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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.