California’s new bill requires DOJ-approved 3D printers that report on themselves targeting general-purpose machines.
Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan introduced AB-2047, the “California Firearm Printing Prevention Act,” on February 17th. The bill would ban the sale or transfer of any 3D printer in California unless it appears on a state-maintained roster of approved makes and models… certified by the Department of Justice as equipped with “firearm blocking technology.” Manufacturers would need to submit attestations for every make and model. The DOJ would publish a list. If your printer isn’t on the list by March 1, 2029, it can’t be sold. In addition, knowingly disabling or circumventing the blocking software is a misdemeanor.
Wait so far these things are relatively trivial pieces of equipment in terms of software, no? Read instructions, move stepper motors/control heating elements.
So realistically what we’re looking at is hash based block lists for known firearm and parts designs, which would be trivial to circumvent by adding the equivalent of noop instructions to the .gcode files 🤷♂️
No, realistically what we’re looking at is a full ban on 3D printing as a whole because anything the printer does “might” be a gun part.
And then shortly after, a ban on property rights as a whole, because anything you own with a circuit board or a stepper motor in it “might” be modified to create an illegal 3D printer.
They’ll do anything but adopt firearm laws that are relevant and sensible.
To be fair, California has some of the strictest gun laws in the US. That’s a low bar though.
And most of those laws are either stupid, out of touch, racist, or multiple of those. In a fair amount of times it’s all three.