Recent estimates indicate there to be about 500m privately held conventional firearms in the US, almost two for every adult*, and yet somebody thinks that they can keep people safe by worrying on about a few more plastic ones?

* Or one per adult, and the other for the kids to take to school on a bad day.

More to the point, Bragg has zero authority outside of the State of New York. None. And even if he tried to indict some company in say, Texas, in all likelihood the governor of that State would forbid Law Enforcement in that State from giving him the time of day.

Its like the city wide sugar taxes that some blue cities have enacted. The locals just go to the shops just outside of town and stock up on their carbonated diabeetus.

This is soo true. Like it makes any difference how far away a shop is to how often you go there. I want chocolate, I can walk to the shop 2 buildings away or drive 3 miles outside of town. Both are exactly the same thing!!

Stupid blue cities should know this!!

If this was actually about stopping gun violence they would ban all handguns, not just homemade 3D printed ones. The number of 3D printed guns is a drop in the ocean compared with the total number of guns in America. I think this is more about protecting the IP of gun manufacturers. You must buy all your rapid fire people killing machines from us, not make pirated copies of our products with your fancy printer.

Don't forget government sponsored initiatives such as the CIA project to sting Mexican cartels that backfired…

Give the rednecks enough guns to kill each other and let the rest of the world get on in comparative peace!

The thing is... it is not the rednecks killing each other on a regular basis.

Well, maybe they need a bit more encouragement. Maybe a few more conspiracy theories would help!

Nah, we already dun worked out that the good book won't stop no 50 cal. Not gonna do that one again! Waste o good am-u-nishun!

"The thing is... it is not the rednecks killing each other on a regular basis."

You'll have the liberals screaming that statistics are racist now...

People think that having guns will somehow protect them against the tyranny.

They are probably one HIMARS away from finding out it's probably not going to do anything for their freedumbs.

It's all just gun industry induced psychosis.

Quick quick, slaves are assembling makeshift weapoooons!

Ban it!

The problem is that they are doing it for free. They should buy their [1]JR-15s from decent America gun makers

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jr-15-real-rifle-designed-children/

Doing it for free?

Have you ever tried to print one? A semi-automatic handgun can take 18ish hours to print the main body of the gun which usually needs a whole bunch of filing, drilling of holes to the proper size and other hand fitting of components to have a so-so weapon. The time increases if you wake up in the morning and find the printer bed is a chaotic mess of filament due to the thing not sticking to the bed properly. The parts that must be metal and precision aren't cheap so it can often be less expensive to buy a handgun on the street that was made by a quality manufacturer. You just take the risk that it was used in a crime and the ballistics could match up to a case that makes you look really bad (guilty).

> In March, Bragg also wrote to 3D printer manufacturer Creality and asked it to ensure its products could detect designs for guns and refuse to produce them.

What kind of training are District Attorneys required to undergo before being allowed to interact with grown-ups?

How should a printer "detect a design" for gun parts or for anything else?

All the printer sees is G-Code like :

G1 Z8.4

G1 X129.439 Y95.632 F10800

G1 Z8.2 F720

G1 E1.4 F2100

M204 S800

;TYPE:Perimeter

G1 F1559

G1 X129.439 Y114.368 E.63419

G1 X120.49 Y114.368 E.30291

G1 F1031.121

G1 X120.022 Y114.368 E.01584

G1 F1001.312

G1 X120.022 Y113.9 E.01584

G1 F1220.27

...

Tough on lathes, tough on the causes of lathes

How should a printer "detect a design" for gun parts or for anything else?

Taking that as a sort of question which comes up in idle chit-chat my proposal would be that the printer renders the G-code virtually, then pattern matches it to see if it's a gun or part of one or not, before printing the real thing.

Obviously there will be more to that but this is just idle chit-chat. Do I get an up-vote for not mentioning AI?

Is the design a working weapon or just a replica? I worked for a movie props company and we provided all of the props for an armory room. We had real military gun racks filled with loads of cheap plastic rifles and handguns. They also had some "movie" guns for the actors to handle that were made of metal, but made so they couldn't fire real ammunition. The cheap plastic guns were really horrible and many got broken as they fit really tight in the racks and people tried to removed them which often snapped off the barrel. Our plan was the next time we had a customer for those props, I'd 3D print some replicas that would could pull a mold from and make polyurethane castings that would fit the racks better and wouldn't break. I left the company before we got to that.

There are fake guns that get used for training LEO's. It's safer and they wind up getting tossed around and abused so cheap plastic is the better option.

A further question is how something would match a pattern. Many 3D printed guns are extremely unique and people design and build those to be very custom one-off weapons.

This is different from preventing 2D Printers printing money, as there is only exactly one way to print a, say, a realistically looking $100 note.

There's simply no pattern to match to "see" if the part being printed is a "gun part", as there is an indefinite number of ways to design a gun, especially in a custom design, without external restrictions.

That's wishful thinking, not an implementable requirement.

Do I get an up-vote for not mentioning AI?

So close, but failed at the final hurdle. Better luck next time.

"my proposal would be that the printer renders the G-code virtually, then pattern matches it to see if it's a gun or part of one or not"

I'd like to see how that could be implemented in the 256kB flash of my Prusa Mk3S...

>> How should a printer "detect a design" for gun parts or for anything else?

Printers can detect attempts to scan and print money, so why not?

It was some colour photocopiers were designed to detect if you were trying to copy a bank note and fail. Perhaps some of the bundled software that came with scanners would also detect that you were trying to scan a bank note and fail. But I remember scanning and printing out a tenner when we got a Xerox solid ink printer to test at the place i worked back in the mid 2000s, and at no point did either the scanner or printer throw an error or mess up the job because it was a bank note.

The resulting note was good enough to convince my colleague I was giving him £10 to go and get us both a coffee from the canteen. I did tell him before he tried to pass a forged note though.

The copier doesn't detect bank notes, but a specific pattern of yellow dots printed on bank notes.

Just noticed several earlier posts below mention this.

Its a lot easier to detect prey designed patterns eg. line if certain frequency, than to decide if the tube is a gun barrel or butt plug

" ... butt plug ... " :)

The whole "adult" sex toy industry could be revolutionised by custom printed "toys."

I suppose the regular pattern of ridges typically seen on a printed models might be considered "pleasure enhancing."

There might even market for electro-mechanical vibratory etc components and Bluetooth controllers for the real DIYers.

Something tells me that you haven't done a search for such things...

I have...

Apparently, it's in the driver, not the printer, at least in the case of my Brother color laser. Printing a scan of a $20 from Windows gets a mysterious error number, but Linux has no problem.

So we need to ban Linux! Tell the attorney general!

Because detecting the specific patterns of a banknote is a lot easier to do for an algorithm than trying to figure out if a certain shape is a part for building a firearm?

A bank note has to look exactly like a bank note or it's useless. Creativity isn't an option.

An ideal time to mention [1]this Mitchell & Webb sketch !

[1] https://youtu.be/xG6oCrtef5A

Curiously a peculiarly relevant [1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVcaWyNN-Q appeared next to that sketch.

"Whoopty Do !"

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVcaWyNN-Q

Printers can detect attempts to scan and print money, so why not?

Because money is designed with background patterns that are intended to be recognisable (see [1]EURion constellation and note the paragraph on the Counterfeit Deterrence System as well).

If gun parts all had "this is a gun part" on them recognising them would be as easy. They don't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

.....ammunition does.

At its crudest a gun is just a piece of pipe (look up "Zip gun"). What makes a gun dangerous is the ammunition. Ammunition manufacture requires precision drawing and forming equipment plus specialized chemicals for propellant and primer. These materials can be purchased for enthusiasts to assemble their own loads but there's no way that anyone could make them at home. So focusing on the 'form' -- making "gun like things that may or may not work" -- rather than the function -- mass produced, readily available, lethal devices -- is just avoiding the issue.

Anyway, there are plenty of uses for 3D printed gun parts because plastics are widely used on modern guns. Just not for the bits that actually do the damage.

No, it's the nut that's holding it that does that. But in civilised societies it's easier to ban guns than nuts.

"This hobby is not dangerous so long as proper precautions are taken"

Years ago it was discovered someone was producing sub-machine guns without the aid of 3d printing in a workshop at Queens University Belfast. Was that also counted as a hobby that wasn't dangerous?

Presumably the team that weren't receiving American support?

I'm not sure that there wasn't such a team. The uneasy bit to me was that was one of the QUB buildings where I'd previously worked.

Where were they getting ammunition from?

Something tells me that they'd be copies of the tube with a spring that was the sten gun.

You really couldn't make a simpler sub machine gun than the Sten

"Bragg has called for new laws that would make it .... a class A misdemeanor to distribute gun design files."

Even though it is only a misdemeanor, it is a criminal act to distribute gun design files. This is only information being shared, and the article made no mention of any of it being under copyright protection. That is freedom of speech, and covered by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Ah, but what about CSAM since distributing that is also illegal? The difference is CSAM is the result of a criminal act.

Now we are moving to block the spread of information which could potentially result in an illegal activity.

What is the next step? We need to block information (regardless of whether it is true or not) which could result in riots & insurrection? In human history, when the truth is exposed about the ruling class (usually politicians), it has resulted in the forced removal of that ruling class. This is why totalitarian states like North Korea and the former Soviet Union strictly control the media and what can be said about their rulers.

Blocking the spread of gun design files, which could potentially be used for an illegal activity is another dangerous small step toward eliminating freedom in the United States. It simultaneously erodes both the First & Second Amendments.

"In human history, when the truth is exposed about the ruling class (usually politicians), it has resulted in the forced removal of that ruling class."

The problem being that the power vacuum left has usually been filled by someone as bad or worse.

And in recent times we've become so desensitised to what our ruling class do that we don't really give a crap.

Literally ANYTHING 'could' be used for illegal activities. Policy makers LOVE broad brush laws, especially the ones in NY.

In the UK it's an offensive to posses or distribute information useful terrorists.

Like the formula for anything flammable or a bus timetable

Or as Private Eye cartoon - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/private-eye-cartoon-arrest-ian-hislop-protest

"It simultaneously erodes both the First & Second Amendments."

Is it the second one that's more properly known as the Right to get Shot?

This article is actually quite misleading. They haven't allowed functional guns for well over a decade.

So it's nothing of their noses to appear to be reacting to the directive.

Makes for good PR.

Law enforcement authorities describe 3D-printed guns and other homemade firearms as “ghost guns” because they lack a serial number and are therefore effectively untraceable.

A gun with a serial number isn't that much more traceable until it's been taken from a criminal or a crime scene. If it goes back out into the wild after that, the problem isn't the weapon.

Many guns used for crimes have been stolen. The serial number has been registered to somebody that will have often reported the firearm as stolen. Now all law enforcement knows is there is a firearm that's been stolen and has that serial number on it. If it turns up in an investigation, the serial number doesn't offer any leads unless the details surrounding the theft have some use. Usually they don't. The gun is stolen and then sold if the perp has any brain cells left functioning. Not only sold, but sold in a distant city.