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What I mean is- do the people (those who speak from positions of authority, such as senior law-enforcement / justice officials) understand that the armageddon-scenario they are describing is physically impossible and are merely preying on public hysteria to increase their power-base, or do they really believe that it's possible to print a scary death-rifle with an Ultimaker?
And I'd understand that if we were talking strictly about CNN and USA Today.
But I'm talking about All Things Considered here. And, speaking from personal experience, NPR does not knowingly endorse hysteria and hyperbole.
I get that most reporters didn't take Properties of Materials in college, don't understand the physics behind the operation of a firearm, and probably aren't even fluent in 3d-printing technology. That's fine. Their job is to interview people who do know what they're talking about. So when I hear law-enforcement officials talking about the holocaust which is going to ensue when people can print their own plastic guns, I'm flabbergasted.
I honestly don't know whether they are unaware of the fact that physics and chemistry simply don't allow a repeating firearm to be made from ABS plastic, but it seems like they should be.
I could be wrong. I often am when predicting the future. But claiming that it's ever going to be possible to create a reliable, workable semi-automatic rifle using nothing but 3d printed parts strikes me as akin to someone in the mid 1970s, when the consumer-grade 2d printer first started to become available, that people would someday be cranking out complete, hard bound copies of Melville first-editions in their den. A dot-matrix (or inkjet, or dye-sub, or laser) printer isn't capable of doing the same job as a book-binding plant, in much the same way that an FDM printer isn't capable of doing the same job as a gunsmithing lathe.
Then they'd reflect light at a wavelength of ~450–495 nm, and dumb people would think they were clever by saying "Why the hell do we call these oranges, when they're not even orange? We should call them blues," to which their vapid friends would laugh because they felt obligated to.
Joe what you aren't remembering is that in the United States, most departments require little more than a GED and no felonies to become a LEO (and in at least one state you can be disqualified for being too intelligent). In the state of California, it takes nearly 3x the amount of training hours to become a beautician than it does to become an officer (same in hicksville Oklahoma). Obviously this varies locale to locale, for instance in OK, Tulsa officers must have a Bachelor's in anything minimum, but OKC needs a GED and a higher base salary.
So I'm not sure why you expect more than "I put bullets in, pull trigger, go bang."
This is just one of things that gets me going knowing we have guys with authorization to use deadly force, yet don't even understand simple things like "Yes, you actually can be photographed and filmed while you are in public. You have no right to privacy in a public space."
Z31, I hear you. And if they were just interviewing Officer Buzzcut, then I'd understand.
But I'm hearing this hysteria from state attorneys general. These are allegedly educated and intelligent people.
It's just an all around **** show anymore.
For example, Julie Ezell, Oklahoma Pharmacy Board's executive director, was recently fired for taking bribes regarding the Medicinal Marijuana vote in OK. They basically added a bunch of extra rules to the law that was against the spirit of what the people voted for, no smokables, must be a licensed pharmacist at every store during open hours, XXX huge sum to open a dispensary, etc.
She was fired, but at first there was even a question if they would press charges.
And it's had a fantastic backfire against all these jerks after doing so (another one of the atty's was found to have created a false email account and sent threatening emails to herself to somehow harm the advocates for medicinal use).
The outright and blatant corruption has meant that supporters have already gathered enough votes to put recreational marijuana up for vote in November (I think). So in a few months, we've gone from, "This state is so backwards and conservative there is no way they are going to pass medical pot," to "Well f--- them we will vote in recreational just because they were trying to screw us out of what we voted for."
The outright and blatant corruption has meant that supporters have already gathered enough votes to...
"Well f--- them we will vote in... just because they were trying to screw us out of what we voted for."
It's refreshing.
This is how people felt when they were screwed over year after year by career politicians in the Republican Party who were only conservative fiscally in their campaigns but never in practice and they decided to vote in an outsider who was not a politician for president. Screw politicians.
Also, I reactivated my Hulu account last night. It seems they aren't up to snuff on the current political climate. I joked with my girlfriend about creating a burner Twitter account and seeing if I could get the outrage going because Hulu didn't have the appropriate pronoun selection for creating an account. She asked me not to.
I've heard that some can fire as many as 5 or 6 rounds at rimfire sizes, perhaps more, but let's ignore that and assume that all 3D printed guns can fire exactly one round safely enough such that they don't pose a statistically significant threat to the operator.
Here's the question that I think many of the pro-gunners aren't fully considering when they ask "why has the media lost their damn minds?": How many bullets are necessary to kill *insert mammal here*?
If someone is hell bent against making sure another person dies, and the background checking process has fully succeeded in preventing that person from buying a gun, then 3D printing would be a way for that person to acquire the means to shoot another person with very little creative effort on their part. Certainly a single bullet might be exceptionally easy to get through an x-ray machine during peak transit times, and a plastic gun of the right size might pass easily through a simple metal detector. If the person had any creativity whatsoever, though, there are probably thousands of methods for hand-crafting a mechanism capable of firing a single shot - it's exceedingly simple to make a metallic single shot device that would easily pass as - say - a belt buckle, or a marker-sized laser pointer. I've seen a shotgun made out of a 10" section of steel pipe with a threaded end-cap. Who is going to empty out a bag of plumbing paraphernalia searching the inside of every steel tube when a plumber rolls through a security checkpoint to repair a damaged supply line on the 26th floor?
The anti-gunners either don't know this, or else they pretend to not know this. There's not already an epidemic of people getting shot by handmade single-shot weapons, and there haven't been any mass shootings by plastic or "80% lower" AR-15s. It hasn't happened. So while there really isn't any major threat to OMG 3D PRINTED GUNS!!, you at least now know why the anti-republicans are telling the uninformed to start panicking.
Will an all-plastic gun be used to commit a mass shooting? It's highly unlikely; but can 3D printing of gun parts be used to bypass background checks as a means to acquire fully functional firearms for the commission of mass shootings? Yes, 100% absolutely - 3D models for printing AR-15 compatible lower receivers have been freely available for years - that's the piece of the gun which carries a serial number and is registered. The lower receiver bears almost no actual firing stress of the gun, and every single other part of the gun can be purchased online and shipped directly to your door in 2-3 days from just about any gun parts supplier without anything more than the shipping address of your neighbor 3 doors down and the credit card information you pulled from the skimmer at your local gas station.
dude, im smart enough to understand what the article was trying to convey (especially if you read the first sentence), but the headline was completely misleading.
But I THINK youre suggesting that the title was faked and therefore BS... but did you consider it was updated?
I tell myself that they couldn't possibly be as dumb as they appear, and that they must be consciously manipulating their constituents for gain. I'm not at all certain that I'm right though.
A Rabbi, an Imam, and a Priest walk into a bar. They order fruit juice and appetizers, and have a rational discussion about issues affecting present-day society.
A Rabbi, an Imam, and a Priest walk into a bar. They order fruit juice and appetizers, and have a rational discussion about issues affecting present-day society.
Tommy Robinson, a prominent activist opposed to radical Islam in the U.K., has been released from prison, where he’d been held since May for live-streaming outside the trial of a group of Islamic men accused of gang raping underage girls. Robinson was charged with violating laws that prohibit filming of court proceedings. He was summarily sentenced to 13 months in prison (including 3 months from a previous suspended sentence). Today however, a judge ruled that the arrest and swift conviction had violated Robinson’s right to a fair hearing, and ordered him freed on bail pending trial.
The “Free Tommy” movement had garnered significant support world wide following the jailing of the “citizen-journalist” and brought attention to several issues. For one, it gave the world a glimpse at laws and policies in Britain that seem downright Orwellian compared to America’s freedom of speech protections. In the U.K., courts can, and often do, order the media not to cover criminal proceedings, ostensibly to protect the defendant’s right to a free trial by limiting outside information that could bias jurors.
Yet such laws often backfire, as happened with Robinson’s own arrest. Following his jailing, a reporting ban was put on any mention of Robinson’s arrest, swift trial, and conviction. So for days, with little information to go on, many supporters claimed he’d been arrested for no reason, and rumors spread that, for example, the recent appointment to the position of home secretary of Sajid Javid — who was born to Muslim parents — was the direct cause of Robinson’s recent arrest.
However, a much more significant downside to the press blackout rules has been their muting effect on a very troubling issue that has been plaguing Britain for years. It’s the very issue that Robinson was jailed for covering: an epidemic of Islamic men, mostly of Pakistani descent, gang raping underage girls in Britain.
The euphemistically termed “grooming gangs” have been responsible for thousands of rapes across the country. Indeed one of the trials Robinson was jailed for covering was that of four men accused of taking a 16-year-old girl, who had asked them for directions, to an apartment above a kebab and pizza restaurant and raping her.
The gangs target vulnerable women and girls, meeting them on social media or preying on them in the street under the pretext of offering a warm car or safe place to say. Victims were offered money, alcohol, and drugs, and are forced or coerced into sex, often while incapacitated.
Some are beaten, threatened, or locked in rooms if they refused.
The problem is so widespread that an investigation found 1,500 victims in one town alone. Yet a number of government inquires have concluded that for years, police and politicians ignored the issue, terrified of the accusations of racism that would come their way if they did address it. Almost all of the offenders are Muslim, and many are immigrants, having come to Britain from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and elsewhere.
And what cases were prosecuted are hidden from the public by the aforementioned media blackout rules. Last year a large investigation and trial of 17 defendants was finally made public after three years under a do-not-report order.
When people like Tommy Robinson tried to publicize the problem, they became subject to accusations of racism and fascism and subject to threats and intimidation. All that has done is to shift attention away from what is a very real, and very tragic, problem.
07-31-2018, 09:41 PM
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