California has lots of restrictions on firearms. When I lived in the state, I had to get a firearm safety certificate (which involved paying some money and taking a multiple choice test), present my ID for a background check, get my thumb print taken, submit two forms of proof of my address (such as utility bills), demonstrate safe handling of a firearm, and wait 10 days. A cell phone bill didn't count as proof of address, only fixed utilities like water & electricity. I'm sure this denied many renters the ability to purchase firearms. Also I could only purchase firearms on California's roster (a whitelist of firearm makes and models). Popular firearms such as 4th generation Glocks were not on the roster, though cops were allowed to buy them. Also firearms couldn't have threaded barrels (it's a felony to put one on your gun) and magazines were limited to a capacity of 10 rounds.

Carrying a handgun for self-defense was impossible, as the local authorities only gave out permits to those with political connections. This caused a scandal in 2020 when the Santa Clara County Sheriff was caught issuing concealed carry permits to bodyguards at Apple in exchange for iPads.[1] Thanks to Bruen[2] it is now possible for any law-abiding citizen to get a permit if they jump through all the hoops (which includes fingerprinting, a psych eval, and examination of your social media posts), though it can take over a year to process the application and costs can exceed $1,000.

At some point the law changed to require a background check to buy ammunition, which always failed for me. I never figured out why, but my guess is that my name didn't fit in the state's database. This sort of thing happened to around 10% of legal gun owners in the state. I never got it sorted out before I moved away.

1. https://www.reuters.com/business/apples-security-chief-accus...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_&_Pistol_...

You have described the lawmaking process of basically any country. We can't actually write laws to solve real problems because real problems are hard and you can actually tell whether they've been solved or not, but we can write laws to solve imaginary problems and then when nothing changes declare victory.

You can pretty much tell when any given administration has run out of ideas once they start making a huge amount of noise about laws that affect to first and second order literally nobody. 3-D printed guns is basically California's version of illegal immigrants voting in elections. Both things happen to a vanishingly small degree that it's not worth taking any action on either, but you can make them sound like they're the greatest threat to America if you have a megaphone loud enough.

> Regulating actual guns that are frequently used in crime? Unlikely.

Well, two things. First, your phrasing implies there’s no regulations around firearm ownership at all, which is not true.

Second, much to the chagrin of California and similar states, that pesky second amendment exists. Which makes the kind of regulations they _want_ around firearms (i.e., regulate/tax them out of existence) kind of tricky. But presumably regulations around what you can do with a 3D printer are much easier to handle from a constitutional perspective.