51–60 of 73 posts
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It would be fairly trivial to outlaw non-licensed manufacturing of high-capacity magazines. The same way distilling alcohol is illegal in the US, but owning a still, owning alcohol, and purchasing distilled alcohol is not illegal.
Trivial to write the law perhaps, but enforcing it would be another thing entirely.
This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.
> This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs. Even if what you're saying is true, one could argue that means "some protective effect." Yes, it's probably true that someone who intends to ignore the law and most moral codes and commit a crime with a firearm will almost certainly ignore a sign and the associated additional legal penalties.…
This is just grandstanding and fear-mongering; irresponsible nonsense that won't have any effect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be fairly trivial to outlaw non-licensed manufacturing of high-capacity magazines. The same way distilling alcohol is illegal in the US, but owning a still, owning alcohol, and purchasing distilled alcohol is not illegal.
When that happens, I'm immediately printing off several high-capacity mags out of principle, and I don't even own a firearm (thought about it, but I don't have time to go to a range so the liability isn't worth it for me). While I understand the intent of the law, it's a totally impractical way to solve the problem. It sounds like the majority of weapons used in violent crimes are obtained illegally so it will do lit…
Why are you not immediately distilling a few bottles of moonshine on principle? My feeling is gun-freedom supporters view gun ownership as a proxy for freedom. Why not view alcohol distillation as your symbolic meter-stick instead? Just like illegally produced spirits, owning a gun won't stop the TSA from violating your rights. Nor will it stop the FBI from raiding your home.
> announced he would be introducing legislation to renew a ban on firearms and magazines that can't be picked up by standard metal detectors. The current ban on plastic firearms expires this year. In other words, the only thing this has to do with printed magazines is that printed magazines are being used as a talking point to promote the bill. Printed magazines, when printed with plastic, would still be picked up by…
The idea of a plastic Glock appeared in one of the Die Hards. For all I know that's where it originated.
In the mid '80s there was a rumor about a Soviet all-plastic 3-shot gun, and there was a guy who patented the idea of an all-plastic gun, and then the media picked up on Glock making guns using plastic frames (but still more than 80% metal by weight). Then someone wrote a breathless story about how Libya was trying to buy Glocks, and this rapidly snowballed into a media fueled freakout about plastic guns and the Glock became a "terrorist special" and so forth.
Honestly, I don't understand the hysteria over 3-D printers when it comes to guns. For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. This has been possible for decades now. Hell, you can see youtube videos of CNC projects where someone takes a manual lathe and puts together his own computer control for a grand total of $600.
I think CNC machines probably fall into the same category as 3D printers when it comes to things like this.
The issue isn't that someone with a little money can manufacture a firearm. This has been the case since firearms were invented. The issue is that it's becoming easier and cheaper to do it, and as time passes it seems plausible that object fabrication equipment will become a staple home appliance. Which will make attempts to ban anything that such machines can produce about as effective as trying to stop people downloading pirated movies.
The funny thing is that they think passing a law against it is going to do anything. The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.
This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.
No law can ever prevent crime, but we don't just give up on the idea of the rule of law.
Banning certain classes of firearm won't make them disappear completely, but it gives law enforcement the opportunity to reduce their availability substantially.
Here's the story from the UK. We banned handguns altogether in 1997, after a school shooting that left seventeen dead. We had been slowly restricting gun ownership over the previous decade, but this time we really bloody meant it - there was a major programme of amnesties, ultimately leading to a minimum 5 year sentence for possession of a handgun. Initially it didn't have a huge impact on criminal use of firearms, partly because of the number of guns already in circulation, partly because the IRA were still fairly active and had extensive gun-running apparatus. Bit by bit, the police started to turn the tide.
The headline statistic is 58 firearm fatalities in 2010/11 (You can't fully control guns, but you can get damned close if you've got an electorate that wills it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When that happens, I'm immediately printing off several high-capacity mags out of principle, and I don't even own a firearm (thought about it, but I don't have time to go to a range so the liability isn't worth it for me). While I understand the intent of the law, it's a totally impractical way to solve the problem. It sounds like the majority of weapons used in violent crimes are obtained illegally so it will do lit…
I believe that the majority of weapons used in non-gang-related mass shootings were purchased legally. Why are you not immediately distilling a few bottles of moonshine on principle? My feeling is gun-freedom supporters view gun ownership as a proxy for freedom. Why not view alcohol distillation as your symbolic meter-stick instead? Just like illegally produced spirits, owning a gun won't stop the TSA from violating…
In any case, the stand I'd be taking is about the absurdity of trying to ban 3d printing of specific devices, not about gun rights. I can't think of a reasonable excuse for a private citizen to own high-capacity weapons of death, and the theoretical argument about defending ourselves from the government went out the window long ago in my eyes. The second amendment was written well before the days of SWAT teams (on the low end of potential government firepower) and anyone crazy enough to think that stockpiling high-powered weaponry will be sufficient to take on highly-trained professionals is, well, crazy.
Honestly, I don't understand the hysteria over 3-D printers when it comes to guns. For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. This has been possible for decades now. Hell, you can see youtube videos of CNC projects where someone takes a manual lathe and puts together his own computer control for a grand total of $600.
>For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. I think CNC machines probably fall into the same category as 3D printers when it comes to things like this. The issue isn't that someone with a little money can manufacture a firearm. This has been the case since firearms were invented. The issue is that it's becoming easier and cheaper to do it, and as tim…
Gun and explosive laws are already unenforceable. Explosives are easy to make - you can get recipes off the internet. And guns are easy to make, too, as I pointed out above. It's not clear to me that 3D printers will be any cheaper or more ubiquitous than milling machines, but in any case milling machines are already ubiquitous.
What keeps people from making machine guns and bombs is the severe penalties associated with doing so. That won't change with the advent of cheap 3D printers, even assuming a printer that could make a gun is ever cheap.
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That's really weird reasoning. If we applied that reasoning to highway construction areas, you'd see "vehicle-free zones" for fear of somebody speeding. But we don't, so instead, we just have "traffic fines double in construction zones." Which makes sense, and presumably people drive more carefully in construction zones. If you want to double the murder punishment in school zones, there is your deterrence. Preventing…
Well, there are a lot of crimes that people engage in other than murder, and many of them involve weapons. It's a much different thing to be caught selling drugs, soliciting sex, etc. in a school zone from a punishment standpoint. All that aside, I don't trust other parents with handguns around my children, and am perfectly okay with laws preventing people from carrying around my kids. Most of the people I know who a…
Really? I've never met a firearm owner like that, and I've been around guns my entire adult life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea of a plastic Glock appeared in one of the Die Hards. For all I know that's where it originated.
It didn't originate in the Die Hard movie. There was a media fueled rumor about the Glock 17 containing so little metal that it wouldn't show up on metal detectors, and Die Hard 2 merely perpetuated that idea. However, none of it was ever true. In the mid '80s there was a rumor about a Soviet all-plastic 3-shot gun, and there was a guy who patented the idea of an all-plastic gun, and then the media picked up on Glock…
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19860418&...
As an intellectual exercise, see how many mistakes and logical fallacies the author commits.