I pit people who refuse to learn from history

Over the years, a lot of industries have been seriously disrupted by advances in technology. This provides a learning opportunity for people witnessing these events.

Meet California State Senator Leland Yee, who is evidently too stupid to learn from such events, particularly what the music industry has gone through.

Listen, you idiot, fighting a far-reaching, blanket fight against new technology is doomed to fail. Is California really so well-off that you have nothing better to do? If you insist on wasting government resources, is there nothing else to waste them on? Why don’t you go water a state park instead? You would do a lot less damage.

The music industry has tried bans on technology that they don’t like. It hasn’t worked. Sure, they catch a few people, but in the process they do a lot of damage to innocent people, and they still can’t stop the technology. What makes you think that you’ll do any better?

I think that power has gone to your head to such an extent that you should be classified as being brain-damaged. Why else would you try something that has absolutely no chance of working? If you want to have any control whatsoever over a new technology like this, about the only realistic chance is to lightly regulate it–there’s some people, probably a lot of people, who would pay a few dollars and fill out a very short form to register their 3-D printed gun, rather than break the law.

But there are a great many people indeed who will simply print out a gun and hide it, if 3-D guns are flat-out banned. And unless they talk about it to the wrong people, how are you going to catch them?

In short, Senator Leland Yee, you are stupid, you are despicable, and as far as I can tell, you have no reason whatsoever for holding the office that you do. You seem to have no redeeming features whatsoever. You ought to be publicly whipped for criminally-high levels of stupidity.

Haven’t we done this thread before?

I didn’t learn anything when we did.

First off, I counter-pit anyone who uses this stupid fucking argument - that [some major problem or problems] haven’t been fixed in [jurisdiction] therefore the officials thereof are not allowed to consider any issue except that narrowly defined set, and if they do, they are wasting time/money/resources and ignoring the “real” issues. Life goes on, other matters go on, and it’s pointless carping to hit on legislators and other officials who look beyond the two or five or ten huge, intractable problems at other things that certainly need some attention.

That said, California has a vast number of electees, all of whom need to find something to get column inches with. You really can’t lose your temper with any California legislator who calls a press conference to announce a bill to ban cars or IC engines or canola oil or droopy jeans or whatever. They’re just publicity whores playing to their constituency and/or scoring air time by saying anything, the more outrageous and provoking the better. I’ve lost count of the times the custom car community has gotten up in arms because some Berkeley boob wants to outlaw all cars over 1,000 pounds or something.

Yes, this is a stupid issue… today. Get back to this thread in five years.

Oh, this is far from the first evidence of Yee’s expensive stupidity. Between the costs for the California AG office appealing the case all the way up and the attorney’s fees awarded against them, he ended up costing the state around $1.8 million with his manifestly unconstitutional pet anti-video-game law. (Although, to be fair, the Governator shares considerable blame for pushing it that far.) He just wants to grandstand, and I guess this is his new hobby-horse since the Brown vs. EMA decision took away his old one.

If you’re in the mood to hate him, though, you could do worse than to check out some of the articles referencing him on GamePolitics. Despising him is something of an art form over there.

Haven’t we done this thread before?

Naw, I would have remembered it.

ppffft

History is like, this stuff that happened. Who cares, right? We should live in the Now and not worry about the past!

See, I just read it as a guy who is appealing to his base. This is California, after all.

No, even in California most people think these guys are nuts.

You can’t really make a “gun” out of a 3D plastic printer. What comes out can only be called a ‘gun” by a large stretch and still requires add’l metal parts. The best so far (and they won’t get much better) is not even as good as the ‘zip guns’ we made several score years ago out of a car radio antenna, a nail and a rubber band (the best so far fired one round-badly- then broke). Google “make a zip gun” and you’ll see plenty of “quick & easy how to’s” with junk laying around the house that will make a gun better than the best that can made from a plastic 3D printer- even a decade from now (as long as they can only do plastic).

Now, there is a real concern in some other nations, etc where realistic toy guns are banned. If you wanted to make a replica that looked REALLY good and would be fine for a hold up where you are pretty sure they aren’t packing a real gun, then 3D printers will certainly be able to make a very realistic LOOKING replica. Better than soap, anyway.

Hasn’t somebody asked this question before?

It requires a nail for a firing pin, that’s it. He added a metal slug to make it comply with the “detectable handguns” laws.

I guess you don’t get PBS:

DoD has ceased the downloads of the files and taken possession of them, so looks like, other than the 100,000 previous downloads, this is a done deal.

I doubt whether that is necessarily true, but even if it were, it is irrelevant. Banning the use of 3D printing to specifically make guns (or even weapons in general) does not in any way, shape, or form amount to a blanket fight against a new technology.

It is illegal to use a printing press or a photocopier to make banknotes. The relevant laws are fairly successful in curbing such activity, are no more difficult to enforce than most other laws, and do not seem to have in any way constrained the use, advancement, and spread of printing and copier technology.

Making it illegal to use 3D printers to make guns seems like a perfectly reasonable and normal use of law to me, and in no way likely to interfere with advancement and spread of the use of the technology for more benign purposes.

But I suspect that 3D printing is not what you care about at all. This is really just another gun control thread in disguise, and you are really just another gun nut, who cannot bear the thought of any restrictions at all being placed upon your totally unfettered access to guns of any kind whatsoever. Even sintered plastic guns are so sexeh!

That’s because history is not an exact science.

Surely you understand that it’s illegal to make banknotes in any way. If you think it’s reasonable for it to be illegal to make guns in any way that would make sense. But since it’s not there’s a legitimate question about freedom of infornation here.

Yes. Other than the fact the information has now been replicated over a hundred thousand times that we know of, the information no longer exists anywhere in the world. Done and dusted. Score another one for the DoD.

And how hard is it to get a bootleg copy of the program from someone who happened to download it when it was available?

And what is stopping me from cranking up my CAD program and whipping off my own design?

Though nothing is stopping anybody with the experience and a bit of equipment making a WW2 vintage Liberator. 23 stamped and turned steel parts and a bit of pressure tube for the unrifled barrel. They made 1 million of them. I wonder how many are still lurking sunk into the ground from being dropped and not retrieved…

Anybody know if the plastic gun barrel was rifled?

Hardly matters for such a weapon. Not like they’re going to be prized for their accuracy.