[ExI] The future of the Second Ammendment

[Mike Dougherty]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very interesting article from our point of view.
>
> http://bit.ly/TOI3Ve
>
> It discusses the future of 3d printing technology, and how that might
> interact with the second amendment (the right to bear arms).
>
> Would love to hear the group's reaction to the idea that you could just
> print up a weapon at your leisure. In the long term, this could be any
> weapon, a shoulder launched rocket propelled grenade, for example, or a
> mortar, not just a gun.

A friend of mine asked me to help him build a spud gun.  We went to
Home Depot and the guy in the plumbing section asked if he could help.
 We didn't, at first, volunteer our intentions... but he recognized
the most likely use for the parts we were buying and asked if he
wanted them cut to length... he then recommended additional parts that
would be required as well as where in the store to acquire them.  So
for $40 we have the making of a cannon to launch vegetables using a
propellent as ubiquitous as hairspray.  Now imagine the potato is
replaced with a handful of nails, for example.
  Or to deviate from the gun motif, lets take a page from horror
movies and video games:  you can purchase a chainsaw at Home Depot.
There's not a lot of defense against a madman wielding a chainsaw with
intent to kill.  If you take another example from movies, Heath
Ledger's Joker (Dark Knight) made a pencil a most effective (and
gruesome) lethal object.

How much do we have to ban to keep people safe?  How much restriction
will simply escalate the craziness?

To address the 3d printed gun I suggest that it's a distraction.  If
one has access to the bullets necessary to make a 3d printer gun into
a lethal weapon, they have many other options for killing people even
without the gun.  The next step of course is to make a crossbow that
doesn't even require access to bullets.  The 3d printer gun plan will
likely do very little to influence gun control, but will illustrate
what a "danger" technology can be... so if guns are banned, we risk
losing the right to own 3d printers because they _could_ be used to
make a gun.

The whole issue makes me so angry that I just can't write any more on
it tonight.  I don't care as much about the guns themselves as I do
the general attitude towards revoking rights under the guise of public
safety.