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.
You can make a crude firearm/hand held pipe bomb with a pipe and lighter. A lot less effort than 3d printing one.
Are they going to go after builders merchants now?
They can arrest Home Depot for intent to distribute.
Plumbers and carpenters are now felons.
Next they’ll be looking at the violent motherfucker that invented 3d printing. Plus fishing supply companies that produce a different kind of, but still a, filament. /s
Might as well go after the smelters for making the metal that goes into knives and guns.
Sure Some people take the filament to the sea to murder fish for sushi lovers. But the real purpose is to 3D print unimaginable violent content.
This will get tossed. But here’s why it’s actually happening:
Gatalog and Polymaker both market through a network of influencers “specializing in 3D printed ghost gun content, as well as companies and individuals that illegally distribute [digital firearm manufacturing codes],” according to the suits.
Both also directly target state residents: Gatalog advertises a “California Compliant Glock 19-based Carbine kit,” while Polymakers’ website features Proposition 65 warnings and state-specific privacy opt-out features.
I mean yea, advertise your filament with YouTubers making guns, and you put yourself in the…oof.
Yeah people too easy to judge instead of reading the actual article. Despite the article being click baity, seems a pretty reasonable reason to sue polymaker. They should do little bit of research on who they choose to sponsor.
hold on let me go sue home depot for selling black iron pipe and nails because someone made a pipe bomb. Nowhere has poly-maker ever advertised or suggested their speciality filaments could make firearms.
Someone’s looking for a payout settlement, fuck California
you could literally make a shotgun with that too. Saw a YouTube video. Two pipes, one fit in the other, small one was the right size to hold a shell, and a nail at the end of the closed pipe triggered it if you used your hands to hit it.
Super effective and easy one shot shotgun. there’s no real way to regulate guns IMO. They’re not complicated devices.
Guns are just a slight evolution of the sling, just us throwing rocks further and faster.
Same as it ever was.
The shit shovel too AK guide is still on my favorite guides that were floating around on the interwebz
the problem is that someone is San Diego county
Don’t tell them about pipes.
I believe they’ll eventually come for those too.
IMO the real end goal of these laws isn’t to ban ghost guns, it’s to ban plebs from being able to build or create anything at all. 3D printing a plastic piece to fix a broken tab in some gizmo cuts into corporate profits so a manufactured moral panic about ghost guns appears. I’m sure they’ll eventually get to a pipe rifle moral panic at some point to lock down DIY plumbing.
" Oi, you got a licence for that sewage mate? "
I am skeptical about that, though the visual is funny.
So they’ll make black iron pipe illegal and require it to be replaced with plastic flex hose.
We’ve been there before.
They used fear of guns to attack Right to Repair and small manufacturing. It was never about guns.
I’m not a gun guy but from my understanding of ghost guns you pretty much buy the whole gun online in parts, and you just 3d print a handle.
So I don’t understand why people are so afraid of 3d printing when it really has minimal to do with the final product. From what I can tell you can’t just 3d print a gun from start to finish like its a llm. You still have to buy the actual gun parts from the manufacturer. To me this sounds completely unrelated and like a issue with regulating gun parts.
You can carve a handle out of soap, wood, or buy a solid chunk of plastic and its the same result.
The problem is that, legally speaking, the lower receiver is the gun. So you can buy all the other parts online with no background check etc.
A person with a machine shop and knowledge on how to use it could also do this
The problem is that, legally speaking, the lower receiver is the gun. So you can buy all the other parts online with no background check etc.
Makes you wonder if there’s a more sensible way to classify things legally… Probably not.
My biggest problem with all these attacks on 3d printing is that what you are talking about is completely legal as far as I am aware. There are tons of places online that sell partial receiver blanks that require the buyer to do the last few bits of machining and turn a “block of metal” into a “gun”, legally speaking. It is currently completely legal for an individual in the US to build a gun without telling anyone about it for personal use so long as the final result does not run afoul of ant NFA rules (like automatic fire, length of shotgun, caliber size, etc.). They don’t start doing anything illegal until they sell them, or even give them away (again, assuming they meet all of the NFA rules - obviously someone making themselves a gun has a high risk of running foul of the myriad of rules here, but the end result has to be evaluated to determine if they broke the law or not).
So all of these are just using gun terror as an attack vector against 3d printing in general. Just like the “think of the children” campaigns all over the world that are really just about stripping us of privacy and security. The guns aren’t the real problem and neither are the kids. A free, private, and secure populace is the problem.
I am not advocating that people build their own guns. I am not a lawyer. I advise anyone go learn your local laws and discuss with actual legal counsel before choosing to attempt anything that could be against federal firearm law. kthx
To me this is so weird.
On one hand you have the gun nuts blocking any meaningful reform to gun control that would prevent mass shootings, school shootings, and general gun crime. Nationally, 98-99% of these are committed with regular firearms.
Ghost guns on the other hand are involved in 1-2% of all violent crimes. You’d think otherwise because the RECOVERY rate is 40-50% of all guns, meaning whenever the police recover a firearm from a crime scene, about half of those are ghost guns. But that doesn’t mean the guns were used to commit the crime itself, often it’s more like “we caught this guy dealing weed, he was on probation, and had a ghost gun in his car”. The actual violent crime statistics for ghost guns is the above 1-2% - that’s where the firearm used was a ghost gun.
But of course you can have more than one mass shootings a day (365 shootings as of 30 Sept in 2026, with 361 dead, 1553 injured), and not lift a finger. But one CEO gets offed with a ghost gun, and suddenly the 1-2% of gun crime gets more focus and crackdown than the other 98%+…
really has minimal to do with the final product. From what I can tell you can’t just 3d print a gun from start to finish
I’m pretty sure you can. It might only work once though.
Basic guns aren’t really all that complex.
They used to make guns out of umbrella parts.
One of the best guns of all time (the .45 1911) was made by a typewriter offshoot of Remington.
You can print all sorts of gun parts though, like suppressors and modifications to allow a gun to shoot faster than normal.
With that being said, trying to ban 3d printing or sue filament manufacturers is monumentally stupid.
I don’t know how impactful those are, and I think a person with access to a decent metal shop could pose more danger.
What is it just the access that’s scary then? As a guy that doesn’t know guns, you often hear things like a potato or a water bottle can be made into a makeshift surpressor or turning a single fire into a sensative rapid fire trigger is trival. So I’m just not understanding why 3d printers are almost entirely linked to making guns in everyone’s minds. When I first got a elgoo that was the first thing people would jokingly ask if I was going to make one.
Like maybe I can understand the argument that access is so low anyone can do it, but even then you can’t just download a gun. The person who is doing this already bought gun parts and knows how to assemble them. This is not going to stop that kind of person from building a gun in any form. The gun is still the metal parts you buy online. A silencer, a trigger mod, whatever is useless until you handle ghost guns.
Yeah going after printing and/or filament is dumb. I’m I guess what some would call a “gun guy”. 3D printing in this space is less practical and more just for fun.
You can use a metal coat hanger to full auto an AR. A printed suppressor is going to be so weak it’ll probably break on first use. Oil filters work tho. If you want to illegal things the better way to do most often doesnt involve printing.
Ive alwaya assumed 3D printers were new enough that Genie could be put back in the bottle
Who is Jeannie?
The specifics revolve around a 3d-printed-gun advocate named Sean Aranda, whose youtube channel focuses on the subject. According to him, when youtube demonetized the channel in 2023 Polymaker approached him with a sponsorship offer. A couple months later Polymaker announced Aranda was a new member of its marketing team.
So regardless of where you stand on the Calif anti-3d-gun law, this isn’t a simple case of going after egg farmers because of illegal omelets.
You’ve got some point there, but doesn’t demonstrate the uselessness of the law? Unless of course they are going after every producer of technical filaments, which is like going after anyone with a lathe or a CNC machine.
No I think this is an example of the opposite - it’s not an action against the filament industry or the 3d printing community in general, it’s against an individual company for allegedly marketing filament specifically to print guns, not just because filament could or might be used to print guns. Whether the law itself is right or wrong is a different issue.
Which makes the law useless. People with nefarious plans don’t need ads. There really are just two possibilities, either it is repressive and overreaching or it is useless.
Ok whatever. I won’t try to argue over the validity of your definition of “useless” since you clearly think it’s absolute.
It is not absolute, you are free to argue in which way it is useful, in practical terms. Have you done so?
Do you think any follower of mentioned channel has difficulties finding functional FDM filaments without ads on the channel? If not, whats the point of the law’s application in this example?
Polymaker did not respond to requests for comment.
Statements like these always seem deceiving to me. Like, how much time did you give them? Some of these people race to get their story out too quickly, without giving a reasonable amount of time for a response.
What if they respond later? I guess they could update the article, but that’s still after people have already read it and formed their opinions based on the original contents.
This is very normal, and not meant to be deceiving. If the group who didn’t respond to the request does respond after the article was published, that will be removed and a statement that reads something like “Polymaker (insert title or department) responded after initial publishing with this statement” and that statement will follow after. From a journalistic integrity standpoint it shows that they wanted to get both sides of a story, especially if one side was interviewed or quoted. The alternative of not stating that comment was requested is we read the article and wonder if Polymaker ever got a chance to speak their side.
The alternative of not stating that comment was requested is we read the article and wonder if Polymaker ever got a chance to speak their side.
But that’s kinda my point: I still don’t know if they had a chance to speak their side before the article was published, nor do I know if they will.
It’s really just a nitpick on my part. If they plan to publish a follow-up article about the response, then it would seem a bit more honest to just add one word: “yet”
I have seen sometimes where the author of the article will include the amount of time given for a response to give context. I like that quite a bit. On the other hand, some companies make it exceedingly difficult to contact them or throw you into a maze of powerless and uninformed underlings.
They’re trying to make this a case over marketing and intent rather than materials.
The actual types of filament they’re concerned with are carbon fiber nylon (sold by many brands) and “PLA Pro” which is just a bit better regular PLA.
These are sold by tons of brands all across the internet.
That is completely bizarre.
If things goes the way I think it will, California will need more guns to fight off the Trump Regime during the opening years of the 2nd American Civil War.
I hope this lawsuit fails.
The type of people buying those guns will definitely not be on the side against the regime.
Americans can order guns to their doors, but the 3d printers are the issues you choose to tackle…
No, they can’t. Guns can only be legally shipped to a federally licensed gun dealer. The dealer cannot transfer it to the buyer without the mandated background check.
The gun laws are already fucked up enough. You don’t have to make shit up.
You can have long guns purchased through the Civilian Marksmanship Program shipped directly to your door. Those are a drop in the bucket compared to most firearm purchases in the US, though.
False.
Residents of CA, CT, IL, NJ, NY, OR and WA must have the rifles shipped to an FFL dealer. You must provide a copy of the dealer’s license with your order form. NJ and IL Residents must also provide their FOID card. WA Residents must also provide the I-1639 training certificate.
CMP can’t do that in states like California or any of the other states with decent gun laws.
I’ve only been threatened with a gun by the government and I bet that is the case for the vast majority of us.
But you want them to regulate it.
Reading comprehension of a dog.
Talking about regulation (and support for common sense gun laws that would also limit cops) ≠ support for all regulation. You and the people who upvoted you need to retake whatever class you learned English through.
Can order black powder revolvers to your door, and can buy replacement parts that allow them to fire cowboy cartridges, which are just low FPS lead rounds, like 800fps. They’ll kill a fella, but don’t have quite the same force as modern rounds. They also burn a lower grade powder and are a bit more smokey.
Actually, those conversion cylinders are perfectly happy with modern smokeless powders suitable for their caliber. Though it’s more about velocities than pressure. I can load any smokeless .45 Colt for my cylinder that is listed for the standard pressures, (about 11,000psi). But it is highly recommended to keep your velocities no more than 850fps, (the original velocity for the Colt SAA). Frame stretching is the issue. Those cap and ball revolvers are made from a bit softer metal than modern revolvers. Remington’s are stronger than the open top Colts.
Trump is trying to pass that law right now, a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but it reinforces my point
This also didn’t solve anything, if you look at the statistics.
This is getting a bit fucking ridiculous. They’re suing filament manufacturers now.
A video I posted a few months ago about this bullshit: https://youtu.be/E1B2cWEaWDw
@jballs that’s like suing a hardware store for someone hit with a piece of wood my point is filaments are legal it is the end-product that is meant to be perceived
#3DPrintingYeah, and they also want to make it illegal to print something without a magic algorithm sitting between your computer and printer determining if it’s a gun part or not. I can’t help but feel like these people don’t know the first thing about how 3d printing actually works.
I can’t help but feel like these people don’t know the first thing about how 3d printing actually works.
Totally. Brought to you by the same brilliant minds that claimed all videogames besides Tetris were simply “murder simulators” and school-shooter training programs. 🙄
Why do the most wasted brains have so much influence…
@jballs that’s called censorship even though I am Canadian have no guns , it is not something I find practical especially with the law creating a potential black market
#3DPrinting
Polymaker is a Chinese supplier, selling to California residents, while also running ad campaigns through ghost gun content creators aimed at California residents, defining themselves explicitly as a ghost gun ingredient.
If they didn’t want to get caught up in this, they shouldn’t have gotten involved in the illicit arms business. But they wanted to be known as the plastic supplier that is cool with you making ghost guns, and that isn’t going to fly in California.
Plastic suppliers that don’t advertise themselves explicitly as being part of the ghost gun supply chain will be fine.
So polymaker actually choose the individual channels their ads (not about ghost guns) were put on…or was that an algorithm (AdSense)?
I don’t remember seeing them do any specific sponsored content, though they may and probably have, but that have a very open affiliate program that every 3d printer youtuber I’ve seen is in. They also give out codes for streaming channels to give away filament.
All this I’m saying is I don’t think they’re “choosing” these channels but I doubt they care what the content in on any channel.
they have a specific partnership with a 3D2A channel The 3D Print General off the top of my head
Well, doesn’t that just show how useless that ban is?
Will be fine, for now.
