"DOJ" in this case refers to the California Department of Justice, not the US Federal Department of Justice.

Text of the proposed California Assembly bill is here:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca...

Generally it is not illegal for you to rent time in a machine shop (in the United States) to produce a receiver (depending on various state laws.)

It is also generally not illegal in the United States (again, depending on various state laws) to run your own small scale ammunition press at home to make your own ammo. It is in fact, the only way for certain out-of production calibers to be produced these days, unless you want to commission a custom run. There are also people who design and produce their own custom derivations (known as wildcat cartridges), some of which have become later commercial successes in their own right. Other people hand-load in order to optimize the ballistics for a specific application (for better distance, accuracy, compatibility with a specific firearm build, etc.) To my knowledge, other than state laws restricting the sale of ammo (if they exist), and federal restrictions on caliber, as well as issues with liability and quality, there's no restriction of resale of handloaded ammo, as there is with a homebuilt gun produced for personal use.

Manufacturing a firearm without a license for sale is the regulation you are talking about.

Quick education in guns:

The receiver is whatever the ATF says it is. In some cases, the frame is the receiver (for example a revolver, or a traditionally manufactured pistol). In other cases, the metal rails that nest in the interchangeable plastic frame are the receiver.

A trigger is typically not considered part of the receiver. However, there's nothing in the proposed law that says that the trigger shall be excluded from consideration as part of an overall algorithm to prevent printing of "a firearm."

https://leginfo.legislature.ca...

"(3) The performance standards shall require that firearm blueprint detection algorithms have the capacity, with a high degree of accuracy, to do all of the following:
(A) Evaluate three-dimensional printing files, whether in the form of STL files or other computer-aided design files or geometric code.
(B) Detect and identify any such files that can be used to program a three-dimensional printer to produce a firearm or illegal firearm parts.
(C) Flag any disallowed files for rejection by a software control process."

Some triggers (in combination with other modifications) can be considered modifications that allow rapid fire, and thus disallowed by the algorithm, as a potential "illegal part".

The kicker is this:

"(5) The department or other relevant state agency shall not require that a firearm blueprint detection algorithm produce a perfect success rate at detecting disallowed files. "

Assume a company designing an algorithm to pass the state mandated law. With (5) above, it would probably be better to have it err on the side of caution and flag all firearm related parts. Better to do that than get hauled up before a board of inquiry as to why the algorithm failed to detect a part of a print (which would include the trigger) that made it into a gun that was used to commit a crime.

Still, there's a lot of potential legal liability for the company producing the algorithm if there was a chance that such a print actually could be done and the state-approved algorithm failed to detect it. Think about companies that produce cameras to detect weapons in schools. Better for them, from a legal liability perspective, to flag a bag of Doritos as a gun, than to miss a real gun, even if for the schools, the false positives are a headache.

Road to hell. Check.
Good intentions. Check.

At this point I'd want to know what the estimate is for establishing and funding the CA DOJ apparatus to regulate 3D printers in the state, and the impact it would case on professional and hobbyist markets through:

1. Regulatory compliance. There are a number of pistols that are not sold in California because California has its own set of safety certifications that manufacturers have to get that effectively act as a ban on sales in the state (hint, it's an effective ban because the cost of certification far outweighs any resulting sales.) I would assume that they'd extend this regime to 3D printers - you'd have to pay the state to prove your product doesn't violate the law, and then continue to (pay to) maintain that certification in order continue selling in-state. They do this with catalytic converters too - California has its own regulations that override EPA certifications for catalytic converters, which mandate which approved parts can be used on which vehicles.

2. Collapse of the legal resale market. You'd have to get what would amount to an FFL to sell 3D printers, and any 3D printer that couldn't be demonstrated to pass current compliance could not be sold. You might not even be allowed to buy replacement parts if they weren't certified. Thus you'd have to sell your old machines (working or not) out of state (assuming the other states haven't passed similar laws.).

BTW, folks from other states might not understand, this kind of insanity is standard in California (introduce invasive laws that make no sense) due to the fact that our legislature is FULL TIME.

Yes, we pay them (and their staffs) for 365 days of work (minus vacation and holidays). And this is what they give us.

https://ballotpedia.org/States...

"As of 2017, full-time legislatures generally had larger staffs than other legislatures. A few exceptions to this rule were Florida and Texas, whose hybrid legislatures had larger staffs than a number of full-time legislatures. This meant that not all staff members worked at the State Capitol; some states with full-time legislatures also had district offices and staff.

Among all 50 states, each state averaged 682 staff members. The 10 full-time legislatures averaged 1,250 staff members each. Legislatures that spent more than two-thirds of a full-time job used 469 staff members on average. Legislatures that spent half of a full-time job used 160 staff members on average.[1] "

Your tax dollars at work.

I'd expect this kind of crazy from California and New York. I don't know what happened to Washington.

Real problem:

Mass displacement of white collar workers underway. A lot of careers outside of the white collar world require training and certification, with barriers to licensing (outside of exams) such as minimum number of hours worked before qualifying to sit for an exam. Unemployment hasn't been adjusted to keep up with inflation. Things are not great.

Fake problem:

3D printers could be used to make unapproved machines at home. Better tax people to create a bureaucracy dedicated to keeping people from potentially causing a non-existent public threat. Best case - security theater. Worst case - camel under the nose to start regulating computing devices as well. After all, computers could be used to *gasp* share machine drawings for people to manufacture gun parts without a 3D printer!

Also, g-code is used not just for additive manufacturing, but also for things like routers and mills. If you regulate all software capable of generating g-code for a 3D printer, you're also directly regulating all computing platforms used in those industries. Open source project to generate g-code for a cricut? Could be used as a circumvention device, BANNED. Open source project to build a CNC mill requires a slicer - which now is illegal to run without a government subscription and yearly licensing fee in California. Effectively BANNED.

Great, there goes the in-state manufacturing industry. I guess we'll just have to ship all our work out of state, and those jobs too...

Plea for sanity:

This really feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic for the sake of "doing something". Invent a problem that doesn't exist, and then spend money making it go away. Can we please start laying off politicians instead? Or identifying the lobbyists that are pushing for this so we can rightly tar and feather them before this spreads any further?

... from the crimes committed on Rape Island. We've seen this exact same thing before. I hope you guys find a way to put these perpetually lying turbo-criminal thugs before a court real soon. Keeping my fingers crossed from across the pond.

Disclaimer: European here.

While structural changes are due and the French are way overdue with loosening some of their very cushy labor laws and pension mechanisms, this whining sounds a lot like corporate propaganda to me.

For one, many large critical or significant corps throughout Europe score obscene amounts of subsidies and bail-outs when times are tough and experience first-class treatment by their governments when it comes to protecting their markets.

Then there is the modern capitalist LLC structure that can juggle bankruptcy and labor responsibilities with comparatively litte effort and some LLC and holdings wired up in the right way to enable creative ledgering.

I presume this to be propaganda to loosen labor laws in general or it's whining from large corps that they can't just turn nimble on a dime by dumping thousands of employees on a whim, despite having all the benefits mentioned above.

I'm not buying this. This sound 100% akin to the nonsense about "shortage of skilled labor" and other bullshit we constantly hear here in Germany and in other places. Corporate bullshit propaganda, that's what it is. Nothing else.

IIRC glass is a very slow flowing, ultra extremly viscose liquid. Old glass in church windows is thicker at the bottom due to this. Are they sure that glass can retain micro-etched information for 10k years considering this?

GF's mom in high school worked nights. Manufacturing. Wrecked havoc on the poor woman. Dad had a day job. I think she had OT on weekends fairly often as well. I think maybe whirlpool if I remember right.

I kind of agree, but think AI users will face a significant fall off when the bubble pops and a lot of folks walk away from it without critically thinking about it in the same way a lot of folks walk toward it without critically thinking about it, never having 'got it' one way or the other and just following what the apparent mass opinion is.

Also, a bubble pop would likely come with price hikes for the surviving companies under more pressure to operate at a sustainable revenue instead of loss leading, and that may deter some more users.

In the wake of the dotcom boom, a lot of otherwise healthy companies walked away from this 'internet thing' even as they credibly probably should have kept with it.

Because so many people assume LLM is superseding *everything*, and need explicit reminders that not only is the 'old' way so much more efficient and simple, it's even more effective than what an LLM would do.

You have to draw the line somewhere. Can I hire a taxi to drive me to the airport without being financially liable for life if the driver has a heart attack or can't find another fare to pick up after I'm done with them?

... and then the person files a lawsuit, alleging that HR ignored their complaint. That becomes expensive.

We're just endlessly alternating between stories accusing AI of taking all the jobs, and studies 'proving' AI doesn't produce anything.