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My main concern is, how long is it before you can't print a replacement part for something you bought because it looks too similar to an OEM part and the manufacturer doesn't think you should be able to do that so they throw a little money to the right politician.

This is insanely stupid stuff. Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns. Why not? Because nobody is printing guns! It's an infeasible solution to a non-problem!

Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, which appears not to be the case here, or (b) they went insane on social media.

(can't confirm this personally, but it seems from other comments that it's perfectly feasible to just drive out of New York State and buy a gun somewhere else in the gun-owning US? And this is quite likely where all the guns used in existing NY crime come from?)

I would also note that the Shinzo Abe doohickey wasn't 3D-printed.

The only logical end of this is that they should ban 3d printers and cnc mills to unlicensed individuals. Which, is probably the goal. Things like 3d printers, drones, GPUs, general purpose computers, vpns, encryption, talking to people in private and the like are far too dangerous for the citizenry to be allowed to do without appropriate oversight and approval.

The most insane thing about this is that it is not illegal to manufacture firearms in the United States. Providing that you do not sell or distribute the firearm, it is entirely legal to manufacture a firearm in the USA for personal use only. Laws vary state by state, of course, and it may be different in the state of New York, but assuming that this federal law has not been overridden by some state law in New York, then this proposed regulation is 100% nonsensical.

> blog.adafruit.com Your browser is out of date. Update your browser to view this site properly. Click here for more information

if you care about right to repair and the ability of regular people to make a living and choose their own destiny(i.e. live independently of a mega-corp), this type of error message should bother you. HTML is a mature tech. There is no reason for this type of error

This will cause 3D printer usability to go down massively. A bit like the multicolored tracking dots - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots that causes the driver to tell you "you can't print black and white as you're out of yellow".

I could see why "people are making guns" would be at the top of the list of politicians' worries in places where there are almost no guns, and people want to keep it that way. But in the US?

I don't think they know what Ctrl+Alt+Delete means.

They want to restart it? They want to go to the screen where you can switch users or sign out?

Do they think it's just a fancier way of saying delete?

Hmmm... this is literally the intro of the narrative arc in the game that I'm making. Governments confiscating 3D Printers, powerful GPUs, robotic parts to prevent "simple people" the access to "dangerous technologies". For their own good of course.

I saw a shirt one time that said something like "in just one generation user manuals went from showing you how to tune your carburetor to warning you not to drink the battery acid"

Stupidity or nefariousness? Probably both. I don't feel like I can fix either.

Should flour, yeast, water, and ovens be banned, and only commercial bakeries be allowed to make bread?

I know guns are different. There are also an enormous amount of ways to cause harm. I personally think that, ideally, nobody should have guns. That's not the world we live in, though. A political government body should not infringe on privacy of individuals because some small percentage may cause harm.

I can make a sword, grow poisonous plants, isolate toxins, or stab someone with a pencil. I do not. I shouldn't be punished for the idea that other people may.

> The obvious problem: you cannot reliably detect firearms from geometry alone.

The obvious problem with this argument is that in just the medium term, world-model style AI will get good at this task, but having big brother pre-approve every print will still be bad.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that in the US we have the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which gives you the right to manufacture a fire arm. There are still requirements like it must be for personal use, cannot be transferred, must have a serial number, etc.

People regularly circumvent "blocking technology" (i.e. DRM) because they want to watch a TV show on a plane with no wi-fi, or because they want to save $20 on a cartridge of printer ink. If someone wants to kill another human being and evade detection, I'm sure they'll find a way to print their part.

The much much much more concerning part of this bill in my opinion is the part that applies this expectation to CNC machining equipment. This means that there will be some ugly consequences to running real industry out of New York state. Probably heavy import and cross shipping delays (lots of German machining equipment passes through the port at NY/NJ, so could theoretically be subject to this, even if eventual delivery is to Texas, for instance). The reasoning behind things like the old "receiver is the only part of the gun to be serialized and tracked" and "80% AR Lower Receiver" were to prevent impact to non-gun industries. Block of steel with random holes is not a gun is an important concept. My only conclusions are: 1) very glad I don't live in New York, 2) buy my used VMC sooner rather than later to avoid this stupidity. Much like continuing to drive my 2010 Miata a lot longer since it doesn't have all this terrible new technology that prevents maintenance (VIN locked modules, no home programming software to replace things, etc etc).

4th Amendment, unreasonable search. And of course the 2nd, but the former is more worrying. Also if printing is speech, then you can add the 1st to the list as well.

As you might expect on a tech website, folks in the comments have immediately jumped to workarounds for this. Before we do that, spare a thought for whether our government should be allowed to conceive of something like this in the first place.

It's not illegal to make your own firearm, you just can't sell it.

I built an 8'x4' CNC router table in 2004. I bought rack and pinion, steppers, drives, aluminum extrusion, and I had it built in one week. What would stop someone from building their own printer and building and selling printers to others who don't have the skill set? They would make it illegal to make 3D printers or CNC machinery without a license, and if you are caught it is tantamount to making guns.

What a great way to inhibit a path for a nation to advance it's manufacturing capabilities - putting roadblocks in the way of individuals learning how to manufacture things.

Weird how this is happening simultaneously in many states. Washington is considering a vague 3d printer and CNC law to address ghost guns. Gun crimes are mostly committed with regular pistols but that isn’t stopping politicians from passing all sorts of restrictions under the guise of keeping people safe. Meanwhile these states have serious budget problems that go unaddressed …

So what's next? People will re-flash their printers with an open-source firmware that won't do the checks? Who's liable in this case?

New York are going to be very angry when they discover that pipes and hammers exist.

Note that Washington's similar HB 2321 defines a "3D printer" as any additive or subtractive manufacturing machine. So these idiots want to regulate CNC machines too.

Public comments can (and should!) be submitted here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/2321 Keep them polite and respectful; insults and threats won't help.

This is a frustrating replay of the DRM (digital rights management) / copy protection debate from about 20 years ago. That time, it was about restricting fully general-purpose computers and storage devices from copying or displaying certain bit patterns in the hopes of stopping media piracy. The pro-restriction side spent enormous amounts of money, engineering talent, and legal firepower, yet hackers have defeated every copy-protection system ever devised.

This time, it's about restricting fully general-purpose 3D printers (and perhaps CNC machines) from following instructions according to certain bit patterns in the hopes of stopping the manufacture of firearms. I have a feeling it's going to play out in the same way, leading to an long and expensive intellectual war that accomplishes nothing.

Fighting a war against general-purpose tools is as futile as making water not wet. When will legislators learn this and give up?

For hundreds of years people have been making guns without 3D printers and CNC mills. All that is needed is some metal machining skills, a lathe, and some other tools.

The irony is it’s really easy and cheap to get a type 7 ffl, basically a background check and $150. Legally manufacture and sell all the guns you want. The reality is no one would buy your 3d printed junk anyway.

Year 2027: beep boop beep boop, scan your implanted rfid digital ID chip to authenticate:

- your social media consumption and any post you make

- your app installations

- registering a new account or keeping an already existing one

- driving your car

- 3D printing something

- watching a YouTube video

- buying anything online

- receive any gov support or healthcare

- any transaction including cash ones

And all of that is synced with your digital wallet (TM) for convenience, internet is not needed!! I am so glad we are protecting the 16yo from accessing tiktok, or something something deportations if you are the other team!!

It tells you all you need to know about their honesty, that such a dramatic expansion of government power into our private lives and property, was put into a "budget bill".

Any state laws trying to restrict the 2nd amendment are always going to be useless. You're not going to stop someone who's determined at causing harm with firearms in a country where firearms outnumber people. All these little "bandaid" solutions do is allow for fishing expeditions by police and prosecutors.

On a related point, trying to implement more gun control after seeing how this federal government is deploying the three letter agencies is pretty fucking stupid.

And not for the first time:

2025: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228

2023 (before Mangione): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/A8132

Maybe there are others.

"This is defined as software or firmware that scans every print file through a “firearms blueprint detection algorithm” and refuses to print anything it flags as a potential firearm or firearm component."

I'm sure this won't inadvertently flag nerf/band guns, models, tubes/pipes, etc...

Until metal 3D printing becomes common for consumers, this isn't really a big deal. Plastic components have limited lifespan and even questionable safety. It's pretty much always been legal to create your own firearms. Blocking some 3D printers isn't going to stop that. If nothing else, the criminal enterprises will just use out of date software from before the ban and even create their own 3D printers.

3D printing companies need to simply exit the NY market, including the industrial sector. Once you start inspecting businesses, education, and enough individuals, they will cave.

just sell almost-3d-printers.

All it is missing is a screw with a serial number on it.

Gun nut Eric Raymond was cheering when the first printable guns came out. Checkmate gun grabbers, you'll never prevent us from having our shooty-shootys now! Haha! I thought, well the answer to that is simple: simply declare 3D printers to be weapons. You know, like how the Feds declared encryption to be "munitions".

Also, manufacturers that make 3d printers simply wont sell in NY. They’ve solved nothing with this.

make sure to collect a bunch of stl, gcode, etc files that you have questions about and email them to the NY and WA legislators seeking clarification. if it’s possession and not intent, maybe they need have skin in the game to understand.

Why would I bother with an unreliable 3D printed zip gun and 3D printing when I can go and get a real working gun off the street for a few hundred?

Edit, reading further it's even more insane:

> The New York definitions sweep in not just FDM and resin printers, but also CNC mills and “any machine capable of making three-dimensional modifications to an object from a digital design file using subtractive manufacturing.” That’s a lot of shop & manufacturing equipment!

This is the dumbest thing I have ever read.

We look the other way for so many actual gun tradgedies. "What more can we do?"

But when it comes to a theoretical problem we must take action even if it takes freedoms and opportunities away from normal people.

If you haven't bought a 3D printer yet then I think it's a good time to invest in one. This is going to be one of those technologies that slowly the government will erode our access to, so getting on board now is the best course of action.

Once again another proposed law that would just make normal people's lives more difficult while doing nothing to prevent individuals who are motivated to do the illegal thing from doing it. Offline 3D printers are really not difficult to build, there are many open source plans and all of the hardware is available to order from AliExpress making it simple to do. Somewhat more technically capable people can cobble them together from alternative sources if they don't want to purchase things online.

But the bar is even lower than that since you can simply buy a gun much more easily than you could 3D print parts for one.

How's this supposed to work for all the printers running tiny AVRs?

I wonder if this could fall under the 1st amendement. In any case it is stupid, won't work and has nothing to do in a budget bill. Someone's getting paid

For some unknown reasons, the PDF page: https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2025/S9005

stuck on loading (tested on both latest Firefox and Chrome on macOS). I'm on Indonesia, BTW. Could someone upload the PDF?

This is an easy one:

bool isRestricted(uint8_t* /* data */) { return true; } // Might catch a few false positives

and

popup("This is a restricted model. If you are not in the state of New York, please flash the international firmware ([link]) to print restricted parts.");

It can also handle STL, step and all kinds of other formats.

I think it's interesting to note that not only is there precedent for this type of "blocking technology that prevents the printing of certain things"[1], but it's also inconsequential and uncontroversial enough that most of the people here obviously have never even heard of it.

We lost the ability to print $50 bills with our HPs[2] and it had no noticeable negative impact on society. I'm not sure why losing the ability to print a gun with our Prusas will be any different.

[1] - https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/cant-photocopy-scan-cu...

[2] - https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-Archive-Read-Only/Won...

New York should introduce a technology that can detect politicians and law makers who are not the sharpest tool in the shed, and let them go

The USA has these type of rules. Similar with cars that have to have self-stopping when they almost run into another car (for example on your phone and person in front breaks).

I always think it's strategy to block Chinese manufacturers with super difficult to implement technology being a hard requirement.

Specially the selling face-to-face requirement here.

Wait, so this is in the budget bill proposed by the supposed adults in the room, not from the usual types in the peanut gallery of the legislature?

Over here in Europe, it's pretty laborious to get a firearm legally and yet 3D prints for that are not discussed at all.

It's surprising to see discussions and bills like these, when there is the second amendment in place. What is fueling this discussion?

> The New York definitions sweep in not just FDM and resin printers, but also CNC mills and “any machine capable of making three-dimensional modifications to an object from a digital design file using subtractive manufacturing.”

...what? This some of the stupidest, most out of touch garbage I've ever read and clearly made by uneducated lawmakers being out of their depth.

I could understand these laws more if the majority of gun related deaths were from ghost guns. But they simply aren't.

Time to save firmwares for popular printers, and probably disable their firmware updates.

I can't read this because adafruit.com uses blocking technology on the website

I'm very confused by this. 3D printers seem to have become a critical part of many european manufacturing workflows. Is this not the case in the usa? If -say- Province Noord-Brabant were to adopt a similar law, the western IT industry would crash.

Clearly, if politicians are afraid of the people, it's a sign that the people aren't happy with the work they're doing. Maybe the solution is to start delivering the results that people want.

This provision has first, last name and an address of a person who pushed it to the budget bill.

What if i want to print a nerf gun for my kid? They have clearly not thought this through. I thik they should gather experts BEFORE signing this in to law :

Feasibility escape hatch: If the working group determines it’s “not technologically feasible,” no regulations are required… until the group decides it is feasible. This is good, but weak sauce: the working group could be stuffed with non-experts who just say what the legislators want.

How's does this apply to non lethal weapons (airsoft for instance) there isn't an algorithm in the world that can tell me if the identical handguard is ment for a gun or an airsoft toy.

The voters of NYC got _exactly_ what they wanted and deserve.

They voted to “seize the means of production.” This was one of the few promises delivered. May they enjoy it!

I made a choice, too. I cancelled my annual NYC trip in January to see friends and went to Miami instead.

I can't believe they haven't tried banning anyone from having a knee mill if they don't have an FFL yet (or just banned it entirely). It's not hard to convert an old inexpensive Bridgeport to CNC or just mill the parts by hand. Pandora's box is already open, and all this is is just useless flailing.

I will just continue to use my non-regulated printer and open source slicer. Fortunately I have a copy of the source.

If anyone needs help printing parts for a Voron just let me know. (Not a real offer for the public, but for friends absolutely.)

Yeah but what about CNC milling machines? Way more guns are made on those every day than 3d printers. There is even one you can buy that is specifically for making "ghost guns"

But not CNC machines?

Oh, ok. I guess I'll just build a printer from parts, then.

This is ridiculous. As WIRED has shown [0], the only 3D printed part of most "3D printed" guns is the frame. You can do only so much with the frame alone. All the other parts are sourced online and much easier to get, other than getting a 3D printer and finding the frame of the gun you want to print it for.

Maybe these advocating for gun control laws for 3D printers should first advocate for stricter control on selling spare repair parts for guns and the websites selling them with no sort of background check.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/luigi-mangione-ghost-gun-built-t...

I think this would be even harder than the penis detection in Lego Universe.

We’re soon gonna realize that we will need manual kill switches for all tech in case it goes rogue or allows an AI installed somewhere else to go rogue.

We need blocking technology on CNC lathes and mills too!

Why is it in a budget bill?

wild that the country with the biggest gun proponents and number of gun stores is the one proposing this bill.

the irony

This is another example of either stupid or malicious politicians thinking that it is possible to implement mandatory scanning on devices owned and operated by people and somehow get a meaningful true match rate without false positives. Of course this is not possible! But the negative consequences are immense.

It is exactly the same kind of stupid thinking driving ideas such as Chat Control in the EU. In the end, no child will be safer, but we will end up having a world where no-one has the right to control what software can run on their own hardware devices and where no-one has legal access to end-to-end encrypted communication.

Is this a real issue? Guns are not hard to get in the US.

Washington state is pursuing a similar law at a similar time. Presumably pushed by the same advocacy organization, whichever one it is. The Washington one seems impossible to actually comply with -- how the hell is the computer in a CNC machine going to figure out what geometries are gun-like? A de facto ban on additive or subtractive manufacturing is pretty dumb.

The law says nothing about flashing firmware, just point of sale delivery. The first thing you do after buying a new printer is update the firmware. As is, this law is a joke written by someone who has never setup their own printer.

Just another example of more lid than pots.

Instead of containing the anger of the public by doing good politics and thus reduce radicalizations and peace by plenty of filled pots, its surveilance, panopticons, terror and ever more laws sas lids. If you can't atand the heat get out of the kitchen.

Democrats hard at work, making the country better.

Meanwhile anyone with a CNC machine can make actual weapons.

Policy in the pursuit of easy political narrative wins looks like this. US gun crime is a national issue, and therefore unsolvable in the current political climate, so useless posturing like this is what we're left with.

The real fix is something like a nationwide licensing system like for cars, with auditing of weapons and weapon storage.

Washington state lawmakers, led by Democrats, have introduced bills like HB 2320 and HB 2321. HB 2320 is sponsored solely by Rep. Osman Salahuddin (D-48th District), focusing on prohibiting 3D printers and CNC machines for untraceable firearms. HB 2321, pushing printer DRM requirements, similarly lacks Republican co-sponsors based on available details. In Washington where this is going on in the state House Democrats hold 59 seats, Republicans hold 39 seats and in the state Senate Democrats hold 30 seats, Republicans hold 19 seats. These Democrat-sponsored bills passed initial House committees along party lines, with no Republican co-sponsors or primary support Virginia Democrats are advancing multiple gun ban bills in the 2026 session, including assault weapon sales bans and magazine capacity limits, primarily through Democrat-controlled committees. Virginia's General Assembly has a slim Democratic majority sponsoring and pushing these measures without Republican support.

In VA, bills like house SB 217 (assault weapon ban) and HB 271 (semi-auto ban) were approved in the Democrat-led Senate Courts of Justice Committee strictly along party lines. Sponsors such as Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim (D) lead these efforts, facing opposition from Republicans like Del. Terry Kilgore (R). They await full Assembly votes and signature from Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

In NY State, Democrats, holding supermajorities in the Assembly (103-47) and Senate (42-20), champion Governor Hochul's 2026 State of the State proposals. These include criminalizing unlicensed possession/sale of CAD files for 3D-printed guns (via Penal Law amendments), mandating 3D printer safety standards to block firearm production, and requiring recovery reports to state police. Key bills like S.227A (Sen. Hoylman-Sigal, active in 2025 session) target 3D-printed ghost guns/silencers as felonies; related A2228 pushes printer background checks.

Republicans offer no sponsorship or support, labeling Hochul's agenda and bills like S.227A "anti-gun, anti-speech" infringements on Second Amendment rights and innovation for non-gun printing. NRA-ILA criticizes them as futile against criminals while burdening hobbyists

In my opinion the ICE unrest is a smoke screen. During Obama's presidency (roughly 2009-2017), 56 people died in ICE custody, averaging about 7 per year. There were no major protests over the 56 deaths under Obama because the current situation is a psychological influence operation led by the same criminals who seek to exterminate the rights of ordinary Americans (showcased above). There is a separate fully frontal assault on personal liberties impacting normal American citizens happening right now and it is happening while all the attention is on Minneapolis!

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=2320&Year=202...

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=2321&Year=202...

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260127/virginia-gun-contro...

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S227/amendme...

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228

My HP printer already does this. It blocks random prints on paper. I once tried to print a target practice thing for snowballs and it would always fail. There were other cases too. My very expensive printer has some other very sketchy issues with it. It's easily the least secure device I have connected to my network. This surveillance state has gone too far and I'm so sick of it.

Seems like a boon for small batch 3d printing companies.

All government regulation is good regulation.

Just reject printing everything or nearly everything :)

Inform users where this censorship filter is implemented, so users can go change the source file value from 1 to 0 :)

Malicious compliance is highly appropriate for a malicious law.

Stuff like this used to make me incandescently angry but as I've gotten older I've come to understand that honestly we just can't have nice things

I thought all printers had in place block to stop printing of money so something like that to stop printing and making of firearms etc is not unrealistic

You get what you vote for.

Good luck reverse engineering Gcode files to weapons. The infeasible clause rules this law and it's actually funny how they even tried to pass it inside of a budget.

This is batshit crazy leftist authoritarianism. And because it's so silly, it will achieve nothing but expose its peddlers as morons and give more votes to Republicans just by making them appear saner in comparison. BAD.

They can require whatever the want. Good luck stopping people from just building their own printers without such "blocking technology".

Gotta do something ism. Making things shit. Just do gun control, America.

I wrote as good an opposition as I could. Basically, I opposed it on multiple principles.

From the top, I absolutely detest this kind of censorship. But the bill states that the implementation will be defined (or rendered infeasible - yeah right) AFTER the bill passes. Said decision will be punted to a "working group" of industry folks. That alone stinks, since it places a lot of abuse potential outside of duly elected representation.

Oh no, now New Yokers will have to get their 3D printers the same way they currently get their guns: bring it in from another state.

No! Just No!

"preventing firearms printing", aka "securing big companies' income from spare parts selling with 500% margin"

Second half of this article has signs of AI slop, as confirmed by Pangram:

https://i.imgur.com/gGIAApA.png

Hard to trust an article like this when the legal analysis and suggestions are being outsourced to an LLM.

I really dislike this whole debate because I never wanted to be lumped in with 3D gun printing weirdos.

When I first told my very non-technical somewhat new friend about my 3D printer, they looked really concerned and told me they weren’t comfortable with it because of how people make weapons with them.

I’ve had to spend a lot of time building trust and showing that I’m not one of those weirdos.

Ultimately I don’t think any kind of printed gun banning law has a tangible impact (it’s not like guns with serial numbers aren’t regularly getting away with murder), but what I don’t like is that the law and discussion around it validates this stupidity and continues to lump me in with gun weirdos.

It’s weird to own a gun. It’s weird to print a gun. I don’t even think the 2nd amendment is very necessary and is clearly not capable of stopping tyranny (and the amendment itself says that’s not its purpose anyway).

At this point we could probably get a coalition of Trump cult members who have no consistent ideology (Trump doesn’t like guns) and “liberal pansies” to just repeal the 2nd amendment and become a normal country.

Yet another case of lawmakers proliferating the “you should not have root access” meme. This is one of the most dangerous ideas in the modern political landscape and a backdoor to much less well intentioned actions (intentional and unintended).

Fuck all the way off.

Yet another reason why fully open hardware and open software is so important + of course a fully open source slicing pipeline.

It might be a bit less convenient than a shiny vendor locked Bamboolab closed machine but it is perfectly doable.

A filament 3D printer is basically just a control board, firmware (like Marlin), bunch of off the shelf steppers, two thermistors, heatbed and nozzle heater. If you have modern stepper drivers you don't even need end stop switches.

Put this together and you have a machine you fully own and control and can easily repair or upgrade. Then just feed it GCODE generated by something like Prusa Slic3r from STL/obj/step files and that's it.

Avoids any shenanigans like forcing you to use only blessed consumables or trying to dictate what you can print.

I can more or less understand where the legislator might be coming from: laser printers and copiers are already mandated to include fingerprinting in the output and disrupt any attempt of copying money.

perhaps people printing their own guns at home is actually quite bad and in fact should be controlled in some way without it being seen as a fundamental incursion on your rights.

just a thought from across the pond.