The real problem was always the grip being the serialized part of a firearm…

As long as that’s true, firearm regulations are easy to circumvent.

“Fire Control Units” make more sense, but is still just kicking the can down the road. Eventually those would be home made too.

It’s like racoon-proofing a trashcan, if you do it step by step, all you’re doing is teaching raccoons to break into trash cans. If you start out secure enough, they never learn.

It’s easy to find examples of homemade guns. Here’s a blog full of them: www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/author/improguns/

Most of them are made with crude metalworking, not 3D printing. Making a quality firearm is difficult; making one that goes bang most times the trigger is pulled is not.

Somebody once suggested removing all restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms, but severely regulating ammunition.

This, I like this.

TMK, while ammunition is somewhat regulated already, it’s even easier to manufacture with minimal resources. Hobbyists have been manufacturing ammunition for a very long time. In the short term, those manufacturers would fill in the demand gap left by factory ammo.

It would certainly make ammunition more expensive, and thus potentially curb unnecessary use, but a lot of that unnecessary use is a big predictor WRT safe use, so I’m not entirely sure the net effect would be positive in the long term either.

Also, as a general note…

Since fascist governments always seek a monopoly on violence, the fact that I’ve been pro gun control for a very long time hasn’t stopped me from turning my head on the issue. Many comrades will undoubtedly disagree with me on this point, but: I think now is not the time for leftists to be pro gun control.

Yep. Someone safely using their gun and teaching others how to safely use theirs can easily go through thousands of rounds in a pretty short time period. Someone murdering with one only needs a few rounds ever. Restricting ammo sale quantity only hurts safe and legal users.

If it discourages people from owning guns or getting into guns as a hobby, then it makes society overal safer.

Abstinence only education doesn’t work. Gun safety training is critical for safe use.

Being against gun safety is an extremely counterproductive position.

Lmao, “Nothing can be done to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens”.

Try and be less American.

Critical for safe use, yes.

But really who is actually using them for any real purpose beyond: 1 hunting for sustinence (not sport) 2 military 3 protection from wildlife

How often do most gun owners actually do those things? How often do most people do those things?

Doesn’t it make more sense that if you need to do those things, then you get the training before doing them?

I believe that was Chris Rock: youtu.be/VZrFVtmRXrw

The real problem was always the grip being the serialized part of a firearm…

Not the grip, the receiver. Serializing the grip wouldn’t make any sense. Sometimes the receiver includes the grip, sometimes it doesn’t, it depends on the firearm.

Either way, it’s basically the “frame” or “chassis” of the firearm. It doesn’t make sense to serialize any other portion because you could just swap that part out and have an ostensibly different firearm.

It doesn’t make sense to serialize any other portion because you could just swap that part out and have an ostensibly different firearm.

Grip/frame/chassis is the easiest part to make at home…

Yes, some part needs serialized no that does not mean we make it the easiest part to make yourself

California just passed a law

Looks inside

Mon 1 Jun 2026

Their laws are so “liberal”

-sigh-

Now all the 3D printing bros get to experience what life is like as a firearm bro.

The laws are not so bad but it’s the malicious compliance of retailers and manufacturers that will make your hobby nearly impossible.

Oh but if you have plenty of money there are no issues for you.

Hm nah this is mostly about commercial printers. As a 3d printer hobbieist I can build it from the ground up so I wouldn’t care much

Most of the hobbyist 3D printer market is not people who think that building 3D printers is fun and their primary hobby, it’s people who bought them to print other stuff for them.

It’s literally the entire reason Bambu has shot to popularity so fast.

The mechanical hardware build is no problem, building a controller and firmware is a different matter. This legislation is all about the firmware.

I have some experience with 3d printing equipment but I’m not sure I could build a controller from the ground up. To be fair, I’ve never really looked into it so maybe it’s easier than it seems.

You can buy a controller at any place that sells motors or Arduinos. None of my printers have their stock controller.

The firmware most controllers run is often a modified version of one of the different open source 3d printer firmwares (klipper, Marlin, etc)

You can even choose to compile and flash the firmware yourself (often just load bin file to sdcard and insert into board)

But all of that is moot because the controller and firmware are not capable of that level of processing. You would have to implement it on the slicer level, and even that wouldn’t work because most of them are open source.

True

Sick! They just made a stronger gun trafficking industry! This is a huge win for business minded career criminals. /S

This so broad and vague as to be unconstitutional. It’s like mandating that computers have to have technology that prevents hate speech. A 3d printer, like a computer, a hammer, a pencil, or the myriad of other tools humans use is just a general tool that can be put to good or bad uses. It would be insane to require anti-skull bashing technology for hammers and it is crazy to burden 3d printer manufacturers to develop technology to try to do this. Moreover, 3d printers are just one way to make ghost guns. A better way may be just home CNC. Instead of additive technology laying down layers of plastic one by one, with home CNC you can take a block of metal and machine it out, subtractive technology. The bill does not impact home CNC. So dumb!

mandating that computers have to have technology that prevents hate speech.

What a brilliant idea, let’s get on it immediately. 🤣

Joking aside, you are 100% right.
Except I think the idea of printing a gun is to avoid detection in metal detectors.

The vast majority of these 3d printed guns use the fact that the registered “gun” is only a small part of the actual whole gun. You can buy barrels, magazines, slides, firing pins, etc, all mail order without any fuss — it’s the part with the serial number that is actually the firearm and restricted. So if you print that part (which is often basically just a shell to hold the metal components in place) you have an unserialized gun that’s basically just as good as one from a gun store.

OK, maybe that would be possible to prevent, but I doubt it.

You do know that 3d printed guns are not 100% plastic, large chunks of them are just normal metal gun parts. I’m also wondering what you think bullets are made of?

Please don’t repeat stupid shit like saying 3d printed guns go past metal detectors. It will hurt the 3d printing community.

I think the idea of printing a gun is to avoid detection in metal detector

Wrong.

And with machined metal, you might make something that can shoot more than one bullet that probably won’t explode in your face.

Are you somehow under the impression a 3D printed firearm will explode in your face?

All part of why the Democrat party is only slightly smaller bags of shit than the Republican party. Neither one is worth a damn. It’s all about control, power, and keeping rich.

We should pass a law that all knives have to know what purpose they are being used for and should refuse to be used for stabbing or otherwise hurting people.

What you don’t understand is that this is only about guns on the surface. This will enable every 3d printer manufacturer to harvest tons of data from everyone. To a point where the printer can not work without a connection to the server for security reasons by law.

You could buy a metal pipe and fill it with gun powder and you have a cheaper and more robust gun than a 3d printer could ever build.

Lol, do you realize that regular 2D printer manufacturers have mandates for embedding codes in the prints so that they can be traced?

Or that Photoshop and photo editing software has mandated counterfeit bill detection features in it?

It doesn’t completely invalidate all of your points, but the idea is not as crazy or unprecedented as a hammer with anti murder technology. Hell even just basic cap guns have to have an orange tip.

As long as gun nuts kept insisting on designing and printing guns, this was inevitably going to happen. Like what the fuck did they think the end result of designing and distributing murder machines online was going to be?? Did they really think everyone, in every jurisdiction and country around the world, was going to agree with their dumbass Republican interpretation of the 2nd amendment?

But can you 3D print a guillotine?

Asking for a friend.

That law is impossible to follow and moronic.
You can’t prevent a new unknown designs to be printed, and my guess is those are pretty trivial to make. And there is guaranteed to be workarounds too. This is just enshittification by law.
My guess is that this law will not pass.

My guess is that this law will not pass.

Reread the first 5 words of the headline.

Sigh…

Now read a little further:

The bill must still pass through the California State Senate, and will pass through California governor Gavin Newsom’s desk if it clears the Senate. Newsom can then either sign it into law, or veto it.

But I can see the people upvoting you didn’t do that either. Sigh…
It’s not my fault the headline is stupid and misleading. It has only passed 1 step out of 3.

Yep. That’s not just a stupid headline. It’s flat out wrong.

Exactly

It’ll pass, it just won’t matter outside of California and the corporate entities 3D printing there.

You can still print guns out of your heavily modified Ender 9999 covered in a trash bag.

They will do anything except properly regulate guns huh

No, California already does lots of gun regulation.

If anything, I think this is the result of a culture in which they’re looking for ways to do more when there’s no much more they can really do without federal changes.

It’s fucked up. California legislators just do not really care about surveillance or civil rights at this this point.

I think this is the result of a culture in which they’re looking for ways to do more

Well, except for actually effective policies like better access to mental health care and reducing socioeconomic inequality. Because that would take actual effort.

but if we built a bunch of housing my property value might go down - average parasitic nimby

this is a fair concern for any politician because landowners are primarily voters, but sometimes politicians need to fo things that are political suicide for the good of what they represent.

I think this is the result of a culture in which they’re looking for ways to do more

All gun control is about controlling the actions of citizens who already abide by the law.

Poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, mental health, and income inequality are the causes of gun violence. Treat those root causes, and it doesn’t matter how many guns there are.

If gun ownership directly translated to gun violence, Finland and Switzerland would have many times the rates of gun violence as the US. In those countries, the total number of guns owned might be smaller, but the overall percentage of people who own guns is nearly 100%. Those countries don’t have the same problems with gun violence because they address the real root causes of gun violence.

It’s California, you ignorant swine.

My favorite thing about these super-specific gun laws is how we’re 50 fiefdoms where none of it is ultimately enforceable.

Americans do not give a fuck. We’re a violent people and if your kid gets hurt so we can have our toys, it’s a-okay.

Uvalde Texas re-elected the police chief who let all those children die in that school shooting.

Everyone once in a while you really have to stop and gander at just how dumb and cruel of a nation America is.

I’m assuming it’s a combination of the lack of strong public education, combined with a toxically grueling, safety-net free society, that leaves people with no bandwidth to self educate or think things through properly outside of school, but it’s always wild to me the level of dumbness and cruelty that it results in. In other countries people will laugh about the intelligence of the “average” voter etc, but no other nation I’ve been to has had that combination of dumbness and flat out uncaring cruelty at anywhere close to the level that I’ve seen in the US.

Sounds so much like age limit to “protect the children”. If that’s seen as a good idea by the rest of the world’s leaders… I hope my not-connected old printer will last as long as I!

Thanks gun nuts! You’re obsession with point and click murder machines has now led to this.

That’s stupid. Let’s just build our own with FOSS.

This really seems like it’s just a way to get DRM onto printers to stop people from printing replacement parts or ‘copyrighted’ materials.