I don’t know the line but it seems this would obviously warrant investigation regardless of if this person broke a law. I say that as someone who believes in limited government.
Is it fair of my neighbor to instill fear in his fellow neighbors? What if his stash was kept secret for decades, are all those bombs good for the neighborhood? What if he dies and then his stash is discovered in some kind of explosive event?
However, instead of going after those criminals, the FBI has placed its focus on sending a SWAT team to arrest someone who downloaded the wrong 3D print file or ordered a spicy plastic gun accessory on the Internet. That’s a disingenuous application of the law by people who have an agenda, not an approach that’s actually intended to reduce harm.
Why do you think the fbi is giving a pass to drugs? There's ample evidence that they devote a lot of resources to it.
Again, and please read this slowly, to be a decent, caring, good neighbor is not to have them worried about what you're building in your garage. Your reply cares nothing if one of his kids or neighborhood playmates happens upon one of his bombs that could lead to a potential explosion.
I'm generally on the side of intended use mattering more than mere possession of things. However, it seems there may be evidence in this case of violent intentions and destructive devices intended to kill. The comments about the SBR are mostly based on the mental contortions one must do to say an SBR is somehow more dangerous than a braced pistol (even if one is clearly illegal and the other is legal, the question is why).
If the US intends to stick to the freedom-first philosophy with regards to possession, then it would behoove everyone to have a more nuanced legal view of intent.
E.g. graduated escalating consequences for 'Making threats and remarks of a violent nature' to 'Taking actions that indicate preparation for violent action' etc.
Like you, I think if people want to mess around with homemade explosives, and they have enough land to do so, then that's their business.
BUT! There should also be a pattern of behavior, evidence, and witnessed statements where we say 'This particular individual has ceded the right to access dangerous things.'
So essentially being able to charge and convict someone (with due process) of 'violent intent', with no financial or incarceration penalties, but temporary addition (5 year?) to lists that preclude their being able to access dangerous material (guns, explosives, etc).
Of course, the NRA has historically been the biggest lobbyist blocker to anything of that nature, given their paranoia that any legal government consequences will spiral into a panopticon.
Unfortunately, that view doesn't solve the fact that there are very troubled individuals out there, and we'd all be able to be afforded greater freedom if we did a better job in managing those particular people's access to lethal things.
I'm not sure what you're getting at on this one. This individual faces potential incarceration. He is on bail and would be denied access to dangerous things... in theory. Of course he manufactured explosives, so it's not like he has to pass a background check to come into possession of them again.
"and we'd all be able to be afforded greater freedom if we did a better job in managing those particular people's access to lethal things."
Do you have some examples of additional freedoms we're missing currently?
"Of course, the NRA has historically been the biggest lobbyist blocker to anything of that nature, given their paranoia that any legal government consequences will spiral into a panopticon."
I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to that they oppose. But the legal term for a slippery slope is the Overton Window. Speaking of gun regulations generally, it's not hard to understand why a pro-gun group would be against the types of additional regulations that are already present in other states that arguable do not improve safety or could even reduce it in legitimate use circumstances (eg hollowpoint bans, etc).
The current US justice system is based around conviction of a crime (which usually requires having already committed it, or a VERY high bar for having intended to do so) in order to impose consequences (usually severe).
Or limitations on individuals' rights after conviction of the above.
There's no lesser standard of 'at higher risk to commit a crime', aside from a patchwork of short-duration city/state red-flag type laws, most of which are being challenged in court.
> Do you have some examples of additional freedoms we're missing currently?
Access to NFA-controlled devices? [0]
E.g. a breach-loading potato gun
> I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to that they oppose. But the legal term for a slippery slope is the Overton Window.
The Overton Window isn't a legal term: it's a PR/clickbait term.
The NRA has and currently opposes red-flag laws [1], even when constructed with due process procedures, because of its mistrust of any government firearm regulation.
If they instead switched their lobbying approach to productively crafting due process procedures that would allow targeting individuals with a history of threats, abuse, and violence, the rest of us could benefit from greater freedom to dangerous devices.
Instead, their tunnel vision on absolute freedom requires repeatedly casting a blind eye to inconvenient situations where disturbed individuals leverage that freedom to kill others.
Solving problems requires clear-eyed appraisals of the risks and benefits of various approaches to arrive at optimal outcomes.
The NRA has fueled the exact opposite, by leveraging histrionics and fear mongering, not least for its own financial gain. Fuck em.
I would bet that the NRA will propose ammendments to any national red flag legislation introduced, just as they helped shape the 1968 legislation once it looked inevitable. That's all a part of the political game. Sure, the Overton Window is associated with some clickbait, but it's a real and valid concept in politics. This is why groups aren't going to volunteer to help implement things that are counter to their goals, be it the NRA or Everytown. Do you really think Everytown would support something like national reciprocity in exchange for red flag laws? No, as they are also a hardliner and playing the game.
"Solving problems requires clear-eyed appraisals of the risks and benefits of various approaches to arrive at optimal outcomes."
So what's the solution? What's the optimal outcome?
The NRA's blanket opposition to red flag laws is simply one example their willingness to ideologically fight even the simplest approach to a priori restrictions.
> So what's the solution? What's the optimal outcome?
In my ideal world, the US would lean more heavily into universally-accessible but universally-required certification for access to dangerous devices.
Similar to motor vehicles, the default should be that no one has access to these things, but everyone has a right to obtain certification to have them.
As an example, that would look something like national "must issue" concealed weapons permits, but contingent on completing a non-trivial safety course and passing a background check (to ensure the individual isn't spending their free time talking about murdering people online / to their neighbors, appealable ofc).
Instead, we've spent ~60 years wringing our hands to try and square the circle between {everyone deserves access to dangerous things} and {some people are too irresponsible to have dangerous things}.
Why not just start with those facts and craft a viable system from there?
The way the current system is set up, it's supposed to weed people out before they get access to the more dangerous stuff. As juveniles, if they get convicted of certain offenses, they will be prohibited, at least until 35. We have eroded various aspects of this with selective enforcement, plea deals, and the promoting the continuation of childhood with delays in freedoms and responsibilities. Then for the of-age group we have stuff like conspiracy, voluntary/involuntary commitment, terroristic threats, and all manner of prohibiting offenses. There's certainly some room for improvement, but it hard to say what an effective improvement would be.
Freedom from gun violence for thousands of US children annually?
yes, there is nothing that is covered more in the united states and concerns more people than inner-city gang-related shootings… you are very funny and entertaining, I’ll give you that. now I gotta head over to some news media sites for continuing coverage of the mass shootings in south-side chicago…
that ship has sailed the moment United States of America collectively decided that it is acceptable to slaughter children in schools. when you make that decision as a society it is over.
bringing up inner city gun violence to a gun debate is more than funny to me :)
The contradiction is that that’s literally the content and purpose of the 2A of the US Constitution. It’s not the right to bear arms for hunting deer, or the right to go target shooting. The language is pretty explicit, if it isn’t clear enough the founders took the time to explain the purpose of it in the Federalist Papers after they fought an armed revolution against their own government.
My take on unstable people is that if you’re not stable enough to own guns you’re not stable enough to participate in society. If the person in this case made credible threats, they should charge him with a crime other than possession of a firearm accessory. There are plenty of other ways that deranged people hurt others (Like driving a vehicle into a christmas market). The only way we can claim to live in a free society is by maintaining a system of due process.
The literal text is ambiguous to a degree that commas change its meaning:
>> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Relying on contemporaneous ancillary (and unratified with consensus) documents should be an obvious sign that textual clarity is lacking.
Furthermore, the ability of an 18th century individual to craft weapons of mass destruction was vastly inferior to our modern access.
> My take on unstable people is that if you’re not stable enough to own guns you’re not stable enough to participate in society. If the person in this case made credible threats, they should charge him with a crime other than possession of a firearm accessory.
Not only stability! Just normal common sense.
~20% of English-proficient Americans can't do basic numerical tasks in English [0].
I wouldn't trust anyone that dumb around a loaded 6-lb trigger pull.
As the aphorism goes, some people ain't got the sense God saw fit to give a squirrel.
And while they and unstable people are fully entitled to live their lives however they want, it would behoove society at large to say 'Maybe we're not going to hand you things that require the highest amount of safety and carefulness.'
But I'm from the generation where you started out firearms ownership with a hunter safety course at the local firehouse, followed by supervised use with your family, eventually progressing to independent use by high school.
We don’t gatekeep rights based on someone’s perceived intelligence. The same logic was used to keep southern blacks from voting in the civil rights era and was promptly struck down. If you’re an American, it’s your inalienable right.
> The literal text is ambiguous to a degree that commas change its meaning
The people who wrote the amendment literally wrote essays explaining their thought process. It’s not like we’re deciphering ancient greek artifacts, we all know exactly what the founders meant when they wrote it. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this extremely obvious interpretation.
Exactly. Prison or full rights, guns, voting, living beside a school, all of it. Get rid of all this inbetween crap.
Oh, the prisons are too crowded you say? Well perhaps criminalize less things.
We can also focus on actual rehabilitation or fewer heavy handed sentences for non-violent offenders. A lot of things that are currently prison sentences could potentially be probation and fines.
If no, you acknowledge there is a line. We’re allowed to bear arms, but not any and all arms.
If yes, maybe your views are consistent but you’re utterly insane.
Since the second amendment itself doesn’t contain any express instructions as to who can bear which arms—which is a necessary consideration once you’ve accepted that everyone shouldn’t be able to bear every arm—we’re now solidly in the realm of political debate rather than second amendment absolutism.
Nuclear weapons are an intentionally-absurd example to force a concession that there obviously must be limits. Frequently people will even acknowledge that the 2A probably doesn’t cover them (or at least oughtn’t be interpreted in a way that it does). From there it’s generally pretty easy to walk reasonable people backward towards MANPADs, and then further on down to things that aren’t quite so difficult to acquire.
You may consider it hypocritical, but the vast majority of the founders ( Jefferson was an exception) were very very anti armed rebellion! That's the context for the Constitution replacing the articles of confederation. Having recently fought one they didn't think we needed any more revolutions and didn't want any more revolutions! And didn't appreciate several violent incidents like Shays rebellion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75z37x/what_...
> Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising led by former Massachusetts militiamen and veterans of the American Revolution which took place between 1786 - 1787. Daniel Shays led several thousand ‘rebels" to fight against the economic injustices that were facing farmers and agrarian peasants all across America. (3) These farmers were experiencing extreme poverty following the end of the Revolutionary War. All across America, farmers saw their lands foreclosed on in unfair property seizures, and they wanted to fight back. They were also trying to fight taxes which were beginning to be levied against them.(4) People in rural American fought these perceived injustices in a few ways, with Shays' Rebellion being the most violent. Shays' Rebellion would ultimately be put down, but it startled the gentry who feared further uprisings throughout the United States.
> While we call it a “rebellion" today, these men did not label themselves this way. They called themselves “regulators,” specifically they called themselves the “Massachusetts Regulation,” modeling off of the North Carolina Regulators that we saw just a moment ago.(5) This was the larger part of a trend of poor Americans fighting back against economic injustice. The idea of “civilian regulation” was catching on and becoming a popular idea for ending government corruption. They believed that if the government wasn't regulating itself on behalf of "We the People", then "the People" had the right to regulate, or take back the government – to take it back and do what they believed was right. They didn't see themselves as a rebellion, but rather the gentry labeled them as such in order to de-legitimize their cause. By calling them "rebels," neutral Americans would see these men as insurgents who needed to be stopped. But this regulation was not the only type of fighting Americans across the country participated in. Many states saw widespread revolts ...
> By the time the the constitutional convention convened, America was under extreme duress. In Terry Bouton's article "A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania" he masterfully explained the fighting and rebellion that took place in the rural country sides of Pennsylvania that mirrored what had happened in Massachusetts.(7) The gentry were terrified that they were losing control of rural America, and as a result they would not be able to seize foreclosed land and collect taxes, which they needed. Empowering militias to be trained and carry firearms allowed the gentry to call up these men in times of need and suppress these rebellions that were taking place. The Founders knew that the only solutions were to call up militias as they had done in North Carolina and Massachusetts.
...
> Multiple other bills of rights from other states had already protected a militia's right to bear arms (such as Section 13 of Virginia's Declaration of Rights) and many of these states were fighting to have the federal government protect this as well. Here their declaration stated:
> > SEC. 13. That a well-regulated militia, or composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.(8)
> This wording is even more carefully crafted then in the national Bill of Rights. Here, they define “well-regulated” meaning they were trained my military officers. You also see that they define the purpose of it as being necessary to “defend” the state (implying against people in rebellion) and they of course explain why they feared a standing Army. Now if you examine the wording of the Second Amendment, we can see some clear similarities:
> > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
> Like in Virginia, “well regulated" is the key phrase. They are referring to militias led by people like Benjamin Lincoln and his Massachusetts Militia, not Shays and his "rebellion". The idea that people need firearms to protect themselves from the government is not accurate. It was a message propagated by anti-gun control advocates of the 1980s. This “right” was crafted when rebellions were happening everywhere and the only way the government could maintain control was to make sure they could call up their militias.
Do you also believe you should not need a driving license, or an electrician should not have any certification?
Because an average person can watch a YouTube video and wire a circuit, or learn to drive by themselves, but their chances of making explosives without posing a danger for themselves or others are far, far lower.
This should be a licensed activity where you need to demonstrate at least basic competence and mental stability.
If an individual is endangering only themselves in a way that poses no risk to others (e.g. blowing up stumps on their own large property), then that's a responsibility they should be given.
Which does suggest stricter limits on higher density areas (read: cities), given the proximity of people and lack of empty, fuck-around space.
Bluntly, it’s also the hacker community, or at least this hacker community, being kind of poor at generalizing things to an overall population and confusing their own emotions about something for a reasoned defense of it. We’re arrogant, overconfident in our ability to reason about things, undervalue others’ reasoning, experience, and history, regularly mistake our ability to reason through a technical issue for expertise in things outside our wheelhouse, and are profoundly gifted at self-motivated reasoning, so the idea that anyone else might have a valid opinion on why we shouldn’t do something we really want to do strikes us as tyranny.
Regulations actually in place to protect people are fine. Most regulations on this sort of thing are overbearing. A lot of the licensing and recordkeeping are targeted towards companies and commercial producers and apply ham-fistedly to individuals. One example is distillation of spirits. It's illegal for me to distill. I'm not even allowed to get a license to do it because my property is residential and not commercial even though I want to do it for myself. There's really no valid reasoning for. The courts are starting to agree - there was one court that said making the permit impossible to get as an individual in a residential property is a violation of some right.
The point is, we should challenge regulations that don't make sense. If there is a valid reason, then we learn. If there isn't a valid reason, then maybe we can correct some injustice. Even as hackers/programmers/etc, we miss edge cases and have to amend our code, it's really not much different for policies, probably even worse than the spaghetti code with of us has seen.
The problem of listening and reacting to public outbursts is that there are enough people on all sides of this that there'll be an outburst whatever happens.
The Algorithm makes us a pile of hyper-reactionary babies.
If the FBI had all this information and didn't act on it, then he e.g. went into a tower and murdered dozens of people in the street, there is not going to be a substantial number of people saying "oh well ya know they didn't have a basis to intervene when they were first informed of his 1) probably-illegal firearms, 2) extreme violent views and 3) growing stockpile of explosives."
I personally don't think there's enough public consultation on rights. For some reason America relies on an increasingly political supreme court to set those boundaries rather than what The People actually want.
And all of this is entirely impossible to derive from online conduct because it's just wall-to-wall strife, disagreement and suffering. A system continuously telling us to be angry with other people, rather than how to enjoy these short, little lives we have. Weird if you ask me.
All of that is absolutely, obviously true.
My original point got a little lost by my second post. That there are angry people shouting about something doesn't mean they're right. Being loud shouldn't earn you opinion being rebroadcast, but that's exactly what today's social media does. And it's what the traditional media did before it. Sell engagement through outrage.
If we want to have qualitative conversations about what homeland security really looks like to stop an attack like the one here —that nobody is even suggesting was planned— I'm not sure people will be so "absolutely, obviously" on one side. Only once you have those conversations can you reasonably barter with the limits of rights.
As it always is, people are always on some spectrum for an activity.
The people who want to harm our country don't seem to have any difficulty doing it.
>Investigators also found hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, which the agency described as “an explosive material that is so unstable it can be exploded merely as a result of friction or temperature changes.”
I mean, I don't even have to look that chemical up to see that it is explosive.
We see the examples of successful attempts at harm, most of us don't pay much attention to the failed attempts, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about how hard it go from "attempted harm" to "actual harm".
Though obviously the amount of explosives per device is going to modify the risk profile.
86 deaths, 434 injured
The poser referred to a “6,500lb truck” vs “19-tonne Renault Midlum cargo truck” used in that attack.
the 9/11 attackers went though flight school to be able to hijack planes. meanwhile getting a CDL is like $6k for out of state, $2k for in state, and ~$400 if you can demonstrate need / poverty. the classes are readily available at any community college, and can be done by anyone who can drive, basically.
Vehicles are used to kill a great number of people per year, but it’s really unusual to find someone who actually killed 50+ people through a vehicle alone. Meanwhile there’s significantly more people who used bombs to reach those numbers, despite how much more difficult it is to access significant quantities of explosives.
There’s no mention of the guy using smokeless powder just hexamethylene triperoxide diamine which is an actual high explosive.
0: https://ktla.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/12/FBI-pipe...
There is occasionally discussions if we should ban trucks that carries dangerous materials from driving near large cities. The main counter argument is that the number of people who has access to trucks with dangerous goods in them is so few compared to the number of people with access to a car. Thus the more logical solution to mitigate risks is to address car access to areas with crowds.
This is incorrect, ammonium nitrate is intrinsically high-explosive. It is mixed with other ingredients to improve performance and/or sensitize it but this is not required. There are several famous examples of stored ammonium nitrate exploding e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
Most of those other blasts, including Beirut, involved lots of contamination of the AN + large fires + very large quantities of ammonium nitrate.
In truckload or less quantities, and when not contaminated with specific substances, ammonium nitrate is pretty much impossible to detonate without a sizable quantity of some other high explosive.
If you’re going to assume they have access to significant explosives to actually detonate pure ammonium nitrate, then you also need to consider flour and other ‘safe’ compounds due to the potential for even larger fuel air explosions.
BUT
.. apart from Jan 6 and a few milita incidents, nobody ever combines these three into politically targeted violence. The mass murders are always either strangers, workplace, or schoolchildren. Politically motivated, but not targeted at any kind of power structure. It's been a long time since the Unabomber. All the elements are in place for a really serious deterioration of civil safety, but so far the glue is holding.
Your other points are valid but this one has been so highly politicized that inner city gang violence is classified as mass shooting, which is a completely different social issue that’s being co-opted in with the political violence issue and the mental health crisis. All of those problems are complex and have different root causes, implications and magnitudes, but activists like Everytown want to lump them together to portray a “Gun Problem” to pitch their forced solution, which is making it harder for law-abiding citizens to own guns.
We can't stop drug importation. What makes you think that we can stop guns?
> and we had less of them we would have a safer less violent society.
"less of them"? We can take away all of the deer rifles and not change US violence at all. A collector with 100 guns is not more dangerous than one with 25.
The vast majority of US gun violence is committed by people who are already involved in other illegal activities involving other illegal substances. It is absurd to think that they can be disarmed by legal means.
It takes about 1% of the "by physical volume" drug smuggling to provide them with a new gun per crime.
If anything guns are harder to ban than drugs (because they're easier to make and smuggle), and that was true before 3d printing became a thing.
Hello, I'm British.
Better solutions don't have to be perfect, as the country of my birth demonstrates: still has drugs smuggled in, sometimes even has firearms, even a few mass shootings.
But firearms are banned so effectively that even the police don't routinely carry them — the handful of officers I've ever seen armed in the UK, in person, were all in airports.
The four nations of the UK combined had around 700 homicides in total in each recent year, which is about the same as Philidelphia plus half of Baltimore. It's not just because the US is more populous, the per-capita homicide rate in the UK is about 80% lower in the UK than in the US.
I know the UK is unusual — I'm in Berlin now, and the cops here have what looks like a pistol, not that I'd be able to distinguish it in the holster from a taser or a pistol shaped pepper spray — but there's a whole world of other ways to do things than what each of us takes for granted, and we can learn from each other if we don't shut out the possibility.
As a non American, I am unfamiliar with your inner city gang violence.
If it involves guns being used to kill multiple people in one incident, this seems tautologically "mass murder", even if it's specifically also gang war.
(Then again, perhaps I should add "gang war" to my list examples of things where people sincerely argue if it counts as murder, along with normal war, assassination, abortion, and meat).
The elements will always be in place for disturbed individuals, just look at the number of "Cars running over crowds" stories, such as yesterday in New Orleans. The question and premise for a lot of the battles are, do we take away rights or abilities of those that won't do it, on the off chance that someone could?
Clear laws, enforced consistently would help a lot here. I would also posit, though not likely a popular opinion, there are people that cannot be a part of a functioning society and we have to collectively agree on that. We need to bring back functioning mental health facilities for long term care and accept that some people will be placed here and not leave.
That's my point: there's loads of "apolitical" school shootings and much less "political" violence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Matthew_Crooks
Indeed. But since they're right wing guys attacking Trump, it seems to have faded from the conversation. Also they failed.
I wont speak more on it here but I can think of atleast 6 people i've known closely who've just gone completely dark online + in their community after anti-govt organization. I assume they're dead.
PS- Just one recent example: The plot to kidnap Gov Gretchen Whitmer managed to break thru to corporate media. This wiki has a smattering of the misc terrorist groups involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
Where do we draw the line of ridiculousness?
Fortunately, this guy commited over 150 crimes. Bail was denied. We can lock him up and throw away the key. It really doesn't matter if he were to be an imminent threat or not.