20 US States Want to Stop the Posting of Blueprints For 3D-Printed Guns (abc7ny.com) 382
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a federal regulation that could allow blueprints for making guns on 3D printers to be posted on the internet.
New York Attorney General Tish James, who helped lead the coalition of state attorneys general, argued that posting the blueprints would allow anyone to go online and use the downloadable files to create unregistered and untraceable assault-style weapons that could be difficult to detect... Proponents have argued there is a constitutional right to publish the material, but critics counter that making the blueprints readily accessible online could lead to an increase in gun violence and put weapons in the hands of criminals who are legally prohibited from owning them... For years, law enforcement officials have been trying to draw attention to the dangers posed by the so-called ghost guns, which contain no registration numbers that could be used to trace them.
New York Attorney General Tish James, who helped lead the coalition of state attorneys general, argued that posting the blueprints would allow anyone to go online and use the downloadable files to create unregistered and untraceable assault-style weapons that could be difficult to detect... Proponents have argued there is a constitutional right to publish the material, but critics counter that making the blueprints readily accessible online could lead to an increase in gun violence and put weapons in the hands of criminals who are legally prohibited from owning them... For years, law enforcement officials have been trying to draw attention to the dangers posed by the so-called ghost guns, which contain no registration numbers that could be used to trace them.
Gonna hafta download from abroad then (Score:3, Interesting)
Gonna hafta download from abroad then. What kind of idiocy is this? Have these people ever used the Internet?
Re:Gonna hafta download from abroad then (Score:4, Interesting)
Gonna hafta download from abroad then. What kind of idiocy is this? Have these people ever used the Internet?
The Defense Distributed files are available for download from lots of sites. The company posted the files on their website but Pennsylvania wrote a law making them illegal in that state, so DD pulled them from everywhere. You can pay a small fee for a branded USB stick with the files on them. They serve no purpose other than being a "happening" collective.
You are correct that 3D "blueprints" are available on the 'net, but there's an insignificant interest in them.
3D printers are not cheap, they are a pain in the ass, and the total process produces a hazardous time bomb.
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Some are almost as cheap as inkjets these days. $250 gets you a serviceable model capable of printing small parts
You can probably buy a real gun for less that that.
(and it'll fire more than a couple of shots before it explodes in your hands)
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3D printing is hard! (Score:2)
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Re:3D printing is hard! (Score:4, Informative)
Compared to photography nuts or train set nuts or Warhammer 40K nuts, gun nuts are pretty tame. But everyone needs a hobby, and a hobby where you create things by hand is a great one.
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What a waste of time. I'll never understand gun nuts. Don't you have someone more interesting to do or make in your life?
I went to the shooting range today, it was a good time. It's just one of my many hobbies.
What did you do today?
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Tough Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Every freedom has consequences.
I fail to see the big deal (Score:5, Funny)
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Just 3D print your own bullet proof storm trooper armor [slashdot.org] and there’s nothing to worry about. The defense is already ahead of the curve on this one.
Maybe we'll see someone in court when they try that shit, like shooting a .50 caliber through a phone book [washingtonpost.com].
He thought a book would stop a bullet and make him a YouTube star. Now he’s dead.
Send a SAE (Score:2)
Argument could use some work (Score:5, Insightful)
Proponents have argued there is a constitutional right to publish the material, but critics counter that making the blueprints readily accessible online could lead to an increase in gun violence and put weapons in the hands of criminals who are legally prohibited from owning them...
That is not a "counter" to the claim of having a constitutional right. A counter would be some evidence that it isn't a constitutional right. Otherwise, just kindly agree that publishing the information is constitutionally protected and make your argument for amending the constitution. If the claim is "we recognize it is a constitutional right but think the government should ignore that because we don't like it" then you ought not to be involved in this legal process or any other. Makes this a handy list of twenty AGs who should be removed.
For years, law enforcement officials have been trying to draw attention to the dangers posed by the so-called ghost guns, which contain no registration numbers that could be used to trace them.
Excellent, now you can tell us how many people have been killed by "ghost guns" over the course of the these years of them being an apparent threat. Must be quite a few if we are discussing purposely violating the supreme law of the land in our desperation to stop it. How many is it?
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That is not a "counter" to the claim of having a constitutional right. A counter would be some evidence that it isn't a constitutional right. Otherwise, just kindly agree that publishing the information is constitutionally protected and make your argument for amending the constitution
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that distributing the plans to 3D-print a gun is similar to selling or giving a gun. I don't think that holds up, but IMO it's the right thing to be debating. We all know it's pointless to try to prevent distribution of bits, but that's never stopped governments from trying.
A less reasonable argument, one I can see no support for, is that distributing the designs makes you a gun manufacturer. That's the kind of argument that a government blatantly stepping
Re: Argument could use some work (Score:2)
It a law that says you cannot poet such materials.
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If you don't understand how our system of laws exists in a hierarchy, with the ones closer to the root node superceding those further away, then you don't know what a law is.
I'm pretty sure that you don't know what a law is, because you suggest that a leaf node can overrule the root node.
An illegal law (a law further from the root node that tries to supercede a closer one) is no law at all. This has been repeatedly upheld in a thing called a "Supreme Court". They call those illegal laws "unconstitutional".
Printing a gun (Score:2)
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just change the amendment already. (Score:3)
it talks about freely trading, acquiring, training and equipping a private military.
clearly that has not been allowed for decades (nearing 1 century already), you're not allowed to have armaments that are just that, armaments.
So just change it. would clear up a lot of the confusion - or start adhering to it.
granted, they didn't think there would be armaments as powerful we have now but they did have what they considered battleships, cannons etc when they penned that as armaments, in what was then private hands - but just because it's an amendment to the constitution does not actually mean that it could not be changed if the houses agreed to it. This whole ongoing thing reminds me of a fiasco member of parliament in Finland who said out a very stupid thing that you shouldn't change a law because it's the law, while having been elected to an institution which has 1 main purpose and that 1 main purpose is to change the law(constitution as well for which said institution has defined a process for)
in how many of those states is it currently legal to build your own gun though? surely in quite many of them? furthermore you can just go to a hw store and get everything necessary for a zip gun anyways and ammo as well?
anyway, wouldn't it be a bit ass backwards if it's legal to create and register a gun but not tell anyone what the parts look like?
I've never actually read a good treatment (Score:2)
In any case it's a wedge issue. I'd prefer to let i
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Re:just change the amendment already. (Score:5, Insightful)
granted, they didn't think there would be armaments as powerful we have now but they did have what they considered battleships, cannons etc when they penned that as armaments, in what was then private hands
This bears repeating. The second amendment was very clearly seen by the Founding Fathers as including artillery and the like. Later, in the days when a machine gun was a cannon-sized Gatling gun, they were all in private hands. The US Army around the Spanish-American war (c1898) had made some very poor procurement decisions, and our soldiers were simply outgunned. But a bunch of people brought their own private Gatling guns, and these personally-owned machine guns became key to the fighting, with some historians calling it the invention of the now-standard concept of "base of fie and maneuver element", once the artillery corps figured out not to use them like cannon.
It was only in the 1920s, when prohibition caused machine-gun armed gang violence, that people started claiming that the second amendment didn't protect machine guns or other "military weapons", after 150 years of it very clearly doing so!
We certainly shouldn't be blocking any kind of small arm in private hands, not without actually amending the constitution! But the government simply ignoring the constitution to appease public outcry is nothing new, I guess.
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The very first gun control laws were meant to keep blacks from defending themselves.
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Sure, I think that's well established. And Democrats are still advocating those same laws today they were back then. But I'm talking about the argument that "the Founding Fathers never meant for the Second Amendment to include military weapons", which is 100% bullshit. The American Revolution started when the government tried to seize cannon that were in the hands of private citizens; of course it was meant to include military equipment.
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The very first gun control laws were meant to keep blacks from defending themselves.
I'm fairly certain that this is still the intention of gun control today. Just listen to Mike Bloomberg talk.
https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
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It doesn't make any difference if you think the 2nd is talking individual rights or something like National Guard. The second *is* about ARMS. Individuals can't own artillery. I do not know the actual rules but I'm pretty sure that National Guard of any State doesn't have operational control of nukes. Nukes and artillery are ARMS darn it, but distinctions are made, thank God. The Second talks about ARMS, yet arms ain't arms always in practice so change the practice or change the Second.
Re: just change the amendment already. (Score:2)
Actually, individual citizens CAN own artillery.
Currently, the M114 Howitzer, with a 155MM round, currently in active military use around the world, is the largest privately owned artillery in the US.
Posting the plans could lead to... (Score:2)
Blah blah blah.
PROVE IT!
Offer something other than your stupid, uninformed decisions you tyrannical fuckheads!
The moral panic over these weapons is way overblow (Score:2)
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Perhaps they think that by making a stand on 3D printed guns they can distract the public from thinking about all the massacres that occur due to lax gun control of ... actual guns?
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Missing the point (Score:3)
You can already get unregistered guns easily, the US has no appreciable gun control. Except for 3D printed ones.
Idiocy.
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At least it's not like the stupidity up here in Canada. Where you can still buy a .223 rifle with a 5 round cap. But an 'AR15' is going to be illegal. What's the difference between the two? The AR15 is black, also has a pistol grip. That's it. But why? Because "gun violence" is the claim, but the feds have no fucking care to actually deal with the problem.
There's been 6 shootings in Canada with stolen .223's. The vast majority of our gun crime comes from, gangs in major cities, having shootouts with
Let's amend the bills to ... (Score:2)
... include damming up the Indian ocean.
The left needs to let gun control go (Score:5, Insightful)
It's tempting because polls show Americans want more gun control, but it doesn't matter what Americans want, what matters is what _voters_ want. People don't vote on the issue of gun control. Drop it. You'll save more lives with Medicare for All, Federal Jobs programs like the "Green" New Deal & ending those stupid wars.
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The last person we should listen to about gun control is Joe Biden. After all, he told us to take a double barrel shotgun and blast it in the air [snopes.com] to scare away people, which is illegal in pretty much every single jurisdiction in the US.
As far as Bernie, he's way out there [berniesanders.com] with regards to firearms. What is an "assault weapon" and what is a "high capacity" magazine? He also wants to ban 3D printing of firearms.
He's a nut, without any real clue about firearms, and wants to take away the rights of citizens
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The last person we should listen to about gun control is Joe Biden. After all, he told us to take a double barrel shotgun and blast it in the air [snopes.com] to scare away people, which is illegal in pretty much every single jurisdiction in the US.
If you're scaring away an intruder, there's a very good chance you'll be perfectly within your legal right [wikipedia.org] to do so by firing your shotgun into the air, regardless of what local ordinances say about the matter. Also, if you're going to fire a weapon into the air, far better a shotgun than just about anything else.
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You think anyone on the left will ever notice that it's the black kid who doesn't have a father at home because dad is serving time on a gun charge? It's not the white kid.
Re:The left needs to let gun control go (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a losing issue.
Or at least let gun registration go. Personally I have no issue with background checks, what I have an issue with is registration or the creation of any sort of database about who has what guns. If we made a simple system where if you want to buy a gun, you go and get a gun purchase license, which requires a background check. Once you get that license it is good for a year (or some reasonable length of time). If you already have a concealed carry permit, it would work as license (since clearly you would have had a background check.) Next put the responsibility on anyone selling a gun to ask for the license. Maybe even have a toll free number to call to ask if a license is still valid and not revoked. Have no requirement to record the serial number or the sale. Make it a severe penalty (felony) to sell a gun to someone without seeing their license. To enforce at the problem areas like gun shows, have federal "secret shoppers" try and purchase guns without having to show a license. I would go for a system like this and I bet a bunch of second amendment crowd would as well. It would provide a reasonable solution to what gun control people *say* they want - ensure guns aren't sold to those who are not entitled to own a gun; and it would prevent the hidden agenda that gun control people don't talk about - the registration of all guns so that someday they can be more easily confiscated.
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Buying a gun already requires a background check.
It's apparent you have never bought a gun. They do call a number, the FBI.
> I bet a bunch of second amendment crowd would as well
Once upon a time. Now? No. We have basically what you are asking for. What will these new laws do? After decades of compromise and rationalization like yours it is never enough. There is always one more law. Regardless of how effective that law is or if existing laws are even followed. Will it stop suicides? Will it stop gang vio
You made a great response (Score:3)
First, the database issue is resolved. The Firearm Owners Protection Act (1986) explicitly restricts the government from creating a list of gun owners and the guns they own. That's a done deal already.
Second, if the gun is being sold by a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer (ie: an FFL license holder) then the
Regs are about export (Score:2)
The regulations are about export. An honest Federal judiciary would dismiss the state claims for lack of standing. And failure to state a claim of action. "Someone might use this information to do something illegal in our state, therefore the Federal Government has a duty to ban it" is not a real legal principal, and even if it were, it would be precluded by the First Amendment (we don't even _need_ to bring the Second into it).
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"Someone might use this information to do something illegal in our state, therefore the Federal Government has a duty to ban it" is not a real legal principal, and even if it were, it would be precluded by the First Amendment.
Not to mention the even more obvious fact that no export of the blueprints would have taken place if someone in their state downloaded them. The regulations in question involve export to foreign countries. So the issue of people doing illegal things in these particular states doesn't intersect at all with the issue of international exports. That's an even stronger reason why the states have no standing.
Legality (Score:2)
It's completely legal for you to build a gun using plans, or improvising your own. It has been pretty much forever. The DoJ agrees it's completely legal to print a gun using a 3D printer, as long as you follow all other regulations (no fully automatic machine guns, silencers need a tax stamp, etc...) So, I'm not sure what the lawsuit is all about. To be successful they are going to have to argue that somehow printing a gun is different than building one from parts, which is settled caselaw to be legal.
Let's violate the First Amendment while we're here (Score:2, Flamebait)
These assholes have no respect for individual rights. They violate the Second Amendment with their laws against the keeping and bearing of arms, then they violate the First Amendment with their attempts to prevent people from communicating on how to build weapons, and doing their best to prevent Second Amendment advocates from assembling peacefully.
What is also amazing to me is they don't have any idea on how any of this even works. This is closing the barn door after the horses have fled. People have be
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Make no mistake that the people behind this are far in the majority members of the Democrat Party.
The list of party states is all the usual blue state suspects; Illinois, California, New York, etc.
This isn't even about guns. There is no homebrew gun crime wave happening. Printed guns aren't even capable of facilitating a mass shooting. It's just the usual leftest need to impose their will and force people to submit. Does't matter if it actually solves any problems or creates more problems, as long as they win.
20 US States (Score:2)
Have shown us they can't focus on real problems. Or they've shown us they have too many people on payroll if they can find time for this meaningless nonsense.
If you thought your government was competent, this story should be a wake up call.
Asked to Design 3D Weapons (Score:2)
Americans & guns? (Score:2)
You say to someone, "Here's a machine that can fabricate just about anything. What do you want to make with it?"
It's sadly predictable that all Americans seem to want to make is guns.
America's foreign policy is dominated by bombing or threats of bombing, including war crimes (almost all administrations, Democrat & Republican, going back decades), committed either directly or through a proxy government or militia.
Precedent will extend far beyond guns (Score:3)
That's not to say such restrictions are wrong. Just that we're entering completely uncharted territory, and need to think extremely carefully about how we wish to proceed. The restrictions we decide to allow now will set a precedent and have far-reaching consequences for decades to come. We need to make these decisions after debate and consideration commensurate to the decades of consequences we'll be creating. These decisions can't be made in the heat of the moment as a knee-jerk reaction to fear.
Old song (Score:2)
"For years, law enforcement officials have been trying to draw attention to the dangers ..." ...of allowing the public to film them when they beat up black citizens.
Preposterous (Score:3)
First - Guns are legal
Second - Making your own gun is legal and requires no serial #
Third - 3D printed guns don't work. By all means proceed to youtube and watch them fail*
Four - People who aren't allowed to own guns can purchase them from individuals all day long.
Five - The Constitution doesn't permit the government to prevent citizens from publishing materials.
Six - These things are all over the internet, never stopped being all over the internet, and aren't likely to go away anytime soon regardless of how much FUD these windbags want to spread.
*3D printed guns using consumer level technology. 3d printed guns with sintering and commercial metal printing technologies have done better but at that point it is cheaper and easier to reproduce them the old fashioned way
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20 US states can't do shit.
#1 and #2 say FUCK YOU.
#2 won't suffice.
There are all manner of restrictions on firearms as it is.
#2 is about keep and bear.
CaptainDork's 27th Corollary: "You have the right to keep and bear arms but you don't have the right to use them."
Does not matter. 1 hour wirh leaving the store (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me one hour in Home Depot, walking in with nothing, and within an hour I can construct a functioning firearm. So long as plumbing exists, trying to ban guns, or I this case knowing how to to make one, is a losing battle. It's just not something you can do.
3D printing isn't even a very effective way to do it. Trying to reduce crime by banning 3D printer files is like trying to reduce CO2 by banning instructions for building wood-fueled cars. A completely ineffective strategy. The ONLY gain possible is for a politician to score political points from voters who don't have enough interest in the subject to know anything about it.
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Precisely. It becomes practical for you and I, or anyone of moderate skill, to make their own firearms, and indeed the government seeks to make THAT difficult by making it illegal to explain it.
This should not be tolerated. Tell them no.
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Previous failure to defend the rights of citizens doesn't justify ongoing infringement...
#2 says "shall not be infringed", pretty clear and concise.
That wording is aimed (see what I did there) at the federal government. State's rights prevail. For reference, see every goddam individual state firearm penal code along with reciprocal agreements.
It's a spaghetti mess.
Re: 20 US States (Score:2)
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was built upon the idea that nobody could infringe upon those rights (they were considered natural rights given to all residents and citizens of the United States) and it was the federal governments job to protect citizens from their own states' legislature and states' governments from the federal legislature.
Yes, this was perversed by the Democratic states in the South that wanted complete autonomy in order to hold slaves but that dispute on states right
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Re:20 US States (Score:5, Informative)
The Supreme Court says you're wrong.
In DC v Heller [wikipedia.org] they expressly determined that the 2nd Amendment meant that the right is an INDIVIDUAL right, not restricted only to military or militia use. And in McDonald v. Chicago [wikipedia.org] they found that the right was incorporated to individuals nationwide, meaning States cannot ban the right.
What is amazing is that people STILL insist that they can ignore the Constitution's plain words, as clearly stated and clearly reinforced by the US Supreme Court, that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms for their own self defense, in all States. In fact, that founder Thomas Jefferson said:
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
Pretty unequivocal, isn't it? And given that British attempts to seize firearms [tenthamendmentcenter.com] was one of the reasons for the start of the revolution, I do believe the Founders would find your position simply untenable.
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What is amazing is that people STILL insist that they can ignore the Constitution's plain words
That insistence will never cease. Most people don't bother to actively discover and eliminate contradictory beliefs (or blatant hypocrisy) from themselves. Fear of guns is a powerful motivator, and it will absolutely override fidelity to the constitution, or to logic, when provoked.
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meaning States cannot ban the right
I don't think it's quite that powerful, e.g. states seem to be able to ban convicted felons from acquiring guns. Similarly the right to vote can be taken away.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just new judicial activism from conservative plants on the SC, who won't stop until the US is under theocratic dictatorship.
How is guaranteeing citizens the right to bear arms a first step toward dictatorship, theocratic or otherwise?
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Agreed that history has examples of armed countries allowing dictators to take over...but with your straw man in mind...how many *disarmed* populations were able to overthrow their government or stop a dictator? vs the country you likely live in which only exists because the population was armed.
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Seems to me that DC v Heller is right in-line with the quote from Jefferson. Perhaps he didn't understand what the Founders intended when they wrote the 2nd Amendment?
As far as US v Miller - I agree! Anything that the military is allowed to use, citizens should be allowed to use. Anything restricted from military use, can be restricted from civilian use. You sure you want to use US v Miller as justification to eliminate personal ownership of firearms?
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Perhaps he didn't understand what the Founders intended when they wrote the 2nd Amendment?
No. DC has never had restriction on gun ownership, it has always been legal to store a gun at home (unloaded or disassembled). Thus fulfilling the requirements of the 2nd Amendment. DC vs Heller was about the right to carry handguns outside of war time.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Informative)
In Emily's case she had never owned or wanted to own a firearm until she experienced a burglary where she came home to find someone in the house, he immediately took off but she realized that as a rather petite single woman, she was at risk. Not to mention the occasional left wing nut-job threatening her life due to some article she wrote. So she decided she wanted to get a handgun for self defense. She inquired as to the requirements and in shock at the lengthy and expensive process that was outlined to her she mentioned it to her editor at the Washington Times, he suggested she document the process and she did over the next few months in a lengthy series of columns that later became the basis for the book.
And she you jumped through all 17 hoops and got her permission slip and her firearm. She had to keep it locked up and disassembled. Which made it useless for the defensive purpose she'd used to justify needing the firearm.
Through that very painful and expensive set of steps, DC did have restrictions on ownership, oh theoretically they did not, but in practice they did. Unless a resident was a Senator who could get him/herself sworn in as a US Marshall, there was effectively no right to keep let alone bear arms in the District.
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You sure you want to use US v Miller as justification to eliminate personal ownership of firearms?
I was thinking the same thing, after all, the second amendment seems mostly confined to small arms, but considering the military has access to significantly more devastating weaponry which are justifiably restricted, going down the route of equipping a militia is, well, idiotic.
Re: 20 US States (Score:3)
Yeah. Brown vs Board if Education overturned long-settled law too. I bet you like that ruling though.
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The Judiciary Committee recommended Black by a vote of 13–4 on August 16,[33] and the full Senate considered his nomination the next day. Rumors of Black's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan surfaced, and two Democratic senators tried defeating the nomination.
Duh. He was a conservative Republican plant as well. Back then Southern Republicans were just called "Democrats".
Re: 20 US States (Score:2)
All rights in the constitution are individual rights. Without individual rights, group rights cannot exist.
Read the Federalist papers for a start. The goal is for any citizen to arm and protect itself against any government or government official exceeding their authority. If you're alone on your farm in the prairie, where are you going to find a militia? Also the second amendment doesn't state a right to guns, it says arms, which means any weapon.
If you have to wait for your rights to be violated until yo
Re: 20 US States (Score:4, Informative)
I've read the federalist papers, and quote them at length often [slashdot.org].
For example:
To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss.
Conscripting the whole nation into the militia would crush our economy, and only those highly-trained as such would be anything like a well-regulated militia.
Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
The only thing we could do on that scale is bring them all together to make sure they have guns and know which end the bullet comes from.
The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it
By only incorporating a smaller body of the citizenry into the militia, we can train them to operate as a well-regulated militia instead of a bunch of confused farm boys, and they can actually defend the States instead of wandering out to get slaughtered.
if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens
If the Federal Government forms a standing army and attacks the States, then this well-regulated militia--notice the "little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms" part, rather than "lots of people barely capable of holding a gun right," indicating the smaller and well-regulated militia described--can repel such an attack. The States all have militias of the highest military training, which cannot possibly be achieved across the whole body of the citizenry, and this large body of a well-regulated militia can drive back such attacks.
RESERVING TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS, AND THE AUTHORITY OF TRAINING THE MILITIA ACCORDING TO THE DISCIPLINE PRESCRIBED BY CONGRESS."
The militia is also trained under the authority of each state, appointing the officers and creating the command structure. It is not the militia of the Federal government.
That a well-regulated militia exists only under the command of the Officers appointed by the States means a bunch of people with guns are not a well-regulated militia, but an illegal band of vigilantes not operating under the authority of Officers appointed solely and exclusively by the States.
What does that mean?
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions
According to the Constitution of the United States, it means that a bunch of vigilantes with guns claiming to be a militia are exactly what the well-regulated militia will go shoot.
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This is complete bullshit.
The US has never, in its entire history, had a left-wing government, or anything even remotely close to a left-wing government. Which means that there has never been an opportunity for the US Supreme Court to be stacked with left-wing judicial activists.
Sometimes it has a merely far right government as a temporary relief from its more usual batshit-insane extreme-right government.
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Are you enjoying your freedom of the quill pen and sheet-fed printing press?
Re: 20 US States (Score:3)
Jefferson knew about automatic weapons, hell, the Continental Congress tried to get their hands on some of them, Ben Franklin recommended them to George Washington saying it could shoot up to 8 bullets in 3 seconds.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Informative)
He was also likely aware of the Pucklegun an early gatling style gun.
And then there is the fact that he also could not have imagined Radio, TV, modern printing presses or the internet. So thus by your logic the 1st amendment does not extend to those mediums of speech, just quill pens, hand cranked single sheet printing presses, and oration in the public square..
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Well, you should be comfortable in that not every 'shmoe' out there can get a FULLY AUTOMATIC weapon.
Full auto weapons are very limited and very difficult to get legally.
The gun laws passed in 1986 (Hughes Ammendment)...basically said that no full auto weapon made after that year can be sold to the public. So, the only full auto weapons out there are 1986 manufacture and older, so t
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Informative)
The purpose of the 2nd amendment was to allow people to own weapons to form disciplined militias to defend the country much the same as it is in countries like Switzerland, Denmark etc. where national guard members store their weapons at home. The people who wrote the 2nd amendment never imagined that it would be interpreted by a bunch of total nutcases in such a way as to make access to guns so easy, terrorists, drug cartels members and homicidal maniacs can walk into a gun show and arm themselves to the teeth.
And you cannot have that if the government gets to decide who is a member of this disciplined militia.
The US federal government is a construct of the states. The states feared a federal government might disarm the public like the British royalty had just tried to do. To prevent this from happening again there was an explicit protection from this. This means the federal government cannot decide who makes up a state militia, the states get to decide this. If it is the federal government that decides who is allowed to keep and bear arms then the Second Amendment protects nothing.
Not only was this the intent of the authors of the US Constitution but this interpretation was the basis of many SCOTUS decisions in recent history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This is just bullshit that the Second Amendment only protects the ability of the states to arm the National Guard and police forces. That argument might have had some weight prior to the opinion handed down from Heller but it holds no weight now. The Second Amendment protects the right of the individual to keep and bear arms with no condition that this be connected to service in a militia.
Also made clear in Heller was that the Second Amendment does not prohibit state and federal government from enforcing certain time and place prohibitions on the keeping and bearing of arms. Barring someone from bringing a firearm too close to an MRI machine is not a violation of our rights. This would also apply to situations such as on aircraft, into a natural gas processing facility, or into a mental hospital, which are all places where a firearm poses a unique threat to safety and there are measures of enforcement that are also unique.
No known terrorist or drug dealer is going to "walk into a gun show and arm themselves to the teeth" because there are laws prohibiting this, and I do not expect any court to declare this unconstitutional.
Again, the federal government lacks the authority to disarm people just because they are not in a militia because to do this means the federal government gets to decide who is a member of the militia. This protection was incorporated to apply to the state government by court rulings that went all the way up to SCOTUS. This is a good thing because this prevents the federal government from coercing the state governments into disarming the public for them by having the state governments decide who is a member of the militia.
Don't give me the argument that somehow this protection does not apply to "weapons of war" or "assault weapons". Every weapon was at some time a "weapon of war", and every weapon is an "assault weapon". If a weapon is in fact a weapon then it can be used to "assault" someone.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Informative)
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"The purpose of the 2nd amendment was to allow people to own weapons to form disciplined militias"
That's extremely ignora
Re:20 US States (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of the 2nd amendment was to allow people to own weapons to form disciplined militias
Wrong.
The purpose is to guarantee people have the right to own guns and kill their government should the need arise. See the war.
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I see your troll mods have already begun, but I'm sorry I don't have a positive mod point for you. However, they have the motivation to win the mod wars and Slashdot lacks the capability to defend itself these years.
Anyway, my take on the Second Amendment was that it was deliberately intended to threaten the federal government so that there would not be a civil war over such contentious issues as slavery. There actually were a couple of other burning issues of those days, but slavery was already the elephan
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The militia clause is a prefatory clause, in that it introduces one reason for the Amendment. But it is not the meat of the amendment and that clause is grammatically disposable, the objective clause is where the actual right of the people is stated. With or without the first clause the Amendment still says that "the right of the PEOPLE (not the militia) to k
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The big problem with the second amendment is the way it's written - that it mixes in militia with the right to bear arms and that causes it to be interpreted in many different ways.
Re: 20 US States (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you should read up on the history of the United States and weapons of war. They knew very well how big the US could become (hence why they gave out virtually free tracts of land to spur growth) and they ordered automatic and semi-automatic weapons themselves (as Ben Franklin puts it "8 balls in 3 seconds") to fight the English.
The US is based on the fact that if you don't have a superior force with weaponry and a population that is armed, someone will come and tax you.
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I didn't know Donald was a Buddhist.
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Ok buddy... Donald Trump, with the Jewish daughter, is a secret Nazi handing out Swastikas...
If he thought it would get him votes I'm sure he would. He might want to fuck Ivanka so bad but I don't think that would stop him throwing even her under the bus.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just the usual gun-grabbers doing their usual gun-grabbing. But it will make for some very interesting reasoning if the SCOTUS eventually rules on it.
I think the single factor that will affect our standard of living 100 years from now (well, likely our descendants) is IP law around blueprints for "home manufacturing", by which I mean some automated combination of 3D printing, milling, casting, and so on. Once the ability to make everyday items in the home is as cheap and ubiquitous as a laser printer is today, what part of that will corporations be rent-seeking on via IP law? Law on the distribution and printing of 3D-printing designs is very important to the future.
Perhaps it's best that the early cases are likely to be around "do your rights to possess an item include your rights to print that item", and not around current IP law. The former seems much more consumer friendly.
Do we say "the right to own a gun is just the same as the right to make your own gun"? I sure as Hell hope so, from a consumer rights point of view! Making it illegal to distribute a copyrighted design fits well with current IP law, but making it illegal to print from that design without permission would be a huge landgrab for corporate profits! Should the police be able to seize the 3D-printed Nike shoes you're wearing because you can't prove you have a license to print them? That's the question we're facing here.
Re:20 US States (Score:5, Insightful)
if your specifically talking about the the AR15 lower receiver the patents expired a long time ago. Thats why hundreds of companies make them. So there are no IP rights to be debated. Furthermore the lower needs to be made of something stronger than plastic due to the temperatures and pressures when firing. Are they seriously trying to contend that someone with enough cash to buy a metal 3d printer might print an AR15 lower receiver instead of just buying one for $40? Or an 80% complete one for $70 and use a router and jig to finish the remaining 20%? Thats the only part that is serialized, and its not exactly 'traceable'. The most you can do is trace the manufacturer who then tells you which FFL they sold it to. Said FFL will then have a record of whom he sold it to. Thats where the trail ends. If consumer sold it later, traded it in, or lost them in a boating accident, there is no way to know other than ask him. There is no way you are going to 3d print the barrel, buffer springs, bolt carrier group, etc. These parts require special heat treating and metallurgic finishes to function, such as chrome lined barrels, phosphate or nitride finishes to avoid corrosion. Anodizing for the same protective treatment of aluminum. How do I know? Because I've built dozens. Some parts are just outside even my scope of abilities. Sure I can make a stripped lower or upper. I can even anodize them type2 but not type3. I still lack the resources to make a barrel from scratch. You can buy everything you need easily to assemble one. A bad actor just doesnt go through this hassle. He just goes and steals one or gets one some other way. A bad actor usually goes for low hanging fruit. Manufacture is _far_ from the low hanging fruit. If you are going to the extent of manufacture to commit mayhem, why build an AR15??? Why not a real ww2 flame thrower? Its actually less difficult and if mass terror is your goal, then having the news showing non-stop footage of some gun-free zone having 50 people burned alive while napalm came pouring out of a make shift flame thrower would pretty much do it.
This is more inventing a problem that doesnt exist instead of focusing on the laws they actually have that they refuse to enforce. Every year 10,000 people who are prohibited from buying guns make an attempt at an FFL to buy a gun illegally before going to the black market to buy one. Only TWELVE ever get prosecuted. Thats over 9980 people that go on to acquire one illegally some other way. Thats 9980 people that could have been jailed before killing someone. Look up the statistics of homicide by firearm and how many of those are from an illegally obtained weapon. They are worried an unauthorized person might MAKE their own gun??? I can for fucking sure promise you he already tried and failed to buy one from an FFL. IF this piece of shit attorney general had done his fucking job in the first place he wouldnt be trying to get this law passed. Those people would ALREADY be behind bars.
BTW the democrat pushed Gun Control Act of 1968 clearly, unequivocally, says you have the right to make your own gun. Distributing 3d blueprints is covered under the same 1A protections that the Anarchist cookbook is covered. These attorney generals need a public hearing on their incompetence as to why they let almost 10000k back onto the street to go kill someone.
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I'm not talking about IP rights of guns, I'm saying that the laws made for 3D-printing of guns today will be the foundation of IP law for everything in the future. Will it be legal to 3D-print your own Nike shoes from a pirated blueprint? Or will we screw it all up with DMCA-3D?
There is no way you are going to 3d print the barrel, buffer springs, bolt carrier group, etc
Not today. But 100 years from now? I'm thinking of "home manufacturing", not merely 3D printing. Admittedly, rifled barrels in particular are probably too specialized to mill yourself with automated in-home gear, even decades do
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You need a lathe and a hydraulic press. You can do a pistol using a hobby (benchtop) lathe and a medium sized (wall mounted) automotive press. You'll probably need a full sized lathe and a freestanding hydraulic press to do a long barrel.
Basically just four steps. Bore the barrel on the lathe, press a rifling button through the bore using the hydraulic press, then ream the chamber, and mill out any reli
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I'm not sure I see hydraulic presses, or at least real ones you could use to work metal, ever being part of a cheap every-home manufacturing box. Would be neat, but it seems fundamentally large and (relatively) expensive to safely apply any real pressure. Just can't miniaturize that. Still, for an enthusiast setup, sure.
Laser sintering is really neat, but does it exist in the world of 3D printing for metals right now? From my limited understanding, "real" sintering requires pure (uncontaminated and unoxi
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I imagine it would use a similar legal basis as the ban on printing your own money. The government has an established right to regulate people making certain things, such as money, nuclear reactors, surface to air self-guided missiles etc.
Enforcement is another matter.
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Hell, the plans could simply be put on bittorrent or another aggregating site.