NY Bill Would Require Background Checks to Buy 3D Printers
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
That's an ancient document written by people who couldn't even concieve of modern day "assualt" style printers. We need common sense 3D printer control. There is no reason any person would ever need more than 4kg of filament, these high capacity fast manufacturing printers pose a threat to our society.
Should we just let anyone who wants to buy a 3D printer? What if they do bad things with it? What if they print weapons? I don't think we should allow just any person out there to be able to purchase a 3D printer and start printing guns. We need mandatory waiting periods before allowing people to purchase 3D printers.
Should criminal's be able to have 3D printers? What if they print them to make guns?
Not only should we have strict requirements on who can own a 3D printer we should also require 3D printer manufacturers install technology that allows the government to ensure it isn't used to print dangerous things.
I honestly am glad at this brave and stunning move by New York to set an example for the rest of the nation that will prevent dangerous weapons from getting into the hands of criminals. It is only this kind of thinking that will allow us to eventually be able to be as safe as places like the UK.
And let's be clear here anyone that disagrees with me or downvotes me you are only doing it because you hate children and want them to be massacred, how many kids have to die due to 3D printing before the government will step in?
(I'm on your side, btw fwiw! But I still don't like dripping sarcasm insinuating other perspectives are clearly stupid!:)
If the result sounds in any way remarkable, then that only illustrates that the original is remarkable in exactly the same way, which is of course the point of the exercise.
Maybe you aren't a fan, but they are certainly in non-trivially good company.
How far off is a consumer product that has been “locked down” but otherwise capable of printing devices of increasingly larger scales of destruction?
Are we not already on this trajectory?
Not yet...
The purpose of my comment? Reductio ad absurdum.
I’m quite surprised at the negative response to be honest. The original comment put no limits on their claims that “utilizing technology” should be regulated.
Do people not read comments as a linear progression of call and response?
You can also easily build a drone with a GPS from commonly available parts, then strap a bomb to it made from match heads and PVC pipe and give it a destination to fly to.
There are an insane number of ways anyone moderately intelligent can cause a massive loss to human life if that is their goal.
We should be thankful most violent types are not smart enough to do anything worse than pull a trigger.
The only way to stop humans from hurting each other is strap us all in solitary confinement VR pods.
Can you cite that? It's pretty clear that freedom of "speech" isn't limited to literal verbal speech. I'm not sure I've ever seen the suggestion that the authors of the constitution were overly concerned with the literal mechanism of printing, so much as the ability of the citizens to publish information.
So we end up in this weird land because originalism and conservatism usually agree and so too progressivism and liberalism to the point where the lines of thought shape how more than the courts think of issues. But both sides end up having to do tricky mental gymnastics on this particular issue to resolve the two. But this is, of course, silly. It appeals only to the lizard brain who when faced with decisions far beyond the ability for humans to understand or are effectively arbitrary need a made up framework on which to post-hoc justify what are really just gut feelings.
When the answer to what path better is more obvious like "should people be allowed to buy a bazooka at Walmart" nobody is out here asking if the founders would have intended it, everyone just goes, "oh fuck no" and we move on.
The word press quite literally meant printing press. People did not refer to journalists specifically as "the press" until around 1868: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/art...
You’re the one who keeps bringing up the terms journalists and journalism. It’s not clear to me why the constitution predating those terms implies that “press” was meant literally.
They of course couldn't have envisioned alternative mediums that the "press" might alternatively refer to. They couldn't have predicted radio, television, and the internet as alternative forms of "publication". There was the spoken word and the written word and that's all there was for thousands of years. The press simply made the written word more scalable.
I understand that Constitutional rights are interpreted by Courts to carry meaning through progressions in technology or society norms. Clearly the spirit of the "freedom of the press" is partly an implied "right to publish" as you say, and as the 9th amendment underscores, the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
There is no mention of "distributing news and information" with regards to "freedom of the press" in the Constitution. It simply says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. It doesn't justify it or give a reason for it. It's held to be self evident. It should be understood that the U.S. was founded on the principle of "liberty by default". There is no need to justify liberty. The purpose of the bill of rights was to provide extra protections against the egregiousness of government, to preserve liberty, but not to box it in and define it for all time to mean "these specific things."
Clearly the founders couldn't foresee the advent of 3D printing, either. However, milling machines and molds very much did exist. It would be equally unthinkable to the founders to enable the government to restrict the usage of mills and molds on the basis that they might be used to produce arms (another right they saw fit to enumerate), as it would be to restrict 3D printing.
On the basis of the 1st, 2nd, and 9th amendments, and the principles of liberty itself; the 3D printing press should remain as equally free as the 2D printing press.
That’s fine, but it seems disingenuous to present that opinion as if it’s a factual statement about how the constitution was written or has been interpreted by courts.
I’m not aware of any case law that’s suggested the 1st amendment’s freedom of press implies anything about mills or molds, nor do you seem to have any rational for why “the press” should be literal but “speech” wouldn’t be, other than you think that’s how they should be interpreted.
It is a fact that "the press" in the first amendment referred to the printing press. That is indisputable. That courts have expanded that at times or attempted to hone in on its meanings over the centuries is irrelevant to that fact or to my point.
It is an opinion, that goes without saying, when I offer: "The 3D printing presses should remain equally free."
The right to speak, the right to pursue happiness, the right to print freely on a press, the right to bear arms, the right to liberty, these are all enumerated rights. These are more than enough to cover the right to print in 3D, nevermind that these enumerations are non-exhaustive.
"Printing presses shall be free except as to false facts published maliciously either to injure the reputation of another (whether followed by pecuniary damages or not) or to expose him to the punishment of the law." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes for a Constitution, 1794.
"Printing presses shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ME 2:298, Papers 6:304
"A declaration that the Federal Government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
"The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world... And while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:465
"The art of printing alone and the vast dissemination of books will maintain the mind where it is and raise the conquering ruffians to the level of the conquered instead of degrading these to that of their conquerors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:334
"The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Paganel, 1811. ME 13:37
It's relatively easy to detect modern US currency, it doesn't vary by much, and if you were to vary it a lot, it'd be an obvious counterfeit. Firearms don't operate like that. They are all wildly different designs with different complex parts. Even if you wrote something to detect the current models that are out there, they could be easily changed to be identically functional but unrecognizable.
> Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don’t have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced.
> In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year. ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings.
> The report found that annual law enforcement seizures of guns without serial numbers [in California] have risen 16-fold over the last decade, going from fewer than 1,300 in the early 2010s to more than 20,000 in both 2021 and 2022. The rise in ghost guns has happened alongside a pandemic-era surge in gun violence in California and the nation as a whole.
- https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/california-ghost-g...
It's just any gun without a serial number.
Recently (last 3 years) there has been an attempt at redefinition to include 80% guns (80% of work completed before purchase, end user does >60 min of work to complete it) and normal guns with their SN removed.
So now when someone quotes ghostgun numbers, they're mostly talking about normal guns with SN's removed.
> "For purposes of this section, 'three-dimensional printer' means a computer or computer-driven machine or device capable of producing a three-dimensional object from a digital model."
Would they require background checks on people who previously bought 3D printers? What if you go to another state with a prepaid card... Will they search your cars traveling interstate? Comb through your transactions and contacts?
"You think it's harmless when kids start playing with legos, but soon that isn't enough, they just gotta go bigger."
"Listen we get one seed printer in and we can dominate the rest of the competition!"
"Waltuh, the filament is making me light headed Waltuh!"
They do for guns, why should this be any different? It's possible that someone became a felon since they got their last 3d printer, and the cops wont necessarily check if someone is on the 3D printer owner registey when they arrest someone (if such a registrt will be created?)
Plus when they eventually implement a 10 day waiting period for 3d printer purchases, I doubt people who already have a printer will be exempt (except maybe cops?)
Anyone capable of building a gun at home with a 3D printer, also has the skill required to build the 3D printer itself. Next they will try to restrict people from owning a drill press or a welding torch. Or from owning rubber bands and rocks, lest someone make a slingshot.
This sort of law is proposed by the same types of idiots that think the existence or CSAM is grounds to backdoor encryption.
Zero.
https://dailyvoice.com/new-york/westorange/port-jervis-man-p...
Make bullets very expensive and hard to get.
It makes much more sense to control the supply of gunpowder (and bullets) than that of 3d printers (or guns for that matter).
I am not sure I am reading the data the same way as you. To me this shows urban areas have a much higher homicide rate which would be more associated with safety.
Using suicide as a safety metric is both misleading and generally in bad faith - it's usually a far better representation of mental health (generally loneliness/depression) or overall quality of life.
This amount of suicides from people who I assume are mostly able bodied and otherwise healthy though by gun indicates a few things to me though:
1. Guns are an extremely effective and fast method of suicide.
2. Sudden depression or psychosis could happen to anyone.
3. A mental state can be and usually is transitory or treatable.
I think my belief from the above is that this is a safety issue in terms of the immediacy of the act, rather than the act itself. Taking pills, jumping from a bridge, asphyxiation all take time and planning. All you need is one gun in your house for self-defense bought years ago or inherited/borrowed from a close associate, or even for hunting, and there's nothing our societal safety net or your future self can provide for protection from your present self.
I have a friend who was admitted to the hospital for medically induced psychosis (a known side effect of the medication prescribed by his doctor), it scares me to think that anyone trusts that their brain chemistry and state is this solid and unwavering foundation of sanity, that's simply not always the case.
That's generally the case of rural living as a whole. Internet? fat chance before starlink. have fun with dialup or horrendous phone. This alone limits your financial flexibility greatly. Thank god Starlink exists now.
Have a heart attack? Have fun being dead or getting over it on your own by the time an ambulance shows up!
Ditto for pretty much anything. House fire? tough tits, the fire department will show up an hour later to make sure there's no embers.
Legislation? Unless your state/province is mostly rural (which it pretty much never is), Urbanites are the golden goose. 90% of legislation is made with them in mind.
This has lead rural communities to be entirely self reliant, for good reason. they don't have society to rely on. They, more than pretty much any urbanite, have actual reason to have guns. Taking them away isn't going to change the fact that nobody gives a shit about them on a systemic level lol, and if anything will probably make them resent urbanites more for taking their shit away.
I understand that there's a privilege involved in even having a close community, I recognize that and cherish that I have not only neighbors but close friends living less than 30 feet from me. I also recognize that the problems I have in a city are a planet's difference compared to rural living.
That said, I think people who live rural are putting themselves at serious risk by embracing social isolation, and the data describes that. I'm extremely happy about starlink because for people's health, we need that kind of infrastructure to keep people connected, and extremely unhappy that we couldn't build it out faster. Everyone should have a right to community.
As for guns, the UK allows anyone to own a gun through a licensing program [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58198857]. It's probably the most onerous requirements in the world, but they also have the lowest rates of gun death (both homicide and suicide) [https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...]. Guns are considered a privilege, not a right, and so the likelihood of even running into someone with a gun who might be threatening your life either in the city or the country, is significantly smaller.
I'm not expecting a constitutional amendment, but getting back to my previous argument, we rammed through drug laws without a second thought to the implications of the constitution or the effect it would have on my city, and we could certainly do that here by regulating black powder in the same way we regulate fentanyl.
I have a feeling people don't like this argument on either side because it reveals something hypocritical from both perspectives. The anti-gun crowd is very focused on the machine and the fear it instills, take away the AK47 and you're left with something that doesn't instill the same sort of emotional reaction, and much of their argument is built on that. The pro-gun crowd hates it not just because in creates regulation without taking away their guns (an entirely legal argument i'm sure), it flips the script toward a gun seller being a fentanyl dealer and a gun owner being a fentanyl user, which considering the numbers, isn't that far off apparently.
You can buy cigarettes for sure, and you can go out of the city to buy cigarettes for less, but for most people they'd rather kick the habit than deal with the entire situation.
at a minimum, this would not be seen as acceptable in the "constitutional carry" states - half of the country
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1184731316/gun-violence-epide...
There is nothing special about a bullet or an entire assembled cartridge. There is nothing in a bullet or a gun that you can control that doesn't also apply to bicycles and pens and teapots.
There are some extra exotic fancy materials that can make merely bigger better bullets and bombs, but no one intending to do harm actually needs them. So you can control depleted uranium to make bullets that work a bit better than others, but plain lead, or steel or copper or iron or tin or nickle or even glass ones work well enough. You can control the main ingredient in a nuke, but no one actually needs that to completely destroy anything with other kinds of bombs that don't need any such special ingredient.
This applies to every part of both a gun and a cartridge. There are no special or controllable in gredients or processes, fundamentally. You can only take a little bit of the shine off. If for example the assembled recognizable cartridge were simply outlawed, so there were no convenient factories producing the polished finished good, then people would just have to make slightly less polished versions, but not materially less effective.
Any ingredient that you might think to target has countless alternatives if ever needed.
Let's say cartridges are illegal, so the home cartridge maker needs brass tubing, so you go "aha! that is a pretty niche product that most people don't need, we can just control that!
The problem is, brass tubing is not actually needed. nor is brass sheet. nor is brass. It's used today because it's a good fit for purpose, but you can use practically anything, especially if you have to design your own gun anyway, you can adjust the gun design to accomodate the needs of some other shell design.
The same goes for every other part. A perfectly functional gun and it's ammunition can be constructed out of whatever is available. It's not limited to the specific design you see on a shelf today.
I'm not a gun owner or lover, and am liberal on pretty much all topics, but these kinds of arguments about guns really are ignorant, which should be fine, it should be fine for most people to be ignorant of most things, but it's really a problem when it is used to forward policy.
Most of it is demonetized of course, but that's probably a good thing.
And ammunition can't be printed and can't be made out of plastic. You can make it yourself yes but it's also possible to make a rudimentary gun from regular metal parts.
Serialized bullets and proposed microstamps will drive up manufacturing and end consumer costs and expand a black market for it.
You may not be able to fully print ammo yet, but you can still buy primers and powder-actuated tools that’ll help get there, and then we’ll have to pivot and regulate that too.
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37897798
I might be slightly dyslexic
But I know what you're referring to, the stupid copyright ads on DVD.
Just saying that printing a car isn't actually science fiction anymore. Cost effective? No. But possible.
Maybe they should require all STL and Gcode to be submitted to the state for review.