'Maybe I'll go to Hell, but I think it's a good thing' says plastic Liberator gunsmith Cody Wilson

Re: Re more guns, lower crime rate

I'm a huge gun advocate. Guns for everybody I say. It's not like we need politicians to help us get them. We've got good firearms resource sharing too! If we see that a country is running low on firearms we've got an entire liveried courier service that hand delivers then to the unfortunate and leaves entire warehouses and shipping containers of extras behind in case these a future shortage.

More seriously, I really enjoy guns. I build some of the most complex and advanced machines on Earth, and I'm still impressed at the engineering in a well built firearm. The tides aren't any more reliable than a well built firearm and it's just fascinating from an engineering perspective.

But that stupid liberator thing was the work of a grade a moose dick with no sense of responsibility, common sense or even good design principals. Furthermore, he made a farce out of export control regulations that are very serious things and one of the very, very few government things I take seriously. Those rules aren't in place as a feature of national protectionism, they're in place because they're important and keep truly bad people from accessing things they should be able to get unless they're strong enough to take them.

Of all the things I'm involved in the export control regulations are the only thing I've got personal liability for and the only business related thing that gives me bad dreams. If I ship high speed mills to some country and they end up where they're not supposed to be who do you think goes to prison? It ain't not me. I'm responsible for that stuff until it's installed in its final home and where possible I'll come take it away for free just to keep it from falling into the hands of a misguided clown. They're usually like this guy but actually have morals they're willing to kill for, so they're actually meaningful people.

If you're going to make guns fine, but make a fucking gun. Not a dangerous piece of garbage that has precisely zero redeeming qualities. I've seen kids take the CO2 cartridges for BB guns and make more powerful, and less dangerous to the user, guns that fired AA batteries in a gelatin carrier and they were better looking to boot.

Nothing about this entire project was well done, and instead of preening, he should he hiding in a closet from embarrassment. The fact he isn't is indicative of the fact he's improperly configured and needs immediate service. Who crows about a failure?

And the guns save lives/reduce crime thing? Please. Guns are lots of things, but the overwhelming majority of firearms owners can't hit shit with a real pistol. Even the NRA (I'm a lifetime member) says a pistol is a last line if defense, you can't run or escape, last ditch you're probably going to die if you actually need the gun kind of thing. They did an excellent study in the late '80's or early '90's demonstrating how long guns and shot guns offered a reasonable level of protection, but real pistols were next to worthless and most people would be better off with a beer bottle, baseball bat or shillelagh. The liberator isn't even a real pistol, so it's not even that useless.

If saving lives and preventing crime is the goal then land mines are far more effective, last longer are incredibly safe and require nothing beyond the skills one needs to properly take a shit in the woods. Dig cat hole, insert mine, recover with earth. This Cody guy could even do that. Every amputee (or dead person) is one person less likely to harm another and mines cut down on pillaging of natural resources. The DMZ in Korea is a great example. That's going to be the next Galapagos style evolutionary island and not one single plastic gun is required. Mines work for rebellion, home defense, golf courses and military conflict zones equally well and instead of misleading, flat out lying actually, about what the liberator wasn't, just hand out land mines and do everyone a favor. Leave gun design to the people that know what they're doing.

The clown doesn't even interview well. I know some actual interesting people, I can arrange done face time with them if you lot are hard up for interviewees. Most of them will even treat you to lunch and good booze in person too. They're also leaders in tech, science and engineering so closer to your audience. They're not 3D printer renters who can't read rental contracts or export regulations.

Re: Re more guns, lower crime rate (THIS IS TRUE IN SOME LOCATIONS)

Pot meet Kettle, you're both black.... not that I'm criticizing but there truly are MANY less gun killings due to violence in the US than deaths due to bad medical practices or car accidents. Half of the roughly 38,00 deaths are due to SUICIDE not gun related violence

Note that number of killings and accompanying crime HAS ACTUALLY decreased where the populace can legally own guns. Overreaction to school shootings by CRAZY people notwithstanding, there is little that can actually be done to stop criminals from illegally obtaining guns.

For example, the cities of Detroit and Chicago each ban ordinary law abiding citizens from owning handguns. Criminals don't care.

In each of the banned areas, violent and gun crime has risen soley because NONE of these laws affect the criminals who STILL have guns (even though the guns are banned). In similar areas that ALLOW gun ownership,there is very little crime because those criminals understand they are facing an armed citizen.

Banning handguns or any weapon does NOT stop criminals, it only makes more victims. 9 people died just last week because the police regularly take 30 minutes to arrive or longer and are no deterrent to crime. Gangs no longer even care and the fact their guns are illegal makes them MORE prone to use them fatally. Dead men tell no tales.

However, you have an agenda so you continue to fail to understand.

this shows the problem behind the anti-gun crowd

this automatic belief that possession of a firearm equals "shooting somebody who appears to be threatening me".

That may be YOUR problem and why YOU should never possess a firearm. But to project that failure of character on everyone else, is rather arrogant of you.

I've been possessing BB guns and firearms since I was 9 years old. Legally carried a concealed weapon for 5 of those years. That still adds up to (next month) 34 years of not shooting ANYBODY regardless of perceived threat status.

Hell, I've only killed two three birds (defending the family pie cherry tree) and one deer (I claimed the kill but Dad fired the same time I did) in all that time.

Interestingly enough, other than the amount of game meat downed, I am NOT unique among firearm owners.

Your fantasies of violence that seem to only be curtailed by the lack of a means to realize them, should be addressed. You might find a firearm someday.

Re: A better alternative

For the downvoters.

Explain the disparity between the societal argument that harsh punishments don't deter crime, with the argument that that crime has fallen because people know they'll be caught and punished.

The base premise of the entire post doesn't stack up. As punishment has been made more lenient crime has gone down.

Re: A better alternative

Not sure why.

"the ability to destroy your neighbour due to rage or stupidity or drunkenness or greed has been curtailed"

The ability of one person to kill another has not been curtailed in the slightest.

In medieval times people had swords and blades. They still have swords and blades if they want them. In some countries they also have guns. Many houses have explosive gas piped directly into the place which could be tampered with, or there's the option of just chucking a glass of bleach in your victim's face and forcing a glug down their throat whilst they're clawing at their burning eyes.

People don't because there's a very good chance the Police will come a-knocking. Which they didn't in medieval days and you're usually better off suing for recompense in respect of whatever they have done to wrong you.

As for the whole guns thing. "Gun ownership" isn't a useful thing you can measure in any western country.

You have legal ownership and illegal ownership. Sometimes the two are black and white, sometimes there are broad grey areas.

In the UK extremely stringent licensing means the white and black markets are very separate things - even though licensed ownership has increased over the past decade gun crime has gone down, mostly due to enforcement activity like Operation Trident. Something like 98.9% of firearms crime involves firearms that have never been registered, nor touched the white market. These are guns that have been produced illicitly and have never been legal in the course of their existence. Additional legislation can't control them (beyond banning the private ownership of lathes and metalworking tools to stop people making them, which isn't terribly hard. About as hard as setting up a 3D printer in fact). Once you've banned unlicensed ownership once, the rest is down to enforcement. Making it more illegal is just silly.

In the US, there are ways and means to shift guns between the two markets, grey areas and room for straw-man purchases. People possess firearms for very different reasons, which in addition to differences in how crimes are recorded mean comparisons to European states are worthless. Worth noting ~50-54% of annual firearm deaths in the US are suicides though, so the often cited "gun death" stats are not crime stats although they're frequently presented as such. Gun crime is high, but not as high as some would have you believe. Tighter gun control would not prevent people using any of the other suicide methods that exist.

Some rural counties in the US mandate by law that every home keep a firearm for home defence. They have very low crime rates. Some US urban areas pretty much ban private firearm ownership and have high crime stats regardless.

Switzerland is different again, with many young men doing national service and keeping a military rifle at home in case of invasion, but an incredibly low rate of firearms crime. Indeed crime overall is low.

Basically, levels of gun ownership have squat to do with crime levels. In some cases it may be a contributing factor, but one that usually ranks down below factors relating to poverty, gang activity, efficacy of law enforcement, etc. In short nothing that can be reliably applied across a country as a national policy, much less the many jurisdictions and regulatory regimes of the world.

Re: Pragmatic Actual Immanent 3-D Realities

>>And that means the life of a burglar breaking into your home is worth more than the property they are trying to steal.

Your brainless sophistry, far from airtight, is a damp wad of deductive metaphorization, oblivious to the fact that, unlike inanimate "property", humans are self propelled by volition and INTENT and since, as such, do not rigorously recognize themselves as an object without volition, are not liable to the laws, whims and vagaries of inanimacy, hence cannot be metaphorized as such in any hare brained scheme of yours to compare bananas and alarm clocks. Your "logic" reads thus: The number two plus two bananas equals 4 bananas. You are leaping identity domains like a thief leaping back yard garbage cans after a gunshot from the back porch. Humans may not be "property" of object ownership, but they consist of actual properties of INTENT, and if your properties threaten my properties, yoo gonna get de-animated by buckshot even if your name isn't Albert Einstein.