… because gun companies don’t make money off of them.
'Tis important to include the Trump/NRA reasoning, AP.
However, Dotard granted Russia full distribution rights, so all is good.
Okay. This makes no sense.
Trump and Republicans are rattling sabres at China over “the theft of intellectual property.” And here we are publishing blueprints to manufacture semi-automatic weapons to any damn terrorist who wants them?
Conservatives, what’s the matter with you?
What should be done with people like Cody Wilson, the person behind this effort to spread death and destruction? Involuntary commitment would be one choice. Actually, the company and its principals are providing material support for terrorists. Why aren’t they being prosecuted?
WIKI: Cody Rutledge Wilson is an American crypto-anarchist, free-market anarchist, and gun-rights activist…
Known by the company one keeps:
Guardian: Forget far-right populism – crypto-anarchists are the new masters
Crypto-anarchists are mostly computer-hacking, anti-state libertarians who have been kicking around the political fringes for two decades, trying to warn a mostly uninterested public about the dangers of a world where everything is connected and online. They also believe that digital technology, provided citizens are able to use encryption themselves, is the route to a stateless paradise, since it undermines government’s ability to monitor, control and tax its people. Crypto-anarchists build software – think of it as political computer code – that can protect us online. Julian Assange is a crypto-anarchist (before WikiLeaks he was an active member of the movement’s most important mailing list), and so perhaps is Edward Snowden. Once the obsessive and nerdy kids in school, they are now the ones who fix your ransomware blunder or start up unicorn tech firms. They are the sort of people who run the technology that runs the world.
There is both more and less to this issue than either side will admit. It is seriously doubtful that any criminal will ever use a 3d-printed gun in a crime so long as real guns are cheaper, better and easily available. On the other hand they have potential as an assassin’s weapon if you can figure out how to get a bullet past a metal detector.
There is a pretty good article on the subject at 3d print.com. The author basically says both sides babble ideology while displaying profound ignorance of the actual technology. By the way the potential of 3d-printing as an emerging technology is absolutely amazing.
The guardian is a little optimistic. crypto-anarchists are also the people who build software that can hack systems, and some of them also put their beliefs about the government not having the right to track money flows into practice. If Manafort had hired some he’d be less exposed right now.
It’s a weird sort of issue. There’s plenty of information about making deadly stuff available in print and online. And the law that the feds used to block the release of these plans is that same law they used to prevent americans (and others) from having effective cryptography for the decades during which the underlying structure of the internet was being built. (So you can also blame a lot of computer security breaches on previous administrations, particularly reagan/bush).
And practically speaking, 3D-printed guns suck. I could see states making most of their argument against putting the plans online under the same category as making it illegal to sell dynamite and blasting caps to minors – sort of an attractive nuisance thing.
The company behind the plans… had reached a settlement with the federal government in June that allows it to make the plans for the guns available for download on Wednesday
What the hell kind of settlement is that?
“We want to turn every home into an assault weapon manufacturer.”
“Please don’t.”
“Okay, we’ll wait like 6 weeks and then proceed at full speed.”
Because … reasons.
(I’ve been waiting for a chance to use this new locution!)
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued the order Tuesday afternoon.
Finally, some sanity.
Â
In the meantime, Congressional Democrats have urged President Trump to reverse the decision to let Defense Distributed publish the plans. Trump said Tuesday that he’s “looking into” the idea, saying making 3D plastic guns available to the public “doesn’t seem to make much sense!”
Credit where credit is due.
“doesn’t seem to make much sense!”
That would be applicable if the statement was:
" doesn't make ANY sense "
otherwise … donnie’s just as muddled as he always is —
First amendment would be right up there. I bet the patent drawings for every serious handgun of the 19th and 20th centuries are available on the intertubes. These plans are different because they’re instructions to a machine rather than to a person, but making that distinction in a principled way is really difficult. In the old days (80s and 90s) the distinction was between bits and paper (a book containing weapon information was protected speech but a computer file containing the same information could get you arrested), but now that’s been recognized as stupid.
It’s a tough problem. And the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (and its successors) are really lousy, arbitrary and stupid laws. (IIRC this case wasn’t about whether the “weapon” in question was exportable, but about whether the company had to file paperwork at all.)
And things are only going to get weirder. The same image-processing power that gave us Kobach’s proposed anti-voting law also lets you recreate keys from pictures of them, or knives…
(Sorry for blathering, but an early version of this was one of the first stories I got involved in as a cub reporter almost 40 years ago, so I’ve gotten a little obsessed over the years.)
Blathering? Not by a long shot — but even if you had been … !
Thanks.
Because this is exactly what the authors of the Constitution had in mind. And Ben Franklin knew all about the printing business.
Two truths: 1) 3D printing will replace most other forms of manufacturing in this century, possibly early in this century. And 2) We are going to have to get our minds and hands around the legal ramifications of that or there will be anarchy. And not in a good way.
Glad to give you the chance.
Go on! They had three dimensions back then?
; - )