Sen. Leland Yee, c Wall Street Journal

I thought we were supposed to embrace change. Thanks to Defense Distributed, the old model of gun control no longer works. If people can simply print out a gun in the safety and anonymity of their own home, then all the infrastructure that California has put in place to disarm their subjects is completely useless. So what’s the first thing that famed anti-2A state senator Leland Yee proposes? Gun control, chapter one, page one: registration, background checks, and licensing. For printers. Yes, printers . . .

From the Sacramento CBS affiliate:

Video showing a plastic gun being test-fired appeared online last weekend, prompting Yee’s fears.

He’s concerned that just about anyone with access to those cutting-edge printers can arm themselves.

“Terrorists can make these guns and do some horrible things to an individual and then walk away scott-free, and that is something that is really dangerous,” said Yee.

He said while this new technology is impressive, it must be regulated when it comes to making guns. He says background checks, requiring serial numbers and even registering them could be part of new legislation that he says will protect the public.

Civilian disarmament proponents have absolutely no idea how to respond to Defense Distributed’s Liberator, and it’s starting to show. They can’t countenance the idea that their population might actually be able to defend themselves against criminals (of both the petty and the governmental variety), and 3D printing represents a permanent loss of control over that means of self defense.

They can’t handle not being in control, so fall back on what they know, and decide to start regulating one step up that chain. In this case, it’s 3D printers. Which, especially for a state that prides itself on being high-tech, is more than a little ironic. If the younger generation wasn’t already turned off on this Yee character for his crusade against people’s First Amendment right to produce video games, then trying to shut down personal 3D printing in the cradle of Scilicon Valley should start people looking for the pitchforks and torches pretty quickly.

Oh, and even if Yee’s 3D printer control legislation is signed into law, 3D printing is an unstoppable force. Take for example the RepRap project, the entire point of which is to make self replicating 3D printers. Like tribbles, you start with one printer, and you end up with as many as you want for all your friends.

People laugh at us for using the “slippery slope” argument when it comes to gun control. Well, here it is in action. And it ain’t pretty.

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86 COMMENTS

  1. Look, we need an all-out ban on these high-capacity printers. They are endangering our children.

    • we to to register, license, and perform background checks on people using any manufacturing product of any kind… because… they could make a gun with it.

  4. Once you outlaw printers, only outlaws will have printers.

    Printer control won’t work, since criminals, don’t buy printers, they steal them.

    What’s the point in banning law-aididing citizens from owning printers, when criminals can buy them at any street corner?

    Without regulation, there will be print houses (crack houses) on every street.

    If we don’t ban them, there will be printer dust in the streets.

  5. Dont tell him about drill presses, lathes, mills, hand drills, nails, lengths of pipe, blocks of wood, retro car antennas….

    The poor guys head might explode.

      • See my post below. Is it time we show our policy makers how cheap, easy, and fast it is to make zip guns? I honestly think they have absolutely no idea. I have even shown zip guns to multiple police officers (seasoned guys at that) who had no idea.

        To the uninitiated, it is exceedingly easy to make a zip gun for .410 and 12 gauge shot shells. And it is only slightly harder to make a zip gun for .38 Special.

  6. Lets not forget, 3D printers are used for a wide variety of applications not just guns. so he is severely limiting the rights of many other types of entrepreneurs. it would be essentially the same as banning hammers.

    • and if this new regulation doesn’t kill their tax base, I am sure Leland will find something else to regulate and ban . . . . . I laugh at everyone of my friends in California. The nice weather, beaches, and babes are not worth the headaches, cost of living, and nanny state.

  7. I am sure Rick Perry will invite all the high tech start ups and freedom loving nerds to Texas where we will not be trying to ban new technologies. I am fine with that as long as any who choose to take the Guv up on the offer leave their leftist politics at home.
    -Cranky

    • I’ve been considering moving to either Texas or Arizona. I’m hoping for a further education in 3D printing, and CA TX and AZ are three of the states that have more than just one or two colleges with programs.

  8. Well… I suppose if we could make a law for it… Just the way the fools think. It’s all about the regulations

  9. TO: All
    RE: Heh

    Ever read Jerry Pournelle’s Co-Dominion series?

    Remember how the government suppressed any new technology that they thought would be a potential threat? And how it stifled innovation?

    Guess what…..Pournelle is prescient!

    Regarda,

    Chuck(le)
    [Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. — Isaac Asimov]

  10. Yee is only one of the many, many imbeciles “serving” in the California Legislature. These are the same brainiacs who came up with (yesterday) the idea of having non gendered restrooms in schools for trans-gendered persons. Yes, more school rapes coming at your kids because of feel good legislation.
    Most of California-other than SanFran, LA, and other coastal smokers is very conservative. We are just constantly out voted! All Yee and the other minions are doing is forcing us to drive to Phoenix, pick up the damned printer, and haul it back. It is the same with guns, ammo, and other “outlaw” activities. We pick it up out of state and become a defacto criminal once we cross the border. Most of us try to live gray: one persona for the world and another for the real & true us. I consider all of the shenanigans good practice for when the ball drops.

    • Yee is not an ‘imbecile’.

      He and the rest of his ilk are EVIL!

      And the sooner you and the others around here stop pussy-footing around the root-cause of his actions, the better off the rest of US will be.

  11. Dateline Sacramento:
    Yee introduces bill to collect, control and regulate all the sharp and jagged rocks.

  12. These only purpose of these 3-D printers is to make a gun that will blow up in your hand.

    • Yes, it’s just a plastic pipe with a nail in it. But this plastic pipe with a nail in it has started a terrible arms race. One man will design a bigger pipe with a bigger nail in it, and that man’s neighbor will respond by designing a plastic pipe even larger still. Until one day man will build a plastic pipe with a nail in it SO LARGE that it will destroy us all. For the sake of the children, all children everywhere, we must stop this madness – NOW!

      • Human Ding Dong
        Are you real or some kind of computer bot programed by a libtard. Grow a brain. Stupid the technology has been around for years it was called Stereolithography, used for rapid prototyping. So idiots like you could buy useless shit from Ronco every week and foreign own company’s like GM and Chrysler could make dash panels and such. This just a up graded version of the resins and technology. But this is to deep for a shallow mind such as yours. Libtard.

        • He was making a joke, from a Simpsons Halloween episode where they disarmed the earth after Lisa wished for world peace. Kang and Kodos conquered the planet with a slingshot.

          They were defeated by a board with a nail in it. They fled earth, saying we would build bigger boards with bigger nails, etc.

        • I could smack back and embarrass you in front of all your friends here, but I’m going to be nice. Go hunt up a copy of The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror II” episode (their annual Halloween special) from season 3 and watch it. You only need to watch the first segment to the end. Then check your satire detector for calibration.

  14. If we Americans weren’t so skill-less in the old trades they’d have been the same way over metal. For example, John Browning’s dad didn’t have that big a shop in Nauvoo, IL in his time there…but look what he could do…look what skills he passed on to his son who revolutionized the industry. No license. No printer. Just a shop.

    If there’s any semblance of common sense and rational thought (a long shot, I know), this hissy is going to expose them for the utter control freaks they really are. We really are a nanny state, and they’re acting like the nanny in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons, jumping up on the chair, screaming, and wacking at whatever they can with their broom.

  15. What an ignorant, narrow-viewed government official. Outside of a prison (or even in prison) weapons are easily made by anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge or creativity. People have been making home-made guns for as long as there have been guns. In countries where guns are totally banned, organized crime syndicates batch manufacture completely modern and functional firearms using anything ranging from basic tooling to basic CNC machining.

    Every single technology can be used to make weapons, as a part of a weapon, or be used as a weapon itself. It’s a fool’s errand to chase down ever item in the world and regulate/ban it. And even if you did, knowledge and creativity will create more. So what do we do next? Ban knowledge? Regulate creativity? This is the “slippery slope” that I used to ridicule the tin-foil-hat people for believing in, and since December it has been illustrated in spades.

    Address the root causes for violence. The motive. Most violence in the USA is due to the fact that violence is the only conflict resolution mechanism available in illegal business. All the non-violent alternatives that society has built up are unavailable for the common conflicts that arise in illegal business. For these anomalous psycho killers, we can start by having door locks in all school classrooms and effective access control. We can then study the facts behind each case (which come out long after the media creates a convenient and simplified narrative that turns out later to be not quite accurate) and see that in every instance there were clear warning signs for years, sometimes decades, that people in the killer’s community and family willfully ignored acting upon. Diffusion of responsibility.

    3D printer regulation however is lazy, unimaginative, unintelligent, fascist BS.

  16. For the young’ins out there, this is not new. There used to be this mean old country called the USSR. They actually made you register typewriters….woops…you probably don’t even know what that is? It was a machine that put ink on paper when your fingers pressed down on a special labeled lever. They also really got made when folks used mimeographs…woops…you probably don’t even know what that is too? It was a machine that reproduced written words. Used funny purple ink and smelled really bad. Anyway, the good guys went ahead and made copies of typed stuff and passed it around. They called it in Russian SAMIZDAT. A really old guy by the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about it in these things called BOOKS. You can ask your grand parents about them.

    • In the USSR they could build Atomic Bombs, Jet Fighters and pretty good Tanks, but they could never build a washing machine that washed clothes clean or worked reliably more than a year. Their computers were based on vacuum tubes because the State never allowed transistors to be developed as they were considered a dangerous technology from The West. In the 1930’s they manufactured a fleet of giant propeller driven bombers that had a bent angle in the fuselage that made them nearly impossible to fly. This was because someone accidentally wrinkled the design draft drawings and no one would point that out because it was a mandatory Death Sentence to damage State Property. These planes also had steel train wheels for landing gears because they could not manufacture rubber tires big enough to do the job.
      There’s a glimpse of our future if we don’t get the Demo-commie-rats out of our Government.

      • They used transistors and integrated circuits – having worked on a Russian TC-10 and some VAX copies, I’d know – some “borrowed,” many Dussian-designed.

        On some MicroVAX chips, written in Cyrillic for those reverse-engineers, was “VAX: For those who care enough to steal the very best.”

        You are thinking of the Foxbat, which did indeed have tube-based avionics.

        This was not because they didn’t have semiconductors. It was because should a nuke go off nearby, unlike their western counterparts the Russian ‘planes would not fall out of the sky.

        Tubes don’t care bout EMPs, you see.

        • I lived in Russia just after the collapse of the USSR. If you think their computers were bad, you should see the standard Soviet toilet. Yikes. It became a sign of sophistication and power to have the ability to travel abroad and bring back a western-style toilet. Or umbrella.

    • Thanks TK, you beat me to it with the Soviet era of typewriter registration. Great Post!

  17. Yee is such an idiot he would try to outlaw Pea Shooters if he could. Unfortunately, given the other idiots in the California State Legislature and the koo-koo old man we elected Governor, Yee will probably get this passed. Did I mention how the Government of California likes to torment businesses, as well?

  18. I can’t believe he thinks the only thing preventing terrorists from murdering individuals and walking away scot-free is his legislation to register printers. So, actually, I can’t believe he expects us to believe he believes that.

    • When 3D printers are outlawed, only outlaws will have 3D printers.

      Hell….

      ….they’ll have them whether they are outlawed or not. Just like they have guns that are outlawed.

      After all….that’s why they’re called ‘outlaws’……

  19. “He’s concerned that just about anyone with access to those cutting-edge printers can arm themselves.”

    That is correct. Similarly, anyone with $20 and access to a hardware store can purchase a few parts to make a zip gun and arm themselves.

    Oh, and so can anyone with access to common tools in any of the tens of thousands of machine shops in the U.S.

    Apparently almost no one knows about the zip gun application because that is much faster, cheaper, and easier than using a 3-D printer. In other words it makes simple firearms universally available everywhere to everyone (including ex-convicts) in the U.S. no matter what laws anyone passes … thus it should be much more disturbing to people the likes of Yee. If universal access to firearms is the death knell to civilian disarmament, then we should wave photos of zip guns in the faces of the civilian disarmament policy makers every day.

  21. I think we need to look at the bigger picture/threat, and how this issue dovetails with the ongoing evolution of DRM.

    One of the dreams of the entertainment industry is a DRM scheme that could control the delivery of media, from cloud server to headphones, with a) no possibility for the end user to make a copy, b) complete awareness and control of the media consumed.

    I foresee that Yee’s ilk could propose that all 3d printers, CNC machines etc. be a) network enabled, and b) report to Big Brother every single item produced on the machine. The argument would be for a) policing patent infringement, b) eliminating unauthorized weapons production.

    • Folks dont realize that govt requires EVERY page coming out of your inkjet printer has the machine serial number on it for tracing by said govt. That all copying machines store the image of what u copied internally. We are further down this road than we would like.

      • That is malarkey.

        Print “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” and go over the page with a microscope. Nothing.

        With LASER printers it might be possible to do, but it’s not happening.

        As for photocopiers, have you any idea how much storage that’d take? Even a very large capacity drive would rapidly fill up in a commercial environment, and those beasts have no hidden drives in their underwear – er, undercarriages.

        Some copiers do “watermark,” true, but that’s not what you said. Also, that’s only some large commercial machines.

        Let’s stick to facts, shall we?

        • Again, you said inkjet, not LASER.

          I was referring to monochrome LASERS in the “might be possible” sense; again, you said “all.” Most LASER printers (and photocopiers) are still monochrome.

          And you referred to photocopiers remembering everything they ever copied, which they don’t. Even were some newer copiers to have long-term memory, that’s hardly “all.”

          As worded, your coment is in fact malarkey – irrespective of color LASER and photocopier “watermarking.”

    • That will never happen. When I was a kid I used to use cassette tapes to record the radio. I would shut the tape off when the commercials came on. If I can broadcast a sound, I can capture it with a recording device and play it back later as well as share it with someone else. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to media.

      • There are moves to protect content from exact copying, e.g. a microphone next to a speaker.

        Fortunately, we’re winning on that score – for now.

  22. Its funny that only now are governments so p1ssed about this. Why weren’t they mad about that guy(s) who have made AK’s with shovels? Or shotguns with pipe from the store? Stupid is as stupid does.

    • The shit shovel AK also showed how gun control is irrelevant. Do we need background checks for shovels now?

  24. TO: All
    RE: Oh Just Great!

    My wife, who works at a Community College, reports that one of the students there has designed a 3D printer that one can MAKE YOURSELF for about $200.

    So much for the requirement for background checks on such printers being bought.

    Regards,

    Chuck(le)
    [Technology advances, despite the efforts of tyrants…..]

    • Yeah, a couple friends and I started doing this in ’81.

      We called it “incremental modeling.”

  25. Maybe I’m missing something here. Is my good Senator Yee proposing to rewrite California’s Penal Code to include illegal possession of a 3D printer in the firearms sections? If so, does Staples, Office Max, Best Buy, etc., then need an FFL to sell 3D printers? Will a 3D printer have to be safely stored so that children cannot accidentally print a plastic gun? Will the sale of resins and polymers also need a NICS, license and face to face sale? Will 3D printers need to be insured in case a criminal steals it, and commits a crime with a printed gun? Will there be a waiting period before you can pick up a 3D printer? Will they need to be sold with cable locks?

    I’m from California, and know Senator Yee very well. His goal is not civil disarmament. Senator Yee is working very hard to regulate every aspect of life here in the Golden State, and therefore to ensure that every citizen of California is on a government payroll. It is very enlightened thinking. I’ve put my application into the California Bureau of Stupid Ideas. Very coveted position, a lot of applicants. Mostly Democrats though.

  26. yeeyikes yee, what no signs? Of the people by the people, Shall not be infringed? You read & comprehend as well as obama the great. You should really try to outlaw the nails that are used as firing pins, I smell a Carpenters Union hero of the year award here, Randy

    • People like yee totally ignore the constitution. They believe that they can just create laws as they see fit because rights in his mind cone from the state. The constitution is an old irrelevant, outdated document to them.

  27. I don’t have crystal balls but i predict another flurry of comments by 16v on this subject.

  28. If there was any more proof needed that this guy is completely out of touch with anything resembling reality, this should do it.

  29. So should we start having registration, background checks and licensing on paper printers as well because a handful of people MIGHT print up some child porn on it?

  30. This is typical KKKalifornia. They tried to do something like this when colored printers first came onto the market. It didn’t last long.

      • Too much. I never intended any double-meaning or rather semi-hidden meaning though it is there.

        KKKalifornia and colored printers was never intended as some sort of twisted anti-California joke. (eyes rolling here)

  31. “Video showing a plastic gun being test-fired appeared online last weekend, prompting Yee’s fears.”…..that his inarticulate, marginally-competent-and-likely-demented ass will be out of a job. And then nobody will run cover for him when he shoplifts suntan lotion or tries to pick up hookers….

  32. Ever try to copy a dollar bill with a fairly new printer? They will probably put the same control on 3d printers to prevent them from printing guns or gun parts or knives or knive parts or swords or anything fun.

    • A belt grinder and an ond Chevy monoleaf spring make for a much better sword than ABS and a LASER…

  33. They keep chasing after the constituent parts of guns, each in turn.

    Eventually, and as absurd as it sounds, we will arrive at the molecular level of control. Nano-control, licensing, yada-yada-yada.

    At the end of the day, it’s about control. Maybe because Yee was bottle fed, or whatever. Who knows?

    Yee is an anti-Freedom tyrant, and should be regarded and treated as such. Plus, he’s just not very bright.

  35. I called this months ago. I knew they were going to try to regulate/ban 3D printers. Just a matter of time.

    I hate being right.

  36. There was move a decade or so back to regulate programming tools – compilers, debuggers and such – and to create an environment in which only licensed companies could write and distribute software. Otherwise, someone might use their skills to circumvent the menu on a DVD or to share music.

    This fortunately went nowhere, but it was touch and go for a while.

    This “printers are dangerous” nonsense won’t go anywhere, either. Not because of 2A advocates – to whom politicos pay no heed anyway – but due to a mature freedom of thought and creativity framework backed by millions of programmers, authors and inventors.

    The EFF, FSF and ACLU – my other crowd – will kill this bit of stupidity for us.

    On my wall is a personalised New Hampshire license plate reading UNIX; read in toto it therefor reads “UNIX – Live free or die!”

    We’ve got your six.

  37. Today, Senator Yee introduced a Public Restroom Check bill. In a speech outside the state capital, he issued the following statement:

    “Terrorists and child molesters use public restrooms. It is utterly insane that anyone can just walk into a public restroom without anyone knowing who they are or what they might do. As such, I have introduced legislation today that will require anyone wanting to use a public restroom to undergo a full background check (including mental health and other medical records) in order to obtain a permit to use a public restroom. There will be police checkpoints at all public restrooms verifying that you do in fact have a permit to use a restroom. You must be 21 or older to obtain a permit and anyone under 21 wanting to use a public restroom must be under direct supervision of a permitted person – and when I say direct, I mean direct – none of this right-wing whackjob “turn your back for privacy” nonsense. Also, anyone who is in a public restroom for more than two minutes will be assumed to have “intent to molest or commit acts of terror” and will face a minimum sentence of 15 years in jail and a minimum of a $250,000 fine. Americans have lived in fear of being assaulted or blown up in public restrooms for far too long and it’s time we close the Public Restroom loophole!”

  38. Ah, the leftist mindset…anything resembling freedom, self-reliance, or opposition to total societal control must be regulated and crushed.

    The founding fathers wouldn’t have tolerated this trash in public office, yet we do.

  39. Senator Yee who I had the great displeasure of sitting behind during the April 16th committee hearings is one of the reasons I am joining Robert in being a 2A purist. No back ground checks no CCW fees or courses, nada. I will not compromise or buy into having our rights chipped away incrementally over time.
    I have nothing nice to say about the man so I won’t.

  42. There has to be embarrassing pictures of this guy somewhere, surely he’s into something that he should not be. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up in the US House or worse the Senate.

  44. good thing people didn’t make their own weapons before the advent of a 3d printer…
    oh wait the Sten Mk I-Mk VI, the Błyskawica. the KIS, the Pleter 91, the Pat Luty style SMG, the Metral SMG, the IRA’s Avenger SMG, the international Ordnace Mp2 SMG, Bechowiec-1
    “Danao City makers manufacture .38 and .45 caliber revolvers, and semi automatic copies of the Ingram MAC-10 and Intratec TEC-DC9 submachine guns”
    what’s next licensing lathes and machine shops? As a Korean American just like Senator Yee I can say with utmost certantity that he’s a complete tool. the 2nd Amendment saved my dads business and probably his life in CA when the rioters were burning down korean businesses. My old man had an AR15 ( which is now CA ILLEGAL) which was pretty much the same weapon system he used in the korean army, to protect what was his by right against dozens of looters when the police were unable to protect him and while the NG was still being mobilized.

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