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.
this hasn't been true for like 5 years now
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.
You're spelling out a specific process in detail--which is the only reason I'm picking on details. Do you have anything documenting what you're describing?
From what I remember, Apple's system was proposed, but never shipped. They proposed hashing your photos locally and comparing them to a local database of known CSAM images. Only when there was was a match, they would transmit the photos for manual confirmation. This describes Apple's proposal [1].
I believe what did ship is an algorithm to detect novel nude imagery and gives some sort of warning for kids sending or receiving that data. None of that involves checks against Apple's server.
I do think other existing photo services will scan only photos you've uploaded to their cloud.
I'm happy to make corrections. To my knowledge, what you're describing hasn't been done so far.
[1] https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On...
its a framing trap to think you have to print or cnc the whole thing in one job.
split it up into many smaller jobs, each one not looking dangerous, rezero start the next section as if its a new job, spiff it all up with a session of crank and curse finishing, and the blockade is meaningless.
Receivers are tracked.
People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.
And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.
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?
The government allows private ownership of automatic weapons, but hasn't issued any new tax stamps for 50 years. You can convert any semiauto gun into a full-auto gun for a few cents of 3D printed parts (or a rubber band). The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.
I think yes, it is reasonable for Congresspeople to fire a gun before they legislate on it, because otherwise they are incapable of writing good laws.
Good gun regulation in the US would probably look like car insurance, where gun owners need to register and insure their weapons against the possibility of crimes being committed with them. There are so many guns compared to the amount of gun crime that it would probably not end up terribly expensive, especially if you own a gun safe.
> The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.
This wasn't the goal by the congresspeople, and that them having fired a gun would've changed that goal.
That was the goal. They knew they weren't going to be able to pass any kind of legislation that actually msde people safer, but they wanted to look like they were "doing something".
This is incredibly common. It's the primary reason behind the TSA and its continuous expansion, for example.
I'd also add that the TSA is a good reason why we shouldn't expect talking legislators to gun ranges would make better gun laws.
The reason the TSA is what it is is because legislators fly more than most people. If you've ever been to DC you see a lot of this sort of security theater everywhere.
So much of the TSAs budget should be redirected towards what would actually make long distance travel safer, improving the ATC and Amtrak.
If you want discounts because you live in a low-crime area, have a gun safe, have many guns, etc. then obviously the storage location for the weapon needs to be declared to the insurance company.
https://medium.com/statute-circuit/the-atfs-quiet-digital-tr...
It's not too surprising, considering the way the rules are written at the ATF. There's basically zero logical thought that goes into pistol vs rifle vs felony:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perf...
(Sorry for the reddit link, it's a common image but that was the first url I found from a quick search that had it up front and center).
The ATF has been in court (and lost) quite a bit [1] over this.
[0] there's a nice picture and writeup here of a pistol brace being setup https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/gear-review-sig-sb15-pisto...
[1] a brief rundown of the 2023-2025 legal rulings https://www.fflguard.com/atf-pistol-brace-rule/
It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.
You don't have to be a life-long user to regulate heroin, but if you start legislating second-hand heroin smoke, people might look at you sideways. You kinda need to know a little even if you've never actually ever seen heroin. If you demonstrate severe ignorance, people are going to call you on it.
To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.
they should at least be able to understand that a 3d printer is akin to a turing machine and what the real limits are - strength of the printed material vs length of the strip of memory.
I don’t own a gun, and think guns should be regulated more and better, but the heroin let alone another one are just flawed. There are no legitimate, non-life-ruining use cases for either of those analogies.
Absolutely ridiculous.
> one particular design, outlined in his book Expedient Homemade Firearms, is the best known. This design makes extensive use of easily procured materials such as folded sheet metal, bar stock, washers, and hex screws. It is a simple blowback-operated sub-machine gun and entirely made from craft-produced components, including the magazine and pistol grip. The major drawback of such designs is the lack of rifling in the barrel, which results in poor accuracy and limited range
This book was openly sold on Amazon 10 years ago. I still have one on my shelf.
So, unless your garage is down to a pair of rusty pliers and a dried-out Biro then you're probably still up there.
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
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.
EDIT: I think you mean "allegedly"
Well yeah, it's not exactly easy to get everyone to understand that insurance isn't magic and money out has to match money in.
So yeah, money out not matching money in is exactly the problem.
https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/invest...
In 2023, they had a 0.8% profit margin[0]. 9 billion dollars in a trillion dollar industry.
Ignoring the disingenuous framing ("taking off the top" including how much they pay their employees), how does that compare to other industries?
[0]https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/2024-annual-hea...
Highlighting that was actually part of my point. What utility does insurance add to justify its existence as a middle man? How are we better off with a middle man taking a cut vs nationalizing the industry? And that 14% is at best, given the other externalities of the existence of insurance and its perverse incentives.
You're saying "how is that worse than other industries", but I'm saying, why is there an industry there at all?
The real problem with our system is that for anyone who is going to hit their deductible, or especially their out of pocket max, the costs no longer matter at all. Sure, that cancer drug can be $500,000. GLP1 drugs for $1,000 a month? Why not?
Of course, there's no free lunch on this. In a single payer system you get things like the UK not approving certain cancer treatments for people over a certain age, certain medications just aren't available, etc.
Otherwise you could make every plan a very high deductible plan, possible just not cover medications at all, etc. But then people will complain about people not being able to afford things, especially in the short term.
God forbid individuals and organizations not choose paths of action that "low level piss off" millions of people such that their chance of being at the business end of some outlier who will actually do violence upon them is non-trivial.
It's not hard to not be "the thing" in any given crazy's life they choose to go out with a bang over, especially if you're not something they deal with every day. If that means that the default amount of screwage your organization applies needs to be dialed back, or that you must clean house a little better or more often then cry me a river.
>most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is
Except it's not. The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
> The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Linco...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_John_Lennon
Agree to disagree. I'm not willing to trust the judgement of those most willing to commit gun violence as to whom deserves gun violence.
e.g. https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.net/ritchietorres.house.go...
Every part except the firing pin is now printable (you can print quite strong carbon-fiber reinforced parts at home). The firing pin can be made from a nail or similar piece of metal.
> You can't get bullets
Bullets are mostly easy enough to make. One of my neighbors growing up was a competitive shooter who competed nationally and internationally. He manufactured his own ammo in his home shop, using tools any boomer dad had access to, like a lathe, presses and very accurate scales. He didn't really pay any more for ammo than we did per round. The only reason criminals don't do it is because buying factory ammo on the gray and black market is so easy.
The most difficult part to make would probably be the primers, but that still isn't difficult for any chemist.
Here's a (old) video of someone in Europe making their own ammo at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Cx4idIIe0
Even in police force or army, they literally count every single bullet, and for every fired bullet, it must be explained in detail.
Maybe that's why we have low gun-related crime here.
Gunpowder is fairly simple to make.
> Maybe that's why we have low gun-related crime here.
Mexico has extremely restrictive gun laws and that is not the case there. It seems to have more to do with how much crime you have than whether someone who could be charged with homicide could redundantly be charged with having a firearm.
You need to hold a suitable licence, which isn't expensive and is mostly an exercise in proving to the police that you're not a violent psychopath who's likely to run up to people in cars and shoot them in the face.
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.
[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.
Preemptive regulation is absurd.
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
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.
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).
0: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/11/17/handing-zip-g...
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, 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)
But don't worry, in the mean time they're coming for our regular knives.
The BBC has already rolled out Idris Ebla to explain that kitchen knives shouldnt have points[0]. Yes this has been picked up by politicians with the minister for policing at the time calling it an interesting idea [1].
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1j...
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/...
Sorry about the amp links
https://www.reddit.com/r/ATBGE/comments/b4d9gy/unicorn_rifle...
(Yes, it is a real gun and it shoots real 9mm bullets.)
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.
I get:
blog.adafruit.com Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.
blog.adafruit.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.
And this hangs forever. What difference does it make if I access this site using a browser (blocked anyway) or I asked my LLM to fetch the content? I bet my LLM coukd get it anyway as I'm using basic local scraping with firecrawl for backup. So my LLM if it fails to retrieve using my basic local crawl4ai will use my paid firecrawl api and those guys can scrape EVERYTHING.
I do not understand why do you (as a site owner) care? Are these bots generating so much traffic? Can you set it up to serve text only version to them then?
It seems ruthlessly disappointing to consider, but maybe Adafruit isn't cut out for this whole Internet thing.
An invisible product is one that may as well not exist. When a person can't find it, then they also can't purchase it.
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.
By repeating propaganda at you though desperate financiers can hack your brains innate prediction loop to convince you you're knocking on the door of infamy.
Look, I get you. You're trying to fill the hole created when father never came back with cigarettes. Mom always blamed you for his leaving. But little Warboy screaming "Witness me make line go up !" everyone else is a self selecting meat suit too working unintentionally (simply distracted by their own lives needs they never encounter your pitch) and in some instances intentionally (fomenting economic and political instability) against you to support themselves.
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.
Either the browser has Javascript disabled (Tor), or its Javascript engine is very outdated/broken (a couple of old Firefox forks) or doesn't support Javascript at all.
It doesn't necessarily mean the browser is vulnerable to anything, just that it's not a browser normal websites would expect to encounter so the bot check fails.
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/consu...
The rest of the stuff? You can buy and overnight ship it to yourself legally with almost no regulation (as of 2026 CA requires more gun-like treatment for those parts).
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
It's so much easier just to "recruit" the direct manager of the firmware engineering team. Convince them it's their patriotic duty to add "tracking dots" to the design requirements without drawing attention to where the requirement came from.
The engineers implementing it will assume the requirement came from somewhere above, or another engineering team. And if the executives ever notice, they will assume it came from somewhere below. Both will probably assume the legal department was responsible, and that there is some kind of law somewhere requiring them to implement that functionality.
Moreover, most executives don't require blackmail; they tend to go along to get along.
Big company executives are easiest to control; they want money and all of it. US Government luckily has plenty of it to throw around.
I'm aware of the programs Snowden revealed, Tempora / XKeyscore / Longhaul / the like, plus I've heard J. Edgar Hoover did bad things and lots of CIA meddling internationally was bad. Still, these seem qualitatively different to the explicit blackmail you're referring to.
Do you (or someone else reading this) know of historical examples that demonstrate a pattern of this sort of thing? You can interpret "this sort of thing" as you wish.
That's a lot to ask for on the spot, so if not, I would be interested in what generally makes you approach the situation from this cynical angle, especially given that it's the FBI. In my experience, which is fairly limited but is as a US citizen, most of the time the US government mostly follows the law and doesn't do this sort of thing to citizens.
If you want examples of events that could be reasonably interpreted as “this sort of thing”, the son of the guy who tried to assassinate Trump the second time was mysteriously arrested for possession of CSAM a week after his dad was arrested. I’m inclined to believe that the base rate of people being into that stuff is reasonably low so whenever I hear about someone being charged with it in relation to a completely unrelated major news story it gets my spidey sense tingling.
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.
This legislation is basically like a gold star on some politicians report card about preventing gun deaths. The impacted groups are allways gonna be niche, but it looks good to the overall public.
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"
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.
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.
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?
https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/hzx6btMYEqZJfSAL3WVxXuW3-jw=/1...
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/windows-10-ctrl-alt-del-5b475456c9e77c0037e730b3.png){kind=link}
Doing anything other than a reboot started with protected mode MS-Windows 3.1 IIRC (then marketed as "386 enhanced mode").
Before Windows 3.1 it just rebooted the machine as you described.
Launching Task Manager was the 95 to XP behaviour, but NT behaved differently -- even Windows NT 4.0 (developed alongside Windows 95) took you to the security screen with Ctrl+Alt+Del (something that would later be ported to Vista), where launching Task Manager was one of its options. These OSes weren't used residentially though, until Windows 2000 attempted to merge their lineages and Windows XP finally cemented the deal.
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
Yes, I get that you're trying to express a deeply RWNJ partisan view but as a proud LWNJ I must express that the real world is much more complicated than "commies are nuts yo". Perhaps the issue is rampant authoritarianism?
Yes, you got a president democratically elected by the clear majority of the people in the USA on a clear platform to deport all illegal immigrants (as impossible as that might be in practice), and you - the minority - are flooding the streets, harassing the law enforcement forces and committing crimes to stop the law from being applied even after the majority of the electors told you that they indeed want the law to be applied (in case you had any doubts that the law - that already existed - should indeed be applied).
If that's not rampant authoritarianism, nothing is...
P.S. If you know so much about Marx, you should probably also know that Communists are standing in a long time honored tradition of calling fascists to anyone that's in their way. Stalin was already denouncing Trotsky (you know, the guy that was actually even more ideologically pure about communism than Stalin himself) and his supporters as "fascists" back in 1928.
Just 2 more years for LWNJ to be using the same tactic for 100 years straight... at least they know how to keep traditions, I give them that much.
It's like you just confused RAM with SSD because they both involve gigabytes.
"We have to ensure we are unapologetic about our socialism", Mamdani, 2021
"There are also other issues we firmly believe in [...] weather is the end goal of seizing the means of production", Mamdani, 2021
"We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.", Mamdani, 2026
It's funny. You people go up in arms calling Elon Musk a fascist because he made a suspicious gesture with his right hand. But, then you have a guy outright telling you he wants to "seize the means of production" and you make excuses on why he is not actually a communist.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jul/03/seizing-means...
Collectivism and some amount of state controlled means of production are typical of many leftist systems. America already does this in many places: military, power, education, civil works. Communism stands out among other -isms on the left in that it is single-party and incompatible with democracy.
> suspicious gesture with his right hand
It was a Nazi salute. Don't believe me? Go to a crowded street corner and do the "suspicious gesture," and gauge the reaction.
So, you proved his point.
Why is that considered evidence? There are many cases of elected representatives doing things that do not align with the wishes of their constituents. There are also many cases of regulators regulating things that their constituents don't care about at all, but help a politician's career by building their reputation as one of "getting things done".
Actual evidence would be polling, citizen organizations, donations etc. None of which seem to exist for this issue.
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 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...
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.
And the printer doesn't really know what the model is. It would have to reverse the gcode instructions back into a model somehow. The printer isn't really the place to detect and prevent this sort of thing imo. Especially with how cheap some 3d printers are getting, they often don't really have much compute power in them. They just move things around as instructed by the g-code. If the g-code is malformed it can even break the printer in some instances, or at least really screw up your print.
There are even scripts that modify the gcode to do weird things the printer really isn't designed for, like print something and then have the printer move in such a way to crash into and push the printed object off the plate, and then start over and print another print. The printer will just follow these instructions blindly.
- a washer if run on a small machine in metric w/ flood coolant
- a lamp base if run on a larger router in Imperial w/ a tool changer
and that deriving what will be made by a given G-code file in 3D is a problem which the industry hasn't solved in decades, the solution of which would be worthy of a Turing Award _and_ a Fields Medal, I don't see this happening.
A further question, just attempting it will require collecting a set of 3D models for making firearms --- who will persuade every firearms manufacturer to submit said parts, where/how will they be stored, and how will they be secured so that they are not used/available as a resource for making firearms?
A more reasonable bit of legislation would be that persons legally barred from owning firearms are barred from owning 3D printers and CNC equipment unless there is a mechanism to submit parts to their parole officer for approval before manufacturing, since that's the only class of folks which the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to, and a reasonable argument is:
1st Amendment + 2nd Amendment == The Right to 3D Print and Bear Arms
Making tiny modifications isn't just a method of circumvention, it's like part of the main workflow of using a 3d model.
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.
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.
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....
It is my understanding [0] that multiple videos show that Petti did not draw his gun.
Do you know of evidence to the contrary?
[0] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/did-pretti-draw-wea...
He possessed a weapon on his person in a state where that in completely legal, in a country whose constitution explicitly says he's allowed to own that weapon. There was not a single reason for him to be executed by federal agents.
Absolutely vile smear against a hard working VA nurse and stand up citizen.
There were zero attempts made by Alex Pretti to draw a weapon. He was being a hero by helping 2 women move away from the masked officers forcefully pushing them.
This must be satire. This will never, ever happen in the US. Guns are a religion here.
You know that line from the Mandalorian, "Weapons are part of my religion"?
That is true in the most literal possible sense for a large portion of Americans. And not all of them right-wing, either- if anything, the past 5 years have convinced many of my left-wing friends to get concealed weapons training and being carrying pistols.
They tend to lean on whether it is reasonable that the Founders might have had access to such a weapon with their technology. Machine gun is just a rifle with automatic rechamber. Not an unreasonable upgrade for 1700s technology. Maybe, I dunno; political people don't have to actually care about the details.
There are limits. And if cases like this made it there they might rule that no Founder was smelting the materials. That they would have had to collaborate, in some "market dictates options" ruling to limit hermits going in a rampage. Also everyone a weapons assembly line in their home is anti-corporate capitalism.
"George Washington understood the value of civic life and sound economics! He would not have tolerated such insular selfishness! He did not make his own weapons! He engaged in trade!"
Not saying it's realistic but politics is not never controlled by people living in reality. Making shit up seems as reasonable as anything.
This is largely machine guns and explosives. Pistols, rifles, etc are ordinary weapons in common use*
*NYC authorities may not agree
Sawed off shotguns seems arbitrary and that was ultimately my (pre-coffee) point; government is fine with coming up with an arbitrary restriction when they want.
They could outlaw the means of production. Gen pop is not allowed to own that.
Not only did jews have guns, but Polish jews had an entire military and state and that did not protect them.
Because guns do not protect you, other people willing to die for you protect you.
Basically everything else can be owned with an NFA tax stamp. Nuclear weapons my understanding is the difficulty is more with laws on handling the material than specifically owning one as a weapon, so I'm unsure those are even outright illegal either.
Explosives are actually one of the ones with looser restrictions. Even felons can own and re-instate their explosives rights, because bafflingly when congress de-funded the firearms rights restoration process for felons they forgot to do the one for explosives. Felons can also own and manufacture explosive black powder without scrutiny or paperwork, even ones intended to go in a black powder gun.
There’s a whole community of folks building semi-automatic auto-return triggers that are “technically” semi automatic, but with just a gentle squeeze, fire off another. If you maintain that grip, the return mechanism engages, returning the trigger to firing position, where your pressure causes it to fire again… it’s called a Forced Reset Trigger.
My point overall was government is fine with arbitrary exceptions that would get Stan's dad going all "Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was America."
A large fraction of the harm from firearms comes from their ability to fire rapidly which didn’t exist when the constitution was written. As such it was making a very different balance of risk between the general public and individuals.
2. As someone else pointed out, early repeating rifles did exist then.
3. If the meaning of the constitution is only to be evaluated against the technology available at the time -- what does that say about the validity of the 1st or 4th amendments with modern technology?
But again, in historical context, the point of the 2A was to permit people to own the most deadly weapons of war that existed at that time.
So are a pile of stones, it’s the degree of risk to the public that matters not some arbitrary classification.
Ignoring differences is degree here isn’t enough to win the argument.
Where was that part of the decision making process in 1789?
But obviously we don’t have direct knowledge of every conversation.
Where? The constitution says neither. It says "Arms"
Regardless, the constitution specifically makes reference to the private ownership of cannons and warships.
> To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
Very obviously individuals were expected to be part of the militia, which was the military at the time (c.f. the Militia Acts 2 years after ratification requiring individual gun ownership and very clearly laying out that all able-bodied white male citizens aged 18-45 were part of the militia), but also states could regulate weapons if they wanted.
Not a firearm.
I didn’t say we could ban compressed air powered guns, I specifically said percussion caps. The Girardoni was way less dangerous than a modern handgun.
In the 230 intervening years, we've vastly increased the scope of the federal government and developed a formal military, so one might argue we ought to amend the constitution to change exactly what's allowed under 2A (e.g. it should be straightforward to have a nuclear weapons ban added with unanimous agreement), but as it stands, 2A (+14A) clearly gives individuals the right to own the arms necessary to run a functioning ("well-regulated") militia, which in 2026 means at least semi-automatic firearms.
Thrown stones are a fast firing deadly weapon. They, compressed air guns, and ball musket etc aren’t used by modern military forces in combat because they are less dangerous.
A rule that allows compressed air weapons yet bans percussion caps is quite reasonable and could pass constitutional scrutiny.
Banding heavy machine guns yet another invention after the constitution was written didn’t, so there’s clear present this wouldn’t either.
Obviously there’s a bunch of exceptions, including as you point out the federal option of going through a background check and paying 200$/grenade. But that’s only at the federal level it doesn’t necessarily meet state requirements.
The rules on those background checks are as capricious as banning people who were dishonorably discharged from the military.
Supreme court rulings are arbitrary as they regularly reverse or update standards, sometimes multiple times.
From Heller v. DC:
“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
A few years after that ruling, the Massachusetts state supreme court upheld a conviction for a woman who had carried a taser for self defense. The Supreme Court accepted her challenge, allowed it to go forward without paying court costs, and unanimously overturned that ruling without asking for oral arguments ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/ ):
“The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they ‘were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.’ This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment ‘extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’
“The court next asked whether stun guns are ‘dangerous per se at common law and unusual,’ in an attempt to apply one ‘important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms.’ ... In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are ‘unusual’ because they are ‘a thoroughly modern invention.’ By equating ‘unusual’ with ‘in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,’ the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.
“Finally, the court used ‘a contemporary lens’ and found ‘nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.’ But Heller rejected the proposition ‘that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.’
“For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent.”
The fact that Caetano was a unanimous and thorough ruling says a lot to me. Perhaps you’re holding out hope that Heller will be overturned soon, but the chances for that are very slim ( https://youtu.be/nFTRwD85AQ4 ).
The right to a jury trial is another example of favoring the individual instead of say, the Star Chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
I don’t think we even disagree per se, but it’s hard to argue the constitution wasn’t written primarily with the thought of what England and how it exercised authority in mind. Individual roadmen and ruffians, let’s say, existed but weren’t existential threats to shape the tone of the new nation’s foundation, were they?
The degree of importance they place on individual factors here is obviously debatable, but they just had two governments fail. England and the articles of confederation didn’t work so there was a larger emphasis on practicality over idealism.
"No person, firm or corporation shall sell or deliver any three-dimensional printer in the state of New York unless such printer is equipped with blocking technology," https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S9005
They don't like firearms in the hands of the public.
The goal is to be an indirect ban that's hard to challenge. California has had significant success with strategies such as requiring "microstamping technology" (but it could be anything - it's just a limiting mechanism) in conjunction with an approved handgun roster to limit handgun sales in the state. This is almost certain to be a similar strategy.
One can always expect the "don't thread on me" country to have some of the craziest, most intrusive rules at the most random places.
> But the answer to misuse isn’t surveillance built into the tool itself. We don’t require table saws to scan wood for weapon shapes. We don’t require lathes to phone home before turning metal. We prosecute people who make illegal things, not people who own tools.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
stuck on loading (tested on both latest Firefox and Chrome on macOS). I'm on Indonesia, BTW. Could someone upload the PDF?
All it is missing is a screw with a serial number on it.
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.
But when it comes to a theoretical problem we must take action even if it takes freedoms and opportunities away from normal people.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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....
I also don't see the point about manufacturing firearms as particularly convincing. It was a process that used to be more difficult and technology has made that process substantially easier. It's reasonable for a government to think the old process didn't need regulation due to that complexity while the new technology intensifies the problem enough for a government response. New technology prompts new regulation all the time for exactly this reason.
From the text of the proposed legislation, this blocking technology needs to fail closed. This means that you need a form of permission to start a manufacturing process. It compels each entity involved in the supply chain to add this government kill-switch from slicing software, firmware developers, 3D printer manufactures, etc.
The entire premiss for this? To stop individuals from manufacturing firearms and firearm components WHICH IS A LAWFUL ACTIVITY! Unbelievable that anyone would defend such government overreach.
Your motivations are transparent. You are using regurgitated anti-gun arguments. Arguments that have been thoroughly dismantled by SCOTUS. Many before you have used this logical fallacy that advancements in technology give the government a pass to interfere with individuals and their rights. Even very progressive judges have conceded that the first amendment is certainly not limited to quill and ink, but applies to the Internet. Additionally, the advent of strong cryptography does not give the government a reason to strip people of their 4th and 5th amendment protections.
Everything is a lawful activity until they make a law outlawing it. You're arguing against the idea of all new laws.
>Your motivations are transparent. You are using regurgitated anti-gun arguments.
I wasn't hiding anything. I think stricter gun regulations would be a net benefit for an American society that is way too obsessed with guns. The voters of New York generally agree with that idea. The last few months have also made it clear that all the years of 2nd Amendment advocates talking about us needing guns to fight tyranny have been lying about their motivations. So if we're demanding transparency, let's also be clear that there is no deeper ideology at play here beyond a love of guns.
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...
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.
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.
How is that less invasive?
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.
I've done that too. You travel so aggressively, eventually you have some oopsies.
I went through a stint where I was driving for work, and working with a bunch of people in a woodsy state. A guy would take us shooting, and he asked me to buy a box of ammo to replace what I shot - so 20 bucks for 500 rounds of .22 caliber ammo.
Next time I flew was the first time I had actually been selected for TSA precheck - you know, the Trusted Traveler program and you can guess what I left in my carry-on. I was very apologetic and had to talk to a very grumpy city police officer, but it was fine. I paid a fine of $130, and that was it - they offered to let me check my bag to keep the munitions too!
It has never even come up with my 3 Global Entry interviews either. And yes - I live in a blue state.
Obviously don't do it. It wasn't a problem for me, but very much YMMV. I know someone else who got dinged for having a banana they bought in a foreign airport, and that continues to come up in their Global Entry interviews. Live ammunition < Bananas, apparently.
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.
Is it that easy to acquire even illegal firearms in the US, that you can just walk around in NYC to the shadier streets and find randoms willing to sell them to you?
However, you really don't even need to do that. You could just drive across the NY border to a state with looser gun laws, buy one there, shave off the serial number, and bring it back to NY. You could also just steal a gun from one of the many Americans who already own one.
You can also legally buy an unfinished lower receiver in many states (the part of a gun that is typically serialized). Since it's technically unfinished, it doesn't require a serial number. Then you drill a few holes into it and assemble it with off the shelf, also un-serialized gun parts.
I don't know where you get bullets for the gun though.
the irony
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.
If anyone needs help printing parts for a Voron just let me know. (Not a real offer for the public, but for friends absolutely.)
Easily sidestepped, it's there to make a point I guess: https://www.jwz.org/blog/
That doesn't help you directly, but perhaps that might help tracing your issue.
Unless you were running a Ceci n'est pas une pipebomb bit that flew over my addled head ...
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.
hmmm
> Sorry, you have been blocked. You are unable to access adafruit.com
> Why have I been blocked?
> This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.
Someone is lying here
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.
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.
robotics? (if you can assume AGI with a perfect world model and perfect motor skills you're insanely further than we are now, like hundreds of years in the future)
military planning? (the british isles haven't been invaded since roman times, hint its not for lack of soldiers)
logistics? (power? fuel? ammunition? boats? planes? parachutes?)
law? (where are you launching your invasion from? how are you testing the killbots without being noticed? who is letting you?)
it seems like the only way you believe this is if you've given completely up on trying to understand anything and just truly to your core think that AI = magic
Don't worry, we're safe. It's already been done and it did not win: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/14dv530/the_homele...
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.
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...
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.
It is illegal for the government to make a registry of gun owners. There is an electronic check to clear you as a legal gun owner but there is no registry.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/ctdm3/oldie_but_goody...
...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 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.
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.
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.
Goto 0
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?
If a populace gives up their weapons they become ultimately powerless against armed aggressors. 2A first purpose is to make citizens the first line of defense against invasion. This is supposed to be in place of a standing army from a time that a town could be wiped off the map by invading forces before any military force could be dispatched.
Yes, a permanent standing army is unconstitutional (Article 1 Section 8).
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.
Maybe we shouldn't let people write their own software either, as there's all sorts of crime they could get up to...
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.
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.
That strikes me as extremely counterproductive given the actually sensitive part of a BP is an (outside of the US) unsigned, semi-publicly-documented barcode.
On the other hand, if I need a replacement part for something, it's unlikely I will find the manufacturer giving me models for it. And if a manufacturer is giving me models for it, they probably do so with the explicit expectation that I might end up using them to manufacture a replacement.
In most cases either me or some other volunteer will need to measure the existing part, write down all the critical measurements, and then design a new part from scratch in CAD.
Even if somehow you are able to fingerprint on those critical measurements, that's just _one_ part.
The only way this kind of nonsense law could work is if you mandate that 3D printers must not accept commands from an untrusted source (signature verification) and then you must have software which uses a database to check for such critical measurements, ideally _before_ slicing.
Except that still doesn't work because I can always post-process a part to fit.
And it doesn't work even more because the software will need to contain a signing key. Unless the signing key is on a remote server somewhere to which you must send your model for validation.
This is never going to work, or scale.
There are even more hurdles... I can design and build a 3D printer from scratch and manufacture it using non-CNC machined parts at home. A working, high quality 3D printer.
Where are you going to force me to put the locks? Are you going to require me to show my ID when buying stepper motors and stepper motor drivers?
What about other kinds of manufacturing (that these laws, at least the Washington State ones, also cover)?
Will you ban old hardware?
What about a milling machine? Are you going to ban non-CNC mills?
These are the most ignorant laws made by the most ignorant people. The easiest way to ban people from manufacturing their own guns is to ban manufacture of your own guns. But again, this is a complete non-issue in the US where you can probably get a gun illegally more easily than you can 3D print something half as reliable.
Neither does DRM, really, but it certainly causes a great deal of inconvenience, and is upheld by the legal system.
Pretty sure those 50 thousand or so civilians killed on the street in the recent Iranian protests/riots would have been a lot less, if all those Iranians had easy access to guns, and not just the government.
Drones are not enough, you still need boots on the ground for you to claim control over a territory, and boots on the ground think twice about signing up for service if that includes facing armed mobs with guns on a daily basis.
So no, mobs with guns are not obsolete.
The Taliban are a military and political group compromised of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. It's not even that the US lost to "goat herders with guns". We failed to secure a small country against a well organized, armed minority.
On the flip side in any domestic insurrection, the soldiers know the terrain, language, customs and culture of the people, the supply lines are nothing (rather than having to airlift materiel and people thousands of miles, you drive them on regular roads), the infrastructure supports espionage, most people support the regime and will collaborate to return to stability (since they voted for it), the regime never leaves (you can leave Afghanistan, you can't leave your own country or it ceases to be a country), and if you lose, you lose territory and/or politicians run the risk of violence. The stakes are why these comparisons are never relevant.
Then the americans tried. They were not goat herders. They failed.
The pattern is clear.
So, if one sees the whole of IRGC plus Basij as the "commandos", they alone form an active elite of about 0.5%, if one sees the entirety of the military+police we're looking at easily 2-3 million units, so up to 2%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed...
Drones cut both ways. You’re correct that it allows a small number of people loyal to the regime to asymmetrically oppress a large population. But drone technology is in theory accessible to the populace in an industrialized country.
2) The weapons culture of the US is so obsolete that there are government officials parroting lines about it not being legal to carry a concealed weapon during a protest in Minnesota when it is, actually, very much legal. That is to say, it's not obsolete at all. Given the prior public stances of the Trump administration on firearms, this is incredibly telling, and all the more reason why you can't trust people like them.
They don't have to be exact circles, they just have to be some dots in about the right place. In the UK, the Bank of England issued notes with Elgar on them and the EURion constellation picked out in musical notes ;-)
There’s valid concern with these types of laws and scope creep. But there’s also precedent which shows they can work and be applied reasonably.
Go ahead, try that
That makes efforts far more durable.
Than it’s a matter of showing up in court to defend attacks against the law(s) that protect it.
In this way, we can have durable change, but it’s a high cost road. By design I am sure.
To give another example, the whole modern anti-vaxxer movement was started by a doctor to sell bogus tests.
I think, if anything, the problem is when people buy a cheap clone and blame Prusa when it fails.
You can still make an open source printer with some extrusion and stepper motors, same as always.
I will always admit that maybe I was just unlucky with my S1 but both the printer and the ACE was horrendous experiences and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone based on my problems with them.
Prusa is king. High quality. Open source. EU made and engineered. Slicer is a market leader (Bambu's a fork of it).
But it's a premium brand now. For lighter use by hobbyists, Bambu is the clear winner on price/performance. The 'less open' downside is not a factor to most people, and the printers generally work so well out-of-the-box that repairability isn't as much of a concern as it was on printers of the past.
Personally I went from a Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P (after looking long+hard at Prusa options), and so far, no regrets. (Although I've kept the old Prusa as a 2nd printer and upgraded it to a MK3.5, but mostly just because I do enjoy a bit of tinkering with them)
Yes, the initial purchase price is higher, the lifetime price might not be.
The upgrade kits are definitely a good thing, going from MK3 to MK3S to MK3.5S was a worthwhile upgrade path and has prolonged the useful life of the printer. But they have their limits.
(And with 3D printing going more mainstream, there's a large segment of the market that has no interest in building printers from kits or stripping down printer to install upgrades - even though some of us find that quite enjoyable)
(And I stayed once I saw the quality. Likely Prusa can match or exceed it, but not with what I was willing to lose from my wallet.)
I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.
It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.
So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!
Their QC and customer support has gradually been getting worse. Their printers are rarely competitive feature-wise. Several printer lines are quietly being retired - with bugs remaining open for years and new features only occasionally being backported from other printers. The open-source part is mostly abandoned due to cheaper third-party clones abusing it.
Don't get me wrong, I really like my Prusa printer, but in 2025 I'd have a really hard time justifying buying another one. The "Prusa premium" just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore.
I'm new to 3D printing, so grains of salt abound, but since I started in on the hobby this Christmas, I've purchased four 3D printers. 3 budget-but-highly-regarded kings to start, but they all gave me tons of trouble. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon I got for Christmas that sparked this mess is a budget knockoff of the Bambu X1C, but in the first 30 days of ownership, I experienced 2 hardware failures that (thanks to having to ship parts from Mainland China) have resulted in 16 days of downtime.
To deal with the downtime, I bought a stopgap Qidi Q2, but it had tons of problems -- problems which, according to the reviewers, have all been solved for. Ambiguous error messages. Poor English. Choices between "OK" and "Confirm", neither of which advanced the system. Mainboard errors. Extruder failures. Boot failures. Firmware upgrade failures. I experienced all of these within the first 3 hours of ownership, and filed for a return.
I was working on a project that needed a printer, and now despite having bought a bunch of printers, I didn't have any printers that could print. Looking around locally at what I could buy that day amounted to either a Bambu P2S or a Sovol SV08. I struggled here, because I would _much_ rather be the Sovol owner than the Bambu owner, but I needed a printer, not a project, and so I decided I'd try out the Bambu until I got done with what I needed it for, and then I'd return it.
But it turns out it was amazing. The others (admittedly, budget units) were loud and cantankerous, but the Bambu was only uncivilized for a few minutes of each print, and the rest of the time you barely noticed it running. The ecosystem is obviously great. Being able to monitor jobs or initiate prints from my phone is admittedly a novelty, but it's a nice one, and one that speaks to a consistency of integration. But the important part is that it just worked. There were printable upgrades available, I didn't need to print modular pieces to fix design flaws like the other units. I didn't need to move it further away to deal with the noise. I didn't need to investigate arcane error messages because none ever arose.
Now, I haven't owned a Prusa, so I'm not trying to compare them. I understand that Prusa hardware quality is amazing. I believe that. I'm also wildly interested in the community efforts to implement tool-changing with INDX and INBXX, and they're the kinds of projects that I want to tinker with. But if I'm to own a Prusa, or a Sovol, or a Voron, it'll have to be as my second printer (well technically third, because I still own the Elegoo because it's too cheap to bother trying to return) because most of the time I want to print things, not tinkering with the printer. But while the Prusa machines might be amazing, the Prusa XL is wildly expensive for 5 colors, and the Core One right now can't be bought with multi-color capabilities.
I'm not trying to argue against Prusa here, but the idea that only shills are into Bambu seems flatly wrong. I am ideologically opposed to how Bambu got to the market position they've reached, and for sure they've undoubtedly got a fair amount of shills in their employ but sadly, their products more than live up to the hype.
In the last decade, most 3d printer users were hobbyists and liked to know the internals of the machine they were using.
That's why there are so many useless models of random gadgets on thingiverse. People didn't care about the output, more about the process.
With the arrival of bambu and the last Creality, the market has shifted to a plug and print model where more and more buy the printer as a tool to produce and output and they don't care about the internals or gcode.
They must be able to control their printers from their phone.
The people that started in 3d printing when they had to assemble the whole machine by hand are now sad to see their hobby replaced by something too easy, it feels like cheating.
"How come you don't know how to level the bed and measure the offset with a piece of paper? "
Just like senior dev are sad to see vibe coding replace "true development craft".
I have a 10 year old kit-built prusa I3 sitting next to me. Its brother is in the basement next to a kossel. It's been years since they have seen action, there is a litany of small bits of work they need.
I unboxed an A1 Mini and it's been like an epiphany. I've been printing almost nonstop. It's so much FUN. I just send from my phone and it just works. Everything has been nearly flawless until last night where half a batch of mini utility knife frames started to spaghetti, probably my fault for not fully cleaning the build plate in a bit.
Beats the hell out of glue stick or blue tape, fussing with slicer params, babysitting the first layers, etc etc. Fuck that, gimme the cheat.
I might be a software engineering but I’m not going to waste time writing a bootloader for my next PC when it is a solved problem.
But if nobody was fixing the problems everybody was experiencing except Bambu, then frankly, good for Bambu.
Boo to the gate-keepers. Vorons still exist and likely always will for those that want to dork around with printers, but for the rest of us, printers that work empower the field. In the past 5 weeks, I've started to learn and understand how 3D printers work, I've started to do some simple 3D modeling, and I've begun making models with OpenSCAD, which wasn't a thing that I knew existed before. Those parts are currently on Github.
I've organized a billion things. I've modeled a corner for my weird desk's keyboard tray so that it stops cutting my knees when I swivel my chair too quickly. I've delighted my wife by printing some conveniences. I have (admittedly infinitesimally) advanced the availability of 3D models in a way that I simply would not yet have if I were still messing around procuring the Voron parts list. Quality tooling advances the craft as it makes it more accessible.
But the main thing is that it doesn't actually help anybody for 3D printing to be more difficult, nor does wanting Bambu to be bad make them not good. They are good, and they're leaps and bounds better than most of the products in the field.
Around 2021 I spent quite a lot upgrading and dialing in an Ender 3 V2 so it was repeatable, whisper-quiet, and dead reliable.
That's it. This doesn't end with me buying a Bambu. It's still all of those things. I'm very happy with my printing appliance, and also that its only data connection is via microSD sneakernet.
Why can't you be both. I loved my time with my Ender 5 Pro, I had it for 3 years and I will always freely admit that 90% of the fun was with the tinkering to make the machine work correctly. But you know, you get bored of it. I got an H2D just before christmas and it's incredible to have a machine that "just works". I can print things for myself and others and not worry whether it's going to work or not - it just will.
Same as I used to tinker with my cars when I was younger, now I want an appliance car - I want to get in, press start and drive across europe not worrying whether I'll have to fix it on the roadside or not. I would say it's just getting older, but I Don't think it is - I think everyone goes through stages of developing things they enjoy about their hobbies.
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.
The majority in this country is "didn't vote". Multitudes of reasons for this.
They forgot.
They dont care.
They missed the registration deadline.
They're homeless, and no address.
They can't get proper papers, even though they are US born.
They're in prison/jail.
The candidates suck, so you dont vote.
Can't afford to take time off work.
They've been gerrymandered, so their votes are significantly degraded.
To think that the minority segment that, due to election game rules and FPTP, that a minority of the minority somehow reflects a majority? I wholly reject that.
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/vitalst...
There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.
We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.
Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.
Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.
But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.
But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.
I don't see how forcing a person to vote will result in carefully considering what to vote for.
A right to vote includes the right to not vote.
It's more a compulsory show you're still a citizen day. The making a valid vote part is down to personal choice.
They also appear to have generally better general political awareness and engagement in policy.
Then add an abstain option to the ballot while still requiring people to show up and select the box. While I do think voting should be mandatory, I'd say that we should make it substantially easier. More polling places, mail in voting, having a mandated paid day off to vote and having more than one day to vote in person would go a long way to making the requirement workable.
Prisoners voting is madness. They are in too dependent a position to believe that their vote will reflect their votes.
On the contrary, voting should be banned not only for prisoners but also for people working for the government in any capacity. People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes.
Registration procedures should be more complex and strict, not simpler. If someone is irresponsible, disorganized, or illiterate enough to fail to fill the form on time, then why should we consider their vote meaningful? If someone believes they have more important things to do than vote, why force them to vote?
The US tried to do this kind of "literacy test" before, remember? It's where the expression "grandfathered in" comes from: you had to do an impossible-to-pass test to gain the right to vote - except if your grandfather had the right to vote.
This was of course used to ban black people from voting without explicitly banning them for being black.
> Prisoners voting is madness
If prisoners can't vote, what's stopping the party in power from preventing them from ever losing an election by just jailing everyone expected to vote against them?
> People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes
This should obviously includes everyone working for government contractors. Which is obviously going to include everyone working for any kind of tech company with any government contract. Which, considering HN demographics, means you likely shouldn't e allowed to vote.
Heck, why not extend this even further? Anyone living in a state which receives more money than it contributes in taxes should be banned from voting. Anyone using government resources should be banned from voting. Everyone driving their car on government-maintained roads should be banned from voting!
Where did I mention a "literacy test"? I'm against such tests for exactly the same reasons I'm against prisoner voting.
> If prisoners can't vote, what's stopping the party in power from preventing them from ever losing an election by just jailing everyone expected to vote against them?
Prisons, by definition, are built on the principle that prisoners are under the full control of prison administrations. If everyone who will vote against could be imprisoned, there would be no problem allowing prisoners to vote: prisoners would still vote in the manner desired by the prison administration. That's how prisons work. And I don't think there's a need to increase incentives for authorities to imprison more people to achieve the desired election results through prisoners' voting.
> any kind of tech company with any government contract.
Obviously, this shouldn't apply to "any" government contracts. But if the majority of a contractor's income comes from government contracts, then yes, employees shouldn't vote.
> Anyone living in a state which receives more money than it contributes in taxes should be banned from voting. Anyone using government resources should be banned from voting.
I don't understand why you're trying to reduce this argument to absurdity. The goal is to preserve democracy by reducing the government's ability to build a totalitarian dictatorship through its ability to control taxes. And yet you're proposing measures that would proclaim such a dictatorship.
Because what happens in the ballot box is private, it should be possible to let prisoners vote without interference as long as poll workers are allowed inside to do their job, but it's not just people currently in prison you have to worry about. There are places where convicted felons can lose their right to vote even after they've served their time and laws like that have already been used to suppress votes.
> The goal is to preserve democracy by reducing the government's ability to build a totalitarian dictatorship
Freedom means having enough rope to hang yourself with. By strictly limiting who is allowed to vote and taking that right away from millions of Americans you'd be destroying the country, not saving it.
Many people already do get the option to ditch out of work to go vote. And it's not logistically possible for _everyone_ to have the day off. So really this is just a matter of sliding the scale a bit so _more_ people can vote; at the cost of more inconvenience.
Personally, I'd rather just make mail-in voting more common.
An easy one would be to have people vote on weekends instead of Tuesday.
The second would be to have more polling station so that people don't have to wait hours to be able to vote (alas this seems to be by design).
Since we are there, but unrelated to the amount of people voting, fix the vote counting process so that you can get the result the following day.
The stuff above is not rocket science and is what most of the other civilized countries do.
If people still don't go out and vote, probably is because both candidates suck, or they don't look so much different one from the other. Fixing this would require changing the electoral system, which is not something I see done anytime soon in the USA
I don’t live in the US, but US elections have quite an influence and it’s frustrating to see a system I perceive as very flawed having such an effect here, at the other end of the world in New Zealand.
This is a good and appropriate thing. States are approximately countries. Most laws only exist at the State level e.g. most common crimes don't exist in Federal law. The overreach of the Federal government claiming broad authority over people is an unfortunate but relatively recent (20th century) phenomenon. The US does seem to be returning to States having more autonomy, which I'd say is a good thing.
Maybe the framers can go fuck themselves.
Yet the framers quite literally told you to change what they made, so they agree.
In Argentina, elections are held on Sundays.
Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.
> We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.
I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal. If people are neither informed nor interested, why do you want them to have a say at all? At best they’ll be picking a last name that sounds pronounceable. Or going with whichever first name sounds more (or less!) male.
> Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.
We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?
> Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.
I’m generally for this though there are a bit of logistics when you’re dealing with preprinted paper ballots and some expectations of processing quantity. Prior registration also addresses people showing up at the wrong polls in advance.
> But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.
Not always a bad thing either. If all it took was the stroke of an executive’s pen, you’d see a lot of things I bet you would not be fond of rather soon.
> But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.
The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.
Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for?
When votes are held in the senate or congress, it’s a straight numbers game. Why aren’t those votes also weighted?
There wouldn’t be many who’d argue that the American political system is in good health. How would you fix it?
They are weighted - the House is allocated by population, and the Senate by state.
I prefer not to live in the Hunger Games world, personally.
Those books are a brilliant exploration of the tyranny of urban clusters.
The electoral college is an effective foil to that.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/18/politics/patriot-games-an...
About half of all folks in US prisons are there for non-violent crimes, and we're talking about a relatively small percentage of voters anyway. Maybe ~3 million added to the ~244 million eligible voters
No longer being able to vote seems like a rather petty inconvenience to heap on top
There's no reason that a holiday to give people time to do it requires or logically leads to either of those, no.
>I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal.
Mandatory participation generally includes write-in and abstain options, but requires people to participate in the process. Making it mandatory defeats the measures taken to stop groups of people from voting (insufficient polling places for long lines, intimidation keeping people away, purging voter rolls, etc.)
>We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?
Because it's easy to file bullshit charges against anyone you don't want voting, and because something being illegal doesn't make it morally wrong, so people should be able to vote to change things even when being persecuted for them.
> Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.
Why does having a day with "more people off work to go vote" mean we make voting harder in other ways? I don't understand what you're trying to say/imply here.
> > Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.
> We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?
Because, like it or not, they are citizens, and citizens get to vote. Do I think most pedophiles have much to contribute to the process? No, probably not. But there's a LOT of prisoners that are guilty of much lesser crimes; ones that don't imply their vote shouldn't matter.
> The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.
Challenge. But this is very much an opinion thing.
This is true, but it's also very useful in assigning blame (or avoiding assigning it improperly).
So for all the people who complain about all the people who didn't vote, and try to blame them for Trump's election, we can just point to the historical record for voting in US presidential elections. The truth is: the turnout was not unusually low. In fact, it was somewhat high, historically speaking (though not as high as in 2020, which was a record; you'd have to back to the 50s or early 60s to see a higher turnout, and that was in a time when Black people weren't allowed to vote in many places).
So instead of blaming non-voters, blame can be assigned properly to those who DID vote. Because the factors that have prevented many people from voting in past elections were still a factor in the most recent election.
>We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.
Right, and how do you enforce this when people aren't allowed to take time off from work to vote? Also, looking at the state of Australian politics, I don't see mandatory voting as a worthwhile fix.
>A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.
Lots of people have to work on national holidays. How do they vote? Society doesn't stop needing police, firefighters, or hospital workers on national holidays. And most stores (like grocery stores) are still open, so their workers are required to go to work too.
More importantly, why do you think the GOP would ever agree to any measures to increase voter participation?
Define "property owning", presumably you mean land or a home (would an apartment be enough without any real rights to the land it sits on?). This definition would end up disenfranchising most young adults and probably a majority of the members of the military (the military is relatively young, and young enlisted folks are housed in dorms, and if they move frequently often don't bother buying homes because it just doesn't make financial sense).
I don't follow. Please explain.
>Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated).
Yeah, just like the good old days when we had literacy tests in this country to vote down south.
You're literally calling for a return of Jim Crow.
Use that big brain of yours and try it, you might learn something about humanity (and humility)!
Prisoners in jail can be there for a multitude of reasons. But the main difference is that they were likely of voting age. Some states even do allow prisoners to vote. Who more than anyone here is subject to its laws than people imprisoned?
It also naturally penalizes poor people, since they demonstrably get less 'legal equality', and thus go to prison more.
As for children. Thats a different issue. The moment this government(s) started tried children as adults is when and the voting age should have been lowered to the age of 'tried as an adult'.
> Expanding the electorate for the sake of expanding it doesn’t make the result better.
So, you do not believe or accept democratic principles.
It is no different than "get enough eyeballs on a problem, and every problem is shallow".
> Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated).
Holy crap, the dog whistles.
Sprinkle phrenology (IQ) in there. Used to defend treating black people as slaves cause "we(royal) were doing them a favor"
Literally grandfather clause, which disenfranchised former slaves.
And property-owning, so a strong retreat to royalist 2nd son tradition. Pray tell, you are only talking about land with property-owning, right?
"Staying home" is not actually a vote, as much as people want it to be in their heart of hearts.
edit: sorry, I was wrong, he did not quite clear 50% -- looked it up and he got 49.8%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
The fact that ~20% of the population either wants to vote but is unable to do so or is disillusioned about the democratic process to the point of not voting at all is extremely worrying. This is not what a healthy democracy should look like.
If you don't care enough to inform yourself about the candidates or at least have a party affiliation, it's probably best that you don't vote.
Stupid people already vote. Wrong people already vote. Your system has to accept that interference no matter what.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
The average person who doesn’t vote is a low-trust individual who is skeptical about government and institutions. Those people are Trumpier than average.
> Voters saw Harris as more ideologically extreme than Trump
... what?
The latest Harvard-Harris poll, which isn’t good for Trump, still shows people want to deport all immigrants here illegally by a 52-48 margin: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/HHP... (page 24). I don’t think even Trump intends to actually do that. He would have to dramatically escalate what he’s doing now in order to achieve that outcome.
People who don't bother to vote for any reason changes elections. It also makes it very hard to make claims about what the majority of Americans want, since so many didn't make their opinions known
A majority of Americans either wanted Trump or didn't care enough to vote against him.
This is precisely why democracy was never seen as a tenable system for millennia. Thinkers of the past always assumed that the people would be incapable of picking the most skilled leaders, and would instead end up picking the most charismatic leaders. This is precisely what Plato's endlessly cited allegory of the Ship of State [1] is about.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_State
Winning representatives are still supposed to represent the people who didn't vote for them in fact.
Democracy isn't about picking the "best" leader because that's not necessary. "The best" is almost never necessary, and you are much better off building a system that handles regularly not getting the best, because no system reliably picks the best, especially since "The best" is a criteria that cannot be rigorously defined.
And that radio jamming no longer neutralizes that threat.
The far more likely explanation is that they just don't want people filming them. They can't legally stop someone with a cellphone from filming them, but that hasn't stopped them from using up-to-lethal force against observers. On the other hand, you can't exactly beat a flying drone into submission, so the obvious move is to observe using drones instead.
Luckily for ICE the FAA already has the mechanics in place to criminalize flying drones in certain places, so with their magic "no drones anywhere we operate" NOTAM they can now punish observers with a year of jail time.
You see how it's impossible to regulate technology? I don't want my tax dollars funding impossible missions.
Yep, that's exactly what the fed undercover will say.
And sure, they can't catch everyone, but they don't have to. They just need to catch and visibly prosecute enough people to create a chilling effect. It's about making it harder, not making it impossible.
Whether the cost/benefit here justifies those gains is a different question.