The fight to stop California’s hugely restrictive 3D printer law, AB2047, is full of misunderstandings.
I’ve written about this several times previously, but in short here’s the situation: California legislators are concerned about the increase in 3D-printed weapons, and propose a new law that will require all 3D printers sold in the state to be equipped with blocking technology. This tech will magically determine whether a print job is legal or not.
The technology is entirely infeasible, and will require each and every job to be transmitted to the authorities for inspection. This is an enormous violation of privacy and is incompatible with industrial additive manufacturing, as well as most open-source 3D printing software and projects. If passed, it will effectively stop progress in 3D printing for the foreseeable future.
If the proposed law is so bad, why are people supporting it? Legislators by and large have no technical understanding of the matter and seem to be simply chasing votes. The California public has had enough of violent crime, and on the surface this would seem to be one way to decrease it.
But really there are massive misunderstandings. I recently read a “letter to the editor” of the LA Times, where a reader explained their viewpoint. The reader said they were a “volunteer for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.”
In the letter, the reader said:
“They must protect us from people who wouldn’t pass a background check, but can now buy a 3-D printer for $250 and possess a fully operable semi-automatic firearm as deadly as a store-bought weapon.”
This is not true. 3D printers cannot produce fully operable weapons. They can produce some parts that could be used in a weapon, but the 3D printer absolutely does not “print firearms”.
“The Firearm Printing Protection Act (Assembly Bill 2047) is carefully calibrated to protect public safety without stifling innovation.”
This is also untrue. Open source projects, which are the foundation of most 3D print technology, will be greatly challenged by this law as these projects do not have the resources to meet the proposed legal requirements. In addition, open source projects are not designed nor intended to require calls to external services for authorization.
“Accountability is focused on manufacturers that fail to equip their products with existing safety technology.”
True, but the technology simply does not work and cannot work. The proposed approach would use shape detection, except that there is really no distinction between “weapon shapes” and any other shapes. Is that a gun barrel or a tube? Is that a weapon or a toy? Slight shape modifications would easily defeat any such system.
This means that solving the technical problem is a highly complex project, something that only a few of the larger companies might even be able to properly attempt. In other words, many 3D printer companies would simply not be able to participate and would likely withdraw from the California market.
”It would not regulate individual printer possession and focuses only on future sales.”
In a technology world where advances happen every month, within 2-3 years many 3D printers would be turned over for new and better machines. The reader likely assumes machines last a long time, but in fact they do not. Effectively this legislation would require all 3D printers to participate within a relatively short time.
“California lawmakers have the power to stop that kind of criminal activity; they’d be irresponsible to avoid taking action.”
They do not. The proposed solutions will be trivially easy to circumvent, leaving only problems for legitimate operators, and not solving the original problem in any way.
Summing this up, we have severe misunderstandings from the public about this topic, and that may just allow enough support for the proposed legislation to pass.
I wonder what they will be saying in a few years when it is shown that no positive effects were seen?
