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That's to be expected in this community. There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. In a large way,

That's to be expected in this community. There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. In a large way, the intended use or application of dangerous things are considered a more important point on here because many of us know the damage a person can cause with common things that have legitimate purposes (certain computer software). 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).

ethbr1 2y ago
The issue, from a public safety and law enforcement perspective, is that intent is mostly a post-hoc construction. Whereas possession can be judged before an act occurs. 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.
- giantg2 2y ago
  "So essentially being able to charge and convict someone (with due process) of 'violent intent', with no financial or incarceration penalties, but temporary addition to a lists that preclude their being able to access dangerous material (guns, explosives, etc)." 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).
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > This individual faces potential incarceration. He is on bail and would be denied access to dangerous things... in theory. 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. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons [1] https://www.nraila.org/search/?t=79503 https://www.nraila.org/search/?t=79503
roughly 2y ago
> There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. 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.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Also bombs and guns are "cool" and bureaucrats aren't, and most programmers are more likely to have been "harmed" (had their taxes collected) by a bureacrat than a bomb or a gun, so they automatically side with the guns and bombs.
- giantg2 2y ago
  I can kind of see that, but t I think the main thing is more along the lines of "this interesting thing shouldn't be banned just because some people can't handle it" and "the punishment should fit the harm". 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.

ethbr1 2y ago

The issue, from a public safety and law enforcement perspective, is that intent is mostly a post-hoc construction. Whereas possession can be judged before an act occurs. 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.

giantg2 2y ago
"So essentially being able to charge and convict someone (with due process) of 'violent intent', with no financial or incarceration penalties, but temporary addition to a lists that preclude their being able to access dangerous material (guns, explosives, etc)." 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).
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > This individual faces potential incarceration. He is on bail and would be denied access to dangerous things... in theory. 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. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons [1] https://www.nraila.org/search/?t=79503 https://www.nraila.org/search/?t=79503

roughly 2y ago

> There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. 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.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
Also bombs and guns are "cool" and bureaucrats aren't, and most programmers are more likely to have been "harmed" (had their taxes collected) by a bureacrat than a bomb or a gun, so they automatically side with the guns and bombs.
giantg2 2y ago
I can kind of see that, but t I think the main thing is more along the lines of "this interesting thing shouldn't be banned just because some people can't handle it" and "the punishment should fit the harm". 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.