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Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

theguardian.com

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Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#21

Post by heartbeats »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #16
anfilt wrote: post #5

I hate how chemistry can land people in legal hot water due to overzealous government policies. While this example is not in the UK. It's illegal to own certain glassware without a permit in Texas for instance. The glassware is considered a drug precursor, like freaking glassware. Oh also federally the DEA treats Phosphorus as a type 1 precursor to meth. That's a freaking element! An element is illegal/regulated like…

Free states write laws that criminalize harmful actions. Police states write laws that criminalize possessing things that could be used harmfully.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." –Tacitus

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#22

Post by heartbeats »

noir_lord wrote: post #17
ty7yt wrote: post #6

good for him. he only has one life and he aint spending it in a sandwich factory. hes exploring some of the most exciting chemistry this world has. and its a shame we live in a place where people are terrified and manipulated by tv into thinking anyone who shows interest in these things must be placed in a small room for a long time. 300 gears ago governments would be giving him money and patting him on the back. som…

Could not disagree more, for much of human history only the rich and their offspring typically had access to higher education and crucially learning materials, books where horrendously expensive for example for all but the most wealthy. We live in a golden age for autodidacts, that people often seem intellectually incurious says less about the society and more the people who constitute it, many people are simply incu…

Right, but those people did enjoy freedom. Now? All bets are off. Since the 1960s or so, we've been through a long process of gradually filing away all the sharp edges. It will continue until we've all locked ourselves into padded cells.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#23

Post by eganist »

cwkoss wrote: post #15
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an isotope of Uranium. It's restricted but I'm pretty sure its not illegal to own a small amount of it.

Not illegal to own uranium ore - I think the restrictions are only on the refined product

If we're being pedantic, pure uranium is literally perfectly refined uranium ore. Possession of weaponizable isotopes of pure elemental uranium is absolutely regulated.

Pretty sure the same is true for some of the other particularly WMD-able elements, but I'm not about to google them.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#24

Post by dsfyu404ed »

gamblor956 wrote: post #19
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free states write laws that criminalize harmful actions. Police states write laws that criminalize possessing things that could be used harmfully.

By that definition, there are no free states except for Somalia, as nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms.

>here are no free states except for Somalia,

You touch on an good point: enforcement.

So far in human history people have been mostly tolerant of laws that were incompatible with their way of life because resources available for enforcement has been the bottleneck and most laws go unenforced unless people really want them enforced. For example, anyone who wanted alcohol during prohibition could get it, it was just a little more expensive and lower quality. Sure alcohol was illegal but it wasn't considered immoral by most so you only had to hide your use of it from law enforcement, not from society in general. We seem to be entering an age (at least in the west) where thanks to technology the bottleneck is politicians and police willingness to face backlash from the public. I'm not going to speculate on what the future holds but I fear that it will not be good if people grow accustomed to the government ratcheting up enforcement of laws that are on the books but currently rarely used.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#25

Post by Someone »

tathougies wrote: post #3

I mean, you really ought to be able to experiment with explosives in a free country, as long as you're not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone. It's obviously legal when companies in the industry do it. Why shouldn't it be for private citizens.

”as long as you're not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone”

By that definition, car racing on public streets, running red lights and ignoring speed limits is absolutely fine, as long as you’re not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone.

Regulations that limit the risks people get exposed to exist for a reason: you can’t undo damage done to others by punishing the culprit. That’s why, for example, reckless driving is illegal.

Lots of things are only legal, not when companies do it, but when those doing it follow safety protocols.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#26

Post by monksy »

3pt14159 wrote: post #13
anfilt wrote: post #5

I hate how chemistry can land people in legal hot water due to overzealous government policies. While this example is not in the UK. It's illegal to own certain glassware without a permit in Texas for instance. The glassware is considered a drug precursor, like freaking glassware. Oh also federally the DEA treats Phosphorus as a type 1 precursor to meth. That's a freaking element! An element is illegal/regulated like…

In D&D there is a certain type of spell called Power Word Kill which works slightly differently based on the version of D&D you're playing with, but the effect is that it essentially kills a single individual with a single word. I'm not saying phosphorus should be legal or illegal, but at some point "it's just a packet I sent on the internet" or "it's just a PDF I sent to someone overseas" or "it's just an element" m…

No post body was provided.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#27

Post by xxpor »

tathougies wrote: post #3

I mean, you really ought to be able to experiment with explosives in a free country, as long as you're not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone. It's obviously legal when companies in the industry do it. Why shouldn't it be for private citizens.

I've always wondered about the legality of videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4JUQaLHriU

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#28

Post by monksy »

floren wrote: post #20
gamblor956 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition, there are no free states except for Somalia, as nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms.

> nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms. Man that's gonna surprise all the legal gun owners in Canada, the UK, Sweden, and so on.

Or most the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#29

Post by RHSeeger »

tathougies wrote: post #3

I mean, you really ought to be able to experiment with explosives in a free country, as long as you're not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone. It's obviously legal when companies in the industry do it. Why shouldn't it be for private citizens.

> as long as you're not hurting anyone

I think the problem is that, much of the time, there's no way to know _if_ someone is planning on causing harm with certain tools until it's too late; until they actually cause the harm. While it would be nice to allow everyone to have anything they want (as long as they're not going to hurt anyone else), sometimes it's necessary to take away some rights in order to protect the greater good. Sometimes it's necessary to make compromises, sometimes there's tradeoffs.

Re: Man's 'experiments' with explosives were lawful, court rules

#30

Post by ultrarunner »

gamblor956 wrote: post #19
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free states write laws that criminalize harmful actions. Police states write laws that criminalize possessing things that could be used harmfully.

By that definition, there are no free states except for Somalia, as nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms.

The constitution of Somalia[0] is actually a fairly interesting read, at least if you have a big imagination. Not sure I'd exactly characterize it as a "free state" though.

[0]http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/Somalia-Constitution2012.p...

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