivery and similar autonomous BVLOS operations.

terbo 6mo ago
And as a result there are a bunch of sub 250g long range digital builds and RTFs that achieve the same as the drones people flew pre remote ID..
- caconym_ 6mo ago
  Flying BVLOS is still illegal (including using goggles without a spotter) and basically nobody in the FPV hobby (non part 107) runs remoteid or registers their drones, even if they're over 250g. IDK what the AMA club field guys are doing, but they've all got FRIAs anyway. In the FPV hobby, interest in smaller drones has increased, but I'm not really sure whether to attribute that more to regulations or just the fact that more components are available now to build smaller drones that can fly in public spaces without interfering with other people's usage, or even inside your own home. Overall it feels like the main impact of the regulations is to keep people away from the hobby entirely, since people who get into it inevitably start ignoring the more onerous rules sooner or later. I'm expecting it to get worse, anyway. And the guys who fly DJI-style consumer drones are fucked, sub250 or not.
jim33442 6mo ago
Idk what law in particular, but if this is about flying drones at low altitude in places where other people didn't show up to hear drones buzzing, I'd want it banned whoever is doing it.
- caconym_ 6mo ago
  No, the regulations I'm referencing have nothing to do with where (in the local sense) you can and can't fly drones. Even if I owned a thousand square miles in the middle of nowhere and wanted to fly a 75mm tinywhoop in the center of my own property, these regulations would affect me exactly the same as they would some jackass taking video of women sunbathing on a crowded beach with an 8" cinelifter. Typically local laws provide the recourse you're looking for.

6510 6mo ago

square tubes is the solution

Terr_ 6mo ago

Hmm, assuming it's part of somebody's bigger plans with an ulterior motive... The requirement to pass everything through a government watchdog module could be leveraged into DRM/copyright/patent overreach.

hacker_homie 6mo ago

I think the real issue is that 3d printing is a direct attack on products as a service (think roomba parts, fridge parts, anything with plastic clip assembly) that are planed to break and they don't sell replacement parts. lots of companies got fat and happy selling you plastic crap for a fortune, now 3d printers let you make plastic crap at home for pennies. If they must pass these laws, it must include protections for printing consumer goods parts, if they won't add that I will not vote for you. contact your state reps and tell them that.

hagbard_c 6mo ago
No, contact your state reps and tell them you don't want these laws passed, period - they should vote against any such laws if they want to have a chance at being voted in. They won't do anything for the stated purpose while they will cripple a thriving sector.

binkHN 6mo ago

It's total bullshit; I should be able to print all the guns I want. Prop guns, plastic replicas of my guns; I shouldn't have to go though this BS.

Aurornis 6mo ago

> I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable. I agree that this legislation is not good, but you apparently aren’t aware of the large communities dedicated to 3D printing guns. The first 3D printed gun was making headlines 13 years ago and since then it’s turned into a semi-underground fascination. You aren’t going to be fashioning a gun out of a pipe from Home Depot more easily than the designs these groups are playing with. Many of the subreddits, Discords, Facebook groups and other communities have started to get shut down since a 3D printed gun was used in a high profile murder recently. There are a lot of comments in this comment section from people unaware of how big these communities are. I’m not supporting these legislative attempts to interfere with 3D printers but you really should know some of the context.

sleepybrett 6mo ago
wasn't luigi's gun 3d printed? (if i remember right it was a glock built from ebay parts and a 3d printed frame with a can. All of those combined meant that it did not cycle properly after the initial shot)

9rx 6mo ago

> what's special about 3d printers? They are typically stocked with material and ready to deploy at a moment's notice. When the time comes that you need a weapon, casually walking into Home Depot won't be an option.

sleepybrett 6mo ago

Most of the '3d printed' guns out there in the 2a community, and all the ones that actually work, require some kind of metal barrel, which might be a pipe, rifled or not. What they actually hate is people who buy bags of glock parts from ebay (contains everything but the frame) and then print the frame. The frame being the handle part, everything below the slide but none of the internals. That's the legal 'gun' when it comes to most glocks and clones. The new ruger rmx, a newer glock clone, is different, the firing group (trigger and all the associated bits there) is the serialized part. The frame is, of course, very easy to print. All the regulations around firearms are super fucking stupid, the way they classify different parts and try and make them illegal. Like.. in a lot of states if you have a rifle (ar or otherwise), you are not allowed to have a vertical foregrip for stabalization. However if your foregrip is like 5 degrees off pure vertical... legal. This 3d printer 'ban' is unenforcable, it's a fucking tool, you can build anything with tools. Sure it's easier and takes less skill to download a glock 19 frame model off the internet and hit print, but there is, apparently, a lot of work that goes into making the gun work with that frame well enough for the gun to actually cycle.

ScoobleDoodle 6mo ago

If you're a California constituent and inclined to take action you can find your California Assemblymember and Senator here ( https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ ) to voice opposition to California bill A.B. 2047 "Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology."

nullc 6mo ago
Alternatively, you could leave California and avoid a whole host of bad policy and legislation. Not that advocating is bad but of the two options one is guaranteed to be successful while the other is unlikely to help.

dyauspitr 6mo ago

Your 3D printed gun still needs that metal pipe. A 3D printed gun is just a frame for those metal parts.

saltyoldman 6mo ago

Home depot can do better than a pipe: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ramset-MasterShot-0-22-Caliber-Powder-Actuated-Tool-PAT-40088/202046595 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ramset-MasterShot-0-22-Caliber-P...

motbus3 6mo ago

Although people point out the occam's razor or whatever, i dont think this is true. As it happens with "protect children", "protect people" is the next blabbering speech to trick people accepting lobbied practices. Someone needs to track who is financing this stuff and I think it will make it much clearer. PS: I wouldnt be surprised if it was disney or something

nz 6mo ago

I mean, the entanglement between technology and politics is difficult to unsee, once one sees it. And the analogy between solar power and grid power, maps cleanly onto 3d printing and manufacturing (trad-printing?). Politics is _most frequently_ about money and the economic surplus, and only rarely about justice or ideology. The funny thing is, that the adjective that is most frequently use to describe markets is "efficient". Yet, whenever technologies that threaten to erode someone's business model appear, the market starts abusing the political infrastructure to introduce inefficiencies and frictions into the adoption of the technologies. Even though lobbying is not _technically_ illegal, we should probably learn to treat companies that engage in it (to the detriment of society) as if it were. Avoid their products if you can, and get your friend-group to do it as well. Build off-ramps. Maintain and share lists of executives who work at these companies (to put pressure on their reputations -- after all, what is wealth worth, if ordinary people refuse to take your money, or to give you any of their attention?). The market's distinctive feature is that it makes things fungible: currency, goods, and even people. Eliminate or reduce fungibility, and you get a very different kind of dynamic, one that has the potential to reverse the trend of rising inequality (and rent-seeking behavior, and unfair one-sided arrangements, etc) over night. In fact, the strategy of any company is to find a way to make an entire class of companies/merchants (not competitors) fungible, while making themselves non-fungible. Most moats are built out of the pieces or remnants of someone else's moat. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too hung over to tell. https://matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/winner-artifacts.pdf https://matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/winner-art... https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

DoctorOetker 6mo ago

I believe such forces are the indirect result of the structure of society and economy. If legal arms dealers want the state to step in because of some decentralizing technology, then for the government it would be yet another cost center to combat this phenomenon. So lobbyists need to come up with a kind of reward, and design more "palatable" proposals, so that income can be derived by somehow initiating government control into the whole decentralized technology instead of just the illegitimately decentralized subsection... but punishing "the rest" for actions of a few would mean financing it with taxes, instead of scapegoating the legitimate majority of 3D printer users.

asah 6mo ago

Using this logic, we never address any problem until we address all problems. Do we never patch one security hole until we patch all security holes? (I'm not defending this particular legislation, just saying that this isn't the way to defeat it)

Tangurena2 6mo ago

Watching what bills show up in my state's legislature, several of them are addressing "Hollywood plots" rather than real-world issues. For example, one legislator always sponsors a bill (which goes nowhere every year) to outlaw chemtrails. This year's version[0] includes the plot from the SF novel Termination Shock[1]. The word "artillery" was not in any previous session's version, nor was sulfur. Links: 0 - https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb60.html https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb60.html 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)#

jim33442 6mo ago

Some expert can make a gun from the hardware store alone, but evidently people find 3D printing way more practical.

shevy-java 6mo ago

First, I agree with you, though I don't call it "bad legislation", I call it lobbyism. But there is one tiny nitpick to disagree with, aside from another user pointing out that there are even simpler ways for obtaining firearms. > If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm While I totally agree with you that this is all about lies, there is still one difference in that most regular firearms are metal-based. With 3D printing one could print plastic or similar materials. Again, I am not saying this is a reason to explain this lobbyism here, but we also need to be objective when debunking the lies of the other side. For instance, one difference is metal detection (naturally plastic-based weapons would also tend to break more easily, so this whole legislation is a total lie to begin with anyway; California is currently broken. I am surprised about that, usually you'd think other US states are more broken, but California is now in the top 3 lobbyist-controlled states - and from there the disease spreads slowly).