New York Wants to Ctrl+Alt+Delete Your 3D Printer
by ptorrone on 2/3/2026, 3:51:42 PM
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/03/new-york-wants-to-ctrlaltdelete-your-3d-printer/
Comments
by: pjc50
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!<p>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.<p>(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?)<p>I would also note that the Shinzo Abe doohickey wasn't 3D-printed.
2/3/2026, 4:35:13 PM
by: crazygringo
I don't think they know what Ctrl+Alt+Delete means.<p>They want to restart it? They want to go to the screen where you can switch users or sign out?<p>Do they think it's just a fancier way of saying delete?
2/3/2026, 4:23:24 PM
by: AnotherGoodName
This will cause 3D printer usability to go down massively. A bit like the multicolored tracking dots - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots</a> that causes the driver to tell you "you can't print black and white as you're out of yellow".
2/3/2026, 4:31:58 PM
by: harrisi
Should flour, yeast, water, and ovens be banned, and only commercial bakeries be allowed to make bread?<p>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.<p>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.
2/3/2026, 5:03:24 PM
by: uzish
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.
2/3/2026, 4:41:54 PM
by: delichon
> The obvious problem: you cannot reliably detect firearms from geometry alone.<p>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.
2/3/2026, 4:46:51 PM
by: jp191919
It's not illegal to make your own firearm, you just can't sell it.
2/3/2026, 4:21:10 PM
by: qwlefkjlk
And not for the first time:<p>2025: <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228" rel="nofollow">https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A2228</a><p>2023 (before Mangione): <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/A8132" rel="nofollow">https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/A8132</a><p>Maybe there are others.
2/3/2026, 5:24:06 PM
by: Hizonner
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?
2/3/2026, 5:23:19 PM
by: krunck
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.
2/3/2026, 4:50:38 PM
by: rdiddly
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.
2/3/2026, 4:35:11 PM
by: pragma_x
I wrote as good an opposition as I could. Basically, I opposed it on multiple principles.<p>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.
2/3/2026, 5:29:59 PM
by: talkinghead
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.<p>just a thought from across the pond.
2/3/2026, 4:50:45 PM
by: hypeatei
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.<p>On a related point, trying to implement <i>more</i> gun control after seeing how this federal government is deploying the three letter agencies is pretty fucking stupid.
2/3/2026, 4:45:24 PM
by: OutOfHere
Just reject printing everything :)<p>Inform users where this censorship filter is implemented, so users can go change the source file value from 1 to 0 :)<p>Malicious compliance is appropriate for a malicious law.
2/3/2026, 5:33:34 PM
by: MisterTea
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?<p>Edit, reading further it's even more insane:<p>> 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!<p>This is the dumbest thing I have ever read.
2/3/2026, 4:19:17 PM
by: SirMaster
But not CNC machines?
2/3/2026, 4:28:37 PM
by: 0_____0
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.<p>The real fix is something like a nationwide licensing system like for cars, with auditing of weapons and weapon storage.
2/3/2026, 4:41:16 PM
by: SilverElfin
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 …
2/3/2026, 4:29:02 PM
by: bieganski
"preventing firearms printing", aka "securing big companies' income from spare parts selling with 500% margin"
2/3/2026, 4:52:38 PM
by: Simulacra
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.
2/3/2026, 4:33:20 PM
by: bitwize
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".
2/3/2026, 4:25:55 PM
by: ortusdux
Seems like a boon for small batch 3d printing companies.
2/3/2026, 4:37:48 PM
by: scratchyone
Second half of this article has signs of AI slop, as confirmed by Pangram:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/gGIAApA.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/gGIAApA.png</a><p>Hard to trust an article like this when the legal analysis and suggestions are being outsourced to an LLM.
2/3/2026, 4:36:00 PM
by: kogasa240p
> 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.”<p>...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.
2/3/2026, 4:46:26 PM
by: throw__away7391
I do not like these "compromise" suggestions. This is just an invitation for later expansion.<p>In general I think a lot of people, including and especially a lot of people who consider themselves "informed" on such matters, do not really understand the nature of the government's relationship to power.<p>Politicians portray themselves as far weaker and more helpless than they actually are. An example--I hear people complaining about "lobbying" by "big money interests" all the time. It is portrayed that a handful of billionaires are running the world, and while some of that influence does of course happen, the reality is no where near as clean and cut and dry as it is portrayed. The power companies have has far more to do with real world things like employing X number of people or providing critical services to a region than having $X in the bank. A lot of what gets called "lobbying" I think could more accurately be portrayed as "extortion". This is just one example. I've had a handful of situations where I got a peak behind the curtain into these dealings and the reality was nothing like the public perceptions. The politicians forced the CEOs of huge energy companies to "play the villain" in the run up to an election, meanwhile they pretended to be fighting them. The reality was that the situation that they were fighting over had inevitable but unpopular constraints that did not have a solution people would be happy with. The companies were forced to keep their mouths shut while the politicians and newspapers attacked them, as if they were not holding all the cards and had the ability to do what they claimed they were trying to do at any moment. These companies were quietly repaid for their compliance after the election with some unnoticed unrelated regulatory changes, but they truly had little say in the matter, the politicians were 100% in the driver's seat.<p>These politicians, of all stripes, are always trying to expand their power further, have more control over more things. Whatever they say in public, you have no idea what your favorite politicians are really like. Your favorite op-ed columnists is not presenting the insights you think. This is just another part of the system they are running. We should be highly skeptical of these kinds of things. Where is the drive behind this coming from? Someone in politics has crafted this narrative and thinks it will be a winner. In the meantime they are not looking at a million other issues that have far more impact on far more people. The only way you get what you want from this system is to force it.
2/3/2026, 4:42:02 PM
by: dangus
I really dislike this whole debate because I never wanted to be lumped in with 3D gun printing weirdos.<p>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.<p>I’ve had to spend a lot of time building trust and showing that I’m not one of those weirdos.<p>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.<p>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).<p>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.
2/3/2026, 4:38:38 PM
by: andrewmcwatters
[dead]
2/3/2026, 4:23:10 PM
by: 3x35r22m4u
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.
2/3/2026, 4:34:01 PM