Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, which appears not to be the case here, or (b) they went insane on social media.
(can't confirm this personally, but it seems from other comments that it's perfectly feasible to just drive out of New York State and buy a gun somewhere else in the gun-owning US? And this is quite likely where all the guns used in existing NY crime come from?)
I would also note that the Shinzo Abe doohickey wasn't 3D-printed.
Printing barrels and FCUs -- the fire control unit, which is the only thing tracked and serialized in a gun at least in the US -- is more difficult but not impossible. Actually, building a functional FCU that can strike a bullet primer, or a barrel that can be used once is not difficult at all and if you look around you can find videos of people that have tested that with a mixture of 3d printing and rudimentary metal working skills. The major issues on designing those parts are reliability and safety. In the Philippines there is a full bootleg gunsmith industry dedicated to build illegal guns that match commercial ones in those aspects too.
Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.
Even for those, you can get 80% finished parts for those - just drill a few holes, and file off some tidbits, and you get an almost factory-spec gun.
I'm no expert on US gun law, but afaik, some states even allow you to make your own guns without registration, as the law defines gun manufacturing as manufacturing with the intent of selling them.
So there's plenty of options, many of them better than making a gun with a printer.
But even all this is typically overkill, I dont think criminals go to these lengths to make their own guns, they just get them from somewhere.
And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.
If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband.
A similar system could theoretically be used for STL files. So it isn't about detecting exact shapes, it's about preventing printing of STL files that are already known to be dangerous. This would make it harder to illegally manufacture parts for weapons because it would make it much harder to share designs. If you didn't have the knowledge or skill to design a reliable FCU, you would have to find a design someone with that knowledge and skill created - which the printer could theoretically detect with a cryptographic signature.
As the original author of the post pointed out though, this could and would be bypassed by actual criminals. As with most things like this, it's probably impossible to prevent entirely, only to make it more difficult.
Receivers are tracked.
People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.
Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygxGrxCEOp0
[2] https://odysee.com/@TheGatalog-Guides_Tutorials:b/BWA-Ammo-V...
Something something about distribution.
Absolutely ridiculous.
House Bill 2321 (HB-2321) proposes exemptions only for machines with licensed AI firmware that connects to blacklists, potentially requiring refits or licensing for machine shops.
They haven't done this specific restriction, but there is a movement to make it illegal to possess the CAD files: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3877
EDIT: I think you mean "allegedly"
Do you have any source?
People are printing guns. They're printing guns right here in the UK.
Then they're taking them out to the firing range, setting them up on a test stand, firing them by remote control, and filming the ensuing carnage with high frame rate cameras.
If you make a really really good 3D printed gun, it'll last at least two shots before it explodes into about a trillion razor-sharp fragments expanding rapidly outwards from where your hand used to be. The way you tell it's a really really good one is it didn't explode into a trillion fragments on the first shot.
We've seen enough Terrifying Public Information Films about the dangers of fireworks to mess with that shit.
Also atleast in America there is a very large 3d printed gun community lots of people are doing it I suggest checking out the PSR YouTube channel it’s a guy who is basically a real life dead pool who’s 3d printed every gun you can think of his videos are very entertaining and while you won’t learn much since YouTube restricts any teaching of gun manufacturing you may be surprised at how far 3d printed guns have come. His plastikov v4 video is good and pretty funny if I remember.
This is demonstrably untrue: https://gnet-research.org/2025/01/08/beyond-the-fgc-9-how-th...
Why would you waste everyone's time posting such nonsense? It's not that I support this legislation, but arguing against with counterfactual statements is unhelpful noise.
I would suspect it is at least partly because the gun that killed the United Healthcare CEO was partly 3D printed.
Preemptive regulation is absurd.
Of course, this is silliness since it is very easy to just buy a gun in the US, and it is also legal to make one in your garage.
This is at least true for some specific rifles, where there’s a whole industry around selling unfinished receivers that are relatively easy to mill down with common machining tools to be able to assemble unregistered rifles.
My guess, is that these bills are a knee jerk reaction to constituents who’ve seen some tik toks talking about this. Though the conspiracist in me thinks that it’s mostly an excuse for control. This means, this bill is also coming for the UK too…
A lot of the polymer guns (1911, AR15) need to be reinforced with metal at certain places for any kind of reliablity. A Glock doesn't need to be, because the material was invented by the designer of the gun and the gun was intended to be a polymer frame from the start.
However, in practice the police continually take and often destroy legally owned antiques claiming they are zombie swords.
The law is written in such a way the police can take anything and you have to prove to a judge they aren't illegal.
One very large example of such police practices: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RPm4Pts23Qg
Because it is possible to print molds for cast iron, I wonder what else you need beyond that (although, don't indulge me if the topic is going in the illegal direction).
Also, I find it unconscionable to suggest we should allow home manufacturing of automatic weapons without even engaging with possible ways to stem that tide.
Someone is. They recover thousands of illegal guns in Chicago alone every year.
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/report/firearms-trace-data/fire...
(those of us with longer memories remember the previous iteration and why the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles don't have "ninja" in their name in the UK)
Cory talked about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jsstmmUUs
At least 25 years. That's the time passed since the first introduction of Eurion marks on banknotes. As far as I know, noone has used it to block reproduction of anything other than money.
I was assured by the internet, I was paranoid, blah blah safety...
Then a few weeks ago something about Minnesota and ICE making drones illegal to fly or something...
The weird part is that, in that 15 years, I've become more moderate and pro-democratic rule of law... but I was right about my previous concerns. Not that I believe in the Justice behind them anymore.
My Plato hating friend, my "called it" list is filled with things the old-timers at the time said no one would be stupid enough to, and the old codgers went and died on me so I can't even give em a good lambast. I believed them, and helped them build things... Now I get to watch things get coopted by a madman and a NatSec apparatus. Pour one out.
EDIT: To be clear, my belief is that a plurality of the voting population voted for this, that much is obvious.
My belief is also that despite the fact that the current administration was elected, there are democratic norms and rules for what outcomes require that a bill must be passed to enact, that states can decide how they can govern themselves within well defined bounds.
All of this is being ignored despite the structures defined in the American democatric system, not because of it.
If they cared even a little bit about gun violence, they’d focus on mental health and other preventive measures.
If they just wanted to provide the illusion that they cared about gun violence, they’d go after high-volume manufacturers first.
This reminds me of Trump’s Venezuela coup. I’m offended they aren’t even bothering to properly lie about their motives.
You see how it's impossible to regulate technology? I don't want my tax dollars funding impossible missions.
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/consu...
when should you be required to serialize it?
if you serialize after it is worked to the point of being a firearm, then there is a period in time, however short, when the firearm is unserialized, thus illegal, thus serializing after creation could be obscuring a crime.
vs serializing before firearmhood, and you are now requireing a "hunk of metal" to be serialized because of what it MAY become in the future.
and just when does a hunk of metal start becoming a firearm, the so called 80% threshold
or worse...
"You are trying to print a design that is 87% similar to Egg Cup™. Acquire a limited run license for $3000 for ten runs which expires in six months? Y/N"
I.e don't buy your printer in New York. Pick it up out of state. Problem solved.
Yes, this is rent seeking, and yes New York is gonna New York, but not a big deal.
On principle, yes, but also for maintenance. The nerfed firmware that's only required in a few jurisdictions is almost assuredly going to fall out-of-sync with mainline features.
"The rule saying you can't print the thing that you either weren't going to print, or you weren't going to let the rule tell you not to print, wants you to run old/broken software." No matter which side of that you fall on, you're upgrading the software.
Goalpost will move to "save gcode on government-approved secured storage", licensing and registering each 3d printer, then confiscating the ones that are not whitelisted, etc etc.
if you care about right to repair and the ability of regular people to make a living and choose their own destiny(i.e. live independently of a mega-corp), this type of error message should bother you. HTML is a mature tech. There is no reason for this type of error
the adafruit blog is not trying to block you my dude(s). we are under constant automated scraping and ddos, largely from ai crawlers, and we use cloudflare to keep the site online at all. the nature of of these things will cause false positives depending on browser, extensions, network, or referrer.
the site publishs full-text rss feeds with no blockers here, no ads: https://blog.adafruit.com/rss
the site respects do not track, privacy badger, and similar tools. the site will probably never pass the purity tests for everyone, the goal is to stay independent, publishing, without selling readers or folding into a mega-platform. we're open source and vc free, chill out about us, ok?
if you still can’t get an article and want it in html, markdown, text, or pdf, email me and i’ll send it directly, i will read it on the phone to you, i am not kidding.
we’re trying, and we’ll keep trying. you gotta meet somewhere.
God forbid whatever library they use to make their website "easy" and detract less labor from their endeavors not have default settings in perfect accordance with their politics.
I bet they don't compile their OS from source either.
They want to restart it? They want to go to the screen where you can switch users or sign out?
Do they think it's just a fancier way of saying delete?
That said, what he's actually talking about in the post makes a lot of sense. That is the important part.
All prefixes eventually become intensifiers?
I think it's because most people associate Ctrl-Alt-Del with the process of terminating a process, so they use the key sequence itself to refer to the act of terminating something.
> n. A metaphoric mechanism with which one can reset, restart, or rethink something.
That's what's confusing. The headline makes no sense because it's not about restarting.
In modern Windows, the three-key salute is a way to lock your session securely. Maybe that's what they mean: locking it up?
https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/ctrl-alt-del...
Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you
If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you
Perhaps if it was literally as simple as downloading a model and pressing print, then in 20 minutes you had a fully working automatic rifle this would be an issue, but that technology simply doesn't exist today.
In reality if your goal is to acquire a weapon which can do lethal harm to someone you just wouldn't print a gun. Even if you wanted to kill multiple people in a place like the UK where guns are illegal you still wouldn't print a gun because you'd probably be better off just getting knife than printing a crappy gun and trying to source an effective propellant, etc.
Stupidity or nefariousness? Probably both. I don't feel like I can fix either.
The truth is just that we don't have actual user manuals anymore. Either the things that went into the manual are now built into software, or they expect you to look it up on the internet. So the only things that remain are legal disclaimers and very basic instructions, like how to turn on the thing so that the software can tell you what to do next.
So they don't tell you how to tune your carburetor because you don't need to do that anymore, it is all injection and the ECU software does the tuning, but the lawyers insist that it should be mentioned to not drink the battery acid should an idiot decide to try it and sue the company.
I know guns are different. There are also an enormous amount of ways to cause harm. I personally think that, ideally, nobody should have guns. That's not the world we live in, though. A political government body should not infringe on privacy of individuals because some small percentage may cause harm.
I can make a sword, grow poisonous plants, isolate toxins, or stab someone with a pencil. I do not. I shouldn't be punished for the idea that other people may.
The obvious problem with this argument is that in just the medium term, world-model style AI will get good at this task, but having big brother pre-approve every print will still be bad.
What happens if you print the handle on a different printer, and print it with an attachment which works as an ice-cream scoop?
Or how about you actually print an ice-cream scoop, and then stop the print halfway to just take the handle, and do the same for several other innocent looking parts which are carefully modelled to fit together after printing individually. There are just so many ways to get around any measures they could put in place.
Since such a printer is incapable of determining whether or not this gcode represents a legislatively-restricted item and then blocking its production, then that machine becomes illegal to sell in New York. Easy-peasy. It just takes a quick vote or two and the stroke of a pen, and it is done.
You're probably thinking something like "But that doesn't work at all," and I agree. But sometimes legislators just don't care that they've thrown out the baby along with the bathwater.
> the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which gives you the right to manufacture a fire arm
There has been a right to manufacture firearms since before the Revolutionary War, and which has remained a right continually since.
> it must be for personal use
Not necessarily; though you can't conduct business without a federal license, you can, for example, manufacture a firearm to be given as a gift.
> cannot be transferred
See above.
>must have a serial number
Not only is that not true, a federal judge struck down the prohibition on defacing serial numbers in United States v. Randy Price (2022):
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.23...
Also in NY it's illegal to make an unserialized firearm. I have no idea what the serialization requirements are there, but what California did was require you report them to DROS.
Also, federally, not legal advice -- but I'm not aware there's any law against selling it. You just can't manufacture it for the purpose of sale or transfer. If it is incidentally sold later it's just like any other firearm without a serial number that's also legal (namely those manufactured commercially before the GCA, or those manufactured non-commercially by private persons after the GCA). I've seen the claim "can't transfer or sell it" over and over on all kind of gun forums etc but no one has ever been able to point where that is blanket illegal.
For example[0]:
> Filburn was penalized under the Act. He argued that the extra wheat that he had produced in violation of the law had been used for his own use and thus had no effect on interstate commerce, since it never had been on the market. In his view, this meant that he had not violated the law because the additional wheat was not subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause.
…
> The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
So don’t assume that just because it never crosses state lines that it escapes federal law, however utterly freaking ridiculous that may be.
Since, the BATF decided to interpret the prohibition as a thought-crime, enforcing a prohibition making such sales illegal, since like The Shadow, they know what lurks in the hearts of men.
The one transfer which has not yet been tested in the courts to my knowledge is an individual having made firearms, passing away, then leaving them in their will to their heirs....
For every constraint I see them creating in the law, I can instantly create a simple workaround, and also see multiple ways it will impair or destroy the ability to create 100% legitimate parts/components/products.
This is an unfortunate example of a too-common political solution:
A new industry arises that unintentionally creates a new capability that some can use to create problems.
So, "let's just create a mandate on the industry that will destroy it or contort it beyond recognition, and provide no funding to support this new requirement!".
I fully understand and fundamentally support the need for government to regulate markets, pollution, product & food safety, and much more, but this simplistic approach is a net negative for society and the economy.
They need to focus on the actual act of "3D printing firearms" not on the precursors.
Custom CNC stuff is tremendously rewarding and fun to work with. I haven't built a 4x8 table (yet), but I've made some smaller stuff. I credit the introduction of these machines into my life with bringing me out of the deepest and longest-lasting period of mental unwellness I've ever experienced, and it'll be a real shame if this kind of hobby becomes hobbled by legislation.
But anyway, to address your question: Unless the fine state of New York decides to close their borders, nothing stops a person from building their own dangerously-unregulated 3D printing machine.
Just as nothing stops a person from taking a drive over the Hudson and buying one already-assembled from the Microcenter in Patterson, NJ. New Jersey isn't beholden to the laws of New York, and they won't care at all where the buyer is from.
It's the same thing folks in Ohio do to buy cheap weed: We drive up to Monroe, Michigan, where there's a veritable cornucopia of places dedicated to selling that devil's lettuce. It's against Ohio law to bring it back into Ohio (as of 2026), but there's a constant churn anyway. In the parking lots, Ohio license plates often outnumber the Michigan plates. Michigan doesn't care about this; they're not responsible for the problems that Ohio creates for itself.
Many small businesses don't need to buy their $100k+ machines anymore, since you can build or buy much more affordable machines in the mid to small ranges.
That it's easier with this skillset to build guns and sell them to criminals when the penalty is the same.
realistically, if it fails now due to public outrage, they will try to sneak it again in the future.
This is probably one of those good tests of "is your 'conspiracy theory' meter properly calibrated", because if it's going off right now and you are in disbelief, you've got it calibrated incorrectly. This is so completely routine that there's an entire branch of law codified in this way called the "Uniform Commercial Code": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code and see the organization running this' home page at https://www.uniformlaws.org/acts/ucc .
And that's just a particular set of laws with an organization dedicated to harmonizing all the various states laws for their particular use cases. It's not the one and only gateway to such laws, it's just an example of a cross-state law coordination so established that it has an entire organization dedicated to it. Plenty of other stuff is coordinated at the state level across multiple states all the time.
The text of the bill suggests that it would make printers capable of being reflashed with an open source firmware illegal to sell, as the legal requirements for the blocking would include preventing it from being circumvented. The law would also make having a printer sold mail-order into the state illegal entirely. It’s not clear how parts-built machines like Vorons would be handled.
It appears to only cover sales, however. Possession of files for firearm components would be made illegal, but seemingly not a printer without the restrictions.
It will be very strange and funny if there is a registry of 3D printers before there's a registry of guns, and for that matter, it will be very funny if it becomes easier to buy a gun than a 3D printer, with the reasoning being that 3D printers can print guns.
I highly doubt we would send goon squads door to door to check your firmware. Then again, given today's situation in MN, I wouldn't rule it out either.
Public comments can (and should!) be submitted here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/2321 Keep them polite and respectful; insults and threats won't help.
This time, it's about restricting fully general-purpose 3D printers (and perhaps CNC machines) from following instructions according to certain bit patterns in the hopes of stopping the manufacture of firearms. I have a feeling it's going to play out in the same way, leading to an long and expensive intellectual war that accomplishes nothing.
Fighting a war against general-purpose tools is as futile as making water not wet. When will legislators learn this and give up?
On a related point, trying to implement more gun control after seeing how this federal government is deploying the three letter agencies is pretty fucking stupid.
- your social media consumption and any post you make
- your app installations
- registering a new account or keeping an already existing one
- driving your car
- 3D printing something
- watching a YouTube video
- buying anything online
- receive any gov support or healthcare
- any transaction including cash ones
And all of that is synced with your digital wallet (TM) for convenience, internet is not needed!! I am so glad we are protecting the 16yo from accessing tiktok, or something something deportations if you are the other team!!
Trump is gonna cancel or fuck with elections in 2026 like he has said multiple times he will, and by 2027 and 2028, he will likely install himself as 3d term president.
Its gonna be an era of economic decline and social dirtiness as shit gets worse and worse and eventually things like crime is gonna rise up again as the lower income sector transitions into the "nothing to lose" crowd.
2025: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228
2023 (before Mangione): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/A8132
Maybe there are others.
The way it worked was as follows:
1. Local groups push to get right to repair passed
2. Fails repeatedly for years
3. They finally get it past the houses and onto the governor's desk
4. Governor gets a visit from a 'unknown' (hint likely Apple) lobbyist, refuses to sign even though they have to
5. They wait until the very last second and then adds last minute 'amendments' neutering the bill.
6. Their sycophants then try to shut down any discussion on Reddit/other social platforms from anyone who criticizes the bill.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Fair_Repair_Act
They are going to keep doing this crap, the government needs to be voted out but just like NJ, NY is captured by really corrupt 'neoliberal' Democrats so its an uphill battle to get someone better in there. The incentives are not there: In NJ and most of NY the economic base is the wealthy suburbanites who like the way things are and will fight efforts to make radical change. That results in a lot of 'think of the children' type people who would welcome any and all bans on things like 3D printing of guns.
I'm sure this won't inadvertently flag nerf/band guns, models, tubes/pipes, etc...
Until metal 3D printing becomes common for consumers, this isn't really a big deal. Plastic components have limited lifespan and even questionable safety. It's pretty much always been legal to create your own firearms. Blocking some 3D printers isn't going to stop that. If nothing else, the criminal enterprises will just use out of date software from before the ban and even create their own 3D printers.
3D printing companies need to simply exit the NY market, including the industrial sector. Once you start inspecting businesses, education, and enough individuals, they will cave.
All it is missing is a screw with a serial number on it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/ctdm3/oldie_but_goody...
Edit, reading further it's even more insane:
> The New York definitions sweep in not just FDM and resin printers, but also CNC mills and “any machine capable of making three-dimensional modifications to an object from a digital design file using subtractive manufacturing.” That’s a lot of shop & manufacturing equipment!
This is the dumbest thing I have ever read.
Zip guns may get past a metal detector, but not the standard x-ray luggage scan. To the extent it'll make it past the x-ray screeners, it's because they let all kinds of stuff through, because it's a poor way to screen for dangerous things, and they are not high-skill employees, they are relatively cheap labor.
Source: I used to travel every week flying home Friday, cycle clothes out of my travel bags, and be on the road again on Sunday night. I learned to my horror I'd been flying with a pair of scissors for at least 5 weeks - during which, TSA forced me to open a Christmas present for my sister and throw away some hand lotion which was in too big of a bottle.
There's a reason they call it security theater. This is just more of it.
btw don't try that with something that is on their list like ammo, even one bullet. Your life will be ruined.
If you want to see what is possible with 3d printed guns now I recommend Hoffman Tactical and PSR on YouTube.
Even in countries with strict gun control, like the UK, the most serious criminals can get hold of guns. And if lesser criminals 3D printed a gun, they'd struggle to get hold of ammo for it. So they stick to knives.
The implication with this type of argument is that if someone is willing to break the law against murder, they'd be willing/able to break the laws around legally purchasing or owning a gun.
What are you referring to as "it" here? When OP mentioned getting a gun from "off the street", that's referring to obtaining one illegally, without a provenance chain or any permitting.
If you want to shoot a CEO, its far easier to buy an untraceable gun on the streets (or obtain a non-serialized 80% lower receiver that you drill yourself) rather than an unreliable fully 3D-printed gun.
Dude literally sat in a McDonalds with all the evidence on him including the 3D printed gun. The idea of phantom murderers wielding 3D printed weapons is nothing more than a rich guy/CEO anxiety fantasy.
I don't know where you get bullets for the gun though.
But when it comes to a theoretical problem we must take action even if it takes freedoms and opportunities away from normal people.
But the bar is even lower than that since you can simply buy a gun much more easily than you could 3D print parts for one.
We lost the ability to print $50 bills with our HPs[2] and it had no noticeable negative impact on society. I'm not sure why losing the ability to print a gun with our Prusas will be any different.
[1] - https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/cant-photocopy-scan-cu...
[2] - https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-Archive-Read-Only/Won...
It's not technically possible to detect "gun geometry".
The only way to comply with this law is to ban 3d printers entirely.
Your implication makes me think that you assume that this useful-yet-not-overreaching detection tech is possible. Do you have any ideas for how this would be implemented? Because in my mind, the only way to ensure compliance would be either a manual check (uplink to the manufacturer or relevant government authority, where an employee or a model trained on known gun models tries to estimate the probability of a print being part of a gun) or a deterministic algorithm that makes blanket bans on anything remotely gun-like (pipe-like parts, parts where any mechanical action is similar to anything that could be in a gun). These scenarios seem to be both a lot more annoying and a lot more invasive. There's no negative consequences for tuning detection to always err on the side of caution and flood the user with false-positive refusals to print. Both scenarios are obviously a lot more involved and complicated than a basic algorithm checking if you're trying to print an image of a US dollar. Therefore I don't see a reason why drawing this comparison is useful. The only thing these implementations have in common is that they're detecting something.
If you have seen that other people have pointed it out, you have already seen my response, but I guess people keep repeating the question, so I need to repeat the answer. This regulation establishes a working group to investigate this technology. If the technical aspects are as difficult as you claim, the proposed regulation will basically be voided. Your concerns are already factored into the proposal and therefore aren't a valid argument against the proposal.
That said, the regulation also makes it sound like "implementing a check for a specific banned print" would be an acceptable outcome of this law. From page 11 of the actual proposal:
>(b) be authorized to create and maintain a library of firearms blue- print files and illegal firearm parts blueprint files, and maintain and update the library, including by adding new files that enable the three- dimensional printing of firearms or illegal firearm parts. In further- ance of this authorization, the division may designate another govern- ment agency or an academic or research institution in this state to assist with the creation and maintenance of the file library. The library shall be made available to three-dimensional printer manufactur- ers, vendors with demonstrated expertise in software development, or experts in computational design or public safety, for the development or improvement of blocking technology and firearm blueprint detection algo- rithms. The division shall establish safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to and misuse of the library and shall prohibit all persons who are granted access to the library from misusing, selling, disseminating, or otherwise publishing its contents.
Think of it like the early stages of internet copyright protections, the first step is just cross-referencing the design with a list of known banned designs. Just like an early Youtuber could have mirrored banned videos to bypass copyright detection, people will likely still be able to manipulate designs in certain ways to get past this sort of ban. That's ok. Regulation like this doesn't have to be 100% effective to still be worth doing. The goal here is to make it more difficult for some random person with no expertise to buy a 3d printer, download some files, and print a weapon.
I'm willing to admit that it's entirely possible that a full on-demand analysis of whether a shape could potentially be part of a gun might not currently be possible and it might be years before that becomes feasible, but until then, simply banning a handful of the most popular STL files would still have value.
I doubt there is a weapons expert that could look at a given STL file and unambiguously tell you whether something was “part of a gun” or not. If these laws pass, they will be either unenforceable, effectively ban all 3D printer sales due to the immense difficulty of compliance, or worse, be another avenue for selective enforcement.
Furthermore, the whole “ghost guns” thing is entirely overblown and misunderstood by people who have never seen or used a 3D printer except in the movies, where Hollywood has latched onto the idea that they are designed primarily for making guns. A consumer grade 3D printer is going to print a gun that will explode in your hands the first time you try to use it, if any of the meaningful parts of the gun are printed. And nothing is stopping people from say, fabricating gun stocks with a table saw and router, or building a gun out of hardware store parts. Why aren’t we also banning mills and lathes while we’re at it? There are also chemicals at a hardware store that could be used to make explosives. If the concern was really “making guns at home”, we’d outlaw Ace Hardware and Home Depot.
Here's a relevant article that addresses a lot of these points.[1]
[1] - https://www.wired.com/story/luigi-mangione-united-healthcare...
Manufacturing firearms is not unlawful in the State of New York, nor is it unlawful federally.
As far as I can tell, there is no federal or state law that compels any company to add features like the ones HP has added to their products. I have not spent a large amount of time researching. Just browsed a few articles like this one https://www.itestcash.com/blogs/news/your-guide-to-federal-c....
There are plenty of people who change their behavior because that tracking is in place, regardless of if what they are doing (or would be doing) is in any way illegal.
Terrible example IMO.
Maybe the way this applies to everything should be an indication that it's unrelated to the point I made about blocking the printing of certain things.
So while the legislation, and implementation can be deemed problematic, the political desire to prevent counterfeit is not actually unreasonable.
Having particular objects be banned that aren't under the exclusive control of a government actually creates new precedent. Regardless of the technical feasibility that you keep bringing up, this legislation is undesirable because of what could come after.
The problem is, as Rousseau warned us, elections only function for so long as the voters are able to see and identify efforts to bribe them with their own money (paraphrased).
stuck on loading (tested on both latest Firefox and Chrome on macOS). I'm on Indonesia, BTW. Could someone upload the PDF?
I always think it's strategy to block Chinese manufacturers with super difficult to implement technology being a hard requirement.
Specially the selling face-to-face requirement here.
The US regulations on Automatic Emergency Braking systems requirements for new cars are actually several years behind many other markets like the EU and Japan.
This isn’t really an American thing and it’s not for blocking Chinese manufacturers. Chinese automakers can make AEBs too.
bool isRestricted(uint8_t* /* data */) { return true; } // Might catch a few false positives
and
popup("This is a restricted model. If you are not in the state of New York, please flash the international firmware ([link]) to print restricted parts.");
It can also handle STL, step and all kinds of other formats.
...what? This some of the stupidest, most out of touch garbage I've ever read and clearly made by uneducated lawmakers being out of their depth.
It's surprising to see discussions and bills like these, when there is the second amendment in place. What is fueling this discussion?
Two different EU countries Time taken is the most 'labourious' part And grandad's funeral
They voted to “seize the means of production.” This was one of the few promises delivered. May they enjoy it!
I made a choice, too. I cancelled my annual NYC trip in January to see friends and went to Miami instead.
If anyone needs help printing parts for a Voron just let me know. (Not a real offer for the public, but for friends absolutely.)
In contrast, a pretty good 3d printer costs $500, can sit on a table, and the inevitable mistakes you will make while learning how to use it are comparatively cheap.
Desktop CNC machines are here bruh.
I have one on my desk...
Once these things can move around us, far away from their owner, there is enormous potential for societal harm.
Someone could buy a $10k Figure robot, strap a bomb or nerve agent to it, then have it walk into a public place.
If we just accept these robots as normal everyday things (it seems like we will), we wouldn't even blink or think twice that a robot was walking up to us.
I hate monitoring and tracking and surveillance. I'm a freedom and personal liberty absolutist for most things without negative externalities. But as I put this new AI tech through thought experiments, I don't know how we'll survive in a normal world anymore when agency is cheap and not tied to mortality.
Society, even one with guns, relied on the fact that people are afraid of the consequences of their actions. If there's no ability to trace a drone or robot, god only knows what could happen.
Kidnappings, murders, terrorism. It seems like this might become "easy".
How hard is it going to be to kill off political opponents in the future? Putin, for instance, enjoys relative freedom of movement because it's hard to get close to him.
Once you can throw a drone into a field or rooftop and have it "sleep" for months until some "awake" command, then it operates entirely autonomously - that's cheap, easy to plan, and potentially impossible to track.
Some disgruntled guy buys some fertilizer, a used van, and comma.ai?
We potentially have a very, very different world coming soon.
Works well enough and is in wide use, many people just don't seem to have realized the implications - kinda like with machineguns and barbed wire at the start of WW1.
The British army only has maybe 20,000 actual soldiers. You could manufacture enough robots to kill them all in a week. Then you’d just have a whole country.
It’ll completely change the game. There’s no point selling it to a state for their army, when you could just instantly make yourself the owner of the state.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121128215957/http://www.northe...
The stupidest thing is you can go to another state and buy a gun in Walmart, why even bother to build a plastic gun in the US?
Of course, 3D printed plastic ammo isn't likely to be very effective.
(Maybe they're worried that before long, 3D printing with metal will almost as easy and affordable as plastic 3D printing is now, and people will be printing off entire arsenals of very effective firearms?)
Asking why someone would want to do this is just not trying very hard in the conversation is actually pretty myopic.
Feasibility escape hatch: If the working group determines it’s “not technologically feasible,” no regulations are required… until the group decides it is feasible. This is good, but weak sauce: the working group could be stuffed with non-experts who just say what the legislators want.
Easily sidestepped, it's there to make a point I guess: https://www.jwz.org/blog/
the adafruit blog is not trying to block you my dude(s). we are under constant automated scraping and ddos, largely from ai crawlers, and we use cloudflare to keep the site online at all. the nature of of these things will cause false positives depending on browser, extensions, network, or referrer.
the site publishs full-text rss feeds with no blockers here, no ads: https://blog.adafruit.com/rss
the site respects do not track, privacy badger, and similar tools. the site will probably never pass the purity tests for everyone, the goal is to stay independent, publishing, without selling readers or folding into a mega-platform. we're open source and vc free, chill out about us, ok?
if you still can’t get an article and want it in html, markdown, text, or pdf, email me and i’ll send it directly, i will read it on the phone to you, i am not kidding.
we’re trying, and we’ll keep trying. you gotta meet somewhere.
The real fix is something like a nationwide licensing system like for cars, with auditing of weapons and weapon storage.
It's mostly handguns, and about half of firearm homicides are with illegally trafficked arms. They can be trafficked because there's no way to account for the guns.
All this rests on the assumption that anyone actually wants to solve gun homicide. A lot of people SAY they do, and that's how you get shit like 3D printer bans.
Inform users where this censorship filter is implemented, so users can go change the source file value from 1 to 0 :)
Malicious compliance is highly appropriate for a malicious law.
Maybe these advocating for gun control laws for 3D printers should first advocate for stricter control on selling spare repair parts for guns and the websites selling them with no sort of background check.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/luigi-mangione-ghost-gun-built-t...
the irony
It is exactly the same kind of stupid thinking driving ideas such as Chat Control in the EU. In the end, no child will be safer, but we will end up having a world where no-one has the right to control what software can run on their own hardware devices and where no-one has legal access to end-to-end encrypted communication.
From the top, I absolutely detest this kind of censorship. But the bill states that the implementation will be defined (or rendered infeasible - yeah right) AFTER the bill passes. Said decision will be punted to a "working group" of industry folks. That alone stinks, since it places a lot of abuse potential outside of duly elected representation.
Instead of containing the anger of the public by doing good politics and thus reduce radicalizations and peace by plenty of filled pots, its surveilance, panopticons, terror and ever more laws sas lids. If you can't atand the heat get out of the kitchen.
In VA, bills like house SB 217 (assault weapon ban) and HB 271 (semi-auto ban) were approved in the Democrat-led Senate Courts of Justice Committee strictly along party lines. Sponsors such as Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim (D) lead these efforts, facing opposition from Republicans like Del. Terry Kilgore (R). They await full Assembly votes and signature from Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
In NY State, Democrats, holding supermajorities in the Assembly (103-47) and Senate (42-20), champion Governor Hochul's 2026 State of the State proposals. These include criminalizing unlicensed possession/sale of CAD files for 3D-printed guns (via Penal Law amendments), mandating 3D printer safety standards to block firearm production, and requiring recovery reports to state police. Key bills like S.227A (Sen. Hoylman-Sigal, active in 2025 session) target 3D-printed ghost guns/silencers as felonies; related A2228 pushes printer background checks.
Republicans offer no sponsorship or support, labeling Hochul's agenda and bills like S.227A "anti-gun, anti-speech" infringements on Second Amendment rights and innovation for non-gun printing. NRA-ILA criticizes them as futile against criminals while burdening hobbyists
In my opinion the ICE unrest is a smoke screen. During Obama's presidency (roughly 2009-2017), 56 people died in ICE custody, averaging about 7 per year. There were no major protests over the 56 deaths under Obama because the current situation is a psychological influence operation led by the same criminals who seek to exterminate the rights of ordinary Americans (showcased above). There is a separate fully frontal assault on personal liberties impacting normal American citizens happening right now and it is happening while all the attention is on Minneapolis!
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=2320&Year=202...
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=2321&Year=202...
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260127/virginia-gun-contro...
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S227/amendme...
And if 3DP gun designers get blocked, they just have to alter the design slightly. Vs counterfeit currency which always and forever must look the same. If the 3DP database detection is loosened to catch lookalikes, then you have false positives for the guy making a desk lamp whose part just kinda sorta looks like a trigger sear.
Also, I am not aware of any open source 2D printers built from the ground up, but 3DP got started that way. So bypassing this would be insanely easy.
It’s political theater.
Goto 0
https://i.imgur.com/gGIAApA.png
Hard to trust an article like this when the legal analysis and suggestions are being outsourced to an LLM.
Are there specific parts of the article which are inaccurate or misleading? If so please say, it would be very interesting and add to the discussion.
Also, most of the suggestions provided in the AI generated section are just useless. While I think this law is terrible, the suggestions provided completely contradict what the lawmakers are intending. I'll explain what I mean with some of the suggestions provided.
> Narrow the Scope to Intent, Not the Tool
This is essentially a suggestion to throw out the entire law as written. Sure, but this is meaningless advice to lawmakers.
> Drop Mandatory File Scanning
This is the same suggestion as before but rephrased.
> Exempt Open-Source and Offline Toolchains
This is asking them to create a massive loophole in their own law making it useless. Once again, essentially just asking them to throw out the entire law.
> Add safe harbor for sellers and educators who don’t modify equipment or participate in unlawful manufacture.
Two fundamentally different concepts here jammed into one idea. Do you want to add safe harbor for sellers who don't modify equipment or do you want to throw out the entire law and have it not apply to anybody who doesn't participate in unlawful manufacture? These are very different ideas, it makes no sense to treat them as one cohesive concept.
All of these are signals that not much thought went into this. If a human had used AI for ideas and writing assistance, but participated in the writing process as an active contributor, I think they would have caught things like this. I don't think they would have chosen to make multiple bullet points semantically identical. I think they would have chosen to actually cite specific aspects of the law and propose concrete solutions.
Another example, one of their suggestions is to improve the working groups to add specific members. Genuinely a fairly good idea. Having actually read the law, I would have cited the specific passage, which requires that the working group "SHALL INCLUDE EXPERTS IN ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DIGITAL SECURITY, FIREARMS REGULATION, PUBLIC SAFETY, CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY, AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DISCIPLINES DETERMINED BY THE DIVISION TO BE NECESSARY TO PERFORM THE FUNCTIONS PRESCRIBED HEREIN." I would question, who do they consider to be experts in additive manufacturing? Why does it seem that the working group will be far more heavily weighed towards policy experts as opposed to 3D printing experts? The article suggests that "standards will default to large vendors" yet there is no evidence here that vendors will be included at all.
The corporation you're citing named "Pangram" cannot confirm anything of the sort. They only make claims, like the ones in your screenshot.
Indeed, this very "citation" of the AI-generated output of Pangram Inc.'s product is a good example of outsourcing work to an LLM without verifying it.
It might be a bit less convenient than a shiny vendor locked Bamboolab closed machine but it is perfectly doable.
A filament 3D printer is basically just a control board, firmware (like Marlin), bunch of off the shelf steppers, two thermistors, heatbed and nozzle heater. If you have modern stepper drivers you don't even need end stop switches.
Put this together and you have a machine you fully own and control and can easily repair or upgrade. Then just feed it GCODE generated by something like Prusa Slic3r from STL/obj/step files and that's it.
Avoids any shenanigans like forcing you to use only blessed consumables or trying to dictate what you can print.
Or maybe 3D printers already do this in a way we don't see.
When I first told my very non-technical somewhat new friend about my 3D printer, they looked really concerned and told me they weren’t comfortable with it because of how people make weapons with them.
I’ve had to spend a lot of time building trust and showing that I’m not one of those weirdos.
Ultimately I don’t think any kind of printed gun banning law has a tangible impact (it’s not like guns with serial numbers aren’t regularly getting away with murder), but what I don’t like is that the law and discussion around it validates this stupidity and continues to lump me in with gun weirdos.
It’s weird to own a gun. It’s weird to print a gun. I don’t even think the 2nd amendment is very necessary and is clearly not capable of stopping tyranny (and the amendment itself says that’s not its purpose anyway).
At this point we could probably get a coalition of Trump cult members who have no consistent ideology (Trump doesn’t like guns) and “liberal pansies” to just repeal the 2nd amendment and become a normal country.
I agree that the law seems to validate the viewpoint, but I disagree that it's a common one, nor that you should have had to spend time building that trust.
Did the 2nd amendment save Mark Pretti from that exact situation happening to him?
The fact that ICE are still parading around on the street has put in a nail in the coffin that 2A is absolutely pointless.
If anything, USA citizens deserve to have their guns taken away forcibly just because they could use them but didn't.
just a thought from across the pond.
NYC doesn't have a gun problem. They regulate the shit out of guns to no effect. They should regress closer to the national mean and spend the resources on stuff that matters more. And even if they do want to regulate it, micromanaging everyone's 3d printers is not the way to do it both because of bad efficacy and bad precedent.
I'm glad there's an ocean between us.
Maybe we shouldn't let people write their own software either, as there's all sorts of crime they could get up to...
