Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#131

Post by kbenson » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #55

pwlb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any country in history that prevented its downfall because its civilians are armed to the teeth?

Western democracy wouldn't exist without citizens who were armed to the teeth. Do you think the monarchys would have happily and peacefully turned over their power because of the power of love? Because someone said please sir?

In the UK the Monarchy was stripped of powers by other nobles, not regular citizens. I'm not sure about other places, but I wouldn't assume it was always a popular revolution of some sort. I would guess in many cases it was slowly ceded to other parts of the government.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#132

Post by notahacker » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #105

einpoklum wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is possible to make a gun using 3D-printed parts does not make it a significant contributing factor to the prevalence of guns (for non-recreational use) in the US.

Correction: it's not a significant contributing factor yet . It takes a pretty advanced case of myopia to not be able to foresee home firearm manufacturing growing. At the current rate of development, I give it 10 years, tops, before European and Australian gun control measures are effectively meaningless.

But they're not "meaningless", because the average person in Europe and Australia has no interest in owning a gun, never mind figuring out how to print one, and even the average hardened criminal has to consider the possibility that since it isn't necessary for them to preemptively shoot anybody who challenges them, possessing guns might not be worth the risk of additional penalties. Those are much bigger factors in low gun deaths somewhere like the UK than the difficulty of obtaining one on the black market

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#133

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #113

nostrademons wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in several recent years NSA has been the largest single buyer of spinning disks in the world." The rest of the world moved to SSDs in ~2010. Google's been storing the whole web on flash since then. (I guess if you're archiving for slow-speed retrieval disks are still useful, but if that's your use-case, why wouldn't you use tape?)

> why wouldn't you use tape Because there are many orders of latency magnitude between spinning rust and tape. We still use a lot of spinning disk for precisely this reason - you get roughly 5x the online capacity for the same cost and automation does not whine about wanting the new shiny.

That was why I mentioned SSDs - there are orders of latency magnitude between SSDs and spinning disk.

I guess it fits the NSA's use-case though, where they have ~thousands of analysts running complex queries but no external users, rather than ~billions of external users running well-defined queries.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#134

Post by blisterpeanuts » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #98

Can someone more familiar with this world explain where the law ended up on building your own guns? I recall a controversy around whether you can even share open source 3D printing plans (which to me felt like a violation of the first amendment) but leaving that aside, I've also heard that it is possible to do so using more traditional methods.

I have a memory that around 10 years ago, Australia banned the very act of downloading and possessing 3-D files to make firearms. Theoretically, if your computer is seized and found to contain the SolidWorks files to make a Ruger, for example, you can be prosecuted. However I don't know that this was enacted into national law or later struck down.

A man in Queensland was given a suspended sentence for printing parts of a gun that did not together constitute a usable gun without some additional pieces[1].

Apparently there have been efforts there to ban 3-D printing of guns but so far they have not been successful.

In the U.S., while it is physically possible to do anything within the privacy of one's home, it is technically illegal to print a gun if you are not legally permitted to possess one.[2]

There are also existing laws on the books against plastic/undetectable guns which presumably would apply as well to resin/PETG/PLA printed firearms that have few or zero metal parts. Actually, one wonders why there haven't been more incidents of plastic guns smuggled onto aircraft in recent years, perhaps because K9 teams of bomb sniffing hounds are randomly used to detect bomb-making ingredients while standing in line at security. They are trained presumably to smell gunpowder as well as other chemicals. Leave your "Gunpowder Solid Men's Cologne" at home.

1. http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/science-and-te...

2. https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/legal-3d-gun

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#135

Post by da_big_ghey » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #90

TecoAndJix wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm now trying to picture what an Apple handgun would look like

An iGun will only fire specially made square iBullets with DRM chips

> square bullets

But only at the Turks!

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#136

Post by linksnapzz » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #96

linksnapzz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last person to successfully invade Switzerland was... Napoleon? Likewise, while it may not be to your taste, Afghanistan's polity has spent the last 200 years stubbornly being Afghan, to the surprise and annoyance of the British, Russians, Americans, etc.

Who has tried since? I understood that in WW2 for instance it was their strict policy of neutrality that kept them from invasion, and the fact that Germany thought it was more beneficial to have them as a neutral rather than occupied country.

Keeping Zurich industrialists on their side was essential to helping supply German war efforts-that's how Dehomag laundered its purchases of Hollerith cards from IBM, and I think how GM Europe's part-ownership of Ethyl Inc.facilitated getting TEL to the Luftwaffe.

In addition to losing all that, it would be a costly and drawn-out war against an entrenched enemy on hideously unsuitable terrain. The desire was absolutely there, Hitler hated Swiss Germans, but cooler heads prevailed, apparently.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#137

Post by aksss » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #47

Spooky23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's still a little high, most of these companies are on the wane. Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective and regulatory changes will eventually kick the floor out. Time to cash out... It's like when Phillip Morris bought Kraft and General Foods in the 80s to spin them off later when tobacco regulation came.

Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective The statistics show record gun sales. More and more Americans are becoming firearms owners for the first time, and existing owners are expanding their collections.

What's interesting (to me) about this stat is that retail sales are up, meaning mostly newly manufactured firearms, at a time when we're seeing a "rolling over" of one generation's possessions to another - baby boomers are actively passing their collections on (or selling) to the next generations in private transactions. So there are a lot of firearms changing hands to new owners now (for the last and next 5 years) that are unseen by these retail stats. Guns are a very durable good.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#138

Post by moate » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

linksnapzz wrote: post #70

pwlb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any country in history that prevented its downfall because its civilians are armed to the teeth?

The last person to successfully invade Switzerland was... Napoleon? Likewise, while it may not be to your taste, Afghanistan's polity has spent the last 200 years stubbornly being Afghan, to the surprise and annoyance of the British, Russians, Americans, etc.

Point of order on both nations: They also have protective geography that helps a great deal. The Afghani culture and being very well armed does contribute though, but IDK that we can say it's the sole reason.

Switzerland has been a neutral state during the entirety of modern aerial warfare era, so I'm going to put that less on the guns and more on the "why would I want to attack Switzerland?" attitude of the last ~100 years.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#139

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #57

groby_b wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with tobacco, big studies have been suppressed. Guns are far from a well-ventilated issue, they're just well-entrenched. The Dickey amendment got clarified in 2018, and the first earmarks for research were for FY2020 - so, I'd say we wait with those proclamations a few more years.

What difference are those studies going to make? If Columbia University in the City of New York discovers you can use guns to kill people, are voters suddenly going to go "oh, well then!"

Facts often drive behavior and understanding.

Examples:

- Are there correlations between outcomes and specific brands, configurations, or other attributes of firearm?

- Are there correlations between sales at specific outlets and outcomes?

- Is age and/or experience correlated with negative outcomes?

The assumption is that studying this would negatively impact gun ownership. I don't think that's true. Consider that anti-gun rhetoric over the .50 Barrett rifle. You may find that it's really a collector's item that isn't associated with crime. I'm sure there are many examples similar to this, that are blocked by black and white opinion on the matter, fueled by mutual ignorance.

Re: Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal

#140

Post by anonlawyer » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

I'd say $220 mil is a pretty good price for a company that hasn't introduced an innovative product in 50 years. Colt's main products are the AR-15 (introduced ~1963), the various 1911 models (introduced in—duh—1911), and the single action army revolvers (introduced in 1873). It must be a hell of a marketing effort to keep flogging 50–150 year old products.