Gun Control

The core idea of a “African-American Superheros protecting his neighborhood” still holds up.

Sure, but this does not.

No one is saying “Make a panel for panel” re-creation of the original comics.

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“I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” - 1934 NRA President Karl Telford

Some asshole brought a gun (toy or real hasn’t been confirmed) to the university where my brother is graduating from today. America was never great.

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I haven’t been following this that incredibly closely, but it seems like he’s winning in court. If people want to prohibit this they need to approach it as new legislation… which I imagine even the gun manufacturer’s and the NRA have stakes in preventing home-brewed guns. To me it’s vaguely interesting in the same way a zip gun is, but it seems like it’s largely just a thought exercise to prove a legal point.

Then again, this would also potentially run afoul of first amendment issues. If you can make an argument that gun plans are freedom of expression in the same way, say, stone sculpture plans, or perhaps closer to the matter at hand, code is, then restricting their distribution could be legally very problematic.

One thing to keep in mind is that during the Crypto Wars of the 90’s, the courts (though not the Supreme Court, as it didn’t take up that particular case) ruled that code was speech and therefore the distribution of strong crypto source code (in this case, PGP) was protected by the first amendment. If you make the availability of 3D printer gun plans illegal, you could also end up making strong crypto illegal under the same excuses.

Of course, one way to address this that is often not brought up in the topic of gun control is actually ammunition control. You could have all the AR-15s, 3D-printed guns, etc., you want, but they’ll just be glorified paperweights unless you have the ammo for them. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that easy to produce gunpowder or any of its modern equivalents and then encase it in a reliable bullet form. It’s certainly at least not something that can be 3D-printed by any yahoo with an internet connection as it would, at the very least, require rather specialized skills and tools. Yes, I know there are hobbyists who produce their own ammo for antique guns and such, but every example I’ve seen of this has shown it to be a relatively high skill and expensive process and therefore highly unlikely to result in any sort of dangerous levels of mass production. Regulate the production and/or sales of ammo and you probably have a decent end-run around the first amendment issues of banning the publishing of gun plans.

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I agree completely and many people seem to have a similar take: Ammunition control actually solves a lot more problems than gun control. The problem is still that there’s so many many many bajillions of rounds of ammo out in the wild that control is going to be difficult, but, banning guns gets into all sorts of “well this gun is OK, this one isn’t” while ammo is ammo, basically. And yes, no-one is making quality ammo at home in a basement without high quality ingredients and limiting the availability of ammo and components would in fact do a lot.

In CT, I now need a license just to buy ammo. Guess what, I’ve been too damn lazy and uncaring about actually doing that to go and get said license or said ammo. I would love to collect a few more rifles, including some banned in the state, and I’ve had some interest in building a few guns (including designing one that I can make in my shop on the lathe and CNC mill) but I’ve gotta say actually getting ammo and using the thing is of little interest to me.

3D printing a gun complete is dumb. We’re many many years before that has merit as a viable weapon. Maybe there’s single-shot derringers like the Liberator that could be printed, designs that are essentially really shitty versions of stuff from pre WWI, but you still need to go get ammo for it.

If anything I’d say the risk is someone designing a functional submachine gun that heavily leverages 3D printed components with commonly available and cheap building materials or donor parts. A few pipes from Home Depot, a bolt or two, maybe a few holes and a saw/dremel required, but using 3D printed jigs and internal components to make things fit, well, suddenly a printer and a pile of parts bought for under $50, might get you a gun that could reliably fire a magazine of 9mm before degrading.

Currently lots of people are 3D printing receivers for AR-15s but that’s not solving the problem of… you need $500 worth of AR-15 parts at a minimum to complete the rifle. I’m proposing someone could do something that costs very little and can be made with parts that could never be banned.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVeL3pJzNTc

A gun control activist just won a seat in Georgia.

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WTF?

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-perfect-gift-Company-gives-employees-guns-13391027.php

If you read the article, it’s a company that makes shit for gun fanboys:

The Hortonville-based company has found success on Amazon with its design and manufacture of shot and beer glasses with bullets embedded into the glass. The gift cards to the 16 full-time employees, some of them veterans, cost the company about $8,000, Wolfgram said.

The gifts are also for gun shop gift cards, not actual guns, so that the gun shops have to do whatever background checks are required by state law up there. So legally, it’s legit.

It’s not quite as crazy as the headline made it out to be, given that the kind of people who work at this sort of company are likely to be gun fanboys/girls themselves and the fact that they are only giving gun shop gift cards as opposed to actual guns.

As an aside, I’m personally just not a huge fan of when companies give out “gift cards” as like… compensation. If this is in-fact supposed to be equivalent to a paid bonus.

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