
A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns - apo
https://www.wired.com/story/a-landmark-legal-shift-opens-pandoras-box-for-diy-guns/
======
DanAndersen
I'm glad the story brought up the comparisons to the early days when exporting
crypto was similarly restricted under munitions laws. That era was similarly
full of calls to ban or regulate or backdoor encryption, saying that only
terrorists or evildoers had need of such "military-grade encryption."

Putting aside the specifics of the gun control/rights question (if such a
thing is possible), it's downright refreshing to see this guy's attitude. It's
reminiscent of some of the earlier, more libertarian hacker ethos, of being
focused on being able to do something and fighting hard against authority
figures wanting (justifiably or no) to step in to suppress it. With the growth
of the SV tech industry, it seems a lot of that fire has been stomped out.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Why on Earth would we want to blindly cultivate that attitude? Sometimes
authority figures overreach, but plenty of laws exist for good reason. We
wouldn't look at someone trying to make it easier to distribute child
pornography and say "putting aside the specifics of the child pornography
question, it's refreshing to see this guy's attitude."

The outcomes of our actions matter. Fighting for something unethical against
authority figures who justifiably want to suppress it isn't praiseworthy, it's
shameful.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Guns can be used for good, and they can be used for bad - exactly the same as
cryptography. Child porn is something that relies exclusively on exploiting
people who cannot in any way consent to the actions involved. It's in no way
comparable. The conversation beyond this depends on your view of the role of
government, and _opinions_ there vary. I see the role of the government as
maximizing freedom and liberty for people to live and prosper (or fail) in
accordance with their own actions. Banning items which the vast majority are
completely capable of handling responsibly because of a tiny minuscule of
abusers is not something that I think the government should ever do.

And really the fundamental problem is not guns, it's people wanting to hurt
other people. London is a good example of this issue. As the demographics and
state of that city have changed, their crime and murder rates have soared.
Even with extremely strict gun control, they managed to briefly surpass New
York City in murders. This has now led their government to begin to implement,
literally, "knife control" along with "acid control" given a rise in people
spraying others with things such as drain cleaner, as a weapon. And when the
perpetrators start killing people with steel rods, will we then move to try to
ban weights? If people want to kill or hurt each other, they're going to find
a way. Looking at the way is missing the actual problem - which is the people
that want to kill or hurt other people.

~~~
jakelazaroff
With regard to the "fundamental issue", number of guns is extremely highly
correlated with a high murder rate [1]. General crime rate, on the other hand,
is not [2]; London's brief passage of New York in murder rate belies this.

More generally, though, OP's statement was explicitly made _without_ regard to
whether gun control was right or wrong. It supported standing up to authority
figures in the abstract, which is why I used child pornography as an example
of something authority figures are (uncontroversially) generally regarded as
right in suppressing.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-
shoot...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-
international.html)

[2] [https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-
europe](https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe)

~~~
TangoTrotFox
He stated literally that the action was _' reminiscent of the earlier, more
libertarian, hacker ethos'._ You are straw manning his comment.

As for the issue, do you really think news articles are reasonable sources on
an issue like this? This [1] is a list of countries by intentional homicide
rates. This [2] is a list of countries by gun ownership rates. Here's a
sampling of your "extremely high correlation."

\------

Top 5 Countries by Gun Ownership -- Intentional Homicide Ranking (lower means
more homicides)

1\. USA -- 90

2\. Serbia -- 170

3\. Yemen -- 77

4\. Cyprus -- 179

5\. Saudi Arabia -- 166

\------

Top 5 countries by Intentional Homicide Ranking -- Gun Ownership Ranking
(lower means more guns)

1\. El Salvador -- 92

2\. Honduras -- 90

3\. Venezuela -- 60

4\. US Virgin Islands -- unranked

5\. Jamaica -- 73

\------

The numbers get even sillier if you do the top 20. You have to remember that
some of the gun heaviest nations in the world include Norway, France, Canada,
Austria, Iceland, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, New Zealand, etc.

~~~
jakelazaroff
The full sentence you quoted, and the preceding one:

 _> Putting aside the specifics of the gun control/rights question (if such a
thing is possible), it's downright refreshing to see this guy's attitude. It's
reminiscent of some of the earlier, more libertarian hacker ethos, of being
focused on being able to do something and fighting hard against authority
figures wanting (justifiably or no) to step in to suppress it._

i.e. it's "refreshing" to see someone fighting against authority figures,
whether or not those authority figures are justified. I'm not straw manning
his comment; I simply disagree that the "earlier hacker ethos" he describes is
something to be revered, and I've explained why.

You are cherry-picking the data in your charts to support your conclusion. The
US Virgin Islands, for example, has barely 100,000 people; the US has
320,000,000. Just 4 gun homicides per year there would vastly exceed the US's
gun homicide rate.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
He specifically says the earlier, _more libertarian_ , hacker ethos. While
libertarianism ethos would not be in support of child porn, it is in support
of many things that people might believe are justifiably prohibited. For
instance, many of a libertarian ethos feel that all drugs should be legalized
under the logic that the government has no right to tell people what they can
or cannot put in their own bodies. This is debatable however, and an example
of something that somebody might want to fight against ( _perhaps by telling
people how to grow /refine various drugs_), even if others might argue it is
something that is justifiably prohibited.

When you're trying to find a correlation between homicide rate and guns per
capita, you think looking a listing of nations by homicide rates and guns per
capita is cherry picking? If so then, at the minimum, you've got some crazy
cognitive dissonance going on. Though I failed in my last link to include the
sources. You can see quite clearly that if there is any correlation, it's
would be an inverse - though I would not suggest causality there. As I said,
the problem is not guns - it's people. And even if the countries the fewer
undesirables have more guns, I expect that is probably just a spurious
correlation.

[1] = list of countries by intentional homicide rate

[2] = list of countries by guns per capita

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> He specifically says the earlier, more libertarian, hacker ethos._

Which was explicitly described as trying to fighting against authority
figures' attempt to suppress something, whether or not they were justified. I
don't know how much clearer that can be.

 _> When you're trying to find a correlation between homicide rate and guns
per capita, you think looking a listing of nations by homicide rates and guns
per capita is cherry picking?_

Choosing to ignore other evidence which refutes your claim (in this case, the
wide population disparities that prevent direct comparison of the two lists,
due to high variance in countries with low populations) is cherry picking.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos,
trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're
endorsing for instance the holocaust even though seizing the possessions of
the victims there probably showed a net profit.

There's a reasonable argument to be made for restricting the nations to some
minimum population. The typical figure is 250k-300k which is also likely
conservatively high. The reason your article wants to restrict the data to
populations of 10 million is precisely to cherry pick. For instance this [1]
is the murder rate for Jamaica, a country of some 2.8 million, over the past 5
years. The numbers themselves have some variance, but the rate's magnitude is
relatively unchanged because of how high that scale is. It ranges from
something like 600% to 900% higher than the US over those numbers. It's the
same thing domestically within the US. Places like Detroit have obscenely high
and consistent murder rates. The population? 672k. Guess we can just discount
it as variance?

You can find the sort of same head-in-the-sand attitude when discussing
matters with people on the opposite end of the spectrum. For instance,
Scandinavia has done some great things. But wait... What about the population?
Sweden? 9.9 million. Denmark? 5.7 million. Norway? 5.2 million. Finland? 5.5
million. Iceland? 0.3 million. Well I guess we can completely discount
Scandinavia for any and all statistics. Since none of the nations reach that
magic 10 million mark, they must be completely irrelevant. Right?

[1] -
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2_nhWaXUAgKKfq.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2_nhWaXUAgKKfq.jpg)

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> If I say, 'this action is reminiscent of a ruthlessly capitalistic ethos,
trying to make a profit wherever one is to be made' that doesn't mean you're
endorsing for instance the holocaust even though seizing the possessions of
the victims there probably showed a net profit._

Right, except my reaction is to the literal description of the attitude in
question, not something that happens to incorporate it. The statement was "I
admire X, which is a component of Y", and I'm saying "I find X, specifically,
objectionable".

No one is claiming 10 million is some magic statistical number for sample
sizes; _that_ is a straw man.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Ahh. I would rarely consider, let alone object, to things outside of context.
X of course means very different things given varying Ys.

The reason I am talking about 10 million is because it's the magical number
that the study the NYTimes chose to run an article on, decided to pick. It has
nothing to do with reducing variance, though of course that's used as the
justification. In reality even in populations of tens of thousands there is
surprisingly low variance in homicide rates.

I mean if you look at what they're doing it's really scummy. They're juking
their numbers to try to create a correlation when one does not exist. That's
already really bad. But then they take it a step further by just jumping to
correlation = causation. Try to imagine that this was a topic that did not
confirm your biases. I think you'd be out of your mind with how really trashy
this whole article is. It's like they took a list of things you should not do
when reporting on statistics, and decided to do them all.

------
wmeredith
I don’t see the story here. You could always make guns. So now you can make
them a certain way and it’s a Pandora’s box?

~~~
jsoc815
The story is the perceived loss of control over who can (and will) make guns.
The thinking being that by publishing the info on the net a great many people
who wouldn't have otherwise bothered to figure out how to do so will now make
guns. And of course, since the net isn't limited by geography per se, now the
issue becomes one of international concern.

For the record, while I expect that there will be an uptick in interested
parties, I don't think it will of epic proportions because at the heart of it,
people are lazy.

I do, however, wonder how the gun manufacturers feel about this.

~~~
smsm42
Just for an example, this is what happens when people need to make guns on the
cheap in field conditions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten)

Quoting: "the most basic model, the Mark III, could be produced from five man-
hours of work". In any machine shop having as advanced technology as welding
and metalworking.

------
microcolonel
> _where firearms result in tens of thousands of deaths a year_

> _" I’d call a militia out to defend the server, Bundy-style," Wilson says
> calmly, in the first overt mention of planned armed violence I've ever heard
> him make._

I don't see why Wired sees fit to defame and misinterpret people, and
misrepresent the facts on this topic. If they're so right, why not let the
facts speak for themselves? Calling a militia out to defend the server is not
_planned armed violence_ , it's _planned armed defence_ : not even the
responding militia wants there to be any actual violence, if anything the
armed militia _decreases_ the likelihood of violence occurring (nobody's going
to serve a forcible no-knock on a room full of armed men defending a mere
library, and engaged in the commission of no offence).

------
kikoreis
You know how everybody is worried about machines taking over human jobs and
the resulting unemployment? Well, sort of like Calvin's rant on never being
able to die, I think there will be so much demand for staffing in the field of
dystopia management and prevention that the chance of that happening is really
slim.

