NY Assembly Bill: Criminal background checks for (nearly all) 3D printers

2 days ago (nysenate.gov)

Such a garbage bill. You could do more damage with an easier to make home made potato cannon or pipe bomb

  • I think you might not be up-to-date on the current state of 3D-printed firearms.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9

    (The law is still silly, but for other reasons.)

  • I think it's telling that recently we saw an ex Green Beret make an IED, killing only himself. The day before however we saw someone drive a car into a crowd, killing what... a dozen people? Meanwhile their firefight with the police killed no one, and their IED's failed.

    I'm pretty sure the average SUV can do more damage than the average 3D printed firearm.

§ 398-G. Sale of certain three-dimensional printers. 1. Any retailer of a three-dimensional printer sold in this state which is capable of printing a firearm, or any components of a firearm, is required and authorized to request and receive criminal history information concern- ing such purchaser from the division of criminal justice services in accordance with the provisions of section eight hundred forty-five-b of the executive law. Access to and the use of such information shall be governed by the provisions of such section. The division of criminal justice services is authorized to submit fingerprints to the federal bureau of investigation for a national criminal history record check.

The any components of a firearm phrase seems the one that makes this opaque to what printers will be covered. One could see this apply to all printers depending on who you classify part

Are they still going to allow just any random weirdo to own a lathe?

  • Even if this were a serious bill rather than ostensible fodder, the possibility of Fahrenheit 451 turning from an indexed satire into a documentary as it was ground into swarf and burned is doing anything but decreasing.

    • I recommend rereading Fahrenheit 451. Satire is not what I’d call it. Nor is it in any way about suppressing technical information — the firemen themselves have printed manuals — it’s about suppressing meaning in favor of triviality as a means of social control.

Blatant political showmanship.

It’s as if (1) criminals can’t easily find someone clean to print them guns (2) they can’t go to Jersey (3) there are laws preventing the import of plastic gun parts from other places.

I almost forgot: Mangione was a criminal. Oh wait, nvm.

Why not do something about recidivism instead of hiring people to process 3D printer background checks?

The author is clearly smart enough to know she’s playing a game.

https://www.nyassembly.gov/mem/?ad=038

The result of these kinds of laws is that 3D printers are going to no longer be open devices with open source control software capable of printing anything, and will instead use this as a reason to become locked down ecosystems, where normal users can only print models approved by the centralized curation of a model store, and with a form of "model-signing" similar to Apple's most draconian versions of code-signing to provide some level of accountability in what the people with paid/approved designer accounts are printing for one-offs.

  • > use this as a reason to become locked down ecosystems

    If it wasn't this, it would have been something else eventually. All things tend toward closed top-down controlled systems or whatever brings the most profit/power to the fewest people. It is our way.

    Enjoy the time of 3D printer innovation and open use while it lasts.

Echoing all the comments here calling this bill absolutely ludicrous. If you're determined to make a gun, and determined to 3d print it, then making a diy machine is as easy as ordering a few stepper motors, some linear extrusion and a motor control board. Are they gonna background check before you buy those too? What about a lathe? Or any steel tube? Or a hacksaw FFS. Unabomber made his pistol from broken car parts and a goddamn hand drill:

" [A] few days ago I finished making a twenty two caliber pistol. This took me a long time, for a year and a half, thereby preventing me from working on some other projects I would have liked to carry out. Gun works well and I get as much accuracy out of it as I'd expect for an inexperienced pistol shot like me. It is equipped with improvised silencer which does not work as well as I hoped. At a guess it cuts noise down to maybe one third. It is said that it is easy for machinist to make a gun, but of course I did not have machine tools, but only a few files, hacksaw blades, small vice, a rickety hand drill, etc. I took the barrel from an old pneumatic pistol. I made the other parts out of several metal pieces. Most of them come from the old abandoned cars near here. I needed to make the parts with enough precision but I made them well and I'm very satisfied. I want to use the gun as a homicide weapon"

You know what you can't easily manufacture at home? Bullets.

Draw your own conclusions on why that isn't up for regulation here

  • > You know what you can't easily manufacture at home? Bullets.

    Draw your own conclusions on why that isn't up for regulation here

    New York already requires background checks for ammunition purchases.

    • It is super easy to make bullets at home. I started making my own when I lived in San Francisco where a) there are no gun shops b) ammo sales require a background check so I had to drive an hour c) the rounds I was shooting were $2 ea.

      None of the components are controlled. The setup cost can be as low as $700 and you can make a bullet in about 45 seconds.

    • Sure, so then if background checks worked...then problem would already be solved.

      And if background checks are not useful for keeping weapons/ammo out of the hands of criminals, then what purpose does this bill serve?

      Conservatives will view it as more overreach by the nanny state, and progressives with any critical thinking skills will see it for what it is, useless.

      1 reply →

    • They also have a bullshit "must have a pistol permit for handgun ammo" rule on the books, except there's no such thing as a "handgun" bullet. Many rifles can shoot common "handgun" sizes, like 9mm, and as soon as you tell the gentleman at the gun store you're buying it for your converted AR, they ask you cheerfully how many boxes you'd like.

I want a study on what percent of legislation actually addresses the problems they target, because im sure it would be similar to a 5th grader designing a moon lander and hoping for the best.

  • Wouldn’t it be cool if every law had to have a stated purpose and a method of measuring effectiveness? We could even roll back laws that didn’t serve their desired purpose.

I figured this was inevitable once the videos about 3D printed guns came out around ~10 years ago. I actually thought it would come sooner, but I suppose it took someone actually using a 3D printed gun to kill someone notable for it to be pushed.

How stupid is this law? NYC is literally an hours drive from 3 states, none of which will pass this stupid law.

It's like being stupid is a requirement to get elected to the NY Senate.

Stupid bill. They need to require that all 3D printers in the state run government provided monitoring software to prevent unauthorized gun parts from being printed, with a year in prison being the penalty for unmonitored prints.