The Felony of Curiosity: Why ‘Safety’ Mandates Will Mutilate STEM Education

The United States is built on the backs of makers. From our farmers who repair and maintain their tractor, to engineers designing our next cutting-edge semiconductor chip, and everyone in between, they are all fixing, modifying, and creating something important to move our society forward. However, Washington State’s HB2320 and 2321, along with similar bills that are arising around the country, aim to criminalize creativity and innovation for the illusion of safety. As an educator, I am tragically very familiar with gun violence in America, but adding a government censor to the tools we use to inspire students to explore STEM pathways is not the solution to this problem. Our economy relies on the very garage-built ingenuity these bills seek to criminalize. I have spent decades trying to get students excited about STEM by giving them the tools to build their own futures. If we replace those tools with government-monitored “secure” hardware, we lose the privacy of our intellectual property and the sovereignty of our classrooms and workshops.

My journey into the world of advanced manufacturing didn’t start in a high-tech university lab. It started in my shared apartment with a $150 box of parts called an “Anet A8,” a finicky, open-source 3D printer made from acrylic and hardware store parts. To make the printer work, I had to struggle through the core of the machine, both electrically and mechanically. I spent late nights debugging firmware and learning how code translates into physical movement. Eventually, I modified that exact printer so I could print pudding on graham crackers instead of plastic to show my students that all CNC machines and 3D printers are basically the same concept, only the tool-head changes. I even managed to modify it further to 3D print a peanut butter cup!

That struggle didn’t just give me a working machine, it gave me a career. It taught me the self-regulated learning and reverse-engineering skills that led me to become a K-12 and technical college mechatronics instructor, and eventually a lecturer for the College of Engineering at one of the largest universities in Indiana. I am currently pursuing my PhD in hopes of developing new teaching methods that embrace curiosity of the unknown in electronic and mechanical systems. I am a mentor for a combat robotics team and a toy-making club. But most importantly, I am a life-long learner, a teacher, and a maker. Open-source hardware was my catalyst for learning more. A force multiplier, a low-cost tool that exponentially increased my ability to learn, innovate, and contribute to the community.

But if Washington State’s HB 2320 and 2321, or the proposals in New York, or Indiana’s emerging SB 16 that has similar language to bills in many other states, had been law when I started, I wouldn’t be a teacher, or a PhD student, or a mentor.

I would be a felon.

To be clear, reducing gun violence is a vital and noble mission. No educator wants to see tools for learning and innovation become instruments for harm. We deeply empathize with the legislators that feel the need to “do something” to keep our communities safe. However, in rushing to attempt to solve this very real problem, these bills have proposed a technical solution that logic simply does not support.

Under HB 2321, any machine capable of additive or subtractive manufacturing, like 3D printers and CNC machines, must be equipped with “blocking features” that cannot be bypassed. This effectively outlaws the “RepRap” (Replicating Rapid-Prototyper) movement, the global community of students, professionals, and hobbyists alike who build their own machines from scratch.

If you build a printer today to learn how CNC logic works, you are learning and innovating. But if these bills pass, you are manufacturing a “non-compliant device.” By requiring every machine to have a government-authenticated confirmation that the product is safe to make (called a “handshake”), the law mandates that all hardware be a “black box.” For a student, a black box is a dead end. You cannot learn to improve a machine if you are legally barred from accessing its brain. This is more than a hardware issue; it’s a constitutional one. In the 1990s, the landmark case Bernstein v. United States established that computer code is protected speech under the First Amendment. In our robotics and manufacturing classrooms and workshops, students “speak” through G-code, the digital instructions that tell a CNC machine or 3D printer to move a motor to a specific location. This can be a large file to make a fully functional part on a 3D printer, or it can be typing a single instruction into a command line to see if the tool-head moves in the direction you hoped. I am working with students today doing just this to develop a CNC machine that holds a pencil to support individuals with Cerebral Palsy in developing the muscle movements to write.

By mandating that this code be scanned and “approved” by a state-managed algorithm before a machine is allowed to move, these bills impose a prior restraint on student expression. We are telling future engineers that their mathematical designs must be pre-cleared by a government censor. Whether it is a 3D printer, a CNC mill, a pudding extruder, or an automatic pencil, the government needs to give the “go ahead” before anything can move. Just as we wouldn’t allow the state to scan a student’s diary for “dangerous ideas” before they are allowed to write, we should not allow the state to scan a student’s G-code before they are allowed to build.

Beyond the technical hurdles lies a disheartening legal trap. HB 2320 creates a “rebuttable presumption of intent,” shifting the legal burden of proof onto the citizen. If a student or teacher is even found to have a file that “may be used to manufacture or produce a firearm,” they are assumed to plan to make the firearm, regardless of what the file actually creates.

Imagine a student designing a custom mechanical rail for a sibling’s dresser to save their family money. To a crude AI algorithm, those geometries might “look” too much like a component of a restricted firearm. Under this law, the student, and potentially their teacher, is now guilty until proven innocent. This algorithmic stop-and-frisk will force instructors to abandon open exploration entirely, replacing innovation with “pre-approved” digital coloring books to avoid the threat of prison.

Proponents of HB 2321 cite a rise in ‘ghost guns.’ This is indeed a notable issue, but data from The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that the overwhelming majority of these are made from commercial kits, not 3D printers. By mandating a digital iron curtain for our students, we aren’t stopping criminals, who will continue using manual tools and metal kits, we are simply imposing a prior restraint on the legitimate medical and engineering ‘speech’ of our classrooms.

We must protect the right to tinker, the right to repair, and the right to “speak” in the language of engineering. If we allow these digital locks to become the standard, we aren’t just attempting to stop ghost guns, we are ghosting the next generation of American innovators before they even have a chance to build.