San Diego County jumped into California’s sprawling ghost gun fight this week, suing a 3-D printing filament manufacturer it says hocks material for homespun firearms in violation of state law.
Working with the Giffords Law Center, the county counsel sued manufacturer Polymaker, alleging the company made a “strategic business choice” to market and sell 3-D printer filament to Californians for the express purpose of building illegal weapons. The polymer filament is sold in spools that feed into 3-D printers, allowing the devices to form designs created by their owners.
Don’t tell them about pipes.
I believe they’ll eventually come for those too.
IMO the real end goal of these laws isn’t to ban ghost guns, it’s to ban plebs from being able to build or create anything at all. 3D printing a plastic piece to fix a broken tab in some gizmo cuts into corporate profits so a manufactured moral panic about ghost guns appears. I’m sure they’ll eventually get to a pipe rifle moral panic at some point to lock down DIY plumbing.
" Oi, you got a licence for that sewage mate? "
I am skeptical about that, though the visual is funny.
So they’ll make black iron pipe illegal and require it to be replaced with plastic flex hose.
We’ve been there before.
hold on let me go sue home depot for selling black iron pipe and nails because someone made a pipe bomb. Nowhere has poly-maker ever advertised or suggested their speciality filaments could make firearms.
Someone’s looking for a payout settlement, fuck California
you could literally make a shotgun with that too. Saw a YouTube video. Two pipes, one fit in the other, small one was the right size to hold a shell, and a nail at the end of the closed pipe triggered it if you used your hands to hit it.
Super effective and easy one shot shotgun. there’s no real way to regulate guns IMO. They’re not complicated devices.
Guns are just a slight evolution of the sling, just us throwing rocks further and faster.
Same as it ever was.
The shit shovel too AK guide is still on my favorite guides that were floating around on the interwebz
the problem is that someone is San Diego county
They used fear of guns to attack Right to Repair and small manufacturing. It was never about guns.
This will get tossed. But here’s why it’s actually happening:
Gatalog and Polymaker both market through a network of influencers “specializing in 3D printed ghost gun content, as well as companies and individuals that illegally distribute [digital firearm manufacturing codes],” according to the suits.
Both also directly target state residents: Gatalog advertises a “California Compliant Glock 19-based Carbine kit,” while Polymakers’ website features Proposition 65 warnings and state-specific privacy opt-out features.
I mean yea, advertise your filament with YouTubers making guns, and you put yourself in the…oof.
Yeah people too easy to judge instead of reading the actual article. Despite the article being click baity, seems a pretty reasonable reason to sue polymaker. They should do little bit of research on who they choose to sponsor.
You can make a crude firearm/hand held pipe bomb with a pipe and lighter. A lot less effort than 3d printing one.
Are they going to go after builders merchants now?
They can arrest Home Depot for intent to distribute.
Plumbers and carpenters are now felons.
Next they’ll be looking at the violent motherfucker that invented 3d printing. Plus fishing supply companies that produce a different kind of, but still a, filament. /s
Might as well go after the smelters for making the metal that goes into knives and guns.
Sure Some people take the filament to the sea to murder fish for sushi lovers. But the real purpose is to 3D print unimaginable violent content.
That is completely bizarre.
This is getting a bit fucking ridiculous. They’re suing filament manufacturers now.
A video I posted a few months ago about this bullshit: https://youtu.be/E1B2cWEaWDw
@jballs that’s like suing a hardware store for someone hit with a piece of wood my point is filaments are legal it is the end-product that is meant to be perceived
#3DPrintingYeah, and they also want to make it illegal to print something without a magic algorithm sitting between your computer and printer determining if it’s a gun part or not. I can’t help but feel like these people don’t know the first thing about how 3d printing actually works.
I can’t help but feel like these people don’t know the first thing about how 3d printing actually works.
Totally. Brought to you by the same brilliant minds that claimed all videogames besides Tetris were simply “murder simulators” and school-shooter training programs. 🙄
Why do the most wasted brains have so much influence…
@jballs that’s called censorship even though I am Canadian have no guns , it is not something I find practical especially with the law creating a potential black market
#3DPrinting
Polymaker is a Chinese supplier, selling to California residents, while also running ad campaigns through ghost gun content creators aimed at California residents, defining themselves explicitly as a ghost gun ingredient.
If they didn’t want to get caught up in this, they shouldn’t have gotten involved in the illicit arms business. But they wanted to be known as the plastic supplier that is cool with you making ghost guns, and that isn’t going to fly in California.
Plastic suppliers that don’t advertise themselves explicitly as being part of the ghost gun supply chain will be fine.
So polymaker actually choose the individual channels their ads (not about ghost guns) were put on…or was that an algorithm (AdSense)?
I don’t remember seeing them do any specific sponsored content, though they may and probably have, but that have a very open affiliate program that every 3d printer youtuber I’ve seen is in. They also give out codes for streaming channels to give away filament.
All this I’m saying is I don’t think they’re “choosing” these channels but I doubt they care what the content in on any channel.
they have a specific partnership with a 3D2A channel The 3D Print General off the top of my head
Will be fine, for now.
Well, doesn’t that just show how useless that ban is?
Sue the steel mills for guns too while you’re at it.
Hol up, those guns are made by corporations. What are you thinking?
Anyone with machining knowledge can turn a block of metal into a working gun part
As an old toolmaker, that’s not as true as you think. It requires a lot of other knowledge besides running a lathe or mill. I speak from experience, having had to learn how to make repair parts for antique and collectable firearms at times.
If your goal is to make a working gun, it’s pretty achievable, repairing or restoring existing one is obviously quite a bit harder.
So education is destroyed and all machines sold to China.
Americans can order guns to their doors, but the 3d printers are the issues you choose to tackle…
No, they can’t. Guns can only be legally shipped to a federally licensed gun dealer. The dealer cannot transfer it to the buyer without the mandated background check.
The gun laws are already fucked up enough. You don’t have to make shit up.
You can have long guns purchased through the Civilian Marksmanship Program shipped directly to your door. Those are a drop in the bucket compared to most firearm purchases in the US, though.
False.
Residents of CA, CT, IL, NJ, NY, OR and WA must have the rifles shipped to an FFL dealer. You must provide a copy of the dealer’s license with your order form. NJ and IL Residents must also provide their FOID card. WA Residents must also provide the I-1639 training certificate.
CMP can’t do that in states like California or any of the other states with decent gun laws.
I’ve only been threatened with a gun by the government and I bet that is the case for the vast majority of us.
But you want them to regulate it.
Reading comprehension of a dog.
Talking about regulation (and support for common sense gun laws that would also limit cops) ≠ support for all regulation. You and the people who upvoted you need to retake whatever class you learned English through.
Can order black powder revolvers to your door, and can buy replacement parts that allow them to fire cowboy cartridges, which are just low FPS lead rounds, like 800fps. They’ll kill a fella, but don’t have quite the same force as modern rounds. They also burn a lower grade powder and are a bit more smokey.
Actually, those conversion cylinders are perfectly happy with modern smokeless powders suitable for their caliber. Though it’s more about velocities than pressure. I can load any smokeless .45 Colt for my cylinder that is listed for the standard pressures, (about 11,000psi). But it is highly recommended to keep your velocities no more than 850fps, (the original velocity for the Colt SAA). Frame stretching is the issue. Those cap and ball revolvers are made from a bit softer metal than modern revolvers. Remington’s are stronger than the open top Colts.
Trump is trying to pass that law right now, a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but it reinforces my point
This also didn’t solve anything, if you look at the statistics.
The specifics revolve around a 3d-printed-gun advocate named Sean Aranda, whose youtube channel focuses on the subject. According to him, when youtube demonetized the channel in 2023 Polymaker approached him with a sponsorship offer. A couple months later Polymaker announced Aranda was a new member of its marketing team.
So regardless of where you stand on the Calif anti-3d-gun law, this isn’t a simple case of going after egg farmers because of illegal omelets.
You’ve got some point there, but doesn’t demonstrate the uselessness of the law? Unless of course they are going after every producer of technical filaments, which is like going after anyone with a lathe or a CNC machine.
No I think this is an example of the opposite - it’s not an action against the filament industry or the 3d printing community in general, it’s against an individual company for allegedly marketing filament specifically to print guns, not just because filament could or might be used to print guns. Whether the law itself is right or wrong is a different issue.
Which makes the law useless. People with nefarious plans don’t need ads. There really are just two possibilities, either it is repressive and overreaching or it is useless.
Ok whatever. I won’t try to argue over the validity of your definition of “useless” since you clearly think it’s absolute.
It is not absolute, you are free to argue in which way it is useful, in practical terms. Have you done so?
Do you think any follower of mentioned channel has difficulties finding functional FDM filaments without ads on the channel? If not, whats the point of the law’s application in this example?
Is this filament specifically designed for guns?
No, polymaker just have a big range of engineering friendly filament, just as they have pretty artsy ones, and low cost workhorse filament for makers
Sounds like the lawsuit is on thin ice, then.
They apparently sponsored a maker who prints guns, which is the justification.
Still stupid for a mountain of reasons, not least of which is that 3D printing guns is perfectly legal in many places.
Saudi Arabia can’t go after the companies that sell oak barrels to Jack Daniels because alcohol is illegal there.
It’s like saying steel is specifically designed for guns. For plastics, stronger is a nice property for many applications.
This seems awfully familiar to the gun crackdowns after the Black Panthers started using them for self defense.
They’re trying to make this a case over marketing and intent rather than materials.
The actual types of filament they’re concerned with are carbon fiber nylon (sold by many brands) and “PLA Pro” which is just a bit better regular PLA.
These are sold by tons of brands all across the internet.
