Quote of the Day
As a gun guy for a loooong time, I have bad news for 3D printing guys—the word “gun” is often enough for people to give up their rights out of fear.
People will gladly bend over & let the state have their way with them if it will help with the made up “Gun Problem”.
Guns are the Goldstein Big Brother uses to fuel enough Two Minutes Hate so that people will gladly turn their eyes away from abuses like this because they have been brainwashed into thinking somehow this will keep them safe.
It won’t. And it WILL be used against more than printed guns. It’s a form of control and they will use their fairly successful campaign of making guns out to be the boogeyman to allow them to control more & more of your life.
This is why I’ve fought gun control. It’s MUCH more than just the guns, always has been. But too many people are scared shitless of loud noises & Hollywood portrayals that they honestly fear them enough to allow whatever draconian laws are presented and then call you names & try to have your life ruined if you oppose them.
Robb Allen @ItsRobbAllen
Posted on X, February 9, 2026
This is regarding the restrictions certain politicians are putting on the 3D printers. These restrictions include printer firmware recognizing gun parts and refusing to print them and the printer “calling home” to report restricted items being made.
This is a First Amendment issue as well as a Second Amendment issue.
Of course you can do the job also (and better) with a CNC milling machine, either one optimized for this sort of application, or an ordinary general purpose small milling machine from the likes of Sherline. Or a full size one from any of the usual suspects. If you’re good and patient you don’t need CNC, you can do it with a conventional manual milling machine, plain early 20th century technology, starting from a block of steel or aluminum.
So, this is essentially a First Amendment and Second Amendment violation against uninformed, unskilled, and stupid people, as they always are.
From a more practical point of view, they think a “phone home” system to narc on the user is going to work?
Surprise, MF’er: I control the DNS in my household, and I can adjust the trusted CA list in my printer.
So when I start my print, the narc code tries to phone home to screwthe5A.wa.gov, but my home DNS returns 192.168.30.4, a non-routable IP address inside my home network, and there’s a server sitting there waiting for the call. It says it is screwthe5A.wa.gov, and here’s a certificate issued by the household certificate authority. But but but why does the printer trust that certificate instead of the one issued by secyofstyate.wa.gov’s certificate authority? Because I have physical access to the printer, and I went and added TirnosHomeCA.local to the list of trusted certificate authorities.
Know what that little counterfeit screwthe5A.wa.gov server says when asked if it is OK to print that *whatever it is*? “Sure, dude, whatever.”
Now, that’s just me with complete control over my home network environment because that’s part of my day job and my home network is overspec’ed for a midsize business. What’s the regular home hobbyist to do?
I expect someone will make a little Arduino box with a 10G interface labelled NETWORK and another 10G interface labelled PRINTER, or a Wifi network with a non-broadcast SSID called “Printer Net”, and it’ll automate the man-in-the-middle cutout to keep the printer from talking to The Man. Sell them for $100 at the gun show or maker fair as a “3D printer optimizer”.