Technology

Frankly it seems more like a mild inconvenience then actual prevention. I don't really care how smart a software gets, it can't predict and prevent all possible configurations of prints that could possibly be used to create functioning guns without being so overly restrictive that even perfectly innocent prints would get flagged constantly in which case they simple won't sell to normal users.

It would be a constant game of whack a mole with new creative designs, using multiple printers or with non-printed parts in the design. But no hardware or software that a smart enough engineer has their hands on is impervious to mods either, especially if they're motivated like someone seeking to produce firearms would be.

It's an overreaching law that will likely solve little to nothing, but might make 3d printers in general a bit more annoying to work with. "Sorry, you can't make your dice tower because there's a 16 percent change that it could be capable of firing an RPG out of the dragon's mouth. Please make your design at least 12 percent less gun-ish and try again."

They are essentially trying to regulate technology they know very little about.

That's not surprising, that's just what politicians do. Especially politicians who are 65+ years old and completely out of touch with technology.

This is why politicians should be automatically retired at 65. We shouldn't be allowing people who grew up without seatbelts to make any decisions involving technology.

So in other words, what else is new?

The danger if this passes isn't that someone will be able to successfully implement some manner of system for identifying gun parts which will, apparently, rely on pixie dust and magic. In reality this will effectively prohibit 3D printer sales in California entirely because compliance is literally impossible. And it'll and give overreaching cops and prosecutors yet another nonsense charge they can arbitrarily slap people with over "circumventing" this mystical technology which does not in fact exist if they, ye gods forbid, build their own printer.

It's the same horseshit rationale as the spent casing "microstamping" fantasy that legislators have been salivating about for decades. It doesn't work, it'll never work, but that's not going to stop them from wishing it does and therefore turning it into a defacto ban.

Keep in mind, California also has the precedent of their infamous approved handguns list, which notoriously does things like arbitrarily declaring that the black version of some model of gun is legal, but possession of the stainless version of the exact same gun is a felony. We're not dealing with people in possession of any type of rationality, here.

They are essentially trying to regulate technology they know very little about.

You're surprised that law makers are trying to regulate things they know nothing about? Oh....oh I have like 2000 years worth of news for you....