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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

It will be fine to print a gun but there will be laws outlawing your ability to print an iphone case and printers will have to detect parts from any registered manufacturer. So we will get the worst of all worlds. printers only for guns and not for people to build useful things.

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Unjustified cynicism aside, the same technical reasons that a ban on printing gun parts is infeasible apply to printing iphone cases. There's no feasible way to detect what a printer is printing.

Don't underestimate the state's ability to spy on what you (and your devices) are doing or their willingness to erode your freedom even with massive false positive/negative rates.

Fine, there's currently no feasible way to do that

I very much wouldn't put it past this government from banning unauthorised part printing in some draconian DMCA-esque law bought and paid for by John Deere and Apple, but is there any current proposals for such a law?

Unironically this because guns have fairly stringent constitutional protections and lots of jurisprudence to that effect whereas flimsy hand wavy bullshit about public good is enough to regulate anything else.

You just need a gun design that has a part that can double as an iphone case...

You joke but phone mounts for firearms are a thing. People use them to record gun PoV videos and to make range estimation (such as dope charts) more accessible.

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