Technology

Its really, really big and populous, and also ethnically, culturally, and socially diverse. I think those combined factors lead to California passing more volume and variety of laws than any of the other American states.

Many of the laws they pass are regulation on business and consumer protection in excess of those provided by the federal government, but the socially progressive side of politics has its villains, too. Their villainy comes in the form of forced trading of freedom for security--outlawing activities that are dangerous to you, or banning objects and knowledge that have the potential to harm you or others even if they have other practical uses.

Its the main reason why it is risky to fight for the victory of one's own political "team" without further consideration. It is easy for people interested in the public good to be overzealous in enforcement of public safety.

It's hard to get broad agreement on where to draw that line. For example, I tend to lean in the "natural law" direction, where I think you should be allowed to have and do almost anything you want, so long as it doesn't materially harm anyone else, even indirectly. Most other people, even on the left, find that relatively extreme and believe in more personal regulation in the name of increased public safety. For example, most Democrats support moderate to strict restrictions on personal firearm, chemical, and encryption ownership, rather than banning the illegal uses of those things themselves. It is more dangerous for people to be able to be able to get dangerous stuff, so it makes sense people would have a lot of differing opinions on where to settle between "Mad Max" and "Minority Report".

America has been rotting from the inside since WW2 (MIC, FBI and CIA terrorism, etc), then supercharged with Reagan. Frankly, it's surprising it took this long.

And this is fucking progressive ass Cali.

The left and the right can't stop fucking with their bases long enough to fix real problem.

The tech bros.

The lobbying power of tech companies that profit from proprietary technology and feel threatened by open source. The same people who are behind DRM on everything from ebooks and music to printer inks, and legal restrictions on repairing the devices you own.

Anti-gun/gun control lobby would be my first guess. You can basically print all the serialized parts (the part required for registration) for most any gun then get the rest of the parts and assemble it yourself. The gun parts don't necessarily even need to be based on an actual manufactured gun, there are designs for completely homemade guns down to the barrel using parts you can easily pick up at any hardware store. Then there are also people who are printing parts that can turn some semi-automatic guns into selectable fully automatic.

Problem is the plans are already in the wild for printing gun parts and for open source printers. I don't know what good would accomplish to deter people from printing when the person targeted is already motivated enough to print one to begin with.

I believe the entire goal of RepRap was to build a machine that could build all the parts needed to build another machine. Most of the parts for a lot of machines are either 3d printable or bog-standard off-the-shelf parts that could be used for millions of other things. I have a feeling the really scary target would be software, something similar to the draconian age-verification BS being run around.

This is called the proliferation of technology, its useless to fight it, and also one of humanities greatest existential threats.

Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.

Just FYI, I am full pro 3d printer, love mine. Looking into a second one now.

"Get in good trouble, necessary trouble..."

Or just use the rock.

FFS, you still need a bg check to buy from Walmart. There's plenty of things to point out to fight for sane gun laws without making shit up.

You can’t buy guns at Walmart in California.