Submitted 1 year ago by Anonymouse@lemmy.world to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
https://gizmodo.com/new-york-bill-criminal-background-check-buy-3d-printer-1850930407
I understand the intent, but feel that there are so many other loopholes that put much worse weapons on the street than a printer. Besides, my prints can barely sustain normal use, much less a bullet being fired from them. I would think that this is more of a risk to the person holding the gun than who it’s pointing at.
Do I need a background check to buy a CNC? Or a lathe?
I mean, kind of, yes. CNCs have been one of the big items for export controls. Especially if they can be used to build weapons, parts for nuclear subs, etc.
The post-Cold War control regime is embodied in the 1996 Wassenaar Arrangement, and the 1978 Nuclear Suppliers Group Agreement (NSG) governing the export of machine tools that can be used for nuclear weapons development.
In the US you don’t need a license to purchase a CNC. Even items with export restrictions like night vision goggles (Under ITAR) can be bought by and shipped to your door. The export controls would only come into effect upon you exporting them.
Just export controls though?
Oh wow, TIL! I guess I’m not surprised, consumer GPS is kneecapped at a lower accuracy for similar reasons
six microns
Given that human chromosomes are on the order of 5 to 10 microns, I am thinking this export regulation doesn’t apply to the hobby market. This is “use the machine in a clean room” level precision.
No not at all
Not yet at the rate these clown lawmakers are going.
Is this a real problem? How many crimes are being committed with 3D printed guns?
It’s a rounding error… basically just politicians virtue signalling that they’re doing something.
I’m reminded of Leland Yee. California politician who was in favor of gun control all while doing gun running stuff himself. Guess he felt gun control was good for business.
No, but often gun control is an “if it stops even one” type of thing. Most of it is predicated on mass shootings which are .001% of gun violence in an attempt to ban the gun that kills <500 out of 60,000 people a year.
Owning a ghost gun is a crime, right?
Nearly 500 were recovered last year. ny1.com/…/nypd-unit-combatting-the-growing-proble…
Owning a ghost gun is a crime, right?
(Ignoring the fact that “ghost gun” is a meaningless and intentionally emotionally charged term)
In New York, yes. In the vast majority of the US, no. It’s illegal to file the serial number off an existing firearm, but 100% legal in most states to manufacture your own unserialized firearms for personal use. Just cannot be sold/transferred.
I’d note the article you linked says nothing about how many of those are actually 3D printed, it is infinitely easier to deface the serial number on an existing firearm than it is to 3D print one.
From the picture in that article, those guns would blow up in the shooter’s hand.
I can kind of see the logic.
Like book piracy was never a huge thing because you’d need a hell of a set up to make a book from scratch. Music piracy however…
I’m sure a decently skilled craftsman could make a decent firearm with a short trip to Home Depot, but the average Joe can’t make that happen too easily. With a 3D printer, you could have a gun with next to zero skill. Like a decently motivated person is going to find a gun anyway, but this maybe addresses the less motivated people/crimes of passion, etc.
That being said, if these are the same people advocating for a waiting period, they obviously don’t know how long 3D printing a gun takes.
Book piracy was huge I don’t know what you’re talking about. You could get professionally printed books or you could always just photocopy them.
Ebook piracy is a thing. Often done by the same professor who wrote the textbook.
In other news: virtue signaling politicians are considering banning [scary items that their core voters know nothing about] in order to appear tough on crime, while avoiding doing the logical things experts recommend, because that would look bad in the eyes of the voters. Instead the only consequence is extending the stigma related to excon resulting in greater recidivism
Google returns a story from Rhode Island in 2020 (where the police can’t figure out if the gun was actually printed), an attempted murder in Reykjavík in 2022, and this story from 2022 that claims a total of 44 arrests were made related to 3d printed guns… world wide 3dprint.com/291684/…/amp/
In contrast there were 48117 firearms related deaths in the US during the same period.
Maybe statistics and proportions should be a core part of math from an early age?
These guns are increasingly being found at crime scenes. You may not like NY’s solution, but the problem is growing.
I have two issues with your comment, and the tldr is this “I don’t think the problem warrants the resources needed” and “I don’t think the proposed bill will solve anything, problem or not”.
These guns are increasingly being found at crime scenes.
Probably, I don’t have a source for that, but I suspect that you’re not wrong. What I would like to know is the proportions of gun grimes involving 3d-printed guns vs gun crimes in total. I suspect what others have said in this post, about the percentage of gun related crimes that involve 3d-printed guns, to be within a rounding error, to also be correct.
You may not like NY’s solution, […]
It’s not that I don’t like the “solution”. It’s that I don’t accept the proposed ban as being a solution in the first place. I don’t want to come off as being snarky, I just wanted to make sure that my understanding of the word “solution” was correct. English not being my first language, I sometime miss the salient details. So, I took a moment and googled “definition solution”. According to “Oxford Languages” a solution is a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation.
Can you in all honesty claim, that you believe that limiting acquiring 3d-printing capabilities, in a single state, will reduce the use of 3d-printed parts in gun crimes?
[…] but the problem is growing.
Again, the occurrence of 3d-printed guns or gun parts may be growing, but is it actually a problem big enough that it has to be dealt with? And with the resources necessary to enforce this proposal? Isn’t gun manufacturing already limited? As others have pointed out, why not limit access to other tools you could use to make guns?
As OP pointed out, the intent may be noble, but the attempt is futile.
Sources please?
Some things cannot be effectively regulated in this manner. At all.
There is simply no way to stop people from building their own 3D printers. There are too many open source designs, and they can be built with very simple parts that are readily available at the hardware store. Most hobbyist-level 3D printers basically come as a kit that they have to assemble themselves anyways. What happens next? Background checks to buy stepper motors? Background checks to buy anything containing a stepper motor?
To me this is like trying to mandate government backdoors in encryption algorithms. There is literally nothing that would stop criminals from just using an open source encryption algorithm that doesn’t have a backdoor, so you end up just making it so all legitimate communications are less secure than they should be.
Zip guns have existed for a long, long time, but nobody’s going to legislate serious controls for buying building supplies. I could walk into any hardware store and come out with the materials to build a gun that fires real bullets.
Don’t you just need a pipe of the right size capped at the end, and a nail?
Yeah, a 3/4 inch pipe will fit a 12 gauge shell pretty well, and some pipes will stand a lot of psi.
Luty SMG is an improvement on that. For 3d printers check out the FGC 9. Neither are hard.
People also build potato gun powerful enough to put on through a car door and then some
What the fuck? You dont even need that for buying a fucking knife
I think some people would say the ability to print a gun is more deadly then a knife.
But I kind of agree with you.
If we start licensing people to own stuff that has the potential to do harm, then eventually you are going to run into a never ending list of household items and laws of natural physics:
99% of the what I’ve seen is more deadly to the user than to anyone on the receiving end. You’d really be better off with a pipe pistol or shotgun.
But yeah, almost anything could be dangerous depending on how it’s applied.
We already do that, with guns. Precendent is set.
So it’s almost like the guns are the issue 😩 I can’t believe this
By that logic, they should ban water pipes to stop people from making water pipe shotguns
Must pass a background check before entering Home Depot.
You mean Crime depot
Hey congress, so uhhh… you can 3d print a 3d printer
Or just buy parts. What are they gonna do? Regulate stepper motors and heater cartridges, and generic microcontrollers?
The cat is already out the bag.
“Three-dimensionally printed firearms, a type of untraceable ghost gun, can be built by anyone using a $150 three-dimensional printer,” Rajkumar wrote in a memorandum explaining the bill. “This bill will require a background check so that three-dimensional printed firearms do not get in the wrong hands.”
.... No way an ender 3 is going to produce something that doesn't blow up in your hand.
so. i suggest people get that 150 dollar lol-printer. Should take care of itself.
If you think people aren’t printing firearms with an Ender 3, you are a fool.
an Ender 3's print quality is too low to reliably handle any of the critical components, even for one or two uses. something like the defcad AR lower receiver (which is for some odd reason designated as "the firearm" under ATF regulations...) can absolutely be printed, but not reliably by an ender 3- at least not a stock ender 3. (the defcad team was using resin printers for the dimensional accuracy.)
in any case, you can go to any big box hardware store, drop around 30 bucks in plumbing parts and some quality time with a dremel will produce a fully automatic firearm. should we now regulate plumbing hardware?
You don’t print the explody bits; you have to purchase things like the barrel and the trigger assembly.
However, I know an engineer at Sig Sauer who printed his own gun and he’s never fired it while holding it…so, still prone to eventual catastrophic failure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
so, still prone to eventual catastrophic failure ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Everything will fail eventually, the question is how long it will take and more importantly if the failure can be predicted.
Not sure how to tell you this, but however amusing… you are wrong. An Ender 3 in the hands of even a moderately experienced 3D hobbyist can absolutely produce a functional firearm.
not really. Well let me put it this way. The firearms that are entirely 3d printed are basically one-shot weapons.
the firearms that are single-printed components (or maybe more,) aren't printing components that are part of the firing mechanism. for example, the DefCad team, they're printing lower receiver for an AR. All the lower receiver does is holds the magazine in place for feeding into the chamber. For some technically obscure reason, it's the part that is defined as "the" firearm for the purposes of registration.
the reason most ghost guns aren't actually being printed is because there's easier ways to get better firearms. Like driving to a state that allows the gunshow loophole and buying them cheap and flipping them in NY or whatever. printed ghost guns are... relatively uncommon, overall.
yes it can
You can make a gun with anything
Fine, hard mode challenge: tissue paper!
Give me water, corn starch and a hydrolic press
And if I download a parts list, buy the components, and make the printer myself I guess I can just cruise new york “printing guns” for people without any hassle from the man.
Printing ghost guns, so far, is just a boogyman politicians trot out when one of their corporate sponsors thinks one of their revenue streams might be threatened by DIYers.
I agree that this is a boogeyman law.
I don’t understand the threat to revenue streams. From gun manufacturers? Would anybody who is allowed to purchase a gun bother with a 3D printed one other than for the novelty of it?
My biggest gripe is that I feel that politicians usually don’t get involved in creating laws until way late. Think laws around the regulation of AI or cloning or genetically modifying humans. Is there a credible threat related to printed weaponry? I seriously doubt it.
I saw something similar a few weeks ago on the national news to allow local police to shoot drones around regulated airspaces. In this case it’s a football game. The stadium security said that a drone flew in and distributed pamphlets but could have easily carried in a bomb. Again, this is a theoretical threat, but they’re more likely concerned about illegal filming of a sporting event.
I don’t understand the threat to revenue streams. From gun manufacturers
It doesn’t have to be from gun manufacturers. Any manufacturer can go to the politician they own and say “People are making open source versions of our highest profit margin widget, find a way to make it stop.” Then politician says, “Well, New Yorkers want more gun laws, we can abuse that…”
You wouldn’t download a gun
I don’t have a use for one. A car though? I’d download the fuck out of a car.
You know what would be even more effective than regulating 3D printers like this? Regulating all guns better.
New York has many laws.
everytownresearch.org/rankings/state/new-york/
giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/states/new-york/
What other laws do you think you would help?
Performant horseshit that will never pass.
Louis says NYC is stupid enough
This isn’t even low hanging fruit. This is fruit that’s been on the ground rotting for a few months that no one is going to pick up and eat anyway. Let’s throw ineffective solutions at the problem and when they fail go, “weeeeell, since you can buy a 3d printer and a gun online, let’s just do background checks for internet access”
That was sort of my point. I’m going to go out on a limb and say without any research that bears kill more people every year than 3D printers.
“sir were going to need to do a background check, so you can buy this book that has the word “GUN" in it."
Holy shit, it would be so funny if this started an 80% 3D printer market.
No need. You can buy ALL of the parts off the shelf for a 3D printer and assemble it yourself. None are regulated (Aluminum rails, motors, arduino controllers, LCD panels, Power supplies, heating elements, thermistors, wiring). Strictly speaking there’s nothing about a non-resin 3d Printer you can’t procure and build yourself. And you can even 3d Print the housings to make it look nice once you’ve assembled it. Oh… and the designs and parts are largely open source.
Whats next? Criminal background check to buy cutlery for your kitchen?
I personally have a 3d printed gun that I’ve put a few hundred rounds though and is still holding up just fine 3d printing is plenty strong enough
Oh really? Do you mind telling us how the barrel was 3D printed?
Way to tell on yourself.
Shhhh dont tell new york that anybody can by a lathe or a mill. Or forbid A CNC
You’d be surprised what a hoffman lower or FGC9_2.0 can take.
The New York Police Department has reportedly seen a 60% increase in ghost guns seized from city streets for the past two consecutive years. NYPD recently traced some online ghost gun sales to a “ghost gun printing operation” filled with 3D printers and firearms nestled within a daycare center.
I have no idea from this if the increase in ghost guns was attributable to 3D printing, or if the increase even represents a significant number.
It also seems like this would be really difficult to enforce. You can buy hardware or kits to build your own printer, or you can buy an old printer off someone else.
All that said, if it represents a reasonable concern and they figure out a way where it’s not trivially circumvented (both of which seem unlikely), I really couldn’t care less about a background check.
Gotta stop those guns made from kids. (Per the first image caption in the article).
What are the requirements for other weapons? Does California require a criminal record check for firearms purchases too? I’m Canadian.
In a country where 13 year olds have access to guns.
Who pays for the background check? If it’s the individual, this would kill 3d printing in New York. If someone else, it would still probably kill 3d printing just because of the extra resistance to purchase.
Wogi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s a community that builds 3d printed guns, and those don’t last very long either. They’re not printing barrels, they’re just printing the trigger housing and grip. They go out and buy the dangerous bits.
This is all a bit pointless.
Even more pointless when you consider that once you have a 3d printer, you can make a lot of the components for a second 3d printer, and go out and buy the other parts, without ever buying a 3d printer. Now you have two ghost gun machines!! Oh the horror.
JoShmoe@ani.social 1 year ago
This is the reason why I need education. CNc machines are the only tools you need. Fast food is probably just CNC assembled.
Wogi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s all CNC. All the way down. Always was.
Seriously, 3d printers are just CNC machines, they use the same code the mill I use that was built in 1989 uses.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Not too mention the ammo. 3d printed guns are useless without real ammo.
thessnake03@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Isn’t that an old Chris Rock line. Just make bullets cost $5k each
youtu.be/VZrFVtmRXrw?si=jzUBH1wk5aSsYUjn
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Tbh, you print em right they’ll last a good 2k rnds and you can rifle the barrel with ECM at home these days, they’d get “the job” done, save an extended firefight, and then “NY reload.”
That said I agree this is pointless.
Anonymouse@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A self replicating 3D printer? I like it.
cynar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The reprap movement was exactly that. A self replicating rapid prototyper. While it never reached true replication, it got close enough to cause an explosive growth of the community. That, in turn led to the huge number of low cost suppliers and designs we have now.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 1 year ago
Yeah it’s called RepRap
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
As others have said, the RepRap concept was trying to be that. At first the idea was to 3D print as much of the machine as possible, but what it realistically achieved was you would buy metal frame rails, nuts & bolts, the hot end assembly (a glorified hot glue gun), motors, and a controller board (in many cases literally an arduino) and 3D print connectors and bracketry necessary to hold the thing together. Josef Prusa took the “Mendel” pattern Reprap and simplified it into his now ubiquitous upright plate style “Prusa i3” pattern.
I’ve built several 3D printers from “scratch” and at least 20 from kits. My own 3D printer has printed many of its own parts.
rostby@lemmy.fmhy.net 1 year ago
They saw the x-files and got scared