A Matter Of Perception?

[mljdeckard]

This is a bit of grey area for me. I think all small arms should be available to citizens, including full-auto.

BUT,

In the interests of maintaining what we have, while not shocking people out there who don't already know and would want to take it away if they knew, what I will settle for is, crew-served weapons are not arms, they are ordnance, and not necessarily as necessary for personal ownership as rifles, AND, since machine guns are already registered and regulated, I will let them remain that way, but with periodic additions to the registry so that we aren't limited to weapons that are at least 22 years old, and so that an AK-47, which sells on the streets of sub-Saharan Africa for less than $50, doesn't cost $12,000 in the states. ($1-2k is no more reasonable, but much less outrageos, if that makes sense.)

 

[fearless leader]

No WMDs

If you were to allow the private ownership of...say intercontinental ballistic missiles with 500 Megaton nuclear (or NU-CU-LER if your from Texas) MERV warheads, and your neighbor next door had one, wouldn't an accidental discharge be something spectacular?

Imagine you come home one evening and your neighbor, having imbibed a little too much whiskey, is running over cars with his M1 Abrahms, singing Irish Eyes are smiling, and you can't convince him to stop. He also won't stop the tank.

I wouldn't want to live next door to a "Broken Arrow" if his kid backed over his nuclear weapon with the family station wagon.

And God forbid he drop a vial of some airborne neurotoxin while he's cleaning out his garage.

Don't even think about the stupid ideas some people get on the 4th of July!

The Darwin awards exist for a reason.

Having said that, where do I sign up for my ICBM?

 

[Ed Ames]

Umm.. let's be realistic for a moment.

First... price:

Brazil wanted $10 million each for Condor II missiles w/ a range of 1,000km. China wanted about $20 million each for CCS-2 with a 2,500km range. US Peacekeeper missiles come in at about $65 million each.

Those prices are without nuclear warheads of course. A standard ICBM might carry 10 MIRV half-megaton warheads that have a retail price of $20 to $60 million dollars each.

So we are looking at a $250,000,000 dollar weapon. That's not counting the real estate needed for launch facilities.

I don't know about your neighbors but very few of mine could afford such a device. If they had one they certainly wouldn't casually use it. A willingness to put a quarter of a billion dollars of ones own money into such a weapon would be an indication of extreme patriotism. The ability to do so would be an indication of extraordinary responsibility and capability.

Now... if someone has a quarter of a billion dollars to spend.... do you think you could prevent them from doing harm by keeping them from owning a few warheads? I mean really... 9/11 cost maybe $30,000... so the person who could afford a loaded ICBM could finance over 8000 9/11 type attacks.

Do you really think someone who is willing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a single-use weapon would be stopped by a few laws?

It's a silly and irrational fear. There is no sane justfication for laws barring private ownership of such weapons. The "think what would happen" arguments are just unhinged versions of the "there'll be blood in the streets" argument against shall-issue CCW.

 

[Vector]

Ed Ames wrote;

Umm.. let's be realistic for a moment.

First... price:

Brazil wanted $10 million each for Condor II missiles w/ a range of 1,000km. China wanted about $20 million each for CCS-2 with a 2,500km range. US Peacekeeper missiles come in at about $65 million each.

Those prices are without nuclear warheads of course. A standard ICBM might carry 10 MIRV half-megaton warheads that have a retail price of $20 to $60 million dollars each.

So we are looking at a $250,000,000 dollar weapon. That's not counting the real estate needed for launch facilities.

I don't know about your neighbors but very few of mine could afford such a device. If they had one they certainly wouldn't casually use it. A willingness to put a quarter of a billion dollars of ones own money into such a weapon would be an indication of extreme patriotism. The ability to do so would be an indication of extraordinary responsibility and capability.

Now... if someone has a quarter of a billion dollars to spend.... do you think you could prevent them from doing harm by keeping them from owning a few warheads? I mean really... 9/11 cost maybe $30,000... so the person who could afford a loaded ICBM could finance over 8000 9/11 type attacks.

Do you really think someone who is willing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a single-use weapon would be stopped by a few laws?

It's a silly and irrational fear. There is no sane justfication for laws barring private ownership of such weapons. The "think what would happen" arguments are just unhinged versions of the "there'll be blood in the streets" argument against shall-issue CCW.

When I made the poll it was not envisioning multi million or billion dollar weapons systems. The people who responded in the WMD category probably were not thinking that either. Rather they were thinking about black market or home made WMD's like dirty bombs, chem/bio weapons, etc. The expensive delivery systems you are talking about are much different than a suitcase WMD, which unfortunately is becoming more of a realistic threat in the hands of terrorists.
I of course have held my comments about those who think regular Joe's should own WMD's just to be neutral. However that is beyond any doubt a very extreme point of view.

 

[Ed Ames]

I ... was not envisioning multi million or billion dollar weapons systems. The people who responded in the WMD category probably were not thinking that either.

I mentioned the expensive delivery systems because the guy who posted just before me was talking about ICBMs and MERVs. I'll take that as evidence that at least one respondent was thinking along those lines.

As the other stuff.... that's tricky ground you're walking on.

Let's game this out, starting with the premise that someone builds a rocket-propelled chemical weapon and deploys it in a populated area. 3000 dead in one noxious go.

Let's further assume that the perpetrator lived through the deployment (not a given at all... many of these are murder/suicides as the kid in Omaha recently demonstrated).

Do we need to be able to charge him with possession of a chemical weapon? Imagine the argument... "Your honor, this isn't about thousands of innocent people dying. This isn't about thousands more with permanent injuries including diminished lung capacity, disfigurement, blindness, and worse. This is about the unlicensed possession of a destructive device as defined in 26 USC § 5845(f). The people demand that justice be done and this man be immediately remanded to custody for not less than 36 months in a federal penitentiary."

Okay....

How about possession without any intent to use? Like maybe someone who just has the weapon for the feeling of power but has no intention of harming anyone?

"Your honor, Mr. Smith would have you believe that his tanks of anhydrous ammonia and diesel fuel were 'agricultural supplies'. He will attempt to convince you that he is a 'farmer'. He will tell you tales of using these chemicals to grow 'food'. In short, your honor, he will sell you a load of fertilizer. We will demonstrate that these are the same dangerous chemicals used to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and kill 168 innocent people including many children. We will demonstrate that 'farmer' Smith knew that these chemicals could be used to make deadly explosives. We will demonstrate that he had contacts over the 'internet' with many extreme anti-authority and anti-government provocateurs who led 'farmer' Smith to leave a good job in a city to commence a deliberate, slow, cold blooded, methodical attack against innocent Americans. We will show that he also possessed rockets capable of delivering deadly cargoes. We will demonstrate that, through constructive possession, Mr. 'farmer' Smith was in possession of a destructive device as defined in 26 USC § 5845(f). We will show that, without the speedy intervention of the FBI, BATF, and local law enforcement, we could today be facing a far darker situation: Thousands of lives lost in the blink of an eye. We will demonstrate that Mr. Smith deserves the maximum penalty allowed by law."

Yeah.... I'm really warming up to this. We don't do anything more to the real attackers and in trade we put anyone who owns anything that could be interpreted as a WMD in jeopardy. This is really good!

That wasn't what you were thinking either of course. The problem is that everything today is taken as a realistic threat. Arrest the airline pilot for trying to bring a pocket knife onto the plane never mind the fact that he could simply twiddle a control and everyone aboard will die.

Never mind the fact that it won't stop the people it is putatively intended to stop. If you are willing to face death by lethal injection to kill a large number of people you won't be stopped by the prospects of a few months in prison if someone catches you.

Never mind reality. "There oughtta be a law."

You can't even claim those laws have improved society. They haven't done anything to prevent any realistic threat and they have sent a lot of harmless people to jail for owning weapons that 200 years ago they would've been welcomed in town by the mayor for being concerned enough citizens to buy and maintain such expensive military weapons. Not to mention keeping you from buying 68 caliber rifles.

 

[Gordon Fink]

Well, when something is illegal, the only place it can be had is on the black market.

~G. Fink

 

[Scratchy]

I could legally buy a bulldozer and customize it. But bulldozers cost a lot of money just think of how many .50 BMG rifles I could buy? WMD's are different because they have the potential to destroy entire cities. I think most people are happy and don't want to spend money on bulldozers or planes or fertilizer. All very legal objects that could be used in war.

 

[Ed Ames]

OK, now we have two definitions of WMD. For Vector it includes "dirty bombs" that really don't destroy anything much -- an effective dirty bomb can cause zero fatalities (and a lot of medical headaches, cleanup headaches, uncertainty, and fear for a lot of people) -- and for Scratchy they can destroy entire cities.

I'll go more with the Scratchy version of what makes a W into a WMD. Then we're back to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and your neighbor in the suburbs having an AD or using it irresponsibility just isn't a problem.

 

[NG VI]

WMDs are an unfortunate reality, i believe they have played out their role in history and unless we have need to shoot an asteroid off course or we decide to 'sterilize' the middle east they will just be massively expensive high-maintenance devices to look after. Machine guns- hell yeah i want my government priced UMP .45 and MP5/10 as soon as i make enough money to feed 'em

 

[2Ais4U]

Go back under the bridge.

 

[ctdonath]

Go reconsider Cooper's Four Rules, as expanded to cover safe use of most weapons.

If I point a gun at you without good cause, you have justifiable reason to use immediate and violent force to stop me from doing so. Not knowing whether it was "loaded" (unless you know for sure it isn't) is irrelevant.
WMDs "point" at everyone within a wide area. If you have a WMD in your garage, and I live in your neighborhood, then I can presume it's "pointed" at me, and thus have cause to stop you and disable/remove it through whatever means necessary.

 

[Ed Ames]

OK, I'll reconsider Cooper's Four Rules.

A car is a weapon when used as a weapon. Cars are pointed at me all the time... the guy behind me on the road usually has his car pointed at me. Ergo I have cause to stop the driver behind me and disable/remove his car. He pointed a deadly weapon at me!

Yes, ctdonath, I think you've successfully refuted Cooper's Four Rules as they apply generally to having cause to stopping people and disabling their weapons.

 

[Vector]

Ed,

Listing a dirty bomb was just an example, as it is meant more as an economic weapon even though it can have long term health effects on it's victims. My point was that WMD's can be had or made, and you do not need to have Bill Gates wealth to get one.

 

[Ed Ames]

I agree there are affordable high grade weapons that can be made.

That brings us right around to one of the main arguments against gun control though.

Criminals don't obey laws. That runs right up to the edge of circular but it's true. If someone has decided to to accept the risks involved in commiting crime X, then crime x2, x3, x4, Y, and Z are basically free. They've already shifted from very low risk to very high risk and a little more won't stop them.

So... for people who are a threat... people who have decided to do harm... they've already decided to commit crime X. That means they've weighed the perceived outcome against the perceived punishment and decided that the risk of punishment is acceptable. If you've decided that the risk of life in prison, or execution, for murder is acceptable the rest of the alphabet, which means maybe a few months or years for possession of bomb making components or something, isn't such a big deal.

How realistic is that? Let's say they are a suicide bomber. If they are caught with bomb making supplies they'll face a few years in prison. If they are caught planning to blow up their bomb in a public place they'll get something longer. If they aren't caught they'll die.

How would that change if you got rid of the laws against making bombs?

If they are caught with bomb making supplies they'll walk, right? So farmer Smith with his supplies to make a bomb fit to blow up several federal buildings gets off.... unless he is caught loading those supplies into a rented van with a map to the nearest federal building of course. Then he'll get the longer sentence and his 'possession' is just evidence of the seriousness of his intent. He is punished. Justice is served.

OK, they don't walk... but maybe the guys who actually succeed in blowing up their makeshift bomb will walk... except if they weren't blown up with the bomb they've probably got a long list of capital murder charges or similar. So a few possession charges are probably not even going to be mentioned.

So what exactly does the law against these effective weapons do?

A few things. They increase the odds that non-outlaws will be punished for technical (vs. intentional) violations of the law. They reduce the liberty of people in areas where what you think of as WMDs are useful. I know people who have personally made large bombs... hundreds of pounds of the various ingredients. They did so legally (at the time) and (more or less) safely, on private property, for legitimate reasons (they wanted to dig a pond and that was more fun than renting earth moving equipment). They allow authorities to arrest potential bad people before they actually commit a major crime.

Hey... that last one seems pretty good, right? Except you take someone who was planning to commit a major crime, put him in prison for a few months/years so he can plan without having to work and isn't subject to normalizing social influences, you give him a chance to meet confederates, you give him one more reason to attack by branding him an 'outsider' and permenantly stripping him of civil rights and any real chance of positive reintegration into society as a productive member... and then you release him to go back and try again, this time with fewer penalties because you've already ruined his life and there isn't a lot more you can do to him except give him free room and board for a while.

Sorry, I'm just not buying into this.

Some people seem to think that a society is a machine and deviations are just signs that the bolts are too loose. They tighten everything and when that doesn't work they grab a longer wrench and tighten some more. Only problem is that at some point they turn the screws just a little too far, strip the threads, and the whole thing comes apart. We're seeing a lot of that today. Our society has been tightening more and more for the last 50 years... gun bans are the most relevant on THR but the list is actually very very long. I'm expected to walk a far tighter line than my parents were, with far more extreme penalties for mistakes... and children today have it even worse. This is done in the name of safety... but the root of safety in a society is common social bonds and tightening the screws breaks those bonds. It becomes counterproductive.

And, odd as it seems, a useless law against possession of "WMDs" is in that category. It does no good (in that it doesn't prevent harm ) and it is a tightening of the screws of society which means systemically it is actually doing harm to our cohesion and therefore our mutual security.

Get the idea I'm not a fan?

 

[GHF]

WMDs

WMDs are essentially political - not military - weapons. The Balance of Terror only works if all sides have them and can deliver. Tactically, they have little real use.

Studies of gas in the World War I indicated that:

1. It is useless unless the war is an extreme one of position (the trenches).
2. It is very difficult to control and direct when being deployed.
3. When used, it affects both the offense and defense, making both much more difficult to perform.

Nuclear weapons produce the kind of colateral damage that removes achieving the expected results of victory (what the loser has) - unless you are a nilist Islamic fascist wack job.

 

[woerm]

as stated before

w/ letters of Marque and reprisal any citizen can have the cruise missile equipped Iowa class BB's if they so desire and can afford them.

that being said "paging Bill Gates Bath Iron Works on line 2 about your order..."

what part of all the cruel implements of the solider are covered under the 2A?

all of them

w/ marque and reprisal everything else.

r

 

[Ed Ames]

GHF... I largely agree with you. The problem is that people today are mixing every possible definition of WMD. To some it's a city buster. To others it's an inconvenience weapon or anything more than 4oz of pepper spray.

If we look only at the truly major weapons... the city killers... they are innately VERY VERY expensive. Enriched Uranium is very hard (and expensive) to produce in any quantity and you need many pounds to make a bomb.

The fact that a weapon is mostly political doesn't mean it shouldn't be owned by individuals. You as a citizen have a duty to protect your nation. You can be drafted. You can be sent to war. You can serve your nation voluntarily. The ownership of city-buster bombs by US citizens would be just as effective as the ownership of city-buster bombs by the US government. Private ownership of weapons really does work that way. It's pretty widely reported that Japan considered, and rejected, invading the mainland US because there would be "a rifle fight on every street" between their soldiers and our civilians.

So private ownership of hydrogen bombs is a non-issue.

If we start including inconvenience weapons suddenly anything becomes a WMD and virtually everyone is at jeopardy of prosecution in one way or another. If you own both bleach and ammonia, and know why you shouldn't mix them, you are in fact in constructive possession of chemical weapons. Same as having a semi-auto rifle, the parts to make it full auto, and the knowledge that you have both, put you in constructive possession of a machine gun. If you are aware of the results and own both chemicals you can be prosecuted for possession. If you weren't aware... well, you are now. You are, as of the moment you gained that knowledge, no longer legally allowed to own both bleach and ammonia at the same time.

"You're just being silly, nobody has ever been charged with that."

Yeah, and 60 years ago nobody had ever been charged for owning marijuana. 25 years ago nobody was charged as terrorists for mixing baking soda in vinegar in a soda bottle. The screws have been tightened.

I'm not arguing for the ownership of private WMDs. Far from it... I'd rather nobody had them. I'm arguing against a nonsensical law.

 

[Vector]

Here is the video clip of Archie Bunker on gun control I alluded to when discussing guns on planes;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLjNJI54GMM

Regardless of which side of the isle you stand on(WMD or butter knife), it is funny.

 

[44Dave]

Damnit, I voted before I realized it was from 2007 >: (

 

[Hanzo581]

What's up with people bumping very old threads today, this is the second I have come across in just an hour.

 

[Vector]

I'm the OP, and found a video clip I had discussed back when the thread was new. However this poll is still as relevant today as it was back when I first made it. Fell free to express your point of view by voting and/or discussion, just as long as you do it in a civil manner.

 

[Hanzo581]

Ah, well I voted, I think any law abiding citizen should be able to own any conventional firearm he or she wants, included full autos (without any special paperwork or fees).

 

[Ed Ames]

Funny in a sense.... but it cost me my last word! And it was a good last word.

 

[General Geoff]

Tanks, missiles, bombs, etc. are legal to own by private citizens (at least in most states). Before the GCA of 1968 they weren't even regulated. I don't see what the hangup or disagreement is.

 

[rbernie]

Let's let this one sleep...