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I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

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Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#91

Post by ctdonath »

lifeguard wrote: post #63
at-fates-hands wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Mother Jones is a known Liberal magazine and despite the approach to not insert the authors opinion, you can clearly see the point of the article is we need to have the ability to register guns with the government. I'm constantly shocked at how uninformed gun control advocates are.

@at-fates-hands I bet you didn't know 60 people were accidentally killed by firearms yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. About 30 people are killed in attacks -- every day. And another thing, why is it gun patriots never give a fig about the other rights in the Constitution, like freedom of speech, religion, and assembly? I think you guys just like to play with guns. It takes a cold dead hand…

60 fatal gun accidents per day? Way way off. It's measured in the low hundreds per year, not around 21,000 annual.

Cars however...30,000ish accidental per year. (USA numbers)

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#92

Post by lifeguard »

ctdonath wrote: post #91
lifeguard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@at-fates-hands I bet you didn't know 60 people were accidentally killed by firearms yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. About 30 people are killed in attacks -- every day. And another thing, why is it gun patriots never give a fig about the other rights in the Constitution, like freedom of speech, religion, and assembly? I think you guys just like to play with guns. It takes a cold dead hand…

60 fatal gun accidents per day? Way way off. It's measured in the low hundreds per year, not around 21,000 annual. Cars however...30,000ish accidental per year. (USA numbers)

Wrong. Do more more research.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#93

Post by MChristopherson »

maxerickson wrote: post #68
MChristopherson wrote: post #42

I scanned through the video included in the link. At the risk of sounding like a militia-bound gun nut, the video got me a bit annoyed: "fully functional AK-47" is tossed about rather often, when in fact the guy simply made a rather heavy hunting rifle. An AK-47, as used throughout the planet, is a machine gun. A fully-automatic machine gun. You hold down the trigger, and the gun begins firing at a high rate until yo…

A gun with a limited internal magazine is materially different than a clip ready design though. In the U.S., the legal use of assault rifle has not been particularly confused (it's always meant guns with automatic fire capability), just the sloppy and/or misconstrued use of the term in media and advocacy. Edit: Second paragraph is wrong, see link down thread.

Hunting rifles with magazines are quite common. However, you do zero in on the effective difference between supposed "assault rifles" and semi-automatic hunting rifles: the magazine / number of rounds available.

I think this is an important point, because when you cut through the furor, that really is the only effective distinction. And it's a heck of a lot more minor a distinction than the more common blending of "fully automatic machine gun" with a semi-auto rifle that merely looks bad ass, is covered with Tactical Stuff (TM), and uses a composite stock instead of wood.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#94

Post by minamea »

angersock wrote: post #70
minamea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How is this not a disgrace? This article means that practically anyone anywhere in the US can have an AK-47 with no licensing. How is that supposed to make me feel safe? What if I sneak into my GF's house and her dad tries me right then and there, and decides that the punishment for fucking his daughter is death. Oh, and what do you know? He has an AK-47 for it so all my hopes of running away are dashed. People…

What if your girlfriend's dad decided to run you down in his car--again, running away is dashed. Hopefully she can find a mate who has more spine and isn't cowed so easily by the thought of other humans with possession of means of force. Seriously, you can either live your life afraid of every damn thing, or accept that while there are dangerous devices out there the odds of ending up on the wrong side of one can be…

I'd like to see your brave Kratos face with an AK-47 in your face.

Every point you make is wrong:

I'd have a decent chance of getting away from a car, I wouldn't from an AK-47. A car has other legitimate uses. Guns outside of the police and hunting, don't imo.

I wouldn't say being afraid of firearms counts me as having no spine and afraid of "anything". I just think you're kinda full of crap and would cry the most if you actually had a gun in your face.

I wouldn't say guns are just a means of force. A good punch, a knife is. A gun is just an automatic KO for me. So yes, I don't think the average person should be able to have a gun - something that serves no means other than give him the ability to kill people at will.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#95

Post by knowtheory »

Cushman wrote: post #62
knowtheory wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit? How many of them do you think understand what a receiver is, or what the difference is between an automatic and semi-automatic? If you genuinely think this is information that more people should not know then say so explicitly. There is a debate about guns going on in the US, whether you like it or not. The ques…

> How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit? Order... hundreds of thousands? Millions, maybe? It depends how you define a kit, I guess. It's quite common to put together uppers and lowers and barrels and triggers et cetera when building a rifle, and I imagine most of those who do so understand the rules that govern it. Frankly building an AK from parts i…

Well, we can quibble about this, but i'm betting you that the vast majority of people in the USA haven't put together a gun from a kit, and most of them probably don't own a gun, or if they do own a gun, probably haven't thought about modifying it.

Irrespective of who's right on that point, there is a cultural issue here. People who have not lived with/around fire arms, and who do not hunt, have essentially no reason to ever encounter a fire arm. It is, save for violent crime, just not relevant to their lives.

Expecting them to be informed about firearms kind of isn't reasonable is it? So even if the information is out there, they've had no cause, nor frame of reference for figuring out how guns work.

So, when an explainer like this pops up on how easy it is to put together a gun, it's worthwhile to point out that turning some sheets of metal into a gun is really freaking easy, and banning all guns (even if it were legal) would be from a practical standpoint really really hard.

> As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, we do not have a problem with rifle violence in the US. [...] Let's fucking talk about that.

Dude, I could not agree with you more. But despite that, having even the most basic explainer on firearms is still a good thing.

So, anyway, how do we stop handgun deaths, deliberate or accidental? :P

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#96

Post by bifrost »

garbowza wrote: post #85
djahng wrote: post #66

Please excuse my ignorance on this matter, but why are people so concerned about "untraceable" guns (i.e. guns without serial numbers)? IF a gun is used in a crime, how important is it that there's a serial number stamped on the receiver? As opposed to, say, ballistics showing that a particular gun was used in a crime because of the rifling marks found on the bullet fragments and the firing pin indentation on the she…

Because they can side-step background checks and be resold to anyone.

Anyone who's not a criminal can buy a gun, thats the law. Background checks may prevent criminals from buying guns, but they often do not because criminals don't buy guns from legal gun dealers or other legal gun owners. They either steal them or they buy them from an illegal dealer.

The background check issue is a red herring according to the US-NIJ studies.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#97

Post by fein »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #59

Yes, there is some issue with untraceable weapons but the real problem with 3D guns isn't that they're untraceable, it's that they're undetectable . An attacker could use an all plastic weapon to get past metal detectors in a court house, airplane, and other secure areas.

Ammunition is still made of metal. A gun is kind of useless without the stuff that goes boom.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#98

Post by minamea »

unimpressive wrote: post #89
minamea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How is this not a disgrace? This article means that practically anyone anywhere in the US can have an AK-47 with no licensing. How is that supposed to make me feel safe? What if I sneak into my GF's house and her dad tries me right then and there, and decides that the punishment for fucking his daughter is death. Oh, and what do you know? He has an AK-47 for it so all my hopes of running away are dashed. People…

You should know that, unless you have a 24/7 guard watch (and maybe not even then), if someone truly wants to kill you, there's nothing stopping them. I mean, courts will try them afterwards, but that's no consolation to your corpse. Yes I am aware that the parents example would probably fall under "crimes of passion". The man would still want him dead for more than long enough to make it reality.

Wow! Why have any protection against getting killed at all?! Let's just let everyone murder everyone else at will and then we'll try them afterwards! After all we can't stop them if we wanted to. Great logic!

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#99

Post by gosu »

duck wrote: post #73
gosu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AK-47s scare me about as much as any other gun. It's "good" that rifles are used to kill fewer people than other weapons, and we should choose our battles accordingly. That doesn't change the fact that I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me. That seems like a simple principle. Maybe the best way to ach…

I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me. I would worry more about cars, corporations, and governments. :)

None of those were designed to efficiently kill people like me. The OP's point is that I should be worrying more about handguns, and he's right - but that doesn't mean I can't worry about other things designed to pose a threat to my person too.

Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

#100

Post by djahng »

garbowza wrote: post #85
djahng wrote: post #66

Please excuse my ignorance on this matter, but why are people so concerned about "untraceable" guns (i.e. guns without serial numbers)? IF a gun is used in a crime, how important is it that there's a serial number stamped on the receiver? As opposed to, say, ballistics showing that a particular gun was used in a crime because of the rifling marks found on the bullet fragments and the firing pin indentation on the she…

Because they can side-step background checks and be resold to anyone.

Well private gun sale laws vary from state to state. For instance, in Oregon private transfers of firearms are perfectly legal without background checks or going through FFL dealers. So anyone can side-step a background check in a state like Oregon by asking someone else to purchase the gun legally and then give them cash for it. Does that mean we should expect more gun violence in states like Oregon?
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