4 ms·

Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I don’t bu

Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I don’t buy for a second that this is some gun control attempt.

abtinf 6mo ago
This is the most likely answer. Just as it was the large grocery chains that have funded all the plastic/paper bag bans. The gun lobby has a long history of trying to ban low cost market entrants.
- pfannkuchen 6mo ago
  Is this not like a schizo conspiracy theory? Like why would the grocery chains fund the bag bans? So they can save a tiny amount of money on paying for bags? But having to bring your own bags limits how much you can buy. If someone has a plan to just use their own bags, they will likely forgo purchases at a higher rate than if the bag is not in the equation for them. It's not obvious to me that the buying limit effect sales decrease would not outweigh the savings on physical bag purchases. Maybe I'm not following?
  - abtinf 6mo ago
    The grocery chain campaign is well documented. Just search for it. The short answer is that bags are a non-trivial cost for the larger chains. Now, they get to charge for them at an astounding markup and no longer have to compete with any grocery store on this point. All grocery stores are affected equally, which means it is disproportionately damaging to mom-and-pop stores and smaller chains.
    - Loudergood 6mo ago
      How is this damaging to them at all? They literally get to cut one item completely off their expense list.
      - tehjoker 6mo ago
        I assumed that the grocers would want to offer bags. Making it more easy to drop in and buy something is going to be significantly more money than the cost of bags per a customer.
        daveguy 6mo ago
        Maybe they want you to spend an extra 10 cents every time you drop in and buy something? And they get to be pro environment. Win win.
        pfannkuchen 6mo ago
        What percent of the overall purchase profit is 10 cents, and how much does it reduce in sales by adding friction? Surely there must be data on this, has nobody looked into it in public? Also, it’s been awhile but don’t plastic bags make it easier to carry more things at once because the handles are so thin and flexible? And I don’t remember handles ever ripping on plastic grocery bags. If the math works out in favor of charging for bags it would imply that the margin is incredibly thin in the literal sense of the word incredible. Like the average purchase has so little profit that 10 cents per bag is meaningful? What is the average profit on a bag of items or on an average purchase? Surely more than 10 cents, no? Like I know grocery stores are notoriously low margin, but that’s among businesses it’s not almost 0 in an absolute sense.
    - fortran77 6mo ago
      Grocery stores _absolutely_ supported the bag bans, though they weren't the initial groups asking for them. Similar to how the cigarette companies liked the TV ad bans--if nobody could advertise on TV than the playing field would be level and their profits all went up from decreased costs.
      - sam345 6mo ago
        Some of them supported them because they were pressured into it. Grocery bans of bags and payment etc. are a PITA for customers. No business in it's right mind would force that on their customer unless they were required to. Passing the cost on to their customer is not an issue. Supporting laws requiring payment etc. are cost benefit analysis. Is it worth fighting the bad PR etc or go along. But obviously they wouldn't have provided the bags in the first place if it was not a competitive benefit to them.
    - smelendez 6mo ago
      People here are talking about two kinds of laws: minimum bag charges and outright bag bans. In some jurisdictions, a grocery store isn’t allowed to give you a traditional disposable bag at any price. In others, there’s either a bag tax or a minimum price, usually five or ten cents, a store must charge per bag.
- some_random 6mo ago
  This is a well documented Everytown campaign, you can't blame this one on firearms manufacturers.
  - direwolf20 6mo ago
    Often, different groups align on certain issues. The one that actually causes the change to happen is the one with the most clout.
    - some_random 6mo ago
      Look, the firearms industry has worked in the past to ban competitors but I really don't think they see 3d printed firearms as competitors. The market there is tiny. Meanwhile Everytown is a gun control organization that wants to ban all guns everywhere and again, is documented to be the one behind this push.
BoneShard 6mo ago
I think they don't give a shit about 3D printing, especially in CA. It's not like you're competing with a glock19 type hand gun and cornering this market.
- sheikhnbake 6mo ago
  3D gun printing has come a long way in a short amount of time. 3D printed lower receivers can weather several hundred rounds of 7.62 at this point
  - remarkEon 6mo ago
    That makes it useful for a hobbyist, but it is by no means a replacement for a properly manufactured lower.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Supermancho 6mo ago
      Hobbyist or not, this makes it useful for getting guns (and other gear) from other people.
      - remarkEon 6mo ago
        What I'm saying is that no one is going to build a lower in this manner for a firearm chambered in 7.62 and do anything useful/important with it. Maybe the cartridge size here is a distraction, idk, but this isn't a specification that I would consider common and/or useful for 3D printing a firearm. Even if your nominal intent is just to "finish" a gun with parts you have laying around, it's not going to be something that's consistently reliable.
        Eisenstein 6mo ago
        Can you not imagine any motives that a person could have for printing a gun where they don't care about long term reliability?
elephanlemon 6mo ago
Any gun company caught funding anything remotely anti-2A would be met with an unbelievably negative reaction from the firearms community and face boycotts and massive reputational damage. It absolutely would not be worth it for them to do this. I can maybe see the arguments that perhaps it’s really a proxy for the anti right to repair groups, but absolutely not the firearms manufacturers.
- jasonlotito 6mo ago
  > Any gun company caught funding anything remotely anti-2A would be met with an unbelievably negative reaction from the firearms community and face boycotts and massive reputational damage. This is not true. They currently fund people and policies that are 100% anti-2A without any pushback. It's just a matter of fooling the people into accepting the anti-2A stuff you do support.
  - forshaper 6mo ago
    Got an example or two?
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
- AngryData 6mo ago
  I wish I could believe that but many people are perfectly okay with curtailing certain parts of rights so long as they aren't parts of a right they personally use or value. Plenty of pro-2a people were fine with gun control when it was being used to suppress the Black Panthers. And also many times to "fight crime" with specific firearm features and configurations being illegal despite not making anybody safer.
  - some_random 6mo ago
    That was true, but largely is not true anymore. When Trump was pushing a blanket ban on trans people owning guns, gun rights organizations come out in force against (while anti-gun organizations like Everytown didn't).
esseph 6mo ago
> Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I have 0 reason to believe this. That is some pretty wild speculation, and a terribly risky proposition for any company because they would instantly get blackballed by the 2a community.
- devilbunny 6mo ago
  I think a fundamental problem here is that people who don’t know any 2A/RKBA people think it’s like most political opinions. Oh, you’re a gun guy, you’re a Republican who like country music and hates them black folk. It isn’t. It’s a group of people, some of whom are country-music-loving Republicans who hate them black folk, but who also include a lot of them black folk, a lot of Democrats, and a lot of people who hate country music. It is a group that has decided that one issue is more important than anything else to them. And they vote. For you, if you are for them, but for your opponent, if you are not. They will primary you. They do not care if D or R is next to your name. In fact they love pro-gun D politicians, because it’s a chance to pull that party into respecting all constitutional rights. The NRA is massively successful because of this. They do one thing, and everyone in it knows that. They don’t have to agree on anything else, because if you can’t have guns, the rest of the politics is irrelevant. A company that made the slightest anti-2A movement would be dead by sunset the next day. No store would carry their product. No consumer in the know would buy their product.
  - sleepybrett 6mo ago
    I think it's actually mostly about school shootings and 'gang violence' that drive these regulations at least here in washington, which is a little paranoid. I don't think we've had too many school shootings. I know in seattle we had a shooting OUTSIDE a high school that killed a student, but I'm not sure we've had any columbine type situations.
    - nullc 6mo ago
      We're unprepared to deal with world wide 24 hour media. With 350 million people even extremely rare and weird failure modes will happen often enough for the media to fearmonger a big chunk of the population into falsely believing they're significant threat. In reality firearm homicide among teenagers is a fraction of death from auto accidents, half that of suicide, and closer to deaths from drowning. But the latter three don't make for spectacular and fear inducing news coverage.
hnburnsy 6mo ago
Look up Everytown for Gun Safety, they are behund this... https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251027/from-printers-to-panic-everytown-summit-on-3d-printed-firearms-targets-progress https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251027/from-printers-to-pa...

abtinf 6mo ago

This is the most likely answer. Just as it was the large grocery chains that have funded all the plastic/paper bag bans. The gun lobby has a long history of trying to ban low cost market entrants.

pfannkuchen 6mo ago
Is this not like a schizo conspiracy theory? Like why would the grocery chains fund the bag bans? So they can save a tiny amount of money on paying for bags? But having to bring your own bags limits how much you can buy. If someone has a plan to just use their own bags, they will likely forgo purchases at a higher rate than if the bag is not in the equation for them. It's not obvious to me that the buying limit effect sales decrease would not outweigh the savings on physical bag purchases. Maybe I'm not following?
- abtinf 6mo ago
  The grocery chain campaign is well documented. Just search for it. The short answer is that bags are a non-trivial cost for the larger chains. Now, they get to charge for them at an astounding markup and no longer have to compete with any grocery store on this point. All grocery stores are affected equally, which means it is disproportionately damaging to mom-and-pop stores and smaller chains.
  - Loudergood 6mo ago
    How is this damaging to them at all? They literally get to cut one item completely off their expense list.
    - tehjoker 6mo ago
      I assumed that the grocers would want to offer bags. Making it more easy to drop in and buy something is going to be significantly more money than the cost of bags per a customer.
      - daveguy 6mo ago
        Maybe they want you to spend an extra 10 cents every time you drop in and buy something? And they get to be pro environment. Win win.
        pfannkuchen 6mo ago
        What percent of the overall purchase profit is 10 cents, and how much does it reduce in sales by adding friction? Surely there must be data on this, has nobody looked into it in public? Also, it’s been awhile but don’t plastic bags make it easier to carry more things at once because the handles are so thin and flexible? And I don’t remember handles ever ripping on plastic grocery bags. If the math works out in favor of charging for bags it would imply that the margin is incredibly thin in the literal sense of the word incredible. Like the average purchase has so little profit that 10 cents per bag is meaningful? What is the average profit on a bag of items or on an average purchase? Surely more than 10 cents, no? Like I know grocery stores are notoriously low margin, but that’s among businesses it’s not almost 0 in an absolute sense.
  - fortran77 6mo ago
    Grocery stores _absolutely_ supported the bag bans, though they weren't the initial groups asking for them. Similar to how the cigarette companies liked the TV ad bans--if nobody could advertise on TV than the playing field would be level and their profits all went up from decreased costs.
    - sam345 6mo ago
      Some of them supported them because they were pressured into it. Grocery bans of bags and payment etc. are a PITA for customers. No business in it's right mind would force that on their customer unless they were required to. Passing the cost on to their customer is not an issue. Supporting laws requiring payment etc. are cost benefit analysis. Is it worth fighting the bad PR etc or go along. But obviously they wouldn't have provided the bags in the first place if it was not a competitive benefit to them.
  - smelendez 6mo ago
    People here are talking about two kinds of laws: minimum bag charges and outright bag bans. In some jurisdictions, a grocery store isn’t allowed to give you a traditional disposable bag at any price. In others, there’s either a bag tax or a minimum price, usually five or ten cents, a store must charge per bag.
some_random 6mo ago
This is a well documented Everytown campaign, you can't blame this one on firearms manufacturers.
- direwolf20 6mo ago
  Often, different groups align on certain issues. The one that actually causes the change to happen is the one with the most clout.
  - some_random 6mo ago
    Look, the firearms industry has worked in the past to ban competitors but I really don't think they see 3d printed firearms as competitors. The market there is tiny. Meanwhile Everytown is a gun control organization that wants to ban all guns everywhere and again, is documented to be the one behind this push.

BoneShard 6mo ago

I think they don't give a shit about 3D printing, especially in CA. It's not like you're competing with a glock19 type hand gun and cornering this market.

sheikhnbake 6mo ago
3D gun printing has come a long way in a short amount of time. 3D printed lower receivers can weather several hundred rounds of 7.62 at this point
- remarkEon 6mo ago
  That makes it useful for a hobbyist, but it is by no means a replacement for a properly manufactured lower.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Supermancho 6mo ago
    Hobbyist or not, this makes it useful for getting guns (and other gear) from other people.
    - remarkEon 6mo ago
      What I'm saying is that no one is going to build a lower in this manner for a firearm chambered in 7.62 and do anything useful/important with it. Maybe the cartridge size here is a distraction, idk, but this isn't a specification that I would consider common and/or useful for 3D printing a firearm. Even if your nominal intent is just to "finish" a gun with parts you have laying around, it's not going to be something that's consistently reliable.
      - Eisenstein 6mo ago
        Can you not imagine any motives that a person could have for printing a gun where they don't care about long term reliability?

elephanlemon 6mo ago

Any gun company caught funding anything remotely anti-2A would be met with an unbelievably negative reaction from the firearms community and face boycotts and massive reputational damage. It absolutely would not be worth it for them to do this. I can maybe see the arguments that perhaps it’s really a proxy for the anti right to repair groups, but absolutely not the firearms manufacturers.

jasonlotito 6mo ago
> Any gun company caught funding anything remotely anti-2A would be met with an unbelievably negative reaction from the firearms community and face boycotts and massive reputational damage. This is not true. They currently fund people and policies that are 100% anti-2A without any pushback. It's just a matter of fooling the people into accepting the anti-2A stuff you do support.
- forshaper 6mo ago
  Got an example or two?
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
AngryData 6mo ago
I wish I could believe that but many people are perfectly okay with curtailing certain parts of rights so long as they aren't parts of a right they personally use or value. Plenty of pro-2a people were fine with gun control when it was being used to suppress the Black Panthers. And also many times to "fight crime" with specific firearm features and configurations being illegal despite not making anybody safer.
- some_random 6mo ago
  That was true, but largely is not true anymore. When Trump was pushing a blanket ban on trans people owning guns, gun rights organizations come out in force against (while anti-gun organizations like Everytown didn't).

esseph 6mo ago

> Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I have 0 reason to believe this. That is some pretty wild speculation, and a terribly risky proposition for any company because they would instantly get blackballed by the 2a community.

devilbunny 6mo ago
I think a fundamental problem here is that people who don’t know any 2A/RKBA people think it’s like most political opinions. Oh, you’re a gun guy, you’re a Republican who like country music and hates them black folk. It isn’t. It’s a group of people, some of whom are country-music-loving Republicans who hate them black folk, but who also include a lot of them black folk, a lot of Democrats, and a lot of people who hate country music. It is a group that has decided that one issue is more important than anything else to them. And they vote. For you, if you are for them, but for your opponent, if you are not. They will primary you. They do not care if D or R is next to your name. In fact they love pro-gun D politicians, because it’s a chance to pull that party into respecting all constitutional rights. The NRA is massively successful because of this. They do one thing, and everyone in it knows that. They don’t have to agree on anything else, because if you can’t have guns, the rest of the politics is irrelevant. A company that made the slightest anti-2A movement would be dead by sunset the next day. No store would carry their product. No consumer in the know would buy their product.
- sleepybrett 6mo ago
  I think it's actually mostly about school shootings and 'gang violence' that drive these regulations at least here in washington, which is a little paranoid. I don't think we've had too many school shootings. I know in seattle we had a shooting OUTSIDE a high school that killed a student, but I'm not sure we've had any columbine type situations.
  - nullc 6mo ago
    We're unprepared to deal with world wide 24 hour media. With 350 million people even extremely rare and weird failure modes will happen often enough for the media to fearmonger a big chunk of the population into falsely believing they're significant threat. In reality firearm homicide among teenagers is a fraction of death from auto accidents, half that of suicide, and closer to deaths from drowning. But the latter three don't make for spectacular and fear inducing news coverage.

hnburnsy 6mo ago

Look up Everytown for Gun Safety, they are behund this... https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251027/from-printers-to-panic-everytown-summit-on-3d-printed-firearms-targets-progress https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251027/from-printers-to-pa...