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.
This seems awfully familiar to the gun crackdowns after the Black Panthers started using them for self defense.
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.
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.
@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
#3DPrintingI 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…
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.
Will be fine, for now.
So polymaker actually choose the individual channels their ads (not about ghost guns) were put on…or was that an algorithm (AdSense)?
they have a specific partnership with a 3D2A channel The 3D Print General off the top of my head
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.
Well, doesn’t that just show how useless that ban is?
They used fear of guns to attack Right to Repair and small manufacturing. It was never about guns.
Pfffffff hahahaha, are you also going to go after weed walker too?
The USA is a joke
For fucks sake.
Is this filament specifically designed for guns?
It’s like saying steel is specifically designed for guns. For plastics, stronger is a nice property for many applications.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They are going about this all wrong. Just make possession a crime and enforce it.
How? Already If you want a above board gun you will just buy actual gun. If you are up to some shady shit or just an enthusiast, you go for 3d printed guns. You can’t effectively enforce this especially in the US unless you ban printers, preferably federally and ban 3d printing as a practice. You can’t effectively scrub the models from the internet, you can’t stop people from printing and you can’t really enforce distribution because everybody with a printer, will and a little knowhow can make their own.
The real news here is the filament company are complete doofuses if they are marketing their high strength filament especially for gun making. That’s just like if OpenAI was marketing their new cutting edge image gen AI model as something meant for making deepfake P*rn of celebrities. One would think that they would cover their asses with more neutral wording and description regarding their product. That is a PR and legal problem bound to happen.
The same way that they enforce other crimes.
Murdering someone is illegal. Murdering someone while being involved in a gang is extra illegal and affects sentencing for example.
Caught with possession of a “ghost” gun? Insta-jail. Or maybe increase the charge to terrorism.
The legal system has tons of options at their disposal. Going after filament manufacturers is like going after black powder suppliers.
The legal system has tons of options at their disposal. Going after filament manufacturers is like going after black powder suppliers.
Nor arguing that this isn’t removed.
The same way that they enforce other crimes.
Yeah and the point was that there is no practical way to do that. It’s much harder to control these things than just regular stolen, misplaced or otherwise illegally acquired guns. You cant use deterrence when you are speaking about a tool that you are just going to use to commit crimes that are are going the be more severe that just an illegal firearms possession. Ofc everybody who are above board and law abiding will stop even thinking about 3d printer firearms. However if somebody is considering murder you think they care if they potentially get +5 years added to their sentence if they do it with self printed weapon instead of regular firearm?
Yes, that’s how the system works today. Your sentencing is affected by specifics of your crime.
It’s not really a deterrent. Murderers are gonna murder. I lived above one and they murdered with a pillow and telephone cable. I also sat on a trial that put a murderer away. Their circumstances affected their sentencing drastically.
If it’s so unenforceable, why isn’t it an issue in other countries? Even ones that have nearly the same number of guns as America? 🤔
You still have to buy bullets.
But then I’d be guilty! I have some Polymaker filament right here! It’s still new in the box and everything…
Shit, maybe there’s a sketchy filament black market where I can fence it…
Sorry I misspoke. It’s fixed. Basically illegal firearms should be enforced better.
all firearms are legal.
the difference, is that some firearms require certain permits to possess under the 1986 Hughes amendment to the NFA.
for possession of a machine gun, you either need a transferrable (any registered MG pre May 1986, extremely rare, and this in good condition are literally worth more than most houses), or an FFL-31-SOT, which allows you to manufacture “dealer samples”.
Suppressors (AKA Silencers), and Short Barrel Rifles/Shotguns are now fully transferrable under a form 4473; due to the recent Texas ruling against the NFA.
the requirement for Form 4473s; however, are likely to change due to the semi recent elimination of most of the tax stamp requirements for transferring NFA items; which was only allowed (per the supreme court) because congress has the constitutional power to enact and enforce taxes, but they do not have the power to regulate firearm circulation. the NFA is on its last legs. I will celebrate the day it is finally killed. The victims of the ATF’s enforcement over the years deserve renumeration… or at the very least, an apology.
I can’t possess some firearms legally, therefore many firearms are effectively not legal. How it came to be like that is largely irrelevant.
I’ll be surprised if that changes.
Getting your FFL-31-SOT is pretty easy. It’s just some paperwork. The tricky part is the taxes and license fees; which are admittedly pretty stupidly high. IIRC they’re somewhere in the range of 4 digits - 5 digits.
using what the ATF classifies as “Destructive Devices” (40mm grenades, mortars, etc) requires tax stamps still, and some paperwork, registering who has it and where it is, etc… but they are legal.
If you’re a convicted Federal Felon who has served their sentence, you can petition the courts to have your right to possess firearms reinstated. Of those who petition, most get their right reinstated; in the pro-gun areas. You only get one shot though IIRC; so you should go to a court in a heavily red state to have the best chance. It’s a federal-level decision, so pretty much any federal court should do.
With the way the current administration is going; as much as I disagree with some of their decisions, the NFA is well and truly on its way to the grave.
Every law abiding citizen should be able to possess and operate any firearm, regardless of fire rate, caliber, or form factor.
Good luck, brother.
Freedom doesn’t include asking for permission and paying for the privilege to do so.
Shall not be infringed!
i hope.polymarket fights this. this law ia wrong and should be challenged in court
you mean polymaker
yeah, typo
Por que no los dos?
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.
Oh my God! America could end up having a real problem with gun violence…
Was it ever about the children? It’s not about the gun violence either
Seems the safe option for others is to cease all shipments and sales of printers and filament to California.
What about bullets?
Gonna have to stop all sales of lead and brass in any form (don’t want to have access for people to melt things down). Gunpowder of course, including all the elements needed to make gunpowder. You know, just to cover all the bases. /s
Hmm… You’re right. That’s a big job and I’m only paid to do it.
Okay, let’s blame the 3D printer people.
more /ssssssss
I print my own bullets /s
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
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.
Might as well go after the smelters for making the metal that goes into knives and 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.
