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I understand the perspective that more guns correlates positively with more deaths, therefore this use of 3d printing technology is a bad thing. However, consi

by jboggan 12y ago

I understand the perspective that more guns correlates positively with more deaths, therefore this use of 3d printing technology is a bad thing. However, consider historical contexts where a minority group has been incrementally and systematically deprived of the legal ability to own firearms and consequently subject to the depredations of the majority. Imagine a Warsaw Ghetto uprising but with 3D printers and these sorts of freely available prototypes. Then you get into theoretical tradeoffs - do I prefer to hypothetically reduce the number of children killed in Chicago this year versus a slaughtered neighborhood of <$localized_outgroup> in some civil conflict? Good arguments can be made on both sides. The demand for home gun manufacturing in the USA is very much related to a sizable portion of the populace looking at the changing political climate of the country and extrapolating their self defense rights meeting the y-axis at some point in their lifetime. The potential commonality of such technology makes any sort of future outright ban completely untenable. Do we not ban books anymore because our governments and societies are so much more enlightened or because the internet makes it completely useless? The lower receiver is not a component bearing serious loads during firing and isn't really where catastrophic failures in the weapon originate.

TomGullen 12y ago
> sizable portion of the populace looking at the changing political climate of the country and extrapolating their self defense rights meeting the y-axis at some point in their lifetime What's your definition of sizable?
hobbyjogger 12y ago
>Do we not ban books anymore because our governments and societies are so much more enlightened or because the internet makes it completely useless? Book bans (in general, with few exceptions) have been recognized as unconstitutional far, far longer than we've had mass adoption of the internet.[1] Here's the Supreme Court in 1982: "Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books …" [1] http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/banned-books http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/banned-books
shard972 12y ago
> I understand the perspective that more guns correlates positively with more deaths Thats incorrect, see switzerland, they have a lot of guns there, maybe even more than america per person but their gun deaths are very low.
- krenoten 12y ago
  > Thats incorrect, see switzerland, they have a lot of guns there, maybe even more than america per person but their gun deaths are very low. Your implication is incorrect. One point does not dissolve a correlation. 0 guns -> 0 gun deaths. N guns -> M gun deaths, therefore positive correlation. QED. Switzerland is an outlier in many metrics. They probably don't shoot as many of themselves because they tend to care a bit more about the well-being of their communities. Far fewer people feel the desperate need to lash out against their community.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  As well as being a data point raised in an attempt to refute a distribution (which never works), there is a radical ambiguity you are leaning on: "they have lots of guns there" when applied to Switzerland does not mean anything similar to "they have lots of guns there" as applied to the US. In Switzerland guns are mostly long guns that are heavily regulated and are under very tight storage restrictions. In the US guns are mostly hand guns that are unregulated and under no very tight storage restrictions. So if you want to make an argument from Switzerland, it would necessarily be of the form: "To reduce gun deaths in the US we should pretty much eliminate handgun ownership and require that all long guns be stored under lock and key in a specified manner, only to taken out on state-permitted occasions for military use."
- JonRB 12y ago
  People often cite Switzerland in gun arguments but leave out the fact that in Switzerland, owning a gun is an outcome of completing compulsory military service for men - Which means that they are trained in proper safety etc.. I recognise that it still raises the opportunity for crime but I believe the training is an important distinction to make. Some communities in Switzerland actually offer somewhere to keep the bullets in the town hall instead of at home, reducing accidental deaths.
shard972 12y ago
> I understand the perspective that more guns correlates positively with more deaths Thats incorrect, see switzerland, they have a lot of guns there, maybe even more than america per person but their gun deaths are very low.
pacala 12y ago
> Imagine a Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We've learned a lot during WWII and in the decades after, in matters of mass destruction. A modern Warsaw Ghetto would share the fate of Grozny: razed to the ground by artillery and air bombings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#First_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#First_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#Second_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#Second_Chechen_War > deprived of the legal ability to own firearms There are dozens of militias around the world, deprived of the _legal_ ability to own firearms. They own arms nonetheless. Plenty of arms. When push comes to shove and it's down to a struggle for survival, who cares about legal restrictions?!
JulianMorrison 12y ago
This is a stark example of correlation not equalling causation. Yes, guns are taken from minorities when an authoritarian regime decides to turn a ghetto into a death camp. And you know why? Because they have zero power already. The system is very thoroughly rigged against them. Those guns aren't going to help them. What could a handful of rioters do? If they fight, they might win a few days reprieve. And then the army rolls right over them. You can't solve that kind of problem by escalating firepower. I mean, even if they did have the power to fight the army to a standstill (cf: ISIS), they would be the bad guys in everyone's eyes.

by jboggan 12y ago

TomGullen 12y ago

> sizable portion of the populace looking at the changing political climate of the country and extrapolating their self defense rights meeting the y-axis at some point in their lifetime What's your definition of sizable?

hobbyjogger 12y ago

>Do we not ban books anymore because our governments and societies are so much more enlightened or because the internet makes it completely useless? Book bans (in general, with few exceptions) have been recognized as unconstitutional far, far longer than we've had mass adoption of the internet.[1] Here's the Supreme Court in 1982: "Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books …" [1] http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/banned-books http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/banned-books

shard972 12y ago

> I understand the perspective that more guns correlates positively with more deaths Thats incorrect, see switzerland, they have a lot of guns there, maybe even more than america per person but their gun deaths are very low.

krenoten 12y ago
> Thats incorrect, see switzerland, they have a lot of guns there, maybe even more than america per person but their gun deaths are very low. Your implication is incorrect. One point does not dissolve a correlation. 0 guns -> 0 gun deaths. N guns -> M gun deaths, therefore positive correlation. QED. Switzerland is an outlier in many metrics. They probably don't shoot as many of themselves because they tend to care a bit more about the well-being of their communities. Far fewer people feel the desperate need to lash out against their community.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
As well as being a data point raised in an attempt to refute a distribution (which never works), there is a radical ambiguity you are leaning on: "they have lots of guns there" when applied to Switzerland does not mean anything similar to "they have lots of guns there" as applied to the US. In Switzerland guns are mostly long guns that are heavily regulated and are under very tight storage restrictions. In the US guns are mostly hand guns that are unregulated and under no very tight storage restrictions. So if you want to make an argument from Switzerland, it would necessarily be of the form: "To reduce gun deaths in the US we should pretty much eliminate handgun ownership and require that all long guns be stored under lock and key in a specified manner, only to taken out on state-permitted occasions for military use."
JonRB 12y ago
People often cite Switzerland in gun arguments but leave out the fact that in Switzerland, owning a gun is an outcome of completing compulsory military service for men - Which means that they are trained in proper safety etc.. I recognise that it still raises the opportunity for crime but I believe the training is an important distinction to make. Some communities in Switzerland actually offer somewhere to keep the bullets in the town hall instead of at home, reducing accidental deaths.

shard972 12y ago

pacala 12y ago

> Imagine a Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We've learned a lot during WWII and in the decades after, in matters of mass destruction. A modern Warsaw Ghetto would share the fate of Grozny: razed to the ground by artillery and air bombings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#First_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#First_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#Second_Chechen_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#Second_Chechen_War > deprived of the legal ability to own firearms There are dozens of militias around the world, deprived of the _legal_ ability to own firearms. They own arms nonetheless. Plenty of arms. When push comes to shove and it's down to a struggle for survival, who cares about legal restrictions?!

JulianMorrison 12y ago

This is a stark example of correlation not equalling causation. Yes, guns are taken from minorities when an authoritarian regime decides to turn a ghetto into a death camp. And you know why? Because they have zero power already. The system is very thoroughly rigged against them. Those guns aren't going to help them. What could a handful of rioters do? If they fight, they might win a few days reprieve. And then the army rolls right over them. You can't solve that kind of problem by escalating firepower. I mean, even if they did have the power to fight the army to a standstill (cf: ISIS), they would be the bad guys in everyone's eyes.