Why California’s 3D Printer Bill Worries the Industry: David Tobin Says “It Regulates a Tool, Not the Crime”

• California’s AB 2047, a bill aimed at stopping the use of 3D printers to make firearms and illegal firearm parts, has passed the state Assembly and is now headed to...

California’s AB 2047, a bill aimed at stopping the use of 3D printers to make firearms and illegal firearm parts, has passed the state Assembly and is now headed to the Senate. The legislation has already gone through amended versions, but critics in the additive manufacturing (AM) community say the changes have not solved the core problem. For David Tobin, who serves as Executive Producer of Joel Telling’s 3D Printing Nerd channel and Executive Director of the Community Manufacturing Initiative, the issue is not whether illegal weapons are a concern. It is whether California is trying to solve that problem by regulating the wrong thing. “The things they’re trying to make illegal are already illegal. You can’t make them more ‘illegaler’,” Tobin said in an interview with 3DPrint.com. “The