“More trained gun license holders, more personal security”. From now, it will not only be hostile or criminal elements who have guns in Israel. Instead, loyal, law-abiding citizens will have them as well. All that is left is for us to internalize that the right to self-defense is a basic human right with which man was created, in the image of G-d. The state can negate the right to carry a gun from those people who endanger the public. But the default mode should be that every citizen has the right to carry a gun, as part of all the human rights that the state should protect. The state does not give us the right to carry guns. We have that already. All that it can do is take that right away.
Cracked.com can be outrageous, funny, annoying, and even occasionally informative. This past weekend, they were disgusting genocide-apologists.
Myth: Jews Not Having Guns Led To The Holocaust Truth: Gun Laws Became More Lenient Leading Up To The Holocaust
All German gun ownership was banned after World War I, but in 1928, Germany passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. It loosened gun regulations, but permits were needed, and all new gun purchases had to be registered. However, plenty of Germans, including Jewish citizens, just held onto their guns from World War I, so those went unregistered.
[…]
In 1938, Hitler further deregulated guns with the German Weapons Act, which exempted Nazi Party members from most regulations and lowered the legal age to own a gun from 20 to 18. At this point, they were essentially handing out firearms to whoever looked the least “exotic.”
The 1938 law did strip Jewish citizens of their guns, but that’s an indictment of targeting specific demographics, not gun policy. Even for Jewish citizens who held onto their guns, a couple rifles wouldn’t do much good when an entire army came to their doors. Remember, lax gun laws mean that the people who hate you have easy access to guns too.
The argument of Assarian, et al, is that gun control is fine so long as you’re only targeting despised minorities like Jews for extermination.
And, naturally, they misrepresent the gun laws of Germany of the time. Shall we look at the facts?
When the Nazi took power, they used registration lists (from the existing law) to disarm political foes.
On March 18, 1938, the Nazis passed a new law superseding the 1928 law, implementing handgun control. Essentially, only Nazi party members and allies could be lawfully armed. Jews specifically could not own firearms.
On November 10, 1938 — after Kristallnacht — the Nazis went one “better.” Jews were prohibited from possessing any weapon, “even clubs or knives.”
But the people attacking Jews and their property weren’t disarmed, so Cracked is cool with it; it’s not an “indictment” of gun policy in general.
Regardless of your stance on guns, saying that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust if only they’d had more firepower is sleazy victim-blaming…
I don’t claim they could have stopped the Holocaust in its tracks; that, despised Cracked, is a strawman argument. My position is that if more Jews (and gays, Rom, et cetera) hadn’t been forcibly disarmed, they might’ve had a better chance of resisting.
As they did in the Warsaw Ghetto. Armed with a few hoarded firearms and mostly homemade explosives, the Jews tied up two battalions (and hundreds of other troops) for a month. They lost, but a few escaped.
And I don’t think we should discount the possibility that others lived due to the Ghetto occupants’ sacrifice, because those engaged troops weren’t out rounding up other “undesirables.”
A few hundred Jewish combatants. A few horded and smuggled guns.
And they kept more than two battalions engaged for a month.
We should not discount the possibility that, with more and better arms denied by the Nazis and their allies, the resistance might have been even more effective.
I think I should also address this common leftist/socialist claim:
Truth: Hitler Wasn’t a Socialist; The Nazis Purged Socialists
Yes, they did. And yes, the National Socialists were most definitely socialists.
Leftwingers like to point at the Nazis’ fascism, and pretend, “Fascism is rightwing, therefore they were weren’t socialist because us socialists are leftwing.”
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism,characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy
“[T]he program championed the right to employment, and called for the institution of profit sharing, confiscation of war profits, prosecution of usurers and profiteers, nationalization of trusts, communalization of department stores, extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a national education program of all classes, prohibition of child labour, and an end to the dominance of investment capital”
Does that sound like something you might hear from self-acknowledged socialist Bernie Sanders, or Democrat Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
The Nazis were nationalist socialists (hence the name); fascist socialists. The socialists (and communists) they suppressed were merely competitors for the top slot, to be in charge. The only significant ideological differences between the Nazis and the supposed socialist was nationalism versus — Soviet-style — internationalism: “Our socialist country is better than other countries, and we’ll be in charge” versus “We want one big world socialist order, and we expect to be in charge.”
Of course the self-aggrandizing Nazis suppressed them. They expected to run their worldwide Reich anyway, eventually. They didn’t want any more competition than they already had on their plate.
I wonder if Cracked’s Steve Assarian, Mike Bedard, E. M. Caris, and Michael Battaglino would declare Antifa to be…
Fascist Nazis, not communists and socialists, because they suppress — competing –socialists. Like this:
Yes, you disgusting SOBs at Cracked, Nazi gun controlvictim disarmament did contribute to the Holocaust. And gun control is still evil, even if it only targets people you don’t like.
And it’s hardly a surprise that socialists — whether National Socialists, or Democrat Socialists — like gun control. Gun control is victim disarmament, and it’s a lot easier to manage confiscation of war profits, prosecution of usurers and profiteers, nationalization of trusts, communalization of department stores when the victim is helpless. Just ask any freelance redistributionist.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
David Codrea wrote a column warning of a potential new privacy-busting product called the SWORD. The ramifications were pretty obvious to me, too. Warrantless searches, outing lawful CCW, crooks locating loot, crooks spotting the armed guy to off first.
“The company has created a case that goes around either an iPhone 8 Plus or Pixel 2 XL and uses the phone’s audio sound waves as a sort of sonar to detect whether someone is carrying a gun, knife or explosive device.”
Perhaps, perhaps not. But other dangers come to mind. The whole point of carrying concealed is to preserve privacy as part of an overall defensive posture. Anti-gunners could use the device to harass and even SWAT a gun owner. Criminals could use it to identify who they would need to take out by surprise first. Police could use it to bypass Fourth Amendment search and seizure proscriptions. The company claims Homeland Security is intrigued.
Except…
Based on my research, I think I smell “scam.” And that’s the bright side of a tool for tyranny meant to disarm, register, and track free people. I can think of certain governments that would have loved it.
(not the original image; see link)
My background includes — among many other things — electronics, heavy emphasis on RF and even radar (which comes into this in a minute). Right off, I wondered about that “audio sound wave” bit. Human hearing-range sound waves shouldn’t have the resolution to do what the SWORD allegedly does, without some impressive processing. So I dug a little bit more.
Elsewhere, I found a link that claimed it was ultrasonic. This gets into the resolution-range of the possible — we’ve all seen ultrasound baby pictures — but ultrasound works in contact. With a gel to improve transmission/reception. Working at 40 feet?
On to the Royal Holdings website, where I found some specifications and images. There I learned that the SWORD is neither audible acoustic nor ultrasonic, but RF-based, specifically, the US model would work at 3-10 GHz. That makes a lot more sense. It’s a little bitty radar system.
But I was still dubious. That frequency range would give a max resolution of 3 centimeters, just under one and a quarter inches; which makes it hard to resolve the shape of a gun less than an inch wide, seen edge on.
There are ways to do it though, involving scanned antenna arrays and digital signal processing. Fancy stuff, and it would require a lot of cash to develop a single chip to handle it all (and RF transmission and reception combined); it seemed a bit much to expect from a startup to develop and sell for $1,250 ($950 for pre-orders). But technically doable.
But I was still bothered by the claim that it can detect and recognize weapons at 40 feet. Reading their specs bothered me even more.
This is supposed to work up to forty feet. But it says that the device is FCC approved and transmits under -41dBM. That’s 0.00007 mW, 0.00000007 W, and I simply don’t believe that a cellphone-sized antenna array at that power level would yield a readable reflected power at 40 feet.
Royal Holding’s tech specs mentioned the processor chip that is the heart of this gadget. It’s a VYYR2401, which turns out to be a real thing, sold by Israeli company Vayyar. And it’s impressive. (Some folks don’t realize it, but Israel has a pretty decent tech sector, beyond fine arms).
The VYYR2401 really is a transmitter/receiver/array-scanning/digital signal processor all in one chip.
Reading about that, I discovered that Vayyar has a retail divsion called Walabot. This where things get quite interesting.
If you look at the Walabot Maker series of chip-based sensor kits, you’ll find interesting things in their spec sheets. Like images of circuit boards which appear to be the originals of the images in Royal Holding’s SWORD brochure. Even the RF field diagrams.
It very much appears that RH lifted their tech data and images from Walabot. My initial thought was that RH is simply buying Walbot Maker kits, writing their own smartphone app, and reselling it at a huge mark-up. The Creator version runs $149.99 from Walabot, while RH says they’ll sell at $1,250. The Walabot Developer is priced at $599.99. Such a deal. For Royal Holdings.
But then I spoke to someone about the cool stuff the Walabot products can potentially do, and started thinking about raising the money to buy one myself for experimenting (the sensing possibilities are incredible; by the specs, the Walabots are very cool).
And I found the Walabot DIY. This is a $65 dollar… cellphone case that turns your smartphone into an RF-based remote sensor that can detect and image hidden objects. Sound a bit familiar?
If Royal Holdings is actually planning to sell the SWORD, I believe it is a re-packaged Walabot DIY, at a $1,185 markup, or 19 times the real price.
But I have significant reservations about the legitimacy of the operation.
They’re using images from another company’s web site.
Nothing in Vayyar chip specs or Walabot specs indicates that it can operate at 40 feet. Indeed, the Walabot DIY is listed at being able to sense metal objects through walls at four inches. Not forty feet. So we appear to have one outright false claim.
Royal Holdings also claims that the SWORD can detect explosives. What the Vayyar VYYR2401 chip detects is dielectric materials. Vayyar says it can be set up to measure milk fat content; presumably by setting a reflectance value for the dielectric of a known milk fat level, and looking for variation. In theory, one might build a similar reflectance database for known explosives, but you’d have to know how to compensate for any intervening materials: cotton, nylon, dry clothing, damp clothing, metallized clothing (and won’t that wreak havoc on weapons detection). If it works at all, there will be a lot of false positives AND negatives.
Also note that detection/analysis based on reflectance values means knowing received signal strength very precisely: the farther away something is, the lower the return signal. It is impossible for the SWORD to know the distance to a random object, and compute the return signal level. They’d have to add in range detection to compute path loss, to then compute reflectance to guess at a material. That functionality does not appear to be in the VYYR2401, making explosives detection another seemingly false claim.
Then there are issues with the supposed business itself.
Many individuals register web domains anonymously, to protect their privacy. For-profit businesses, that rely upon people knowing who they are, rarely do.
royalholdings.org is registered through an anonymizing proxy. For one year.
What sort of business that plans to be around long enough to deliver a product — still in design — registers its domain for just one year? And .org? For a business?
What kind of business won’t spring for the .com domain?
The SWORD’s Royal Holdings claims to be located in West Hollywood, California. The only active California incorporation listing I can find for “Royal Holdings” is Royal Holdings, LLC located in Los Angeles. It’s been around for twenty years. This “Royal Holdings” is a new startup according to CNET.
The SWORD Royal Holdings’ principals — per their Team page — are Barry Oberholzer, Jeromy Pittaro, and Chuck Bloomquist.
The principal for Royal Holdings, LLC in LA is David Soufer.
Is the SWORD’s makermarketer appropriating another company’s name?
If this SWORDsmith has investors, they should be asking serious questions, and possibly demanding their money back. As should those 8,000 prospective customers who Oberholzer claims have pre-ordered at $950 a pop.
But David Codrea notes, “I doubt if there really are investors– I’m smelling an ad agency stunt by the antis.”
That’s a real possibility; that the anti-rights gun control crowd is pulling a stunt to rile gun owners. And sites like CNET giving them unquestioning adoration (kudos to 9to5Mac’s Lovejoy for expressing his own doubts)?
“What gets me is tech websites regurgitating their stuff,” Codrea said.
Me, too.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
Of course, the restraining order was against Cody Wilson and DefDist, not everyone on the planet, which isn’t exactly one WA district judge’s jurisdiction (not that he cares about fine legal points). Which is exactly why CodeIsFreeSpeech.com could and did post the files.
Meanwhile — as of this writing — Amazon is still selling:
Sten Mk II Construction Manual The Sten MK II construction manual is a complete “how to” book utilizing kits from ARMEX, SARCO, etc. Photographs detail manufacturing procedure, blueprinted receiver plans and STEN MK II RECEIVER TEMPLATE. With total construction cost of a home built at about $110.
Gunsmithing: A Manual of Firearm Design, Construction, Alteration and Remodeling [Illustrated Edition] 2012 Reprint of 1950 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Illustrated with over 100 photos and drawings. Roy F. Dunlap’s book is self-described as “a manual of firearms design, construction, alteration and remodeling for amateur and professional gunsmiths and users of modern firearms.” What makes Dunlap’s book important is its specificity.
The .50-caliber Rifle Construction Manual: With Easy-to-Follow Full-Scale Drawings This is the book that do-it-yourselfers anxious to try building their own .50-caliber rifles have been demanding since the best-selling Home Workshop .50-Caliber Sniper Rifle videotape first came out. In this companion book, Bill Holmes uses easy-to-follow foldout drawings and precise dimensions to take you step-by-step through the process of designing and constructing your very own .50-caliber rifle easily and inexpensively.
Home Workshop Guns for Defense & Resistance Master gun maker Bill Holmes shares what will and won’t work in designing and building rifles and shotguns from raw materials. Includes the fine points of creating everything from actions to sights, as well as tips on tools, materials, assembly, finishing and more. For academic study only.
A Rifle Anyone Can Build Written by gunsmith Jerry Lindsey, this simple and easy to follow guide to make a beautiful Remington model 6 without investing in equipment beyond what most homeowners already possess.
Single Shot Lever Action: A Home Built Rifle Follow along as Glen Davis builds a single shot, lever action, rifle from scratch, using mostly recycled materials. This book includes a detailed build description of an original rifle, photographs of the actual build process, and scalable drawings.
Zips, Pipes, And Pens: Arsenal Of Improvised Weapons In this book, J. David Truby demonstrates why gun control simply doesn’t work. Features rare photos of remarkably ingenious and very deadly improvised weapons made by guerrillas, secret agents, criminals and freedom fighters, all collected from prisons, police departments and Third World countries. For information purposes only.
Huh. I wonder what “content guideline” applied to The Liberator Code Book that doesn’t apply to those books, mostly listed on Amazon for years.
Maybe it’s the plastic?
Nope (and some of that stuff is more dangerous than the Liberator).
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
Is there perhaps a positive change in the wind for beleaguered Israeli citizens? For several months now they have endured rockets being shot at them from the “two state solution” known as Gaza. Gaza was a fairly prosperous area prior to Israel withdrawing from the area and the citizens of Gaza electing hamass. They’ve endure rockets, bombs, firebombs, rocks, snipers, falcons being murdered by having devices attached to them so they could set more of Israel on fire than they could reach with a fire kite. All because they love the land so much they feel compelled to burn it all. There was recently a demonstration in Tel Aviv by the citizens of communities located near Gaza. They feel the government is doing enough/much/anything (circle the correct answer) to protect them.
The protesters shouted “the government must wake up – the south is burning” and “we are not cannon fodder.” They carried signs reading “the south is burning” and “we are tired of burned fields, we are tired of our children crying.”
They have darn good reason to think this way. In Orwellian double speak worthy of Yasser Arafat’s taqiyya of saying he wanted peace then explaining to the ticked off arabs he was just saying that for political reason we have this
After 250 rockets from Gaza hit Israeli locations, one a heavy Grad, Israel’s security cabinet meeting Thursday, Aug. 9, directed the IDF to continue to pursue “powerful action against terrorist forces.” This was tantamount to a decision against a major Israeli military campaign against Hamas at this time, while instead carrying on with tit-for-tat air strikes as before, and leaving the targeted communities to their despair. Some 19 people were injured in the last two days. Hamas is therefore still allowed to call the shots, exactly as it has done in the last four months, while inflicting in Israel diverse brands of terror.
The daily attacks by other arabs continue with stabbings, pro-tip, quit giving the bodies back. They don’t give Israelis back their slain. Arabs hold a big funeral, and a bunch more of them crawl out from under rocks and come into Israel to try to get money and fame by killing Israelis.
Chum Bucket, 31, approached several police officers near the Temple Mount on Friday afternoon. He tried to stab one of them with a knife before being shot dead by the officers who were at the scene.
If he’s going to attack armed police do you think he will hesitate to attack who he thinks is an unarmed vulnerable Israeli?
Israel Police on Wednesday said that a terror attack in Jerusalem was foiled last week.
In a statement, Israel Police said that officers operating in Jerusalem’s Old CIty noticed a suspicious individual and detained him. Upon searching the suspect, the officers found a knife and tear gas.
The suspect is a 26-year-old Arab resident of Hevron. He was immediately arrested and taken to the police station, where he was interrogated.
Are you kidding me?? Forget about Israel and the IDF you ignorant blow-hards. How about doing something about this? NIS 1 million deducted from PA transfers over torture. Need I mention they are torturing their own people. Or this little detail IDF foils Gazan infiltration attempt. Dead Jews do not concern the UN. Remember that, plan accordingly.
Public Safety Minister Gilead Erdan eased gun restrictions since armed civilians on the scene often help the police contain terrorist attacks and reduce casualties – especially in “lone wolf” incidents.”
But wait, what if your government doesn’t think your life is worth what you and your family think you life is worth. What if for example you were Elor Azariya? This case has been well covered on TZP if you have any questions just search using the little search tool on the right.
Well, we don’t have to “what if”. He applied, he was denied and the injustice continues. Apparently a James Comey (Israel version) works in the Police Department. The media knew Elor had been denied before he did. The man applied because his life was in danger, and it was in danger originally because of the liberal left being in full control of the legal process.
Terrorists do not hesitate to attack armed soldiers, police or guards. They most certainly will not hesitate to attack presumably disarmed Israeli citizens.
A 17-year old terrorist climbed the security fence into the Adam community north of Jerusalem Thursday night, July 26, and slashed one victim after another. Yotam Ovadia, an Israeli man of 31, whom he repeatedly stabbed, died soon after from multiple wounds, a second man, aged 58, was badly hurt and a third though injured managed to pull his gun and shoot the killer dead. The terrorist came from the nearby Palestinian village of Kobar. He must have studied the electronic fence in advance, because he was able to climb over without triggering the sensors for an alarm.
And in the end, it was a good guy with a gun that stopped the carnage. The security fence didn’t stop them, guards didn’t stop them, patrols didn’t stop them. A good guy with a gun stopped him.
Don’t be stingy Erdan, hand those gun permits out like candy.
While looking up some old writings, on a mostly unrelated subject, I happened across this old column:
Lacking new legislation to authorize this, the FAA simply, and arbitrarily, redefined toys to be aircraft requiring registration. [ding ding]
[…]
President Barrycade has stated his intent to issue executive orders to implement gun control, since he lacks legislation to do so.
[…]
Since Obama and other blood-dancers have stated publicly that they wish to crack down on private sales, it seems safe to assume this will be in one EO or another. But what if he emulates the FAA a little more closely?
Imagine “redefining” all firearms as NFA items. Just like toys became airplanes. Or how atmospheric plant food became a pollutant.
That was December 21,2015; one of my first columns for The Zelman Partisans. Fast forward to…
Basically this Constitution-shredding Senator wants to redefine “machine gun” by how fast you can make something fire, rather than being designed to fire automatically as long as the trigger is depressed.
“Machinegun” is defined in statutory law. Short form: a firearm that fires more than one round per trigger operation. If that can be changed by executive order, instead of congressional legislation, then everything is a machinegun waiting for the pen-stroke.
In short, this NPRM, and the intent of the gun controllers, is a camouflaged ban on semiautomatic firearms. Doubt it? Read the NPRM language, and ask yourself how “President Hillary Clinton” would read and apply the rule.
Gun Owners of America finally notices the semiauto problem with bump-fire bans, and the crowd — finally — goes wild.*
Las Vegas Bump Stock FOIA Claims ATF Not Allowed to Examine Weapons “ATF did not disclose that they had not examined the firearms prior to promulgating the rule,” firearms designer and Historic Arms, LLC President Len Savage notes. “And now that the comment period is closed should they go forward with this rule under the Administrative Procedure Act that information can not be used in a court challenge because it was not submitted prior to closing of comments.
They are doing exactly what I warned of almost three years ago. My only error was in expecting it from Obama rather than dubiously “pro-2A” Trump.
You’re welcome.
* I’d like to think that had something to do with the multiple emails — and my columns — on the semi-auto problem, which I sent to GOA before they finally spoke up.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Even a Tracfone card would help. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)
I’ve noted before that 3D-printed plastic guns are impractical.
So why the emphasis on stopping them?
To suppress the technology
The Darkly Twisted Logic Behind The NRA’s Support For 3D-Printed Guns “You go down six months, two years, five years, when these things do start to appear, and then they sort of shrug their shoulders and say you can’t regulate these things, the horse is out of the barn,” said Spitzer. “The public policy question is are these worthy of regulation or even prohibition or restriction in the first place, and if they are, what better time to do it than before they become widely in circulation?”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nra-3d-printed-guns-gun-control_us_5b633bcce4b0fd5c73d762b2
The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left, the barn, that ship sailed, [insert your favored metaphor].
People have been hand-making gun for centuries. 3D printing does make it easier for the unskilled to start from scratch. But you know what? There’s another grand invention that already did that.
Pipe.
Once you could go down to the hardware store and pick up iron pipe in various sizes, anybody could make a gun. And a lot of people did. And do.
Shall we ban indoor plumbing? If it saves just one life?
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik,in Washington state, issued a temporary injunction against Texas-based DefDist barring them from releasing hobbyist computer code files. Somehow, the ruling by one district judge is allegedly binding on the entire country.
Our Constitution’s First Amendment secures the right of all people to engage in truthful speech, including by sharing information contained in books, paintings, and files. Indeed, freedom of speech is a bedrock principle of our United States and a cornerstone of our democratic Republic. Through CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, we intend to encourage people to consider new and different aspects of our nation’s marketplace of ideas – even if some government officials disagree with our views or dislike our content – because information is code, code is free speech, and free speech is freedom.
Should any tyrants wish to chill or infringe the rights of the People, we would welcome the opportunity to defend freedom whenever, wherever, and however necessary. Hand-waving and hyperbole are not compelling government interests and censorship is not proper tailoring under the law.
The plaintively-whining pisswit plaintiffs allege no standing. They can present no case of a crime committed with a 3D-printed hobbyist experiment. They don’t explain why lawfully printing a gun is worse than lawfully assembling a zipgun from Lowes-supplied pipe. They do — falsely — claim that such a home-built firearm is “undetectable;” the law has been clear on that for decades: firearms must incorporate a minimum mass of metal to render them detectable by by X-ray and metal detectors. It doesn’t matter if the firearm is machined by a big corporation, screwed together from pipes by a gangbanger, or printed by a law-abiding home hobbyist.
People have been hand-making firearms for nearly a millennium (commercial mass-production of firearms is a relatively new phenomenon), from materials far more appropriate to the pressures and stresses of a firearm than plastic.
Automated additive and subtractive manufacturing has been around for decades.
Plastic has been a structural element of firearms for decades.
Only now, has it become a “problem.” Because now individual have access to the technology. Not just the licensed, regulated, tracked, inspected, harassed commercial builders.
Very few — apparently none — street thugs are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a 3D printer, more on filament, download CAD files, download more software to convert .SLDPRT files to .STL, run the conversion, and spend hours or days printing a large, bulky, poorly concealable .380 with which to rob his drug dealer. Stealing a gun or buying a gun on the black market is faster, cheaper, and gets them more effective tools of crime. That’s not what has the authoritarian goons worried.
They are afraid of the law-abiding people, who are getting a little tired of laws with no discernible relation to the constitution; honest folks who want protection the cops can’t or won’t provide; good people who might bypass the State’s attempt to render them helpless crime targets (as the criminals already do).
The goons fear arms in the hands of citizens who are tired of their shit. They are so afraid of the people that they are trying to preemptively shut down a new technology before it’s even ready to produce effective arms.
That’s OK. I still have pipe, nails, and wood in the garage.
Take the 3D AR Challenge! 3D-print a fully-functional, plastic AR-15, and successfully demonstrate it. The first person to do so will win 10 rounds of equally functional, 100% plastic 3D-printed .223 Remington ammunition.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.
I’m getting a little burned out lately from dealing with stupidity, so pardon me if this gets a little rough around the edges.
Or the middle.
Gun controller dimwits are going nuts over the possibilty of DefDist putting its 3D printer files back online. A group of technologically-ignorant idiots tried to get an injunction to block the release; it was denied for lack of standing since no one has ever demonstrated being injured by a 3D-printed gun used in crime. I’m tempted to point them at the gun plans on Amazon just to watch all of their little pointy heads explode. And maybe at Lowes. And then the merchants of death of the plumbing industry can lobby for a Protection of Lawful Commerce in Pipe Act.
New Jersey sent DefDist a cease & desist letter, because no NJ gangbanger ever built a zip gun from pipe.
Pennsylvania convinced DefDist to block download from the SSRPA. Now they have to convince every VPN and proxy company in the world to block PA, to make that effective. Hey, they’ve had 16 years years to figure it out. Now all they need is a law against illegal drugs, murder, robberycrime and they’ll achieve frickin’ Utopia.
Except people have been generating printer files and experimenting with no designs the whole time the State Department had DefDist offline… to prevent export of gun designs. Domestic use is peachy, and not regulated by ITAR.
The aptly named name Hello Giggles fears undetectable plastic printed AR-15s. 1) I challenge Ms. Sheffer to produce a wholey plastic, printed, working AR. 2) And do it without falling afoul of the thirty year-old law against “undetectable” plastic guns… or ceramic Glocks, or whatever makes the panty-pissers dampen their drawers next.
Noted international ballistics experts Anthony A. Braga, PhD and Philip J. Cook, PhD have discovered that diameter is the single most deadly characteristic of bullets; .356″ diameter rounds being much deadlier than .356″. I referred them to Marshall & Sanow’s Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study, and attempted to explain the difference between “caliber” and “cartridge.” No response, so the dumbasses are probably still parsing the big words.
Last month, WDIV’s Amber Ainsworth reported that someone carjacked a van using a machinegun, specifically a “MAC-10.” Since neither the gunman (who apparently never fired a shot) nor the weapon have been found, I wondered how they made that determination. Neither Amber, clearly a mainstreaming hire from McDonalds’ program, nor her director bothered to reply. Neither did the DPD or the ATF (who ought to have heard something about an illicit NFA firearm used in a crime).
Amusingly, while trying find more detail on that incident, I ran across an earlier report of yet another “machinegun” used in a Detroit crime; this one was identified as an Uzi submachinegun.
The evidence photo was of a semiauto “MAC-10” variant. And they say fake news is a hoax.
As mentioned earlier, the federal government’s assorted button counters can’t agree on the number of buttonspeople murdered with firearms, disagreeing by nearly four thousand bodies.
Ah, well. It isn’t as though the government can figure out how many of those dead folks are still voting in Chicago and elsewhere either. Probably for more gun control.
Apparently the NRA is still growing by leaps and bounds. Pew-ie Research says its now at 14,125,392 members. LaPierre and Cox are now wracking their tiny brains trying figure out how to collect the dues from all of them, and buy new limos.
Joseph Wyatt, Professor of Psychology at Marshall University, thinks it’s high time schools were made gun-free zones. He also wants all clips limited to 10 rounds. Garand owners say, “Sure. What the heck.”
Over at Childish Vogue, “Prince Shakur” is under the impression that “Gun shows are conventions where both licensed and unlicensed firearms dealers are allowed to sell firearms.” And that’s the high point of his comprehension of Federal Firearms Licensing.
Sadly, Georgia state rep Jason Spencer is the face of pro-RKBA for the media. With “friends like these…” He should have subscribed to the TZP newsletter, too. But he’s always been such a dipstick that even that wouldn’t have saved him from making — a further — um, ass of himself.
The Actuary Magazine makes the case for firearms liability insurance because total firearms deaths and injuries from murder, suicide, accidents, and justifiable homicide exceeds deaths in motor vehicle accident deaths. No word on why they want existing firearms liability insurance programs shut down, if it’s such a great idea.
Of course there’s the perpetual denial of little facts like most crime (and especially murders) being committed by repeat offenders, mostly convicted felon prohibited persons; or that despite an uptick in crime in Democratic strongholds crime is still near its lowest in decades (school shootings, too, Parkland Pussies)… therefore we need more laws for crooks to ignore and to violate the rights of the millions not committing the crimes.
“Common sense” my white-privileged, cis-gendered, patriarchic ass.
— sigh —
I mentioned earlier that folks could contribute to the cause to enable me to conduct further research into RKBA issues. Forget it. Kick in to buy me scotch.
When you have two government agencies generating conflicting data, which do you believedisbelieve less?
I ran across this story today:
CDC: Firearm-Related Homicides Surged During Obama’s Last 2 Years in Office
According to the CDC, “the number of firearm-related homicides was relatively stable during 2010–2014,” then firearm-related homicides sharply increased. For example, there were 11,008 firearm-related homicides in 2014 and that number rose to 14,415 in 2016. That is a 31 percent increase.
Sure enough, the CDC’s WISQARS is now reporting 14,415 homicides by firearm. Which struck me as odd, because I’ve been using the figure 11,004 for 2016.
11,004 is exactly what the FBI’s UCR is reporting for 2016; that’s 3,411 fewer firearms-related murders than the CDC retroactively claims.
In fact, the UCR figure for total murders — any weapon — is 15,070, only 655 more than the CDC’s firearm-only murders claim. The CDC claims 19,362 total murders (+4,292 difference).
Oh, and the 2014 numbers for firearms-related homicides?
The agencies use different sources for their data. The UCR is based on police incident reports. WISQARS comes from incident coding in medical reports. One or the other — or both — could be wrong. But clearly both need some quality assurance checking to see if either come close to reality.
I’d love to do a little research into the discrepancy myself, but as an unpaid volunteer, it’s beyond my means. If you’d like to see me dig into this, consider contributing a little to the cause.
ETA, 8//2018: Gee, how ’bout that?
CDC Finally Corrects Bad Data On Number of Firearm Deaths
However, in 2017, John Lott found a discrepancy. He noted that due to an error in Tennessee’s data, the total count was about 100 higher than it should have been. He notified the CDC and they acknowledged the mistake.
It just took them a year to finally fix it.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
Password Reset
Please enter your e-mail address. You will receive a new password via e-mail.
