Comment by pjc50
1 day ago
This is insanely stupid stuff. Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns. Why not? Because nobody is printing guns! It's an infeasible solution to a non-problem!
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.
People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for my 9mms and my AR15, trigger guards, barrel clamps, etc. I also find it stupid since, as the article suggests, what kind of algorithm can you implement to do smart detection of something that could be potentially dangerous? Will it also detect negative space? I print inserts in elastic filament with my gun outlines instead of foam (or as foam templates) for my carrying cases. Will the "algorithm" prevent me to do that too? What about my plastic disc thrower toy gun, or my PKD Blaster prop? Both look like guns to me. What about a dumb AI algorithm that lacks common sense?
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.
I don't get it - afaik you can get every single part of a gun except for the lower receiver/pistol frame without any restriction - as those parts are legally defined as the 'gun' - the rest are just replacement parts.
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.
Exactly, but it's less effort to steal a gun or have someone else purchase a gun for you then to 3d print a gun.
But even then it's not that difficult, it's entirely possible and legal in many states to print a polymer lower for a AR15 or Glock 17. Then go buy a parts kit from PSA $450 and have fun zero background check or sales tax required as the smaller gun parts stores do not have multistate business nexuses.
It is also not difficult to 3dprint a glock switch, even though they illegal per the NFA https://3dgo.app/models/makerworld/2035005.
This is 100% virtue-signaling from politicians.
The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver, which is the whole point, to circumvent that very narrow legal classification. You're right about alternative lawmaking avenues, but given the 2a pushback on controlling "replacement parts" Americans are kind of stuck with the bed they made.
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The receiver is like the asset tag on computer servers- it's the one thing that is definitely not replaceable since it has the serial number used for entitlement.
This is my attempt to answer your question about "what kind of algorithm can you implement to detect something dangerous". Disclaimer though, I agree that the proposed regulation is way too broad and will have unintended consequences as written.
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.
> 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.
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...
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what part of the dangerous part is the actually dangerous part?
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.
FCUs are not tracked in US (aside from full auto trigger groups, which however are classified as "machineguns" in their own right).
Receivers are tracked.
That depends entirely on the gun. Sig "receivers" are just frames and the FCU is the controlled element. At least in the p320.
> people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives
People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.
In the 1980s, my dad machined a lot of replacement parts for a gunsmith, right here in the UK. All legal, all perfectly legit. I will say it took a hell of a lot more skill than just "download file from thingiverse, press print" - but there's nothing stopping you doing it.
And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.
The difference is this takes years and years of skill learning and hard graft. Downloading a gun file and pressing print requires nothing.
> 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.
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?
This is a bad example. I've been notionally pro-ownership but also pro-regulation my whole life, and one of the major problems with gun legislation in the US is that it's incredibly poorly written and does not reflect the technical reality of guns.
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.
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You're welcome to come up with a better litmus test, but it's beyond clear that lawmakers writing gun control regulation have less than a wikipedia level understanding of the topic. See "shoulder thing that goes up", the weird obsession with the Thompson, the entire concept of an Assault Weapon, etc.
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> Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?
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.
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In this specific discussion familiarity does seem relevant. I don't think shooting is so relevant, but printing and assembling are.
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.
I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used.
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.
Having a clue about how guns work, or the general reality of any other field one may be attempting to legislate, is absolutely crucial. With guns it just happens that actually firing them is a good way to gain (some of) that understanding.
litmus test wise, regulators of 3d printing should be able to create strong parts with a variety of 3d printing mechanisms.
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.
Well didn't they? From the Epstein files, it looks like "all" the elite is involved....
It’s more like people who barely use computers regulating software features and development.. oh wait
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.
It’s becoming a thing, police don’t like to report on it because they don’t want to give people ideas. They didn’t want to report on Glock switches either. I do machining as a hobby and am interested in machining guns from an academic challenge perspective, I’ve not done it because I focus on making things I can’t buy. Guns from an academic perspective are fascinating, we’ve been making them for a long time in just about every possible way, and there is an easy way to measure and communicate quality, I.e. does it shoot and how accurate is it. I think the ban is absurd, the tech to make 3D printers / CNCs is pretty generic and someone sufficiently motivated to make a gun is unlikely to have difficulty putting together the machines to do it.
Just imagine what happens when lawmakers discover the possibilities of every one with access to a lathe or CNC machine.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder how many tools I would have to remove from my garage to make it impossible to build a primitive gun in there. With enough ingenuity I'm really not sure there would be anything left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Luty#Firearms_design
> 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.
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There are some Youtube videos about homemade weapons in African countries and it seems you'd have to remove peoples hands in addition to their tools. Some of the functional guns out there are mostly hand whittled wood with a piece of pipe and some bailing wire.
Wasn't the whole point of the Sten gun that it could be made out of readily-available materials (steel plumbing pipe mostly) with simple hand tools, and really only needed two of the 50 or so components to be machined?
So, unless your garage is down to a pair of rusty pliers and a dried-out Biro then you're probably still up there.
Do potato cannons count?
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This law in new york will also affect CNC machines and laser cutter AFAIK. Everything that is computer controlled that can "create" a 3d object.
Or a file. You can make a perfectly good gun with a damned file.
Or as we learned on Star Trek, some rope, bamboo, charcoal, rocks, sulfur and Gorn dung will make a one time weapon.
They are trying to criminalize everyone who uses a normal lathe or a normal CNC without a permit
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.
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228
Really looking forward to NY funding upgrades to the computers connected to CNC machines which tend to be pre-2000 vintage running software that's even older.
The entire concept is absurd on about 10 different levels.
Or fire and a hammer
> Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns.
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
Tbf to New York it is much easier to print a gun in the us I imagine than Europe for example a 3d printed Glock the controlled part is the lower which is just a plastic shell that ends up containing the trigger group and a few other parts which you can all by easily online the only other thing you need is the upper which is just the slide barrel and a few other parts you can buy them online already completed the only part you actually have to file a form for and get approved for the is lower specifically the plastic shell so in the us once you print that which is pretty simple you can order everything else online no need to file or register anything I imagine in the eu the other parts are much more controlled which raises the complexity by a ton you’d need a lot of tools/parts and expertise to create a ghost Glock in the eu that you wouldn’t in America and you’d still probably need some street connections for the ammo which is much easier to come by in America I’d bet. If it was as simple to get your hands on all the other parts in the eu I would imagine there would much much more 3d printed guns there. I still think it’s stupid everyone should be allowed to print as many glocks as they want especially if your having to live in New York
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.
Actual shootings with 3D printed guns are relatively rare but it’s come up because Luigi Mangione killed the United Healthcare CEO with one.
And they're still doing anything except addressing the grievances that lead to that.
EDIT: I think you mean "allegedly"
Right, because most people recognize that the US has become sufficiently polarized and radicalized that "If enough people are mad at you, a complete stranger might shoot you" is not a theory of change we want to encourage. Yes, even for causes we agree with, most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is, and even how civil and thoughtful you are in pursuing it.
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> doing anything except addressing the grievances that lead to that.
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.
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That case started over a year ago, I would have expected the topic to come up long ago if this was motivated by the shooting. Granted, lawmaking takes longer than public sentiment lasts, but I didn't really hear much about 3D-printed guns at the time.
NY legislators have been pushing for this in public statements over the past year.
e.g. https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.net/ritchietorres.house.go...
Given the potential chain of custody issues, I'm not sure we can be certain a 3D printed gun was involved at all.
And so, Nick Bostrom's total surveillance required, starts
https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
The premise here would have to be that it was previously difficult for the majority of the population to obtain a weapon.
I haven't printed a full firearm but I've printed some replacement/ergonomic parts for my legally purchased firearms. And there are people printing guns - you don't hear about it because they keep their mouth shut about it.
In countries that ban guns, 3D printers don't help much because you still can't get the other parts that aren't printed and you can't get bullets. 3D printed guns are only really viable in places where guns are already common.
> because you still can't get the other parts that aren't printed
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
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The UK doesn't need to put restrictions in for 3d printing guns because the viable approaches for 3d printing them usually require _some_ off the shelf gun parts not to mention actual ammunition which you can't feasibly acquire in the UK to begin with.
You can acquire guns, gun parts, and ammunition quite easily in the UK, and entirely legally.
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.
Why not? Because nobody is printing guns!
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.
> who this is coming from and why
I would suspect it is at least partly because the gun that killed the United Healthcare CEO was partly 3D printed.
Allegedly, given chain of custody concerns with the evidence.
In other words, the most famous murder/assassination in NY in modern memory.
Well it might be the second most famous now, having been supplanted by Charlie Kirk through recency if not also notability (harder to spin the motives of the UHC CEO's killer in a way that people aren't sympathetic to).
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The 3d-printed hybrid FGC-9 is readily and commonly made all over Europe[0]. Most notoriously exhibit by 'jstark' in Germany[1]. Ammo is no problem, as can be made with off the shelf components available in EU[2]. And fairly reliable, if not oversized, 9mm pistol, primarily printed except with an ECM machined barrel that is easily DIY'd by 3d printing a mandrel for the rifling electrode and a simple bolt. A really nice gun all things considered for people with no other options, that can be built quickly using simple instructions.
[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...
I've been saying the same about deepfake noods of hot girls.
Something something about distribution.
Is this even a problem that needs to be solved? How many people have 3d printed guns and used them?
Preemptive regulation is absurd.
Quite famously, Luigi Mangione. (allegedly)
Of course, this is silliness since it is very easy to just buy a gun in the US, and it is also legal to make one in your garage.
Does the UK ban shows like Forged in Fire that teach you how to make all sorts of specific blades?
No, and the blades created because of the methods used, would likely not be covered by the legislation anyway, theres a carve out for antiques and weapons made using traditional methods (now define traditional methods, because the law doesn't, but hammer and anvil would seem to be the most obvious traditional approach).
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
Could be the way guns are defined in UK are different. There is a fundamental problem in US law specifically, that you can purchase legally nearly any part of a gun separately, but only need to register the lower receiver. These are parts that take very little stress and can be relatively easily printed and used to hold together all the other parts that actually hold the stress of firing the bullet.
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…
> These are parts that take very little stress and can be relatively easily printed and used to hold together all the other parts that actually hold the stress of firing the bullet.
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.
Lower receiver being the serialized part isn’t universal. Many firearms have only a single receiver or only the upper receiver is serialized.
is it because guns are easy to get without printing?
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).
Not cast iron
https://revolutionarywarjournal.com/how-colonial-gunsmiths-f...
not a gunsmith, but cast iron manages to be both soft and brittle at the same time. and the barrel and bearing parts would have to be machined anyways. you have to try to harden it too. its probably easier to just machine the whole thing out of decent quality steel. just guessing.
really? they didn't have machining in the 1700s. how about a good'ol musket? or a bit more modern: a gatling gun. I always thought those were made under coarse conditions. I mean, people just need something that makes a spark against gun powder,goes boom and shoots really fast projectiles. If a shotgun is possible, then an automatic shotgun doesn't feel like it's a stretch. I would think the firing mechanisms might not be tolerant of amateur techniques, but the reloading and trigger parts at least might be. I'm also not a gunsmith, no idea what I'm talking about for the record.
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> Why not? Because nobody is printing guns!
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.
Few people would bring an illegal firearm into NYC or other major US metros because a) the penalties in most of those cities and states can be brutal and b) it's not that difficult to acquire a legal firearm in most cities. If someone's smuggling a gun it's likely because it's just a small part of more varied criminal activity. Or because they did it by accident.
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.
> Few people would bring an illegal firearm into NYC or other major US metros
Someone is. They recover thousands of illegal guns in Chicago alone every year.
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/report/firearms-trace-data/fire...
i personally wouldn't described teenagers killing each other with luminous green hunting knives as a 'weird panic' but perhaps something that needs a lot of attention and a multitude of steps to solve. banning these insane weapons is, would you believe it, one quick step that might help.
How many crimes related to “foot claws”, “death stars” and “blow darts” were there before they were banned? The UK Offensive Weapons Act is a joke of a law that makes us look like morons afraid of cartoon turtles and farming tools.
It's just very easily substitutable with regular knives? Plus the Offensive Weapons Act already covers them? I would be very surprised if it has made a difference.
(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)
Yeah, its almost as if the knives aren't the problem. The gang memebrs will use whatever gives them an advantage, guns, knives, acid, bats, bricks. We can't ban everything, we should possibly tackle the cause instead of the symptom...
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
Would they really do less stabbing if they had to use a mundane kitchen knife instead of a 'tacticool' knife or 'ninja sword'?
Not necessarily a lot less but I’m sure removing the aesthetic/cool factor reduces how often they’re carried
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