Another way to look at this is how far back you go trying to prevent crime by punishing "pre-crime" activities. For instance, certain kinds of meetings might lead to a criminal plot; or hiding certain kinds of things; or publishing information that might be used by criminals.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." –Tacitus

> Free states write laws that criminalize harmful actions. Police states write laws that criminalize possessing things that could be used harmfully.

Would you agree that nukes run afoul of that reasoning?

Would you agree that using nukes as an example is arguing in bad faith because they are prohibitively expensive to acquire, even if they were deregulated? It's not like weapons grade uranium is just sitting around. You literally have to make it, which is "state actor" level of hard work.

It was within the capabilities of 1940s state actors. Even if it still takes a state actor level of resources now, that probably won't remain true all that long (considering that it's within the capabilities of North Korea, it can't be that far from "large corporation" levels of difficulty even now).

I can't think of any obvious examples of other materials that would be reasonable to restrict in the same way as fissile materials though. Those are kind of a special case where there aren't many uses for the material (power and bombs are basically the only uses I'm aware of for enriched uranium), and it's hard enough to obtain that trying to restrict it isn't entirely useless (unlike phosphorous, which you can buy in the grocery store in any box of matches). Chemical weapons I suppose.

Since it's an important example, I don't think it's a bad faith argument, but also note that an argument that restrictions on simple possession of one material without any proof of intent to use it for harm are justified doesn't mean that all such restrictions are justified. I think gp was arguing the "sometimes justified" case, not the "always justified" one.

> Would you agree that using nukes as an example is arguing in bad faith

Nope. I chose nukes because they were an obvious example of something that we didn't want just anyone to have within arms' reach. I didn't expect it to be subjected to the kind of criticism you're raising.

There is always an exception to every rule, except for this one.

By that definition, there are no free states except for Somalia, as nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms.

> nearly all countries except for the US ban private ownership of firearms.

Man that's gonna surprise all the legal gun owners in Canada, the UK, Sweden, and so on.

Or most the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

The constitution of Somalia[0] is actually a fairly interesting read, at least if you have a big imagination. Not sure I'd exactly characterize it as a "free state" though.

[0]http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/Somalia-Constitution2012.p...

Shut up, you'll annoy the an-caps with your example of their fantasy world failing in reality!

Why would a failed state like Somalia having a restrictive constitution make an an-cap unhappy?

>here are no free states except for Somalia,

You touch on an good point: enforcement.

So far in human history people have been mostly tolerant of laws that were incompatible with their way of life because resources available for enforcement has been the bottleneck and most laws go unenforced unless people really want them enforced. For example, anyone who wanted alcohol during prohibition could get it, it was just a little more expensive and lower quality. Sure alcohol was illegal but it wasn't considered immoral by most so you only had to hide your use of it from law enforcement, not from society in general. We seem to be entering an age (at least in the west) where thanks to technology the bottleneck is politicians and police willingness to face backlash from the public. I'm not going to speculate on what the future holds but I fear that it will not be good if people grow accustomed to the government ratcheting up enforcement of laws that are on the books but currently rarely used.

Almost all nations allow private ownership of firearms. It's just the degree of hurdles you have to jump through that is different.

Off the top of my head, the only nation that I know explicitly bans private ownership of firearms is North Korea.