FBI: Largest homemade explosives cache in agency history found in Virginia
thehill.com
thehill.com
In the one photograph they do have of this firearm, they intentionally crop it so that it is not possible to evaluate.
Men love this kind of stuff. If TNT was legal to own there would probably be a collector for it.
The more dense the population, the more heavily restricted in general.
Some governments and regulators attempt to enumerate every possible conceivable bad thing and outlaw it. Problem is it's not enumerable, there will always be dozens of missed loopholes, which the regulations will steer people into. Parallels the warping and skewing of trying to fix an economy through proclamation versus distributed capitalism.
You're talking out of ignorance. I recommend you do a cursory read of the basic applicable regulation to understand both how you are wrong and what is actually covered by regulation.
These societies may deceitfully claim to follow a rule of law, while objectively being rule by law.
They generally believe that if you can't use the law to coerce people to some form of arbitrary action after-the-fact through blackmail, the law is useless, and they glory in their power and control of others (privately).
This is why they write law ambiguously enough so it can apply to just about anything, and twist it later just like how it is written in Animal Farm.
Safety is just one of many propaganda narratives used, its all for the benefit of society where everyone is equal, some people in such societies are more equal than others.
Corruption is generally not done by the brightest, it often neglects rational principles for long-term survivability. The problem is these people become delusional warping things until collapse under a de-facto state of non-market socialism drives ecological overshoot into a great dying, if no other crises takes them first.
The chancellor will have his butter while everyone else starves, right up until he can't.
You can't have capitalism under a money printing fiat regime, where the majority of the market cooperates. Economic calculation requires independent adversarial decision-making, and for production in the economy to continue, in general, it requires producers and consumers to make more than enough to cover costs (in purchasing power, disconnected from currency debasement), a profit.
Fractional reserve issued debt, with no fractional reserve (0%) is money printing, its been that way since 2020. Basel III uses valuation as a capital reserve, so when valuations based in fiat change suddenly to the negative, the few banks left can collapse without warning. Value has credibly been shown to be subjective, it changes for every person, so you have to ask who decides the value. The same people issuing the debt as a reserve get to decide, which is a recipe for delusion, and chaotic collapse.
A conflict of interest like this never results in fraud /s...
Government has long been trying to make the public helplessly dependent on them so that no matter what they do (even if they break oaths and the constitution), they'll still retain power through a corruption by dependency. Its sad that such evil blind people have been allowed to get into these positions of power.
Survival will in the near future come down to whether or not we can oust such people from those positions or if people will complacently just follow them to their deaths believing lies.
Lies of omission, even unknowingly and without intent, are still lies, and result in the same destructive outcomes.
You're grossly representing what regulation covers or means.
In this context, regulation means things like health and safety. Those who feel the need to buy explosives need to transport them around and store them. This means sitting in traffic next to someone carrying them in the trunk, or living next to someone sitting on a supply. Society is fine with you blowing up your tractor, but not killing your neighbors, employees, or any passer-by due to your gross irresponsibility. Consequently, if you really want to buy explosives then you must learn and prove that you know how to safely handle them.
Do you think that is too much to ask?
As an explosive it's relatively stable .. but those health risks are exactly why the regulations around it are strict and why the "bomb girls" in WWII factories turned yellow and died young.
Simply:
What recommendations has the federal government made to protect human health?
The government has developed regulations and guidelines for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene. These are designed to protect the public and workers exposed to 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene from potential harmful health effects of the chemical. Since 2,4,6- trinitrotoluene is explosive, flammable, and toxic, EPA has designated it as a hazardous waste. The Department of Transportation (DOT) regulates the transport of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene because it is a hazardous material. DOT specifies that when 2,4,6- trinitrotoluene is shipped, it must be wet with at least 10% water (by weight) and it must be clearly labeled as a flammable solid.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates levels of hazardous materials in the workplace. The maximum allowable amount of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene in workroom air during an 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek, is 0.5 mg/m3. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that the concentration in workroom air be limited to 0.5 mg/m3 for up to a 10-hour workday during a 40-hour workweek.
I replied with an excerpt from a (US) Federal regulatory body?
No. We were talking about regulation.
And the DOT regulation doesn’t apply to things made and used on site? (Aka not transported)
( upthread @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42567255 )
US OSHA regulations do apply to agricultural operations.
Arguably, even subsistence farming is a commercial endeavor (per the Supreme Court) and requires an ATF license anyway. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn]
Who's 'we' kemosabe?
This isn't a Yevgeny Zamyatin novel and you're not the One State.
give up guys.
And, as I’m sure you know, the term “regulated” as written in 2A does not mean the same thing as “regulated” in terms of “government regulation”. In context, it means approximately “well-functioning” or “reliable”.
An individual right to participate in a well regulated militia.
Beyond that, the right is entirely unconnected with service in a militia. That clause at the beginning “A well-regulated Militia …” does not scope or bound what comes next; it offers one explanation for why that right is protected.
SCOTUS explained the historical meaning of these words in more detail in District of Columbia vs. Heller, including an in-depth examination of the language as part of its opinion that the right is an individual right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Hell...
The SCOTUS decision itself is quite readable.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
Notably:
> Held:
> 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
> (a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
In current federal legal context, the "militia" is all men between like age 18-45, plus all people in the national guard, or something like that. That's what the US CFR says.
Because that seems absurd given their rather large population of slaves.
In the US, the militia is explicitly independent of the government. Even if one were to accept your narrow reading, which no court has, I don't see how it would materially change anything given that any random group of blokes without any government involvement is a militia as a matter of law.
Those clubs, or militias, could own tanks, drones, explosives.
Ie, all those things that aren’t allowed today in the hands of private owners.
These are all allowed today in the hands of private owners.
What are you even talking about?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.56...
You might be referring to this image? Which is fairly clear, but I'm not sure how they measure barrel length here, but to my eyes it is 13" (unless the last 3 are a suppressor of some sort that isn't counted).
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.56...
This is from the probable cause affidavit, which I guess is used to obtain a warrant?
That said, 13" is also a short-barreled rifle length. If this is indeed a rifle, and not an AR pistol.
The buffer tube extends off the rear, which has been cropped from the image.
The issue is that it is entirely legal to have an AR-15 configured as a pistol with a very short barrel, without any tax stamps. That is, not having a stock attached to it. The image provided does not prove that he has a short-barreled rifle, because you cannot see whether it has a stock.
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-lpuqsi1cy6/images/stencil/12...
Additionally, this is _also_ considered a pistol with a "stabilizing brace" (which are subject of much contention and confusion)
https://www.sb-tactical.com/wp-content/uploads/sbpdw-install...
The GP's complaint is that the linked photo contains insufficient context (for us, at least) to determine if the firearm in question is, from a legal standpoint, an SBR.
It also seems EXCEEDINGLY unlikely the FBI would make a giant press release before anyone verified if the rifle in question was actually violating any laws. There would be almost nothing to gain, and a LOT of egg on everyone's face if the guy walks because nobody at the FBI knew the difference between an SBR and an AR pistol.
They can literally just lie about the law and confuse the ignorant jury as they did for matt hoover. In a couple years he'll get released on appeal, who cares, they already destroyed his business and relegated his wife and childs mother to begging for money on YouTube.
When you create an account just to post in this thread endlessly defending what appears to be at minimum someone who probably shouldn’t own guns in the first place, it’s difficult to believe you’re here for anything other than stirring the pot.
Oh, I found it. He was literally selling a machine gun conversion kit and claiming it was a business card. It very clearly wasn’t. And it wasn’t a “drawing” it was the metal pieces to convert an AR to fully automatic by breaking out the pre-cut pieces with a pliers.
https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/atf-arrests-florida-man-s...
The distinguishing feature between this and a metal business card is the speech on it makes ATF sad face.
That is the attempt to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Even the seller was marketing their machine-gun conversion kits as AR-related devices that the ATF wished didn't existed.
The seller even posted puerile pseudo legal disclaimers such as don't use them to do anything illegal
It's baffling how these puerile arguments boil down to expecting everyone to be binded to a very specific and far-fetched literal interpretation of a specific part of the law while keeping to themselves the fact that it is actually a blatant violation that's kept as an in-joke. When their poorly-thought-through stunt blows up on their face and see the law still applies, they clutch their pearls claiming they demand law enforcement should be stupid and incompetent enough to fall for their gimmicks.
https://www.scribd.com/document/772241091/AutoKeyCard-Case-A...
I repeat:
> When their poorly-thought-through stunt blows up on their face and see the law still applies, they clutch their pearls claiming they demand law enforcement should be stupid and incompetent enough to fall for their gimmicks.
And here you are, whining that others didn't fell for that pathetic gimmick.
I don't know who do you think you're fooling, or if you think everyone around you is a utter moron. The guy was selling machine-gun conversion kits. More specifically, he was selling lightning links which turns a semi-automatic AR-15 into a fully automatic machine gun.
You are asserting every single ar-15 is an illegal machine gun. You should read the testimony and about hammer follow to find out why you're wrong and why his case will absolutely be overturned.
I feel you're grossly and purposely misrepresenting the case.
The case you're referring to was over unregistered machine-gun conversion devices. The guy was selling them online and was caught with over a thousand machine-gun conversion kits.
What makes this case noteworthy is the dissimulated way kits were being marketed and sold, such as bottle openers, pen holders, or business cards.
The guy also marketed his machine-gun conversion kits as an AR-related device and "the parts ATF wishes never existed".
I believe you are well-aware of this fact. Yet, you chose to misrepresent it.
It's a metal business card shape with a drawing of the parts of a lightning link on it, that the state admitted didn't even function as one when dremmeled out using the blueprint. Even if you cut into the shapes, ATF could not get it to induce automatic fire. This is primarily a first amendment case and will get overturned as soon as a non-lukewarm IQ judge sees it. It's inevitable.
That's a personal assertion you're stating, and one that ignores and contrasts with all facts presented in the case.
I won't waste my time debating this.
A kit is usually sold to make it easier to do something. In this case the kit makes it even harder to induce hammer follow than simply using the parts already in an ar. Some kit, lmao. It is scary speech on the same kind of metal plates that sometimes instead have business card type speech.
I don’t know the line but it seems this would obviously warrant investigation regardless of if this person broke a law. I say that as someone who believes in limited government.
Is it fair of my neighbor to instill fear in his fellow neighbors? What if his stash was kept secret for decades, are all those bombs good for the neighborhood? What if he dies and then his stash is discovered in some kind of explosive event?
However, instead of going after those criminals, the FBI has placed its focus on sending a SWAT team to arrest someone who downloaded the wrong 3D print file or ordered a spicy plastic gun accessory on the Internet. That’s a disingenuous application of the law by people who have an agenda, not an approach that’s actually intended to reduce harm.
Why do you think the fbi is giving a pass to drugs? There's ample evidence that they devote a lot of resources to it.
Again, and please read this slowly, to be a decent, caring, good neighbor is not to have them worried about what you're building in your garage. Your reply cares nothing if one of his kids or neighborhood playmates happens upon one of his bombs that could lead to a potential explosion.
I'm generally on the side of intended use mattering more than mere possession of things. However, it seems there may be evidence in this case of violent intentions and destructive devices intended to kill. The comments about the SBR are mostly based on the mental contortions one must do to say an SBR is somehow more dangerous than a braced pistol (even if one is clearly illegal and the other is legal, the question is why).
If the US intends to stick to the freedom-first philosophy with regards to possession, then it would behoove everyone to have a more nuanced legal view of intent.
E.g. graduated escalating consequences for 'Making threats and remarks of a violent nature' to 'Taking actions that indicate preparation for violent action' etc.
Like you, I think if people want to mess around with homemade explosives, and they have enough land to do so, then that's their business.
BUT! There should also be a pattern of behavior, evidence, and witnessed statements where we say 'This particular individual has ceded the right to access dangerous things.'
So essentially being able to charge and convict someone (with due process) of 'violent intent', with no financial or incarceration penalties, but temporary addition (5 year?) to lists that preclude their being able to access dangerous material (guns, explosives, etc).
Of course, the NRA has historically been the biggest lobbyist blocker to anything of that nature, given their paranoia that any legal government consequences will spiral into a panopticon.
Unfortunately, that view doesn't solve the fact that there are very troubled individuals out there, and we'd all be able to be afforded greater freedom if we did a better job in managing those particular people's access to lethal things.
I'm not sure what you're getting at on this one. This individual faces potential incarceration. He is on bail and would be denied access to dangerous things... in theory. Of course he manufactured explosives, so it's not like he has to pass a background check to come into possession of them again.
"and we'd all be able to be afforded greater freedom if we did a better job in managing those particular people's access to lethal things."
Do you have some examples of additional freedoms we're missing currently?
"Of course, the NRA has historically been the biggest lobbyist blocker to anything of that nature, given their paranoia that any legal government consequences will spiral into a panopticon."
I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to that they oppose. But the legal term for a slippery slope is the Overton Window. Speaking of gun regulations generally, it's not hard to understand why a pro-gun group would be against the types of additional regulations that are already present in other states that arguable do not improve safety or could even reduce it in legitimate use circumstances (eg hollowpoint bans, etc).
The current US justice system is based around conviction of a crime (which usually requires having already committed it, or a VERY high bar for having intended to do so) in order to impose consequences (usually severe).
Or limitations on individuals' rights after conviction of the above.
There's no lesser standard of 'at higher risk to commit a crime', aside from a patchwork of short-duration city/state red-flag type laws, most of which are being challenged in court.
> Do you have some examples of additional freedoms we're missing currently?
Access to NFA-controlled devices? [0]
E.g. a breach-loading potato gun
> I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to that they oppose. But the legal term for a slippery slope is the Overton Window.
The Overton Window isn't a legal term: it's a PR/clickbait term.
The NRA has and currently opposes red-flag laws [1], even when constructed with due process procedures, because of its mistrust of any government firearm regulation.
If they instead switched their lobbying approach to productively crafting due process procedures that would allow targeting individuals with a history of threats, abuse, and violence, the rest of us could benefit from greater freedom to dangerous devices.
Instead, their tunnel vision on absolute freedom requires repeatedly casting a blind eye to inconvenient situations where disturbed individuals leverage that freedom to kill others.
Solving problems requires clear-eyed appraisals of the risks and benefits of various approaches to arrive at optimal outcomes.
The NRA has fueled the exact opposite, by leveraging histrionics and fear mongering, not least for its own financial gain. Fuck em.
I would bet that the NRA will propose ammendments to any national red flag legislation introduced, just as they helped shape the 1968 legislation once it looked inevitable. That's all a part of the political game. Sure, the Overton Window is associated with some clickbait, but it's a real and valid concept in politics. This is why groups aren't going to volunteer to help implement things that are counter to their goals, be it the NRA or Everytown. Do you really think Everytown would support something like national reciprocity in exchange for red flag laws? No, as they are also a hardliner and playing the game.
"Solving problems requires clear-eyed appraisals of the risks and benefits of various approaches to arrive at optimal outcomes."
So what's the solution? What's the optimal outcome?
The NRA's blanket opposition to red flag laws is simply one example their willingness to ideologically fight even the simplest approach to a priori restrictions.
> So what's the solution? What's the optimal outcome?
In my ideal world, the US would lean more heavily into universally-accessible but universally-required certification for access to dangerous devices.
Similar to motor vehicles, the default should be that no one has access to these things, but everyone has a right to obtain certification to have them.
As an example, that would look something like national "must issue" concealed weapons permits, but contingent on completing a non-trivial safety course and passing a background check (to ensure the individual isn't spending their free time talking about murdering people online / to their neighbors, appealable ofc).
Instead, we've spent ~60 years wringing our hands to try and square the circle between {everyone deserves access to dangerous things} and {some people are too irresponsible to have dangerous things}.
Why not just start with those facts and craft a viable system from there?
The way the current system is set up, it's supposed to weed people out before they get access to the more dangerous stuff. As juveniles, if they get convicted of certain offenses, they will be prohibited, at least until 35. We have eroded various aspects of this with selective enforcement, plea deals, and the promoting the continuation of childhood with delays in freedoms and responsibilities. Then for the of-age group we have stuff like conspiracy, voluntary/involuntary commitment, terroristic threats, and all manner of prohibiting offenses. There's certainly some room for improvement, but it hard to say what an effective improvement would be.
Freedom from gun violence for thousands of US children annually?
The contradiction is that that’s literally the content and purpose of the 2A of the US Constitution. It’s not the right to bear arms for hunting deer, or the right to go target shooting. The language is pretty explicit, if it isn’t clear enough the founders took the time to explain the purpose of it in the Federalist Papers after they fought an armed revolution against their own government.
My take on unstable people is that if you’re not stable enough to own guns you’re not stable enough to participate in society. If the person in this case made credible threats, they should charge him with a crime other than possession of a firearm accessory. There are plenty of other ways that deranged people hurt others (Like driving a vehicle into a christmas market). The only way we can claim to live in a free society is by maintaining a system of due process.
If no, you acknowledge there is a line. We’re allowed to bear arms, but not any and all arms.
If yes, maybe your views are consistent but you’re utterly insane.
Since the second amendment itself doesn’t contain any express instructions as to who can bear which arms—which is a necessary consideration once you’ve accepted that everyone shouldn’t be able to bear every arm—we’re now solidly in the realm of political debate rather than second amendment absolutism.
Nuclear weapons are an intentionally-absurd example to force a concession that there obviously must be limits. Frequently people will even acknowledge that the 2A probably doesn’t cover them (or at least oughtn’t be interpreted in a way that it does). From there it’s generally pretty easy to walk reasonable people backward towards MANPADs, and then further on down to things that aren’t quite so difficult to acquire.
The literal text is ambiguous to a degree that commas change its meaning:
>> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Relying on contemporaneous ancillary (and unratified with consensus) documents should be an obvious sign that textual clarity is lacking.
Furthermore, the ability of an 18th century individual to craft weapons of mass destruction was vastly inferior to our modern access.
> My take on unstable people is that if you’re not stable enough to own guns you’re not stable enough to participate in society. If the person in this case made credible threats, they should charge him with a crime other than possession of a firearm accessory.
Not only stability! Just normal common sense.
~20% of English-proficient Americans can't do basic numerical tasks in English [0].
I wouldn't trust anyone that dumb around a loaded 6-lb trigger pull.
As the aphorism goes, some people ain't got the sense God saw fit to give a squirrel.
And while they and unstable people are fully entitled to live their lives however they want, it would behoove society at large to say 'Maybe we're not going to hand you things that require the highest amount of safety and carefulness.'
But I'm from the generation where you started out firearms ownership with a hunter safety course at the local firehouse, followed by supervised use with your family, eventually progressing to independent use by high school.
We don’t gatekeep rights based on someone’s perceived intelligence. The same logic was used to keep southern blacks from voting in the civil rights era and was promptly struck down. If you’re an American, it’s your inalienable right.
> The literal text is ambiguous to a degree that commas change its meaning
The people who wrote the amendment literally wrote essays explaining their thought process. It’s not like we’re deciphering ancient greek artifacts, we all know exactly what the founders meant when they wrote it. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this extremely obvious interpretation.
Exactly. Prison or full rights, guns, voting, living beside a school, all of it. Get rid of all this inbetween crap.
Oh, the prisons are too crowded you say? Well perhaps criminalize less things.
We can also focus on actual rehabilitation or fewer heavy handed sentences for non-violent offenders. A lot of things that are currently prison sentences could potentially be probation and fines.
You may consider it hypocritical, but the vast majority of the founders ( Jefferson was an exception) were very very anti armed rebellion! That's the context for the Constitution replacing the articles of confederation. Having recently fought one they didn't think we needed any more revolutions and didn't want any more revolutions! And didn't appreciate several violent incidents like Shays rebellion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75z37x/what_...
> Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising led by former Massachusetts militiamen and veterans of the American Revolution which took place between 1786 - 1787. Daniel Shays led several thousand ‘rebels" to fight against the economic injustices that were facing farmers and agrarian peasants all across America. (3) These farmers were experiencing extreme poverty following the end of the Revolutionary War. All across America, farmers saw their lands foreclosed on in unfair property seizures, and they wanted to fight back. They were also trying to fight taxes which were beginning to be levied against them.(4) People in rural American fought these perceived injustices in a few ways, with Shays' Rebellion being the most violent. Shays' Rebellion would ultimately be put down, but it startled the gentry who feared further uprisings throughout the United States.
> While we call it a “rebellion" today, these men did not label themselves this way. They called themselves “regulators,” specifically they called themselves the “Massachusetts Regulation,” modeling off of the North Carolina Regulators that we saw just a moment ago.(5) This was the larger part of a trend of poor Americans fighting back against economic injustice. The idea of “civilian regulation” was catching on and becoming a popular idea for ending government corruption. They believed that if the government wasn't regulating itself on behalf of "We the People", then "the People" had the right to regulate, or take back the government – to take it back and do what they believed was right. They didn't see themselves as a rebellion, but rather the gentry labeled them as such in order to de-legitimize their cause. By calling them "rebels," neutral Americans would see these men as insurgents who needed to be stopped. But this regulation was not the only type of fighting Americans across the country participated in. Many states saw widespread revolts ...
> By the time the the constitutional convention convened, America was under extreme duress. In Terry Bouton's article "A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania" he masterfully explained the fighting and rebellion that took place in the rural country sides of Pennsylvania that mirrored what had happened in Massachusetts.(7) The gentry were terrified that they were losing control of rural America, and as a result they would not be able to seize foreclosed land and collect taxes, which they needed. Empowering militias to be trained and carry firearms allowed the gentry to call up these men in times of need and suppress these rebellions that were taking place. The Founders knew that the only solutions were to call up militias as they had done in North Carolina and Massachusetts.
...
> Multiple other bills of rights from other states had already protected a militia's right to bear arms (such as Section 13 of Virginia's Declaration of Rights) and many of these states were fighting to have the federal government protect this as well. Here their declaration stated:
> > SEC. 13. That a well-regulated militia, or composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.(8)
> This wording is even more carefully crafted then in the national Bill of Rights. Here, they define “well-regulated” meaning they were trained my military officers. You also see that they define the purpose of it as being necessary to “defend” the state (implying against people in rebellion) and they of course explain why they feared a standing Army. Now if you examine the wording of the Second Amendment, we can see some clear similarities:
> > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
> Like in Virginia, “well regulated" is the key phrase. They are referring to militias led by people like Benjamin Lincoln and his Massachusetts Militia, not Shays and his "rebellion". The idea that people need firearms to protect themselves from the government is not accurate. It was a message propagated by anti-gun control advocates of the 1980s. This “right” was crafted when rebellions were happening everywhere and the only way the government could maintain control was to make sure they could call up their militias.
Do you also believe you should not need a driving license, or an electrician should not have any certification?
Because an average person can watch a YouTube video and wire a circuit, or learn to drive by themselves, but their chances of making explosives without posing a danger for themselves or others are far, far lower.
This should be a licensed activity where you need to demonstrate at least basic competence and mental stability.
If an individual is endangering only themselves in a way that poses no risk to others (e.g. blowing up stumps on their own large property), then that's a responsibility they should be given.
Which does suggest stricter limits on higher density areas (read: cities), given the proximity of people and lack of empty, fuck-around space.
Bluntly, it’s also the hacker community, or at least this hacker community, being kind of poor at generalizing things to an overall population and confusing their own emotions about something for a reasoned defense of it. We’re arrogant, overconfident in our ability to reason about things, undervalue others’ reasoning, experience, and history, regularly mistake our ability to reason through a technical issue for expertise in things outside our wheelhouse, and are profoundly gifted at self-motivated reasoning, so the idea that anyone else might have a valid opinion on why we shouldn’t do something we really want to do strikes us as tyranny.
Regulations actually in place to protect people are fine. Most regulations on this sort of thing are overbearing. A lot of the licensing and recordkeeping are targeted towards companies and commercial producers and apply ham-fistedly to individuals. One example is distillation of spirits. It's illegal for me to distill. I'm not even allowed to get a license to do it because my property is residential and not commercial even though I want to do it for myself. There's really no valid reasoning for. The courts are starting to agree - there was one court that said making the permit impossible to get as an individual in a residential property is a violation of some right.
The point is, we should challenge regulations that don't make sense. If there is a valid reason, then we learn. If there isn't a valid reason, then maybe we can correct some injustice. Even as hackers/programmers/etc, we miss edge cases and have to amend our code, it's really not much different for policies, probably even worse than the spaghetti code with of us has seen.
The problem of listening and reacting to public outbursts is that there are enough people on all sides of this that there'll be an outburst whatever happens.
The Algorithm makes us a pile of hyper-reactionary babies.
If the FBI had all this information and didn't act on it, then he e.g. went into a tower and murdered dozens of people in the street, there is not going to be a substantial number of people saying "oh well ya know they didn't have a basis to intervene when they were first informed of his 1) probably-illegal firearms, 2) extreme violent views and 3) growing stockpile of explosives."
I personally don't think there's enough public consultation on rights. For some reason America relies on an increasingly political supreme court to set those boundaries rather than what The People actually want.
And all of this is entirely impossible to derive from online conduct because it's just wall-to-wall strife, disagreement and suffering. A system continuously telling us to be angry with other people, rather than how to enjoy these short, little lives we have. Weird if you ask me.
All of that is absolutely, obviously true.
My original point got a little lost by my second post. That there are angry people shouting about something doesn't mean they're right. Being loud shouldn't earn you opinion being rebroadcast, but that's exactly what today's social media does. And it's what the traditional media did before it. Sell engagement through outrage.
If we want to have qualitative conversations about what homeland security really looks like to stop an attack like the one here —that nobody is even suggesting was planned— I'm not sure people will be so "absolutely, obviously" on one side. Only once you have those conversations can you reasonably barter with the limits of rights.
As it always is, people are always on some spectrum for an activity.
The people who want to harm our country don't seem to have any difficulty doing it.
We see the examples of successful attempts at harm, most of us don't pay much attention to the failed attempts, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about how hard it go from "attempted harm" to "actual harm".
>Investigators also found hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, which the agency described as “an explosive material that is so unstable it can be exploded merely as a result of friction or temperature changes.”
I mean, I don't even have to look that chemical up to see that it is explosive.
Actually looking at it, it's a cage of nitrogens and peroxides. Cricky.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexamethylene_triperoxide_di...
>Cases of detonation caused by the simple act of screwing a lid on a jar containing HMTD have been reported
Though obviously the amount of explosives per device is going to modify the risk profile.
There’s no mention of the guy using smokeless powder just hexamethylene triperoxide diamine which is an actual high explosive.
0: https://ktla.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/12/FBI-pipe...
There is occasionally discussions if we should ban trucks that carries dangerous materials from driving near large cities. The main counter argument is that the number of people who has access to trucks with dangerous goods in them is so few compared to the number of people with access to a car. Thus the more logical solution to mitigate risks is to address car access to areas with crowds.
This is incorrect, ammonium nitrate is intrinsically high-explosive. It is mixed with other ingredients to improve performance and/or sensitize it but this is not required. There are several famous examples of stored ammonium nitrate exploding e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
Most of those other blasts, including Beirut, involved lots of contamination of the AN + large fires + very large quantities of ammonium nitrate.
In truckload or less quantities, and when not contaminated with specific substances, ammonium nitrate is pretty much impossible to detonate without a sizable quantity of some other high explosive.
If you’re going to assume they have access to significant explosives to actually detonate pure ammonium nitrate, then you also need to consider flour and other ‘safe’ compounds due to the potential for even larger fuel air explosions.
86 deaths, 434 injured
The poser referred to a “6,500lb truck” vs “19-tonne Renault Midlum cargo truck” used in that attack.
the 9/11 attackers went though flight school to be able to hijack planes. meanwhile getting a CDL is like $6k for out of state, $2k for in state, and ~$400 if you can demonstrate need / poverty. the classes are readily available at any community college, and can be done by anyone who can drive, basically.
Vehicles are used to kill a great number of people per year, but it’s really unusual to find someone who actually killed 50+ people through a vehicle alone. Meanwhile there’s significantly more people who used bombs to reach those numbers, despite how much more difficult it is to access significant quantities of explosives.
BUT
.. apart from Jan 6 and a few milita incidents, nobody ever combines these three into politically targeted violence. The mass murders are always either strangers, workplace, or schoolchildren. Politically motivated, but not targeted at any kind of power structure. It's been a long time since the Unabomber. All the elements are in place for a really serious deterioration of civil safety, but so far the glue is holding.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Matthew_Crooks
Indeed. But since they're right wing guys attacking Trump, it seems to have faded from the conversation. Also they failed.
I wont speak more on it here but I can think of atleast 6 people i've known closely who've just gone completely dark online + in their community after anti-govt organization. I assume they're dead.
The elements will always be in place for disturbed individuals, just look at the number of "Cars running over crowds" stories, such as yesterday in New Orleans. The question and premise for a lot of the battles are, do we take away rights or abilities of those that won't do it, on the off chance that someone could?
Clear laws, enforced consistently would help a lot here. I would also posit, though not likely a popular opinion, there are people that cannot be a part of a functioning society and we have to collectively agree on that. We need to bring back functioning mental health facilities for long term care and accept that some people will be placed here and not leave.
That's my point: there's loads of "apolitical" school shootings and much less "political" violence.
Your other points are valid but this one has been so highly politicized that inner city gang violence is classified as mass shooting, which is a completely different social issue that’s being co-opted in with the political violence issue and the mental health crisis. All of those problems are complex and have different root causes, implications and magnitudes, but activists like Everytown want to lump them together to portray a “Gun Problem” to pitch their forced solution, which is making it harder for law-abiding citizens to own guns.
We can't stop drug importation. What makes you think that we can stop guns?
> and we had less of them we would have a safer less violent society.
"less of them"? We can take away all of the deer rifles and not change US violence at all. A collector with 100 guns is not more dangerous than one with 25.
The vast majority of US gun violence is committed by people who are already involved in other illegal activities involving other illegal substances. It is absurd to think that they can be disarmed by legal means.
It takes about 1% of the "by physical volume" drug smuggling to provide them with a new gun per crime.
If anything guns are harder to ban than drugs (because they're easier to make and smuggle), and that was true before 3d printing became a thing.
Hello, I'm British.
Better solutions don't have to be perfect, as the country of my birth demonstrates: still has drugs smuggled in, sometimes even has firearms, even a few mass shootings.
But firearms are banned so effectively that even the police don't routinely carry them — the handful of officers I've ever seen armed in the UK, in person, were all in airports.
The four nations of the UK combined had around 700 homicides in total in each recent year, which is about the same as Philidelphia plus half of Baltimore. It's not just because the US is more populous, the per-capita homicide rate in the UK is about 80% lower in the UK than in the US.
I know the UK is unusual — I'm in Berlin now, and the cops here have what looks like a pistol, not that I'd be able to distinguish it in the holster from a taser or a pistol shaped pepper spray — but there's a whole world of other ways to do things than what each of us takes for granted, and we can learn from each other if we don't shut out the possibility.
As a non American, I am unfamiliar with your inner city gang violence.
If it involves guns being used to kill multiple people in one incident, this seems tautologically "mass murder", even if it's specifically also gang war.
(Then again, perhaps I should add "gang war" to my list examples of things where people sincerely argue if it counts as murder, along with normal war, assassination, abortion, and meat).
PS- Just one recent example: The plot to kidnap Gov Gretchen Whitmer managed to break thru to corporate media. This wiki has a smattering of the misc terrorist groups involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
Where do we draw the line of ridiculousness?
Fortunately, this guy commited over 150 crimes. Bail was denied. We can lock him up and throw away the key. It really doesn't matter if he were to be an imminent threat or not.
In a legal context, and also the real world sans a legal context, words do have meaning and words do matter. I don't see anything in the article that Spafford terrorized anyone.
Whether Spafford intended to terrorize anyone in the future is another matter, and a matter of legitimate and serious concern. But we must not confuse this with "terrorized" (past tense) if we are going to discuss the matter in a sane and sober way.
Reading more about this, it seems to have come after a several year investigation. Yet he is out on bail as for some reason the only thing he's being charged with is owning a short barreled rifle. Which seems bizarre. https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-12-31/norfolk-homemade-explosi...
Remember FPSRussia went down for paint on a serial number and a few vape pens but the arrest bulletin made him sound like a madman.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/8228342/parties/united-...
This appears to be the actual case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69482949/united-states-...
It’s an explosive, full stop. I have no problem with the premade targets that have a small amount, but honestly, the larger quantities should require at a minimum a background check.
Almost all popular precursor chemicals for drugs and explosives are heavily controlled in Europe.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...
I mean if someone wants to cause mass causulty and terror its going to happen, be it a gun or a knife or explosive. Hell I'd argue cyber attacks could also do the same.
Sure, the general idea though is to raise the barrier - both to make it more difficult to get the weapon in question and to have better chances of red flags popping up somewhere along the chain.
Same for gun background checks outside of the US, for requiring CDLs to rent trucks capable of plowing through assemblies of people, or for requiring at least a CPL if not an ATPL to pilot a plane capable of dealing a large amount of damage.
The higher the damage potential in the hands of someone abusing a thing for terrorism, the higher the barriers to entry should be.
A short-barreled rifle, on the other hand, it is strictly forbidden without an appropriate Federal tax stamp.
One of the reasons that high-explosives are widely legal is that they have several common applications for individual use. Despite the availability and consumption of high-explosives in the US, misuse has been very rare in practice.
One of my rural buddies told me how he spent a summer mixing diesel and fertilizer to clear fields, approaching it like a lab experiment and keeping detailed notes.
Honestly, both sounded like a lot of fun.
As to how much it matters or not? No clue.
Yeah, like AR-15 and high explosives, surprisingly violent death rate is much lower here…
AR-15s are actually not banned in many parts of the EU.
Speech, in both the EU and the US is free under the limits set by law, the US isn't an “absolute free speech land”, you will definitely be jailed for speech that goes against the law (for instance death threats, see [1]).
> equity compensation...
What are you talking about, I've been given equity more than once…
[1]: https://nypost.com/2024/12/12/us-news/florida-mom-arrested-f...
The dude showed of this EU compliant collection.
Multiple pistols and rifles, and what some state would classify as weapons of war, an SBR, or a assault weapon.
All obtained legally via permits and a local cop signing off on the paperwork.
It's actually interesting to met that, in the American discourse, we never discourse an EU-style classification system. Whenever people in the US propose new gun regulation, it always a maximalist approach -- banning the AR-15 completely.
The European system, broadly speaking, is not like that.
There are federal classes for dealers and manufacturers -- manufacturers of silencers, of automatic weapons, of missiles and rockets, &c, and dealers of these articles -- but that also is not like the European classification system I am talking about, which is for end users.
The NFA, which does apply special regulation to silencers, short-barreled rifles and some other items, which allows them to be owned by end users, and that is kind of similar but there is a real difference: you file for a tax stamp and wait for a background check to complete, without having to worry about taking a particular course and getting a certain grade.
The US also regulate chemicals, and knives are free to sell everywhere, it's just forbidden to be carried in public.
Many things which were common in my youth are vanishing forever.
How can otherwise reasonable people come to believe nonsense like this just because it fits their worldviews will always remain a mystery for me.
Going to see how well it works soon though; a few weeks ago had a ~2ft diameter stump left when my 65ft spruce snapped in a wind storm. Turns out about halfway up it had branched off into two trunks, and that junction was rotting, the wind storm caused that junction to snap half way up. In looking, my neighbor has a tree with the same dual-trunk situation, though hers is more likely to land on her house.
https://www.amazon.com/Island-Bush-Pilot-Founder-Airlines/dp...
Maybe the charge would get thrown out at some point, but not including it in the indictment seems odd.
Though it would be helpful to know which state, because I don’t know of any that are quite that easy to deal with.
BATF to my knowledge does still require a license (albeit easy to get if you meet the requirements) for commercial use, anyway.
Seems fairly clear cut. You could argue the term "business" means they need to be selling the stuff, but the definitions clarify "manufacturing" includes for personal use.
edit it never occurred to me he may be licensed. Still, this particular explosive seems to have no approved use, and the licensing seems to be for specific explosives. I may be wrong on that though.
And it's Virginia, the Isle of Wight is a county in Virginia.
The dealer would be the one with the license.
Also, manufacturing and using on site for non-commercial purposes is exempted (albeit not explicitly). Which is why tannerite and personal explosives research is fine and widespread.
While I get some things are exempt like tannerite, I find it highly unlikely someone could just manufacture TNT or rdx and use it in their back yard without breaking a ton of laws.
Even if you used it within the 24 hour requirement so it didn't have to be stored(iirc from my memory of old legal readings)
Specifically, “Persons manufacturing explosives for their own personal, non-business use only (e.g., personal target practice) are not required to have a federal explosives license or permit under 27 CFR, Part 555”
The issue is the law is clearly written to regulate commercial activites, and the fed gov’t (at least in theory) only has jurisdiction over commercial activities (those involving trade). There is a lot of court precedent on this, some of it confusing. So while the law doesn’t explicitly exempt personal, non-business use, the courts (and constitution), and the law, doesn’t cover personal, non-business use either. So, legal.
also, there is zero chance they could stop it.
However, it may be that the suspect violated a different section of the law:
It shall be unlawful for any person to store any explosive material in a manner not in conformity with regulations promulgated by the Attorney General.
The suspect may also have violated the NFA, by manufacturing destructive devices without appropriate permitting or record keeping.
The definitions, which were on the previous page. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/841
I'm not sure if we can take that to mean "engaged in the business of manufacturing" includes non-commercial activity.
it’s not explicitly called out in the law, like you’re noting. rather that personal, non-commercial use just isn’t covered by the law. So legal/exempt.
Other situations, like non-personal, non-commercial use are covered - distribution requires licensing even if not paid, same as import/export, doing business in explosives, etc.
Where some YouTubers and the like have gotten in trouble is when they start making money off what would otherwise be personal use (like showing videos of tannerite usage, or some other synthesis), but funny enough if they get demonitized and aren’t using it for some business purpose, they’re fine.
Then, during the pre-trial phase, a superseding indictment can be added as more evidence is gathered and a stronger case is put together.
This happened with Paul Manafort, who was first indicted for “conspiracy against the United States”, but then the superseding indictment included all sorts of tax and bank fraud.
I suspect a far greater many are injured from fireworks.
Get out of here with your ridiculous 1823 hyperbole. These explosive can be very efficient and useful when managing multiple acres.
If you're clearing multiple acres you use a track hoe and a large bulldozer. Source: the 60 acres of grown up crp we finished clearing last month.
I know the Internet wants you to think that rural life is all guns and explosions, but that's sometimes not the case. Why do you think every small town has multiple excavator companies?
Different experiences for different folks.
Because the law is such an expensive PITA to comply with that nobody does it. People blew up rocks and stumps all the time before the mid 1970s.
About once a week I get pissed off that I'm on Craigslist looking for expensive tractors and expensive attachments instead of just a drill bit and explosives all because some leftists blew up some bathrooms in the 1970s and the 1970s equivalent of people like you wrung their hands over it.
Source: Clearing acreage the hard way in my spare time
Note that it's not totally unregulated. If you are only an occasional user, you get a permit from the ATF for $25. Plus whatever your state/county wants.
https://www.atf.gov/explosives/federal-explosives-licenses-a...
It's fairly common for tannerite to be used for target shooting.
Gunpowder is commonly available for reloading.
I doubt this is common and should probably be illegal if it isn't already because it's horrible for the environment. However, blast fishing is apparently actually a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_fishing
The compounds generally are. The applicable use is where the laws come into play. Things like pipe bombs, devices marked "lethal", etc are not legal without special permits and would be deemed destructive devices.
Because the vast majority of these guys are all talk. For every Ted Kaczynski there are a thousand Dale Dribbles: backyard tinkerers who give up all notion of resistance when the cops actually show up. The cops cannot tell the difference and so must treat them all as potential Teds. Once safely in custody, the Dales will quietly plead guilty to vastly reduced charges.
The difference is that the Dale Gribbles don't go out of their way to harm anyone whereas the uncle Teds do.
You don't need a Waco for many people to die a violent death.
The real criminal in this case is feds depriving fundamental civil rights under color of law. The failure to register short barrel rifle pretext in particular is based on faulty precedent that military did not use short barrel arms thus the NFA stamp was 'constitutional'. ( then, lol, gov obliviously sold a bunch of surplus rifles to public breaking this same law on accident which is why rifles have lower limit now than shotguns).
/s
Unless, of course, you really trust Trump less than any random wacko....
There is no consistent logic here to debate.
Trump won the hard right nuts votes merely by being seen as slightly not as bad on core issues as the other main candidate.
This is a meaningless non-sequitur, not the "logic" you think it is.
Best of luck getting 34/50 state legislatures to agree!
Even if you do the mental gymnastics to rework the English language to make this mean what you want it to mean, the militia is composed of all able-bodied men between 17-45 per 10 U.S. Code § 246.
At the time of this country's founding, private individuals owned cannonry, ships, and ordnance far beyond small arms.
What purpose would letters of marque and reprisal serve without weapons?
You can amend the Constitution to forbid the Supreme Court from interpreting it to allow for unhindered access to weapons of mass destruction. Not super difficult if everyone agrees.
Moreover, Elon Musk can not launch anything with enough mass to come remotely close to the yield on even a small nuclear weapon. Kinetic bombardment of say, a 200 Mg tungsten rod from orbit, impacting Earth, would have a yield equivalent to only ~350 tons of TNT.
To be fair to the Second Amdendment supremacist, he only compared the sattelite deorbit with the explosive arsenal of the wacko the FBI arrested, not tot nuclear weapons.
Which clause?
If you read it, I think that you’ll be surprised to find that it doesn’t actually state anything about interpretation. It was in Marbury v. Madison that the Supreme Court invented the doctrine of judicial review.
I actually agree that the power of interpretation is implied by having a judicial power at all, but it’s not in the black and white text.
Jefferson was right when he said the Constitution should be rewritten once per generation.
Perhaps the initial and continual suitable personal stability and trustworthiness for owning different categories of mass-casualty-capable weapons should be sensibility and increasingly regulated appropriately. Honestly, I think there should be a limited number of gun clubs that require continual vouching/sponsorship to retain access to certain categories of weapons. Letting randos amass 100 AKs with bumpstocks just seems insane.
They don't want to draw a line because that's hard so they eliminate the line and we end up with ridiculous logic like the right to bear nuclear weapons.
Most of the interesting policy area regarding the right to bear arms is actually in bearable arms -- small arms and light weapons. Although it is legal to own a tank, for example, this is not of much practical impact.
In other words, all other things being equal, if wealthy private citizens want to fund the Departments of Energy and Defense over and above their tax obligations, who am I to complain?
It's not like the DoE doesn't already employ private contractors in a wide variety of nuclear security roles[1].
[1] http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=1397444401...
The allegation is that this person made a veritable arsenal of pipe bombs and other explosives, with plausible domestic terrorism intent or inclinations.
The Second Amendment technicality you mention might come up in a legal defense, but I don't understand fixating on that as "the real criminal" here -- on a story of securing a very dangerous-sounding cache of pipe bombs, mishandled explosive material, etc.
The precedent is based on a lie the gov itself accidently violated during surplus sales to the public. The precedent exists because the Supreme Court took up a case against a dead guy with no representation, as a poison pill. The state argued the military didn't use short barrel arms, which was a lie. No defense was there to contest it, and this it is now binding on total fiction.
Of course the most hilarious part is 'short barrel' anything was just a measure to ban pistols, which congress changed their mind on last minute and allowed pistols while forgetting to nix the law on creating pistols from long arms. This guy is charged for essentially violating a historical vestigial accident upheld by bogus precedent against an undefended dead guy.
IIUC, you're focusing on that 2A aspect because it's a topic that you know and care about, and think needs to be mentioned?
And the other aspects of the story were already being discussed, and you had nothing to add on those?
If so, did you say "the real criminal" only as a figure of speech? Or do you think that nothing about the pipe bombs, etc., was criminal?
>do you think that nothing about the pipe bombs, etc., was criminal?
Seems like the FBI don't, for now. Just like when someone is reported as having "an encrypted messing app" - fear mongering nonsense.
The HN post is on the news story. The news story is not a trial, and is about more than whatever charges are filed against anyone thus far. Other aspects of the story are already in active discussion.
I'm trying to get at more substantial discussion than on Twitter, by understanding why someone was speaking the way they were, by asking them.
> Seems like the FBI don't, for now.
Does it actually seem like that, or does it seem like probably the FBI expects that there will probably be additional charges?
You said:
> The allegation is that this person made a veritable arsenal of pipe bombs and other explosives, with plausible domestic terrorism intent or inclinations.
> The Second Amendment technicality you mention might come up in a legal defense, but I don't understand fixating on that as "the real criminal" here -- on a story of securing a very dangerous-sounding cache of pipe bombs, mishandled explosive material, etc.
Your slant there is that this fellow's possession of explosives was illegal... or maybe SHOULD have been.
If it was even vaguely-plausibly illegal, the fellow would have been charged. The cops searched his entire place and detonated some of his explosives, so it's not like the cops were unaware of the explosives. As mentioned in this thread [0] (and accompanying subthread), he's just being charged with a tax violation (and is currently out on bail) probably because possession of high explosives is usually entirely legal in the US.
Frankly, it should be illegal for police and other similar government agents to engage in character assassination. Statements from government agents like "This fellow was in possession of large-but-entirely-legal quantities of entirely-legal substances and materials. Be very afraid!" should absolutely leave the speaker personally liable for something akin to libel.
So it wasn’t enough. or the evidence they provided wasn’t credible.
I can't even imagine the headlines that some of my neighbors would have "Man with Arsenal and stockpile of thousands of rounds of ammunition" presented in a slant. Meanwhile he had a few buckets of 22lr, and a half dozen rifles.
Given the evidence we've seen, the memes, and what would clearly pass as joking, there isn't really any "Here's my plan for x date" type smoking gun.
I think that it's clear this wasn't the "credible" threat implied, simply by his bail.
Which part is this?
That's a scary sentence. I fear this might be used to mandate backdoors into encrypted apps.
> I am The Hill’s national security and legal affairs reporter [...]
So I assume the journalist wrote the piece themself, and knew how loaded that line was.
>I fear this might be used to mandate backdoors into encrypted apps.
You mean above and beyond the multiple levels of surveillance now in place, including AI agents on your devices and god knows what backdoors into TLS? They already have more than most people imagine. They just don't want you to know for various reasons.
Implying that "coordinating through encrypted apps" is a property of "far-right ideologies" is a clear attempt to smear the usage of encrypted apps, assuming that the reader already has a negative association with "far-right ideologies".
But for the sake of curiosity: How would you rephrase the same facts to not be a smear?
But I assume that's not how most readers will understand that message, their mind will go towards something like encrochat, i.e. some app specifically made for illegal/terrorist/far right extremist communications. If you said "we should do something about that", that'll get a fair bit of agreement. If you said "we should do something about your browser being able to use encryption", you'll get less.
We should also object to telegram being called an encrypted app. It is not encrypted by default. When you optionally enable the cryptography it has, IIRC they rolled their own ciphers and it's not considered good by anybody serious.
Despite taking great precautions to obscure their identity, they still received a visit from government law enforcement.
Thankfully there were never any legal implications for my friend with the BBS, but you can be damn sure there were quite a few sleepless nights subsequently as he waited for a knock on the door!
At the time I recall that there were definitely kids into this stuff. Not literal anarchy or violence, they just liked making bombs and setting them off out in the woods somewhere. Homemade fireworks really. They got into the chemistry of it, just nerdy stuff. No harm intended.
Boo.
In high school chemistry, I once superheated magnesium in a covered crucible and then blew on. That was fun.
Just saying * looks around innocently *
We also had all those weekly world news tabloids.. i think some of it just made for weird entertainment.
The pre No Child Left Behind / Zero Tolerance era of school, was a great time. I feel bad for kids today.
The mother of all survivorship biases. We have ample statistics demonstrating that no, plenty of people died.
Christ, can't believe I even have to point this out.
I surely hope they can find out, and the harder it is to know how they found out, the better it is since fewer people will be able to evade it.
I’ve also never seen it associated with suicide bombers, you may be thinking of acetone peroxide chemistries (e.g. TATP), which are common low-grade explosives used by terrorists. Also highly inadvisable, TATP is a pretty shit explosive in almost all aspects (low power, low stability). Someone stupid enough to be using TATP should not be using HMTD, as the latter requires more discipline than TATP.
There is a technical gap between making HMTD and processing it into a form that can actually be used in practical explosive systems.
There's no contradiction here, the main characteristic of a primary is it's (relative) instability.
None of which should be crimes.
Normally each state has an explosives license that you must also have, some of which are almost impossible to obtain unless this is your main job, so hobbyists can't get a permit.
Also destructive devices have to be legal in the state.
And the use of the device has to be recorded via paperwork.
As someone who has an interest in energetics and law, the federal law is pretty reasonable if not just a pain in the ass to handle paperwork wise. The addition of every state having laws you need to comply with in addition can make this pretty easy or upright impossible unless your main day job is working in some mine or something similar.
While I have the ability to read some legal text despite having 0 law education, it still is confusing and hard to interpret stuff.
While I understand the need for regulation, and safety, it seems almost if not impossible to navigate. Unless you have the money to pay for lawyers and someone to handle compliance, its very easy to make a mistake that could kill your career.
So your corporations or large businesses can afford lawyers and compliance consultant people so they ensure they are fine and dandy, but if you rural person wants to build explosives to mess around and experiment and research, their is no way they can afford this unless they are super rich.
Ordinance Labs somehow does this but they are Texas based, and make money off of consulting....so they are a great example of how hard this is. They also are being accused of violating ITAR and EAR which is serious.
I mean, that's how they get you. Make it so you have to jump through a ton of hoops, make the penalties to accidentally violating them felonies, then wait. That's how you discourage people from doing something - make the penalties for mistakes so high that people give up. That's part of why you see gun ownership numbers go down in places like NJ while they brag about gun safety laws working. The trick is, the laws like hollowpoint bans didn't actually improve gun safety, it simply reduced the guns per capita by reducing number of people willing to own a gun when harmless mistakes can ruin your life.
I believe their is a term for it but basically they pass a "gatchya law" that is super difficult to follow and open to interpretation, then if someone gets caught doing something they have a reason to prosecute.
Example: speeding laws, ammo or firearm storage laws, tax laws etc. Most people are reasonable when they drive, but don't always follow the speed limit. If they catch you and other charges fail they always have speeding as an excuse. Tax code is so complicated and constantly changing its a real joke. They even have people who exist to handle the bullshit because its so complex, just like how laws are written. CPA and lawyer do the same job in a sense, figure out the bullshit so you don't go to jail or commit a felony.
I don't care what the subject is, the law should NEVER be like this.
The core challenge is demonstrating historical analogues for regulating specific firearm features from 1791 or 1868, as required by Bruen. Registration and taxation of firearms largely emerged in the early 20th century, making historical analogues difficult to establish for much of the NFA's framework.
However, lower courts remain split on these challenges, and the Supreme Court hasn't directly addressed NFA provisions post-Bruen. This area of law continues to evolve rapidly.
Well apparently some societal standards should exist.
They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said.
No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram. The movement’s adherents promote “targeted attacks, mass killings and criminal activity” and have “historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse,” according to a threat assessment released in August by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.
It’s not like a membership badge or anything.
What about vegans?
No one is mistaking this for a “membership badge.” They’re taking it as a signal for what a person believes, and acknowledging that extreme belief formation (even if cynical and “just a joke bro lmao”) is very often part and parcel with group identity.
Yes, Al Qaeda is obviously a real group with actual members, rather than a random meme. Was that a serious question?
They’re not “random” memes, obviously, but I understand you’re trying to spin with rhetoric a bit here :)
> Middle Eastern Muslim culture expert Marvin Zonis notes that Arab societies value the honor and dignity of the individual more than personal liberty. When the principles of honor and dignity confront the devastating failures of many Middle Eastern states to achieve prominence in the world, the result is a profound and omnipresent humiliation and rage that is palpable throughout the region.
Same shit applies to symbols.
People self select and will display symbols to align with the groups they agree with.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangerous-exploits-of-an-ext...
M. A. Argentino has good articles about this set:
https://www.maargentino.com/nihilism-and-misanthropy-unleash...
764 members have been getting arrested periodically. One was arrested earlier in December:
https://cyberscoop.com/baron-martin-arrested-for-child-abuse...
https://nordictimes.com/the-nordics/sweden/stockholm-attacks...
-Osama Bin Laden
Meanwhile somebody crosses the border in 6,500 lb truck and 2 days later rams it into a crowd of people.
The FBI is addicted to PR arrests but seems incapable of stopping actual terror attacks.
This conspiracy seems like it would appeal to those who recognize that mass killings/suicides at schools are tragic and we are awful for not intervening. But if it turns out that The Government is perpetrating the evil, then we can absolve ourselves of the blame because no amount of legislation could stop their covert actions.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
But the availability of firearms is likely one of those factors.
What do all school shootings have in common? Guns.
Something has changed since then and now guns are a bigger problem.
I suppose the most concise answer is really just "ideology".
And the first thing fringe folks tell you is, "you are right, you are smart, you are clever. You've seen that they are covering up the truth, and you are wise to start questioning everything."
Once you get isolated by a bunch of media that tells you how impressive you are and tells you that anyone questioning you is trying to hold you back, you get separated from those who care about you. Once your loved ones give up on you, you turn to forums and chat groups of others in similar situations. They also tell you that you are smart and clever.
It's a classic abuser playbook, and unfortunately it's really really hard to unwind after a certain point. And we value freedom of speech too much to cut off the early on-ramps to this path. But we don't fund the education or the high quality information sources enough to help provide alternatives or defenses.
In this case, I would imagine it’s: school shooting happens. Politicians use it to push for gun control. Therefore politicians made it happen, so they could use it.
Both sides of the political aisle do this, and plenty of people do it about less political things as well. It’s honestly my least favorite part of the public discourse right now.
And the huge and opaque organization required to make the modern world work provides a fertile ground for imaginations to run wild.
I think at this point it's so deeply ingrained that we're all somewhat susceptible to it.
Jones spread equally ridiculous theories about school shootings.
I'm more worried about the guy with a lot of writing and messages and only a couple bombs.
If the guy just had a thing for blowing stuff up, you might have a point.
But the guy pretty clearly has more going on than just liking explosives.
wait, what?
https://www.maargentino.com/nihilism-and-misanthropy-unleash...
There is a basis for the second amendment, and that is a defense against tyranny, but that means we're talking about civil war levels of resistance. In that scenario, I think it really doesn't matter whether you're using an AR-15 or a M1 Garand, because there will need to be literally millions of people with these weapons.
I think many of us quietly support gun rights for the type of weapon that can be used in a civil war in mass, but can also be opposed to the type of weapon that supports a high capacity magazine that lets one nutjob kill dozens and dozens of people without ever having to reload or giving people a chance to flee. I also would prefer to live in a society where guns need to be locked and separated from the ammo, so that anyone with a visible gun in public can be immediately detained.
- storing explosives - mostly legal. - self build bombs? There weren't used, so hard to make a case. - Spreading misinformation? AFAIk, that's protected under the first amendment unless you really cause tangible damage i.e. Infowars style
One way I can think a case can be made is by portraying the guy as a danger to public safety. In Europe, that would warrant a psychiatrist making an assessment for the court. In the US where people posses more firearms than the total population, I am not so sure of that argument survives in court. And then there is the ancient constitutional right to bear arms...
To be clear, I totally support the FBI locking up an apparent maniac before he goes insane and starts using his bombs. I'm just pointing out that the US legal system doesn't seem to be well equiped for those cases.
For example, the guy who ran the FPSRusia YouTube channel from Georgia, US, was sitting on well over a quarter million worth of firearms and even owned a small tank (!). Apparently that is also legal in the US. Yet authorities only took action when somebody died on his property in what seemed to have been a shooting accident.
Let responsible people have a gun or two given these are legal, have passed background check and did proper safety training, but please keep disarming the apparent crazy ones. Nobody can make a sane case why a single person needs a dozen pipe bombs in a backpack or dozens of automatic firearms and a tank.
Jones is a horrible person but committed no crimes. He wasn't taken to criminal court by the people, he was sued by the victims of his defamation.
I've thought it could be a moneymaker for social media firms to automate defamation shakedowns, just like copyright trolls automate copyright shakedowns. Help those defamed find and the messages and send out "Pay $N thousand and this defamation lawsuit goes away now" messages. Back up some of the lawsuits with $$$ to show the threat is real.
Is that right? Building a bomb is okay if you don't use it? Wild that this is not applied to drugs, unlicensed sawed-off shotguns, etc.
It ought to be.