Teenagers Have Bought 'Ghost Guns' Online, Sometimes with Deadly Consequences (msn.com) 462
The Washington Post begins a recent article with the story of an 18-year-old drug dealer with mental health issues named Zachary Burkard, who shot two unarmed 17-year-olds with a "ghost gun" he built from a kit bought online.
The father of one of those 17-year-olds thinks "They've just made it entirely too easy to get these guns... A child can buy one. There's no background checks. You don't even need a bank account. You can go to 7-Eleven and get a debit card, put money on it and buy a gun." The families of the two teens, with the help of the anti-gun-violence group Everytown for Gun Safety, are now suing the distributor of the parts Burkard used to make his ghost gun, 80P Builder of Florida, and the manufacturer, Polymer80 of Nevada, for gross negligence in providing a teenager with a weapon when he was not legally able to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer. The case, those who track the weapons say, demonstrates a frightening phenomenon... Teenagers have discovered the ease with which they can acquire the parts for a ghost gun, and they have been buying, building and shooting the homemade guns with alarming frequency. Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. Among them:
- In Brooklyn Park, Minn., police arrested two teens with ghost guns in December after authorities said one of them attempted to shoot someone outside their car but instead killed their friend inside it.
- In New Rochelle, N.Y., a 16-year-old created a "ghost gun factory" in his bedroom last year, police said, before killing another 16-year-old...
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) estimated that Polymer80 was responsible for more than 88 percent of the ghost guns recovered by police between 2017 and 2021, though there are nearly 100 manufacturers selling parts, or full kits, which can be made into unserialized guns, a list compiled by Everytown shows. Teens are hardly the only users. Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don't have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced. In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year.
ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings...
[This May] in Baltimore, authorities arrested three 14-year-olds after armed robberies and an armed carjacking. Police said one of them had a ghost gun. And in Valdosta, Ga., authorities said, a 16-year-old bought a ghost gun kit online in 2021 and assembled her own Glock-style pistol. One day while some friends were at her house, the teen accidentally shot a 14-year-old in the head, leaving him partially paralyzed, with severe brain damage and permanent physical and cognitive issues, his family's lawyer Melvin Hewitt said.
While some states have passed regulations, last year America's national firearm-regulating agency also declared parts of ghost guns to be firearms, according to the article, in an attempt to close a commonly-cited loophole. The parts makers challenged the new rule in court, lost twice, then won in a conservative federal court in Texas. The U.S. Justice Department may now appeal that decision to the higher Fifth Circuit court, and if it loses there "could appeal to the Supreme Court." Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, said he is against all regulation of privately made firearms, calling the practice of building weapons a "long and storied tradition in America."
The father of one of those 17-year-olds thinks "They've just made it entirely too easy to get these guns... A child can buy one. There's no background checks. You don't even need a bank account. You can go to 7-Eleven and get a debit card, put money on it and buy a gun." The families of the two teens, with the help of the anti-gun-violence group Everytown for Gun Safety, are now suing the distributor of the parts Burkard used to make his ghost gun, 80P Builder of Florida, and the manufacturer, Polymer80 of Nevada, for gross negligence in providing a teenager with a weapon when he was not legally able to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer. The case, those who track the weapons say, demonstrates a frightening phenomenon... Teenagers have discovered the ease with which they can acquire the parts for a ghost gun, and they have been buying, building and shooting the homemade guns with alarming frequency. Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. Among them:
- In Brooklyn Park, Minn., police arrested two teens with ghost guns in December after authorities said one of them attempted to shoot someone outside their car but instead killed their friend inside it.
- In New Rochelle, N.Y., a 16-year-old created a "ghost gun factory" in his bedroom last year, police said, before killing another 16-year-old...
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) estimated that Polymer80 was responsible for more than 88 percent of the ghost guns recovered by police between 2017 and 2021, though there are nearly 100 manufacturers selling parts, or full kits, which can be made into unserialized guns, a list compiled by Everytown shows. Teens are hardly the only users. Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don't have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced. In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year.
ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings...
[This May] in Baltimore, authorities arrested three 14-year-olds after armed robberies and an armed carjacking. Police said one of them had a ghost gun. And in Valdosta, Ga., authorities said, a 16-year-old bought a ghost gun kit online in 2021 and assembled her own Glock-style pistol. One day while some friends were at her house, the teen accidentally shot a 14-year-old in the head, leaving him partially paralyzed, with severe brain damage and permanent physical and cognitive issues, his family's lawyer Melvin Hewitt said.
While some states have passed regulations, last year America's national firearm-regulating agency also declared parts of ghost guns to be firearms, according to the article, in an attempt to close a commonly-cited loophole. The parts makers challenged the new rule in court, lost twice, then won in a conservative federal court in Texas. The U.S. Justice Department may now appeal that decision to the higher Fifth Circuit court, and if it loses there "could appeal to the Supreme Court." Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, said he is against all regulation of privately made firearms, calling the practice of building weapons a "long and storied tradition in America."
Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new? (Score:4, Insightful)
While teenagers are not more stupid on average than adults, they know even less often about their limits. Let them do it. It serves to improve the race via evolution.
Also, there really is no way to stop this, unless you want a surveillance fascism. To be fair, that is _exactly_ what the religiously deranged want.
Re:Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new? (Score:5, Interesting)
The French are doing their part to stop this. An organization [reddit.com] there have been finding STL models of guns on the Internet and changing them so they either are ineffective or blow up in the user's hands. This is how Europe is taking steps to handle this. The best way is Europeans to pay for pro-child candidates come US election times, because the Citizens United verdict allows anyone to donate to a politician's campaign.
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Re:Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new? (Score:4, Informative)
This article isn't about 3-D printed guns - it's about build-your-own gun kits you can order online. The manufacturers / sellers of these kits don't do background checks, and there are no serial numbers on the gun parts.
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As for the Bribery Division verdict, if you think that some Europeans trying to get rid of the US's second amendment is going to work, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. Sure t
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Let them do it. It serves to improve the race via evolution.
Nothing says "evolution" more than the many examples of going into a school and killing the people trying to get themselves an education. Gun culture in America practices devolution, not evolution. The mentally damaged are the ones doing the killing.
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Then maybe do not mistreat kids so much in school? The only reason teenagers are doing school-shootings is because they experienced school as constant torture. That is a fundamental failing of the schools, not the teenagers.
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Maybe if you take the availability of guns away, it can't hurt? Schools may be rough, but it is the parents and the home which provide the guns. By removing the guns, gee willikers, the mass shootings stop.
Re:Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you could wave a magic wand and poof out every gun in the universe out of existence, you still haven't fixed the original problem: That the person in question had already justified killing others as an acceptable outcome in their own mind. Until you fix that problem, it doesn't matter what weapons or other means of harming others you take away from them. You're just delaying the inevitable by ignoring the core issue.
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No, it won't be pushed underground, it will be made harder. It will be like a dude in China who goes ape with a sword and gets stopped after hacking down 1-2 people, as opposed to hundreds. It will be someone who tries driving a car through a barricade and kills a few people.
You can't stop the intent, but you can make the body counts fewer by removing force multipliers.
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Do you even realize how much damage one could do with a couple of bike locks and two gallons of diesel fuel? It's not the inanimate objects that are the problem here.
Re: Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new (Score:4, Insightful)
It DID and DOES work very well for alcohol, but not in the USA.
It also works very well for guns, but, again, not in the USA.
Because "muh freedom" and shit.
Re: Stupid people will be stupid. What else is n (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, you know, consider the needs of others and not be completely egotistical assholes.
As an aside, you can own even military full auto rifles in certain EU countries. We just don't hand them out like candy.
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You nailed the problem your country is facing.
You are so inundated with firearms, and the gun mentality is so ingrained in the whole nation, there is no escape. Each country has at least one huge problem that they can't solve, yours is guns.
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So sue me. You'd merely apply another American favorite pastime :)
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Look, I couldn't care less whether y'all shoot each other until the last one standing. All I'm saying is there's an endemic problem with guns in the USA, and the whole nation let it become so big and so widespread, there's next to nothing that can be done to resolve it.
In a nutshell: you're fucked and there's no unfucking for that.
Re:Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Then maybe do not mistreat kids so much in school? The only reason teenagers are doing school-shootings is because they experienced school as constant torture. That is a fundamental failing of the schools, not the teenagers.
I'm glad you've come up for a cure for mental illness as well as a way to stop teenagers from overreacting to things and getting depressed.
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No, it isn't the mentally damaged that are only doing the killing. Sometime, mostly actually, it is your basic law abiding citizen who goes postal for fuck-all reasons.
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Assault weapons were not prevalent before the school shootings became a daily event either. One of the safest times in US history was when Clinton enacted the assault weapons ban for a decade. Perhaps we might have safe times if that were enacted without a sunset provision?
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When guns were easy for anyone to get
You seem to be suggesting that guns are not easy for anyone to get right now... I've never heard this claim before. If that is indeed what you're claiming, it seems to be false [thetrace.org].
I'm not sure how you'd measure how easy something is, but how often people do that thing seems like a reasonable proxy. And people are buying more guns than ever.
Re: Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new (Score:2, Interesting)
I would think the main problem is that poor kids see no way of having the things rich people have than to take it with violence.
Give a way for poor kids to get access to education, a career and a meaningful life, and the amount of violence and drugs will naturally go down.
Re: Stupid people will be stupid. What else is new (Score:5, Interesting)
I really don't think that's going to do anything for cases like this. rsilvergun keeps repeating this like a broken record and it still sounds just as nonsense. I still remember him saying something to the effect of if people had education and a job they wouldn't shoplift, as if people with education and a job never shoplift.
More interesting about this story is that some of these ghost guns were being manufactured by a 16 year old, who was then selling them to other 16 year olds. It sounds like he had a job that he liked already. And as for the people doing the shooting? They weren't shooting to get nice things, they were shooting over, among other things, drug deals gone bad, possibly even a turf war.
The first part of getting an education is that you have to actually want one. People in this kind of mindset typically don't actually want that. There's a whole subculture around being a petty thug. We had people like you shouting "RACISM!" when Anthony Stokes was declined for a heart transplant, and then this happened after you guys got your way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The guy didn't want college. He totally could have had it if he wanted it, no doubt about that. But those social media pictures said everything about what he wanted. So instead of going to college, he tries to rob a woman at gunpoint, attempts to put a bullet in her head before running off with her car, nearly striking a pedestrian, and fortunately only killing himself in the process.
I remember watching that video where two guys tried to run over a lady because they wanted her rolex, and one commenter said "this is what happens when people get desperate" despite that...they're wearing nice clothes and tried to run her over with a dodge challenger...they really didn't look very desperate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I can hear you screaming at the monitor "But but if we just gave organized crime an education and a job everything would be different!" so stupid and naive TBH.
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When you have people "graduating" high school who are illiterate and can't do anything but the most basic math, there aren't a lot of career paths open to them. Gangs and drug dealers don't care about anyone's GPA.
Wow that's a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
>Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. Among them:
Holy shit, 0.00005M, with a population of 334.2M. So a motivated political group was only able to find "50 incidents" in 4 1/2 years, and those aren't deaths, just incidents, at least two of which were deaths.
Please, take my rights away from me, Mommy Federal government!! We need to protect the subset of 50 people!
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Everytown is a Bloomberg sponsored anti-gun group that came out of nowhere. With the money that was spent for anti-2A stuff, any stats can be cooked up, even bogus ones.
Lets be real. I have more to fear from a construction worker's nailgun across the street than a 3D printed ghost gun.
Re:Wow that's a lot (Score:5, Informative)
Obama directed the CDC to study to what extent gun ownership prevented crime. They found that they prevent 500,000 to 2.5 million crimes per year, many of which could very well have been deaths or mass shootings. That means guns are saving countless childrens' lives, way more than your metric of "even one person." I of course wait for you to maintain your publicly stated standards and concede that you now support gun ownership.
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Nice point dodge. The fact remains:
A child > your guns.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN - the staple go-to for idiots everywhere since forever. Adult up and think.
Re: Wow that's a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
At which point would you consider this enough of a problem to outlaw selling gun parts to anyone with no checks? 5 thousand shootings? 5 million? Never?
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At which point would you consider this enough of a problem to outlaw selling gun parts to anyone with no checks? 5 thousand shootings? 5 million? Never?
Uhmmm...no disrespect intended, but society makes judgements all the time on where/when it is best to apply rules and regulations to stop deaths. It has to as some instances are so infrequent that the cost to society to regulate it is much much greater than the cost to not regulate it/just let it go. I'll give you the greatest example of this. It's pools. Pools kill a lot of kids. Up until just a couple of year ago, pools killed much more children than firearms. If society really wanted to "protect the chil
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Neither do guns. They didn't even when schools had gun ranges or when kids were allowed to bring their rifles to school as members of the rifle team or because they would go hunting after school.
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Except they did. Indeed, up until 1934 they could mail order those weapons. Afterwards they could still own them, but they would have to go to a local store that sold guns and fill out a $200 tax stamp form. Meanwhile all semi-auto weapons could still be ordered through the mail till 1968. Like all gun laws in the US except for the 1934 NFA, that was another gun law that was passed due to racism. The NFA of course was passed due to the violence and gangs brought about by America's first Drug War.
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Wait, no, that is incorrect, there is one other gun law that came into existence for non-racist reasons. That would be the Hughes Amendment to the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, which was deemed passed in the dead of night(past 10pm) by that corrupt dogfucker Rangel in a voice vote with no recording of the voter record in an unsuccessful attempt to poison pill FOPA. The Hughes Amendment outlawed the sale of new full-auto weapons.
Re: Wow that's a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Pools don't come into schools on a daily basis and drown hundreds of kids though. Bad analogy.
Again, my apologies, but I submit that the analogy is correct. Your answer specifically stated "At what point would you consider this enough of a problem" and then talked about the number of deaths. I.E. your criteria for that answer was number of deaths and only deaths. The means by which that death came to the children is not stated. Since your criteria is number of deaths, I answered that.
Now your trying to add to your criteria. And your adding an emotional criteria. So basically, you've lost the argument on the facts and your trying to add emotion to the mix because that is where the anti-gun people go to once they have lost the facts criteria. Because to the anti-gun crowd, any gun is bad and they will use any means to push that point, especially the emotional ones.
Do I think ghost guns are an issue? Yes I do. I think the solution is pretty basic. Companies should not be able to create kits to make them. But the reason I think they are a problem is that the anti-gun crowd will use it, like you do, to try and create laws against all guns. You don't care about the ghost gun problem, you just don't like firearms period. At least be honest enough to come out and say that. Unlike many in the anti-gun crowd who hide their true feelings behind the "Lets pass common sense gun laws" facade.
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It isn't that you deserve gun-rights, it is that we cannot trust you won't get all pissy and start shooting people for some reason. We don't trust you.
Re: Wow that's a lot (Score:2)
Who's "we"?
You and the voices in your head?
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You can measure trust. The highest-trust areas of the country have the most legal gun ownership and the least crime. The lowest-trust have the least legal gun ownership and the most crime--and the politicians there yell that they'll fix the problem if we give them just a little more power. You see, the problem is that selfish people keep claiming they have rights and aren't giving the government more power.
So what? (Score:2)
make the drugs legal and the dealer issues drop (Score:3)
make the drugs legal and the dealer issues drop big time
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Basic economics (Score:2)
Any time there is a problem with an object or substance, the easy answer seems to be ... Ban It!
Basic economics suggests that this is a futile strategy
As long as there is demand, supply will be found
The only thing the government can do is raise the price and divert profits to criminals
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Guns are not drugs. They require an intricate supply chain to work. Banning primers, ammo, gunpowder, the firearms themselves, reloaders, and equipment related to firearms will be quite effective at taking them off the streets. Add minimum prison terms, and no-defense possession laws (where there is no "excuse" to possess it, like with hard drugs or child porn), and the streets will get cleaned up.
Empower the ATF, and this will be done far quicker than imagined. To ensure it won't be attacked via the Constitution, the US needs to sign the UN Small Arms Treaty, which allows the UN to step in and enforce things, should the need arise and enforcement gets defunded on the US side.
Nice Fascist society you have there. Once they come for the firearms, do you think they will stop at that? That's the problem with you people. You have absolutely no concept of what would be required to institute the solutions you propose. "The Ends Justify the Means". What would be required is that the US becomes a Fascist government. Sir, you might want to read up on how Germany went Fascist. It is very instructive and chilling. And please don't try and lecture me that the US would never become that. It c
Ghost Guns (Score:5, Insightful)
So-called "ghost guns" are just guns that lack a paper trail. It can be well-argued that the paper trail is not very useful, anyway. But one reason that some of these guns don't have a paper trail is because they don't have a serial number. They are usually made by just assembling traditionally manufactured parts. (Or just grinding the serial numbers off a commercially made gun.)
The real "problem" with "ghost guns" is that in the near future everybody will have a 3D printing/milling machine in their garage. At the moment, it only costs a couple thousand dollars. So you won't need any skill at all to just "print" all the guns you want. You can do it now, but the economics (for the criminal segment) have not yet shifted from the traditional methods.
The way they always talk about it, fussing about useless serial numbers and such, I don't think the police quite comprehend this reality of fundamentally limitless gun manufacturing.
And even though the government will mandate that all 3D printing machines maintain a real-time connection and report everything you make, and an AI will figure out if it could be a weapon...well, we know how well that's going to work out.
Clearly, public safety and crime reduction needs to come from a different angle than how we address it now.
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I don't think "everybody will have a 3D printing/milling machine in their garage" in the near future. Most people I know don't even have a box of tools in their garage that they know how to use.
But that's immaterial to this situation which has to do with children buying guns online.
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Clearly, public safety and crime reduction needs to come from a different angle than how we address it now.
Hmm, yeah, it's almost as if something other then technology has changed.
Remember all those school massacres at the Walnut Grove schoolhouse? Where all the teenagers (almost) had easy access to guns? What's that? No?
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Clearly, public safety and crime reduction needs to come from a different angle than how we address it now.
The real problem is a society that accepts uncontrolled violence as a way to "solve" problems. This isn't limited to just guns. There are innumerable videos on the interwebs that show road rage incidents escalating from a simple raised middle finger to deliberately running someone off the road. But there also have been a slew of recent road rage incidents whereby someone shoots at someone else just because they looked at them wrong.
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Simply grinding off the SN shouldn't doesn't make the SN completely unreadable, you can usually still process/etch the receiver and recover the SN. However the agency may not think it's worth the effort. Also could just be an old/antique firearm that were "siezed" from gramps when he got dementia and was moved into a care facility.
Firearms are relatively simple mechanisms, and manufacturing tools are more versatile and capable then ever. Ghost guns aren't preventable via regulation. Really the only reason
Re:Ghost Guns (Score:5, Informative)
I built my own 3D printer. It uses open source firmware. Those who want to 3D print a gun will know exactly which printer to buy and what firmware to load on it - so efforts here are a complete waste of resources. Not to mention that you're putting far too much faith in the abilities of AI and that's further assuming that a 3D printer has the kind of resources to run the model.
I can't imagine they're able to 3d print ammunition though. Maybe controls there could be effective? However, from what I read about the USA, I'm not sure there's a real desire for effective restrictions.
I gotta say, from the outside looking in, and reading news stories about people "going postal" in schools and malls, it's incomprehensible! Your freedoms come at a high cost.
Re:Ghost Guns (Score:4, Insightful)
I gotta say, from the outside looking in, and reading news stories about people "going postal" in schools and malls, it's incomprehensible! Your freedoms come at a high cost.
(America, 1970s)
The rural high school senior pounds down the dusty road in haste on the way to school, with the sunrise in his face and a 12-guage shotgun at his back, hanging in the rear window. He parks and hops out of his truck, hustling it to his first class. A teacher smoking outside stops him and says...
"Any luck this morning, Jimmy?"
Freedom doesn't come at a high cost. Ignorance does. You tell me what's truly broken today, because it sure as fuck ain't the 12-guage that changed. Or duck hunting.
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As much as it's a matter of the "correct" firmware to have your copy machine print realistic looking greenbacks, it's a matter of the "correct" firmware to have your 3D printer to print gun parts.
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Currency has specific design patterns that were specifically created to be easily picked out via computer algorithms, and it has to be that way to avoid false positives. Governments have 100% control over the design or currency so it was an easy solution. But counterfeits still exist, you aren't going to be able to prevent someone from using lenses, etching chemicals, and plates to copy currency. And it only works because micro-jet printers are black magic that you aren't going to replicate at home. Wher
Copy machines (Score:2)
Some countries banned copy machines.
I'm sure it reduced copyright violations, but I still think it was a bad idea.
The value of a machine that can make a metal part from a design I download from the internet is very high.
There's no reasonable way to police it. Proving that is sort of the point of the Ghost Gunner.
Rather than try and legislate reality, I'd rather lawmakers accept that CnC machines exist and people can do things with them they don't like.
The machine is a symptom of the problem, not the proble
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Yeah, that weed supply certainly has dried up hasn't it.
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Bans do work though. Yes, people might be able to get around it on the edges, but in reality, a hidden CNC machine likely will be found out by neighbors complaining about the noise, the power signature, or stupid social media posts. Same way that people's grow rooms get found and shut down.
My guess is that the growth of BEVs, heat pumps, and other household devices switching from fossil fuels to electricity will make it impossible to track illegal activity down based on the electrical load. Noise is not likely to be a problem as that is easily solved with precision machined equipment and insulation. My heat pump is not the latest design and it makes less noise in my backyard than my neighbors' older air conditioners. It is quite likely a mass produced heat pump is easily made quiet at low
A gun is not difficult to build (Score:2)
At least if you don't care too much about precision or safety. It's basically a tube with a feeding mechanism and a way to ignite the bullet. That's it.
If precision and your own safety is secondary, you can essentially build that from a few metal parts you can order online or pick up in any hardware store and a few plastic parts you can print in your 3D printer.
It’s ridiculously easy (Score:3, Insightful)
For about $100 you can from raw materials make a semi-auto pistol.
You would have to regulate every possible raw material, down to springs in ball point pens, blocks of steel, etc. Then regulate means to make those items, like home forges and foundry equipment. Which means fire bricks etc.
Afghanistan tribesmen made AK-47 clones from wrecked trucks. Axels became barrels, sheet metal the frame and rails. Leaf springs the more solid steel parts. For the most part built with hand tools, like hack saws and files, and basic auto repair shop tools.
The knowledge is out there. It will keep happening until we address WHY it is happening.
It's a tube ... (Score:2)
... you put a projectile in it, and propel it with explosive.
Talk about trying to put the genie back in the bottle ...
Buy a Highpoint behind Walmart (Score:2)
Gangbangers and other kids are this lazy now?
Gang and drug culture (Score:2)
I'm not in the US, but I always have to laugh at the calls for "banning guns, whenever an article like this crops up. That genie is out of the bottle, and the bottle has been smashed. Too many guns, and anyway, guns are stupidly easy to make.
More to the point: this all has nothing whatsoever to do with this article. The kids making these purchases, and the people selling to them, are already breaking the law. Making their actions more illegal isn't going to change anyuthing. Here's a quote from one of the
Pissing in the ocean (Score:2)
Science fiction is way ahead of this. One day SOON everyone will have a 3-d printer. It will destroy the bullshit false gods of consumerism, regulation, and information asymmetry. Clothes that don't fit you perfectly will be a thing of the past. Having to go to a hardware store to match a part you need for your home/car will be a thing of the past. And yes, the gubermint's ability to retard innovation and empowerment of the individual under the guise of 'safety' will be a thing of the past, as well. F
As a Canadian (Score:2, Insightful)
With gun ownership under massive attack by the current government in my country I have quickly become disabused of the idea that there is any middle ground possible. My advice now to American gun owners is to never give an inch. None at all. Reasonable compromise is
One thing in common: bad parenting? (Score:2)
You know what else these kids had in common? Bad parenting. Let's go fix the root cause instead of trying to remove rights from law-abiding citizens.
1970's mail-order guns (Score:2)
You could mail-order a WWII Sten submachine gun from an add in the back of a magazine in the 1970's for less than $20 (about $160US today). No license no registration.Gun violence is actually lower today then back then even so there weren't mass killings using submachine guns back then either.
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This is why Governor Newsom's 28'th Amendment needs to be passed. It updates a long-since-bygone rule in the days of a pioneer culture to deal with what is going on in 2023. Remember, when the Second Amendment was written, doctors were still using leeches and trying to balance "humors" in the body. Time passes, and time for that to be sunsetted.
There is a reason why Japan and North Korea don't have gun crime. Time for the US to join the civilized world and citizens need to hand 'em over.
Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:2)
It's too late. There are so many guns in the US that criminals will be able to get them for the next hundred years. The population won't support searching every building in the country, but even that would not be enough. There is no solution to this now, the US is doomed to be the wild west.
Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:2)
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Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:2)
It's only the US that has more guns than people. The other 180 or whatever countries are pretty consistent in saying civilians either can't have guns or need a compelling reason. If you want to compare the US with somewhere US-like try Europe. Europe has practically no shootings, a far lower murder rate, and basically no accidental weapon related deaths.
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There is a reason why Japan and North Korea don't have gun crime.
Yeah, after all it's not like Japan has the same kind of law that allows historical noble families to carry katana, and that the Japanese have a societal fear of deadly muggings involving hunting knives.....
As for North Korea..... well saying their official enemy who's way of life they detest is better off isn't likely to give you the response you were hoping for.
This is why Governor Newsom's 28'th Amendment needs to be passed. It updates a long-since-bygone rule in the days of a pioneer culture to deal with what is going on in 2023. Remember, when the Second Amendment was written, doctors were still using leeches and trying to balance "humors" in the body. Time passes, and time for that to be sunsetted.
Time for the US to join the civilized world and citizens need to hand 'em over.
Considering that your example of Governor Newsom's 28'th Amendment doesn't do that [ca.gov]. I have no idea what point you are trying to make here.
Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:3)
They had zero problem with private citizens owning ships of war sooo, yes? Not to mention the idea that a drug dealer would be unable to source an illegal gun is utterly hilarious.
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They had zero problem with private citizens owning ships of war sooo, yes?
Ships of war from back in the day had the same kind of issue as a gun. A private person with such a weapon (either gun or ship of war) can do insanely minimal damage. Your precious founding fathers would have a different opinion of a tank or automatic machinegun. To pretend otherwise is stupid.
Not to mention the idea that a drug dealer would be unable to source an illegal gun is utterly hilarious.
Funny, where I live most drug dealers are wielding knives and other weapons that give people a fighting chance. No one is asking to make the purchase impossible.
Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:5, Insightful)
To pretend otherwise would require them to not understand the gun prototypes of the time that they looked at and in some cases funded. Like a silent(comparatively) 30 round Girandoni air rifle(which was powerul enough to take a deer sized target, and any gun which can kill a deer can kill a man) they sent on the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Puckle Gun, and the Ferguson Rifle. Or the other prototype multi-round rifles that were kicking around which they looked at(Among other things a 16 round flintlock design that Joseph Belton tried to get the Continental Congress to buy but was wayyy too greedy in his demands), and for the US military circa the War of 1812. In reality, you could argue that they would be horrified by landmines, bioweapons, chemical gas weapons, nuclear weapons, and other poisons but short of that they would be perfectly fine with stuff. They would however most certainly be horrified by the Drug War.
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At the time the Second Amendment was written, it was not unusual for someone to make a firearm at home. About the only difference here is that technology has made it somewhat easier to make a firearm at home.
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And there were a lot less people to shoot. And there wasn't TV to show them how "cool" it was to kill someone. And there weren't video games to make the gore all the more enticing.
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The purpose of the second amendment isn't to increase safety.
Re: Surely the law can handle this (Score:2)
Years ago if you wanted to publish stupid shit that could get people killed, you needed to pay a printer to slowly make thousands of copies that you could then try to distribute, as far as you could transport it by horse.
Today you can instantly post the same stupid shit online, and hundreds of millions of Americans have instant access to it.
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It always amuses me when people assume that individuals from the past were of lower intelligence or of lesser capability to imagine things than people in the present.
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This is an outright falsehood. I'd call it a lie, but given you're you it's unlikely you actually know better.
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It's simply untrue that "when the 2nd amendment was written only single shot muzzle loading pistols & rifles existed".
This article by David Kopel explores the firearms technologies available at the time:
"Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment"
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Surely the law can handle this (Score:4, Informative)
They said no such thing. The right itself and the predicate on which the right is based are not the same thing. To wit - Well read voters being necessary to the election of competent politicians, the right of the people to read and write books shall not be infringed. in no way limits the ability to read and write to people who vote.
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Where do you get that notion? In the language used at the time of the constitution, 'people' was generally used as a collective noun (as in 'the people of the United States'), whereas persons was used to denote numerous individuals. The 2nd Amendment clearly uses the former word and doesn't seem to make any references to individuals.
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It just takes some positive action. Venezuela enacted a ban on civilian gun ownership when Chavez was leader, and that cut gun violence by a factor of 1000. Same with other Central American countries.
Did it? Or did it just cut reporting by that factor? For that matter, was actual violence, not just gun violence, cut similarly?
Also, your proposal for "even a brass casing" would both bankrupt the USA and give the police vast excuses for more racist policing. You see, as a middle class white guy, they'll ignore my cases, but bust the black guy down the street by preference.
As for "Weapons of war" - I have actually used them, and my civilian AR-15 is not it. Semi-ironically, my true war weapon is a bolt
Re: Time for reasonable gun laws like NYC (Score:2)
The police are already planting drugs on people. Check out the videos on YouTube. It's not going to cause much more injustice if they plant police issued brass shells as well. The answer to that one seems to be filming the police so their actions can be checked, with body cameras and by citizens with phones.
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> But. we all know that won't happen.
Why haven't you moved to Canada yet?
Re: stamp it out! (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you but illegal weapons and drugs pop up in prisons quite regularly.
Re: stamp it out! (Score:4, Insightful)
In Britain, at least, guns in crime are exceedingly rare. This isn't because gangs aren't armed, they are. This isn't because rogue criminals aren't armed, they are. It's just some sort of culturally-accepted agreement that gangs and criminals will generally not use guns in the commission of a crime, in exchange for which the police are relaxed when it comes to gang-on-gang violence and the policing of gangs in general, and the ARUs are rarely called in to intervene. As for mass shootings, we have one every decade or two, partly because the insane can rarely get guns, but also because there's much less fear in Britain.
(I contend that most gun violence is born of fear - be it of mysterious "others", of poverty, of running out of food, of someone else owning a gun, of society, of governments, of something that makes a gun a compelling choice over and above a discrete smash-n-grab when nobody else is around.)
In Finland, gun violence is very low compared to the number of guns. If I am correct in thinking that fear is a prime motivator in gun violence, then that would explain the apparent contradiction. If I'm wrong - always possible, I'm not a psychologist and don't even play one on Slashdot - then there will be something equally compelling.
Re: stamp it out! (Score:2)
Re: stamp it out! (Score:2)
One alternative way to reduce harm would be to stop the inane political tug of war and all that LARP and start to build a reasonable society for humans. Every new child can be a new world.
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Maybe we could simply outlaw things that are obviously bad and enforce the laws.
Re: stamp it out! (Score:3)
What's obviously bad to you is obviously good to your neighbor.
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There's a big difference between "objectively good/bad" and "perceivably good/bad".
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I'm not paid enough to do it :)
Re:stamp it out! (Score:4, Insightful)
We have plenty enough gun laws that are "common sense"...and have had for a long time.
They just need to enforce the ones on the books, not invent more of them that don't stop the criminals, but only serve to hinder the law abiding.
The guns haven't really changed much in decades....so, what has?
The people....hell, before 1986 you didn't need ANY sort of background check...guns were all sold mail order, or you could go to your local hardware store and buy one, etc.
So, it isn't ease of getting a gun....
This is more a people problem...we've somehow raised a generation (or two) of kids that don't know the value of human life.
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How do we know you won't sell them to make a quick buck?
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Then just sell them the same model of 3D printer as you used ... until they outlaw 3D printers or that type of plastic.