San Diego County authorities say Polymaker made a "strategic business choice" to market and sell 3-D printer filament to Californians for the express purpose of building illegal weapons.

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.

    • Tim@mastodon.world
      22·
      10 days ago

      @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
      #3DPrinting

      • jballs@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
        21·
        10 days ago

        Yeah, 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.

        • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todayEnglish
          5·
          9 days ago

          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…

        • Tim@mastodon.world
          1·
          9 days ago

          @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

    • chewypoops@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1041·
      10 days ago

      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.

      • holy_scroller@lemmy.zipEnglish
        30·
        10 days ago

        So polymaker actually choose the individual channels their ads (not about ghost guns) were put on…or was that an algorithm (AdSense)?

        • evidences@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          9 days ago

          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.