The only thing he is actually charged with is possession of a short barreled rifle. The prosecutor's documents do not even have photographs of the portion of the firearm that would establish whether it was configured as a "rifle" - it is perfectly legal under federal law to possess an AR style pistol with a naked buffer tube or a pistol brace, without a tax stamp.
In the one photograph they do have of this firearm, they intentionally crop it so that it is not possible to evaluate.
The suspect informed a confidential source that he had a 10" barrel rifle. The source provided pictures of the rifle to authorities, and had seen it before several times, including going shooting with the suspect. The source provided several other points of data supporting him caching weapons and possessing a short rifle.
You might be referring to this image? Which is fairly clear, but I'm not sure how they measure barrel length here, but to my eyes it is 13" (unless the last 3 are a suppressor of some sort that isn't counted).
The GP's complaint is that the linked photo contains insufficient context (for us, at least) to determine if the firearm in question is, from a legal standpoint, an SBR.
> You might be referring to this image? Which is fairly clear,
The issue is that it is entirely legal to have an AR-15 configured as a pistol with a very short barrel, without any tax stamps. That is, not having a stock attached to it. The image provided does not prove that he has a short-barreled rifle, because you cannot see whether it has a stock.
The muzzle device looks to be a flash suppressor, possibly a Noveske KX3 or something similar. Muzzle devices don't count towards barrel length, except in some cases where they're permanently attached.
That said, 13" is also a short-barreled rifle length. If this is indeed a rifle, and not an AR pistol.
Make them communist flags, I don't care. Political signaling wouldn't change anything for me unless there was evidince he was going to engage in violence.
I know this is easy for people to say in theory, but as mentioned elsewhere, if this materialized into an attack people would’ve retrospectively seen that as “certain” evidence of intent.
Most evidence is circumstantial. If someone walks into your office with a wet umbrella, that is evidence that it is raining outside but it doesn’t prove that it is raining. Some evidence is stronger than others, but it is all evidence and should be judged in its totality. Having a flag of a terrorist organization doesn’t prove anything, but it is still evidence. Having a knife, rope, and duct tape in your car doesn’t prove anything, but it is still evidence. It is throwing logic out the window to ignore context and the totality of evidence.
You make a good point. When you see a stranger write the word “people” on the internet, they are talking about you, NicholasGurr, The One Person That Exists
There's legal and then there's needing 5 certifications, yearly renewals etc etc in order to avoid destroying your tractor for handling common nuisance on the farm.
> There's legal and then there's needing 5 certifications, yearly renewals etc etc in order to avoid destroying your tractor for handling common nuisance on the farm.
You're grossly representing what regulation covers or means.
In this context, regulation means things like health and safety. Those who feel the need to buy explosives need to transport them around and store them. This means sitting in traffic next to someone carrying them in the trunk, or living next to someone sitting on a supply. Society is fine with you blowing up your tractor, but not killing your neighbors, employees, or any passer-by due to your gross irresponsibility. Consequently, if you really want to buy explosives then you must learn and prove that you know how to safely handle them.
The health and safety aspects of routine handling of TNT have more to do with the carcinogenic possibilities and absolute risk of anemia and abnormal liver function if not treated as a toxin.
As an explosive it's relatively stable .. but those health risks are exactly why the regulations around it are strict and why the "bomb girls" in WWII factories turned yellow and died young.
If that's a question then the answer is yes, there is plenty that is health related in the TNT (explosive) handling regulations.
Simply:
What recommendations has the federal government made to protect human health?
The government has developed regulations and guidelines for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene. These are designed to protect the public and workers exposed to 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene from potential harmful health effects of the chemical. Since 2,4,6- trinitrotoluene is explosive, flammable, and toxic, EPA has designated it as a hazardous waste. The Department of Transportation (DOT) regulates the transport of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene because it is a hazardous material. DOT specifies that when 2,4,6- trinitrotoluene is shipped, it must be wet with at least 10% water (by weight) and it must be clearly labeled as a flammable solid.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates levels of hazardous materials in the workplace. The maximum allowable amount of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene in workroom air during an 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek, is 0.5 mg/m3. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that the concentration in workroom air be limited to 0.5 mg/m3 for up to a 10-hour workday during a 40-hour workweek.
“An amendment in 1977 saw the OSHA restrict the use of funds to prescribe, issue, administer or enforce agricultural regulations for farming employers of 10 or less people.”
i agree, which is why it’s harder to run across now. Notably, it’s about the same amount of paperwork or less than owning guns in most European countries.
A lot of regulations are a mess. As I understand it, agriculture drones full of fertilizer are beginning to be used throughout, makes sense. And tractors run on diesel since forever. So add diesel to the fertilizer drone now you have a viable powerful weapon... unregulated. I'm sure tens of thousands of farmers have this in their pocket right now, just not their intent.
Same with firearms. A pea shooter .22, highly regulated, felony charges everywhere. Now, a 50 caliber airgun? No gunpowder, not a firearm. They even make automatic airguns. Arguably with a large air supply and large ammo clip, and airgun could trounce some automatics, primarily because their barrels won't overheat, they might overcool though because physics of expanding gasses. And yet the humble .22 is the highly regulated one.
Some governments and regulators attempt to enumerate every possible conceivable bad thing and outlaw it. Problem is it's not enumerable, there will always be dozens of missed loopholes, which the regulations will steer people into. Parallels the warping and skewing of trying to fix an economy through proclamation versus distributed capitalism.
> So add diesel to the fertilizer drone now you have a viable powerful weapon... unregulated.
You're talking out of ignorance. I recommend you do a cursory read of the basic applicable regulation to understand both how you are wrong and what is actually covered by regulation.
The simple fact of the matter is regulators in corrupt societies believe that laws are only good if the public generally breaks them.
These societies may deceitfully claim to follow a rule of law, while objectively being rule by law.
They generally believe that if you can't use the law to coerce people to some form of arbitrary action after-the-fact through blackmail, the law is useless, and they glory in their power and control of others (privately).
This is why they write law ambiguously enough so it can apply to just about anything, and twist it later just like how it is written in Animal Farm.
Safety is just one of many propaganda narratives used, its all for the benefit of society where everyone is equal, some people in such societies are more equal than others.
Corruption is generally not done by the brightest, it often neglects rational principles for long-term survivability. The problem is these people become delusional warping things until collapse under a de-facto state of non-market socialism drives ecological overshoot into a great dying, if no other crises takes them first.
The chancellor will have his butter while everyone else starves, right up until he can't.
You can't have capitalism under a money printing fiat regime, where the majority of the market cooperates. Economic calculation requires independent adversarial decision-making, and for production in the economy to continue, in general, it requires producers and consumers to make more than enough to cover costs (in purchasing power, disconnected from currency debasement), a profit.
Fractional reserve issued debt, with no fractional reserve (0%) is money printing, its been that way since 2020. Basel III uses valuation as a capital reserve, so when valuations based in fiat change suddenly to the negative, the few banks left can collapse without warning. Value has credibly been shown to be subjective, it changes for every person, so you have to ask who decides the value. The same people issuing the debt as a reserve get to decide, which is a recipe for delusion, and chaotic collapse.
A conflict of interest like this never results in fraud /s...
Government has long been trying to make the public helplessly dependent on them so that no matter what they do (even if they break oaths and the constitution), they'll still retain power through a corruption by dependency. Its sad that such evil blind people have been allowed to get into these positions of power.
Survival will in the near future come down to whether or not we can oust such people from those positions or if people will complacently just follow them to their deaths believing lies.
Lies of omission, even unknowingly and without intent, are still lies, and result in the same destructive outcomes.
I guess what is it you're trying to imply? Because I find it EXTREMELY unlikely the FBI agents in question don't know what qualifies as an SBR vs. a pistol. Furthermore, even if he does have a naked buffer tube, if the gun was registered as a rifle at the time of purchase, it is a rifle. You cannot "convert" a rifle lower to a pistol if it was defined as a rifle when you bought it.
It also seems EXCEEDINGLY unlikely the FBI would make a giant press release before anyone verified if the rifle in question was actually violating any laws. There would be almost nothing to gain, and a LOT of egg on everyone's face if the guy walks because nobody at the FBI knew the difference between an SBR and an AR pistol.
The feds recently convicted a guy by arguing a piece of metal (basically a metal business card) with a drawing of a machine gun conversion device on, as having sold machine guns.
They can literally just lie about the law and confuse the ignorant jury as they did for matt hoover. In a couple years he'll get released on appeal, who cares, they already destroyed his business and relegated his wife and childs mother to begging for money on YouTube.
When you create an account just to post in this thread endlessly defending what appears to be at minimum someone who probably shouldn’t own guns in the first place, it’s difficult to believe you’re here for anything other than stirring the pot.
Oh, I found it. He was literally selling a machine gun conversion kit and claiming it was a business card. It very clearly wasn’t. And it wasn’t a “drawing” it was the metal pieces to convert an AR to fully automatic by breaking out the pre-cut pieces with a pliers.
It was not the metal pieces. It was one flat piece with a drawing of the pieces on it. And the atf followed (cut with a dremel for 40 minutes) the drawing and it didn't even work as traced, nor did they ever get their own design to do anymore than a hammer follow malfunction that a fully legal AR can do without adding parts.
The distinguishing feature between this and a metal business card is the speech on it makes ATF sad face.
> It was not the metal pieces. It was one flat piece with a drawing of the pieces on it.
That is the attempt to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Even the seller was marketing their machine-gun conversion kits as AR-related devices that the ATF wished didn't existed.
The seller even posted puerile pseudo legal disclaimers such as don't use them to do anything illegal
It's baffling how these puerile arguments boil down to expecting everyone to be binded to a very specific and far-fetched literal interpretation of a specific part of the law while keeping to themselves the fact that it is actually a blatant violation that's kept as an in-joke. When their poorly-thought-through stunt blows up on their face and see the law still applies, they clutch their pearls claiming they demand law enforcement should be stupid and incompetent enough to fall for their gimmicks.
You've fallen for a trick. Rather than rehash all the ways you've defamed and lied, your claims are thoroughly disproven in the appeal that will prevail [0]. He sold a metal plate with sad speech on it, that atf testified did not induce automatic fire. Unless every non-stamped ar-15 is an illegal machine gun, this card can't be.
> When their poorly-thought-through stunt blows up on their face and see the law still applies, they clutch their pearls claiming they demand law enforcement should be stupid and incompetent enough to fall for their gimmicks.
And here you are, whining that others didn't fell for that pathetic gimmick.
> You are asserting every ar-15 is a machine gun if those cards are. Is that really your position?
I don't know who do you think you're fooling, or if you think everyone around you is a utter moron. The guy was selling machine-gun conversion kits. More specifically, he was selling lightning links which turns a semi-automatic AR-15 into a fully automatic machine gun.
The shapes depicted when cut out by the ATF did not induce automatic fire nor the function of a lightning link. After the ATF modified further they only induced hammer follow malfunctions which every single ar-15 can do with the parts sold.
You are asserting every single ar-15 is an illegal machine gun. You should read the testimony and about hammer follow to find out why you're wrong and why his case will absolutely be overturned.
> The feds recently convicted a guy by arguing a piece of metal (basically a metal business card) with a drawing of a machine gun conversion device on, as having sold machine guns.
I feel you're grossly and purposely misrepresenting the case.
The case you're referring to was over unregistered machine-gun conversion devices. The guy was selling them online and was caught with over a thousand machine-gun conversion kits.
What makes this case noteworthy is the dissimulated way kits were being marketed and sold, such as bottle openers, pen holders, or business cards.
The guy also marketed his machine-gun conversion kits as an AR-related device and "the parts ATF wishes never existed".
I believe you are well-aware of this fact. Yet, you chose to misrepresent it.
They were not kits, and even if you did classify them as one it would necessarily result in every ar-15 being a machine gun because the parts sold in one can do the same hammer follow malfunction without possessing or reshaping the metal card.
It's a metal business card shape with a drawing of the parts of a lightning link on it, that the state admitted didn't even function as one when dremmeled out using the blueprint. Even if you cut into the shapes, ATF could not get it to induce automatic fire. This is primarily a first amendment case and will get overturned as soon as a non-lukewarm IQ judge sees it. It's inevitable.
That's a hilarious criticism considering the case was about a specific statutory definition, and your personal rewording to reduce to 'kits' which apparently means a flat single piece of metal with a (wrong) blueprint on it is. In that case the anarchist cookbook is a kit since it includes flammable paper that could spark the fire of one of the designs inside, therefore also violates the NFA.
A kit is usually sold to make it easier to do something. In this case the kit makes it even harder to induce hammer follow than simply using the parts already in an ar. Some kit, lmao. It is scary speech on the same kind of metal plates that sometimes instead have business card type speech.
As a legal filing, perhaps it’s important to show a picture of the weapon in a neutral way, in order to avoid an argument over the filing itself. (I’m not a lawyer just speculating.)
"Soon": Get the process going, ankle monitor strapped and movement of suspect restricted, continue the law enforcement investigation, and make additional charges if violations are identified.
That's not uncommon; Luigi Mangione was first charged with having the unpermitted handgun and fake IDs. They want enough to hold and investigate further initially; they'll have taken all the bombs.
I have a dream... that one day we will have a DEA which only regulates purity and accuracy of dose for drugs, and an ATF which only regulates quality and accuracy for firearms. These laws do little to protect the public and they mire enthusiasts with steep and discouraging legal (and thus personal physical) risks. This sort of thinking about the role of government has to stop; it is human civilization's chief sickness.
But drugs and firearms have very different risk profiles for other people. Perhaps it bears repeating: US lax gun laws and culture which glorifies violence leads to an order of magnitude more violent deaths than comparable countries in Europe.
That's a non-starter. These militia types don't see the state headed in a good direction so of course they're not gonna sign up to be part of one of the violence arms of the state (military, LEO, etc). If they did believe in the state they'd already have signed up.
The 2A is interpreted both popularly and legally as an individual right: it is the right of the people, not the right of the militia.
And, as I’m sure you know, the term “regulated” as written in 2A does not mean the same thing as “regulated” in terms of “government regulation”. In context, it means approximately “well-functioning” or “reliable”.
In historical context, the “militia” was everyone, every able bodied person who could participate in common defense. It wasn’t a specific organization like we’d think of today
Beyond that, the right is entirely unconnected with service in a militia. That clause at the beginning “A well-regulated Militia …” does not scope or bound what comes next; it offers one explanation for why that right is protected.
SCOTUS explained the historical meaning of these words in more detail in District of Columbia vs. Heller, including an in-depth examination of the language as part of its opinion that the right is an individual right.
> 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
> (a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
In current federal legal context, the "militia" is all men between like age 18-45, plus all people in the national guard, or something like that. That's what the US CFR says.
Are we really to believe that slave states ratified the 2nd amendment with the belief that they were giving every individual the right to keep and bear arms?
Because that seems absurd given their rather large population of slaves.
The militia is every able-bodied person, both as a matter of history and as literally defined in US law for centuries. Furthermore, this militia is expressly recognized as "unorganized" in law i.e. separate from organized militias created by the government.
In the US, the militia is explicitly independent of the government. Even if one were to accept your narrow reading, which no court has, I don't see how it would materially change anything given that any random group of blokes without any government involvement is a militia as a matter of law.
You might be surprised to discover that federal judges are extremely not shy about bringing up threats to their safety that involve litigants before them.
Wasn't there some famous case in NY where a business man had to be sanctioned ~10 times before he stopped trying to get death threats against the judges family?
I don't really doubt that judges would bring something up to litigants but I do really doubt the bar would actually do something.
"We put a filesystem in your database on your filesystem which is a database, so you can serve while you serve while you serve." [inception theme plays]
For the economic impact of monetary systems, the main role of currencies is handling credit - handling direct transactions is intuitively the direct application, but the impact of transaction costs ('costs' in the economic theory sense, not only the direct expenses but also any barriers, difficulties, risks, etc) on the economy, while significant, is not as huge as the impact of availability of credit and supply of money.
For example, when considering dollars, having the possibility to detach the dollar from the gold standard was so extremely valuable to the economy that all the possible transaction costs with handling paper or coins are a rounding error compared to that. Enabling fractional reserve banking is an immense effect on the productive output, due to the big increase in productive investment it enables, so it matters a lot whether a monetary system can support that. Historical changes to what metals were used for coins had a huge impact on economy not because of some decrease in transaction costs but because of changes to money supply. Etc.
At it's core, the primary function of finance is (and arguably has historically always been) handling debt, not handling transfers. So evaluating a currency system on the basis of how good it is for transactions is kind of putting the cart ahead of the horse, if the nature of that currency has, as most cryptocurrencies do, a major impact on the money supply (and thus handling debt).
This is correct, All currencies have transaction costs, but compete on having lower transaction cost than the alternative.
The theoretical maximum is zero transaction cost for a transaction. It cant go positive. Components of transaction cost are triangulation, transfer, and trust. Currencies attempt to lower the cost of the transfer and trust components.
Any positive value a currency claims to have as method for settling transactions is just a differential with another method.
There is a cost to going to an ATM and carrying USD cash, but it is lower than carrying around 100lbs of cabbages to barter with.
Don't forget externalities. E.g. you can get a fee-free bank account with fee-free cash withdrawals, courtesy of the bank being able to loan out that money under fractional-reserve restrictions. In that sense transactions can pay for themselves. Presumably nobody would print money if it wasn't being put to use. Hence, novel currencies can enable novel business models and potentially do more than just lower transaction costs in a zero-sum way. (Admittedly the value of such business models at present, e.g. crypto scams, is somewhat debatable)
Economic activity. Switching from free banking [1] to a centralised currency made trade easier in America which increased the amount of trade. It's why monetary unions work [2].
Bitcoin, similarly, has enabled certain modes of trade that previously didn't exist.
I think that is more of consequence resulting from lower transaction costs, rather than an economic externality. That said, I understand the definitions of externality is changing in popular usage.
> that is more of consequence resulting from lower transaction costs, rather than an economic externality
An externality is "an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity" [1]. If Visa reduced its fees, the merchant's additional profit is an externality.
> understand the definitions of externality is changing in popular usage
Third-party economic consequences have always been the definition [2].
As I see it, I think the distinction between consequences and externalities is that externalities are applied to cost and pricing, but not concepts.
Wikipedia doesn't go too deep into when externality analysis is appropriate or useful, but hints at this in the following sentence to the one you quoted.
>Externalities can be considered as unpriced components that are involved in either consumer or producer market transactions
Something like the advent of centralized currency isnt a priced good or action, so it doesnt make sense to say it has a positive externality (e.g the transaction price of "centralized currency adoption" is not a priced object).
This is why it is more appropriate to say something like the advent of centralized currency has consequences instead.
Regarding the Visa example, the merchant isn't a uninvolved 3rd party, so the profit is not an externality. Value on the table during an economic exchange is not an externality. Similarly, the value created or lost for each interacting party is not an externality.
One more thoughts on common externality misconception.
The general connotation is that externalities describe pricing failure and market failure (e.g. pollution). The usefulness externality analysis breaks down quickly when you move from realized external costs or benefits to opportunity costs or benefits.
If a $1 pill saves a worker's life, is the value that person generates over the remainder of their life an externality. Technically yes. If you sell them a pill again a year later, the same is true. That doesnt mean the pill is priced incorrectly.
This illustrates how externalities can be duplicative and should not be confused with pricing errors.
> the transaction price of "centralized currency adoption" is not a priced object
Of course it is. Joining a currency union carries costs.
Broadly speaking, you're correct: the term has ambiguous meaning. My point is that isn't something new, but an element that has always been with the term.
I think that still runs afoul of the "uninvolved 3rd party" part of the definition.
Two actors can both generate value from a transaction due to a difference between price and their respective utility value for what is traded. This producer and consumer surplus is explicitly distinct from externalities.
If there is a currency deal between the US and Argentina, the consequences to those countries are not an externality. However, if this deal produces a 2nd order change in the Chinese RMB, some would call that an externality, although I would call it a consequence (because externality implies mispricing)
Your right on the first point, but I would consider the “productive output” to be the product and services that ultimately drive the trade. While there are plenty of contemporary hedge funds that would disagree with me here—with few exceptions, simply moving numbers around, constructing high-level abstract financial instruments, and/or arbitrage trading is not what I would consider productive activity. After all, if there are no firms designing widgets, mines digging up widget ore, factories making widgets, logistics moving widgets, stores selling widgets, technicians supporting widgets, or consumers using widgets, then there quite literally is no market.
Cryptocurrency has precious little to demonstrate itself as an analogous store of value to legitimate, organic market activities. It’s primarily been a tool for speculation, as well as evading regulatory and legal scrutiny. I believe Bitcoin has been an incredibly valuable and unique experiment, a fascinating exploration of human nature and our culture of trade. Much of the technology behind it, like the blockchain have found useful applications, but mostly outside of cryptocurrency proper. But it’s been long past the point where, if cryptocurrency had a unique purpose with which it was particularly suited towards, it should have found that purpose by now.
If one takes a strictly amoral perspective, then I suppose the cultivation, manufacture, transportation, sale, and consumption of illegal drugs would technically fit within my prior definition of “productive output”. Whether or not that’s worth its own overhead, complexity, inherent risks, and the collateral consequences to most/all of the humans involved with that productivity is a larger question…and to be fair, a lot of those concerns are nothing new or unique to cryptocurrencies.
But if the intention is to weigh a given currency’s efficacy and inherent value against a broader slate of considerations then, in my opinion, the most definitive distinctions by far between cryptocurrencies and traditional sovereign fiat currencies is the tangible, productive, economic output of its respective national domestic industries that naturally selects and underpins its perceived value and stability.
—-
TLDR; it isn’t some collective delusional belief that makes a dollar worth a dollar, but rather the aggregate sum of the American people’s labor and dynamism, which isn’t nearly so easy to handwave away, as some of the more myopic cryptocurrency advocates have been known to do in an attempt to undermine traditional financial systems, and draw a misleading distinction between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.
The piece itself mostly discusses Nvidia, which is an interesting company from an "AI hype" perspective in that they can only physically produce so many chips, and they are riding a very thin line where their margins are very high and FLOPS (or the equivalent) are in many ways already a commodity, so everyone wants to be set up to compete with them at the first misstep.
