| ▲ | We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme(eff.org) |
| 259 points by hn_acker 6 hours ago | 75 comments |
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| ▲ | gdiamos 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| My kindergartner has a 3D printer. I got a call from the school principal. She said “another parent called and said your son 3D printed a gun and brought it to school”. I looked at the print history. It was a tiny toy mandalorian figuring holding a blaster pistol in his hand. I bought my son a bigger 3D printer and told him to stop playing with that boy. |
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| ▲ | asveikau 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| California voters, write to your state senator. I'm in San Francisco, and I wrote to Scott Wiener, who recently voted to pass this out of committee. Before that when it was still in the assembly, I wrote to Matt Haney, which didn't do much good because he voted for it both in committee and for passage. But, I feel like bay area legislators need to know many of their constituents know this bill is misguided and are paying attention. The tech capital of the world shouldn't have artificially impaired tools. |
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| ▲ | a34729t an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It doesnt matter. you know how much campaign financing is tied up with gun control groups? It sucks to lose all your campaign funding and get primaried, right? Wouldn't want that! | |
| ▲ | jatora 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What reason do you have to think that writing Congressmen changes the slightest thing? Even when they receive a pile of related letters? Seems to me this wouldnt shift the needle at all vs lobbying interests. Seems to me that there is a general unrealistic idealism and faith in democracy at play here. | | |
| ▲ | jacobolus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Each congressperson's staff gathers all of the comments they get, counts them up, and reports back to the congressperson, passing along anything they think would be useful information; if you write a clear and careful letter about an obscure topic there's a decent chance the congressperson themself will see it. Congresspeople typically have local ties in their area and caring what their constituents think is their job. It's a serious problem that there are some congresspeople who don't do any local events, send all comments straight to the trash, etc. You should vote those folks out. In the longer term, we should push for significantly increasing the size of the US House of Representatives to 5–10x the current size and implement serious campaign finance reforms. In combination, these will help make congresspeople more responsive to constituents and less reliant on donors. | | |
| ▲ | b112 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not an American, but I've wondered about increasing numbers myself. Certainly, giving each representative fewer citizens to represent could help. I worry about the size of the bodies, however. Too big, and they become less wieldy. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wonder about other solutions. I was thinking of, for example, 10x the number, but each grouping of 10 has a representative, and they each give proxies on votes. Maybe best though of as, junior representatives. It'd allow more direct interaction, and in a sense you'd be electing regional representative staff for each congressperson. I guess there are a lot of ways to handle this, but regardless I overall 100% agree. | | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | With modern electronics I really don't see why we can't have arbitrary numbers of representatives. In fact I think my preferred system would be representatives get a number of votes equal to the people who voted for them, and anyone can assign anyone as their representative. Gate things like getting speaking time on representing more than x% of the vote, and maybe even have a minimum threshold if we're insisting votes are cast in person for cyber security reasons, but generally the bar for being able to represent people should be low and there shouldn't be winners and losers in elections but just people who represent different numbers of people. | |
| ▲ | dostick an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The modern democracy is unchanged from original Ancient Greek version to adapt to having 100,000 voters per representative from 100 when democracy was invented. It was never questioned if it supposed to work at this scale. |
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| ▲ | WalterBright 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A 10x increase would just be chaos. |
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| ▲ | throwitaway222 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is correct. At this point all constituents believe something like "oh that's just a MAGAT and they don't matter" and throw it in the garbage. I personally think all congress people left or right should be thrown out if they don't personally reply. We're paying them to do this. If many people write about the same issue, they should not have to reply personally, but they should hold a press conference, recorded town hall or issue a statement. We're losing our government and voice to radicalization. | | |
| ▲ | asveikau 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My letter opened with the fact that I generally favor reasonable gun laws, then elaborated how this is not that. It's possible that nobody reads it and captures the nuance, but I did spend time to consider the framing. Nobody who actually reads it will think I am an extremist or that I haven't carefully considered the topic. | | |
| ▲ | jatora 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 99% chance your letter ends up in the shredder without being read | | |
| ▲ | culi an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If we're talking written letters, most of these offices at least have staff that read them. I've sorta lobbied before and they don't get quite as much mail as you imagine. And they respond more often than you'd think. Your attitude is pretty prevalent so the chance to write back and change a voter's impression is hard to pass up. | |
| ▲ | asveikau 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | By the way I also know for a fact that Scott Wiener's staff reads San Francisco's subreddit. Commenting about Wiener's vote in there will reach his staff. Given the bay area presence here it's also possible somebody "who knows a guy" will even see this thread name-drop him. |
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| ▲ | jatora 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We'be been this way for decades, the government has been far detached from the will of any but the rich. The only thing Trump has done is demonstrate that, as a politician, you dont really have to try so hard to pretend otherwise anymore. And the people can and will do nothing but fight eachother. |
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| ▲ | asveikau 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | From what I know about legislators (I am a longtime SF resident but I am also a DC native and have known some congressional staff over the years), it is pretty rare that informed constituents write to them in a cogent and authentic voice about specific legislation, and they do pay attention to this. Calls may work even more. It won't work all the time and how much they do will depend on the issue and why they are supporting it etc. But it's worth a shot. Remember I said: they should know you're paying attention. This can cause them to also pay attention. | | |
| ▲ | trinsic2 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Alright, you won me over. I emailed my congressman from the EFF website with my own message. That's the best I can do right now. I just feel like politics is a losing battle. If its taken over by special interests and there doesn't seem like there is any end in sight, as it gets easier and easier for them to sway the people that are actually suppose to be working for us. What is the point? When we are combating legislation that no sane person should have to deal with there comes a time where the whole thing is unlawful and it we should stop investing our power into it. |
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| ▲ | VortexLain 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It is better to at least do what can be done instead of accepting a defeat without even trying. | | |
| ▲ | jatora 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why? There are better ways to spend your time than yelling at walls. I'd say it's better to be disillusioned and realistic than idealistic and ignorant. Even if the latter feels better. | | |
| ▲ | lern_too_spel an hour ago | parent [-] | | I've written a state rep and had legislation come out of it. I've written a congressperson and had federal bureaucracy expedite my case out of it. People who think their government is unresponsive generally haven't actually tried asking their government for a response. | | |
| ▲ | asveikau an hour ago | parent [-] | | There seems to be a propaganda thread in the culture now to get people cynical and thinking everything is rigged against you in advance, and a prerequisite to accepting this is to ignore how to the system actually works. The end result is to prevent you from getting involved. You never know if you don't try. As an example (maybe some of the HN audience will dislike the outcome here but the point stands nonetheless), this week two sitting members of Congress were knocked out in New York, and their party told them the previous year to not bother trying. |
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| ▲ | culi an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | So what should we do, then? | | |
| ▲ | jcgrillo an hour ago | parent [-] | | Manufacture a bunch of guns with a lathe instead lmao. Or if they try to take that away, forge weld smoothbore musket barrels the old way with bar stock spiraled around a mandrel. Just make sure you use enough 20 team mule and hear a crack every time, or it could make a mess when you proof it ;) |
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| ▲ | WillPostForFood 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Looks even more draconian than the New York law. For example, it seems to mandate proprietary, locked down slicers from the printer manufacturer. -- For integrated preprint software [slicer] design, guidance for how vendors shall demonstrate that printers will accept print jobs exclusively through authorized and validated software systems and will not accept print jobs from unauthorized software pathways, including attempts by users seeking to evade a detection algorithm. |
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| ▲ | __natty__ 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Over the last few years, I’ve felt as though I’ve been living in a feverish dream all the time. Laws, regulations and general changes in the world are so detached from reality and so far removed from the reality they are meant to serve. And this is yet another example. | | |
| ▲ | Mountain_Skies 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Five years ago, the masses told the authoritarians that they could have as much power as they wanted. The authoritarians loved it and now know the uprising against their excesses will never happen. This is just the beginning. | | |
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| ▲ | narrator 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We're bombing Iran to suppress technology form the 40s. We're suppressing advanced AI. We're suppressing 3d printer technology. Then there are the encryption wars. Control of advanced technology, not just weapons, is a larger and larger battle every year. When the robots get here, you'll need the governments ok to do anything at all with a robot. Mark Andreessen's comments that government regulators told him that they've suppressed whole branches of physics is ominous in that regard. Technology suppression is a whole separate narrative of history practically. |
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| ▲ | DropkickM16 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Andreessen is going to be undone by stone age tech with the masses pulling his distended head from its body. Can’t speak for the rest of them but I can hope and cheer from the sidelines. |
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| ▲ | Barbing 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Take Action link only took 30 seconds: https://www.eff.org/3DPrintCA (did choose to edit the letter but otherwise really, it autofills and takes no time) |
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| ▲ | brianleb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I share your hopeful optimism, but here's the reality of the mass-email campaigns targeting congress: [email received 6/18/26 from the office of Steve Scalise, majority leader in the house, who is one of my representatives. I have trimmed for brevity.] >>
Due to advancements in technology, many third-party organizations use their mailing lists to send advocacy letters like this on your behalf. With the increased volume of third-party letters being sent to my office, I want to be sure that I am able to more appropriately address your thoughts and concerns. I will be sure to consider the views you have sent me, but if you have any additional thoughts on this issue, or need other assistance with a federal agency, please contact my office directly through my website scalise.house.gov or by calling (202) 225-3015 ----------- In case it is not clear to anyone reading, this is kosher political speak for "I am ignoring automated emails. Consider this your notice." Honestly, I am surprised it took this long, although I'm quite certain it has been going on for a lot longer and generally they simply do not provide the courtesy of telling you they are ignoring you. | | |
| ▲ | wyrdcurt 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is exactly why I had an LLM customize the letter as I said in my other comment; I've had a similar response from another of my representatives. It might not help much if they're filtering based on where the email is coming from, but on the off chance that they are filtering based on identical content, changing the content might make a difference. With LLMs, the effort needed to customize the content has gone down significantly (otherwise, I would agree with the more cynical commentators that such letters are a waste of time and energy). |
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| ▲ | wyrdcurt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also, if you have a couple extra minutes to spare, consider handing the letter and the name of your senator to an LLM (I used Deepseek V4 Pro) with instructions to research your representative and tailor the message to them specifically. | |
| ▲ | k__o 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | thanks, done. i did handwrite a message since it seems more personal/effective to me |
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| ▲ | deet 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Imagine if you couldn't buy a lathe unless it refused to make a baseball bat (which could be used for hitting people). Or if you couldn't buy scissors (because they could cut brake lines). Or if you couldn't buy a car (because it could be used to run someone over). And if all of those checked with the government before functioning. It's almost like maybe instead you should just ban the undesirable end action, enforce that law, and create societal conditions that don't nudge or force people into doing undesirable things. |
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| ▲ | SpicyLemonZest 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We used to ban the undesirable action! Then DEFCAD got that ban overturned, convincing the federal government that they have a First Amendment right to publish 3D-printable firearm plans. So now our choices are to allow widespread 3D printed firearms (which I and many others won't accept) or restrict the means by which they can be made. I genuinely do wish the DEFCAD folks had made different choices that would not have led us here. | | |
| ▲ | jstanley 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > We used to ban the undesirable action! The undesirable action is shooting people, right? That's still banned. It seems like you think the undesirable action is publishing plans for machines you don't want people to have. | |
| ▲ | xbar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you think DEFCAD will get this overturned, too? | | |
| ▲ | SpicyLemonZest an hour ago | parent [-] | | Certainly not on First Amendment grounds, and in general I expect powerful AI will quite imminently make people more sympathetic to random manufacturing restrictions on potentially dangerous goods. I can imagine 2A arguments against any regulation that's specifically preventing the use of X for gun manufacturing, but my weakly held best guess is that they wouldn't be persuasive here. |
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| ▲ | simoncion an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > ...our choices are to allow widespread 3D printed firearms... Which parts of a firearm can be printed in a consumer-grade 3D printer? Be as specific as your knowledge permits. Of those that cannot, how much money does one have to spend in order to purchase a 3D printer that is capable of printing those parts that cannot be printed by a consumer-grade printer? Are you aware of "slam fire" firearms? If you were not, you owe it to yourself to learn how to make a functional "slam fire" shotgun. The tutorials are pretty widespread. | | |
| ▲ | jcgrillo 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You don't need to print anything, just visit your neighborhood hardware store | |
| ▲ | SpicyLemonZest 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm aware of "slam fire" firearms and know why and how it's easy to produce them. They're much less concerning to me because their rate of fire is extremely slow. I don't know the details of what can be printed in a consumer-grade printer, not having performed firearms manufacturing myself, but I've seen things claiming to be pretty complete kits and it seems to me that most components should be possible. Barrels of any reasonable length might be hard, perhaps firing pins too. (And springs, but of course those are trivial to manufacture by hand.) If it's not actually possible to 3D print an effective gun, perhaps someone should make that argument in detail. |
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| ▲ | userbinator 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | enforce that law Califoria would not be a sanctuary state if they actually cared about enforcing laws. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why would a state enforce federal law? | | |
| ▲ | WillPostForFood 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It is not their job to enforce federal laws, but they are actively thwarting federal law. Both through refusals to notify the federal government about criminal illegal aliens being released, refusing detention holds, lawsuits against building facilities, lawsuits blocking arrests, etc.. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Lawsuits are part of the law, not thwarting the law. Refusing notifications and holds is inaction, the opposite of “actively.” |
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| ▲ | Joker_vD an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US legal system never ceases to amaze me. Why indeed should a state enforce a law? Like, one of those anti-discrimination laws? | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why should it enforce a law from a separate sovereign entity, is the question. And the answer is, it shouldn’t. I don’t think states do, or should, enforce federal anti-discrimination laws. The feds do that. The states pass their own anti-discrimination laws if they want something to enforce themselves. |
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| ▲ | jcgrillo 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can make all of those things. First you pick up two sticks and rub them together real good (maybe use the inner bark of a hickory tree or similar to make some cordage s.t. you can make a bow drill and rub them even better). Using the little coal you've created, build a fire. Now pile a bunch of wood on it and starve it for oxygen. Great, you've created charcoal. Now skin a big animal and make bellows from its hide. Now build a big fire and blast it with the bellows to make it rull friggen hot. Put some rocks in it that have iron in them. Collect the iron from the bottom of the fire (exercise left to the reader) into a stone tub. Build a few forms using wood, sand, and wax in the shapes of the various parts a lathe. Melt the iron in the stone tub and pour it into the forms. Scrape the mating surfaces of the lathe parts flat and clean with a hard stone. They cannot take this shit away. It's futile. | |
| ▲ | morkalork 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | https://xcancel.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980096 |
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| ▲ | rolph 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| guess what, the state of california on the printer bed, depicted in the article, looks close to the profile of an AR15 pistol grip. im looking forward to the idea that the outline of Ca. may trigger false positives |
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| ▲ | rented_mule 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If this becomes law, it will give rise to a fun new form or protest art in this vain. What is the cutest thing you can design that nobody would consider to be related to guns, but which gets flagged? An obvious example... a llama sitting on the ground, legs hidden, and head held high in the air, chewing its cud. Llamas can be really cute! Sell them on Etsy/eBay/etc., printed by an out-of-state 3D printing service. I just used the EFF form to promise my state senator in Sacramento that I'd send her (and reporters that cover her) one of them if the bill passes. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Conversely, add cute animal models to gun parts. Maybe it would be possible to just embed a prompt injection into metadata or the STL mesh itself. |
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| ▲ | WillPostForFood an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It looks even closer to a California banned "large-capacity" magazine. https://dpmsinc.com/media/catalog/product/cache/7217d38013ee... | | |
| ▲ | rolph 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | now that would be a curious looking AR15 with a california pistol grip, and a california magazine |
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| ▲ | throwawaytea 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I had the same hunch when I saw it, which is either pure genius on the part of the author/publisher or pure lol meme magic. | |
| ▲ | NoImmatureAdHom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Better yet, design and popularize an AR grip that is the state of California |
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| ▲ | LanceH 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| At some point between this, age verification for the OS, and everything else, it starts to seem like a coordinated attack on computing. |
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| ▲ | mickelsen 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hope sanity prevails and printers stay free, don't give Europe ideas. |
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| ▲ | leptons 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If some people want to make their own gun, then some people will also make their own 3D printer. This joke of a law isn't going to stop any 3D printed handguns from getting made, it will only add one more relatively easy step. Then what, ban stepper motors? |
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| ▲ | samatman an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Vorons are great! https://www.vorondesign.com You've come a long way, RepRap. | |
| ▲ | tjohns 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Then what, ban stepper motors? Don't give them ideas. But seriously, given that the 3D printer movement started out with people building their own printers from scratch and there continues to be a healthy open-source hardware ecosystem within the community, I can't see this stopping anyone. Unless you also make it illegal for 3D printers to print 3D printer parts... | | |
| ▲ | w4der 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | But how was the first 3D printer made? Are they gonna ban CNC machines next? | | |
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| ▲ | azov 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is somebody organizing a rally to oppose this? |
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| ▲ | shiptoaster an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| wow this is going to add a lot of friction to the printers they already don't make there |
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| ▲ | dmfdmf 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I am old enough to remember when the fax machine first became ubiquitous in the 80's and read about how the Soviets were threatened by it. Unauthorized use was a crime and they stationed guards at fax machines to prevent mis-use. Perhaps I naively fell for CIA propaganda at the time but if true we can hope/estimate that California Commies will fall in less than 10 years since things are moving much faster in today's world. |
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| ▲ | sfRattan 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It wasn't just fax machines. Throughout the Eastern bloc, typewriters were strictly controlled and registered. There's a great scene in The Lives of Others [1], a German movie about a Stasi agent and a dissident writer, in which the Stasi (East German secret police) have recovered a typed manuscript that was smuggled to the West, and are interviewing a forensic expert to determine the make/model of typewriter used, in an attempt to cross reference against anyone who owns that typewriter. We still do similar things now, though for ostensibly different reasons. Inkjet and laser printers have long had various signatures they add to every printed page, barely noticeable to the naked eye, that can lead back to the specific printer used. The stated motivation is to prevent counterfeitting. Similarly, there is a pattern of "O" symbols called the EURion constellation that, if present in an image file, most commercial image editing software will refuse to print [2]. It's not surprising that politicians are trying these sorts of strategies with 3D printing, because they've already tried and used them often in the past. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation#Counterfe... |
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| ▲ | fortran77 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I solved this problem by moving my U.S. home from Sunnyvale, CA to St. Charles MO. |
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| ▲ | RossBencina 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Let me get this straight. The USA has no gun control laws but legislators want to prevent people from making guns with 3D printers? |
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| ▲ | WillPostForFood an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Some states, like California, and New York (which recently passed the first 3d printer ban), have restrictive gun control. These laws are in conflict with Supreme Court rulings supporting the 2nd Amendment, but the litigation and appeal process is very slow. It is 9 years into the Duncan case in California challenging magazine capacity limits, 7 years into the Miller case challenging California's Assault rifle ban. | |
| ▲ | jatora 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The USA has plenty of gun control laws | |
| ▲ | xbar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unlike the downvoters, I'm genuinely curious: do you believe a narrative that the US has no gun control laws? Sometimes I wonder if that is what people outside the US think. |
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