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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.

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[-] Korkki@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Korkki@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

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?

[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 0 points 1 day ago

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.

this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
332 points (99.1% liked)

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