Some commercials from before irrational hoplophobia conquered the land:
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A very young Snake Plisken starts down the road…
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And Ranger Lennier gets an early start on training to take down the Shadows…
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And this is why we can’t have nice things:
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While the ruling classes continue to try to figure out how to prevent people from arming themselves, the people continue to find not only new ways to arm themselves but also how to improve what’s available to ’em. For instance… not long ago a single-shot 3D printed pistol was demonstrated. It required an expensive high-end printer and could only fire a single shot before the barrel needed replacing. Now, an improved and cheaper 3D printed gun has demonstrated the ability to fire 9 shots before barrel replacement. Still pitiful by standard firearm standards, but still, improvement is improvement. Better still is the fact that this is work done by a different designer. The more designers, the better the designs… and the harder it will be for governments to control. Can’t stop the signal.
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Additionally, an somewhat less sensibly, 3D printing has been used to make bullets. Specifically, slugs for a 12 gauge shotgun. seems to me this might be fine for making prototypes and master parts for use in casting copies, but 3d printed bullets seem overly expensive.
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UPDATE: You can buy yo8ur own Lulzbot from Amazon:
In the early 1960’s, NASA wanted the Nova rocket: a launch system capable of orbiting around one million pounds. The primary missions included manned lunar and Mars missions, space station launches, that sort of thing. But other missions were contemplated, including military missions. Information on these military missions is pretty lean. This is most likely due to the fact that Nova was a NASA project with minimal DoD input… thus there would have been minimal actual work done on military launch planning for Nova. Nevertheless, a few snippets of military Nova data have come to light from time to time.
A General Dynamics/Astronautics presentation to NASA in August 1963 had a few paragraphs and a few charts discussing military missions. Sadly there was little more; it is impossible to determine if these concepts were actually requested by NASA or not, and whether these ideas went any further. BAMBI (BAllistic Missile Boost Intercept), an anti-missile satellite system, was studied by General Dynamics at the same time as Nova, and has largely remained classified (or at least, little has been made public). Like the anti-missile satellites studied during the SDI program of the 1980’s, for BAMBI to have had a chance of success at taking out a massed Soviet ICBM strike, a large number of the satellites would be needed. In the NOVA presentation, 14 million pounds worth of satellites – each weighing 4,000 pounds – were claimed as needed. In this case, launching 3,500 or so satellites would be a chore that Nova could handle easier than much smaller launch vehicles.
More unconventionally, Nova was also proposed as a logistics transport. In this case, it could be used to chuck a capsule across the planet sub-orbitally… a capsule with 2.5 million pounds of payload. Additionally, Nova could put a 1 million pound capsule into orbit; the capsule would de-orbit itself and land to disgorge infantry. Orbital systems were in a way prefered, as orbital systems meant that the Nova itself would go into orbit. This meant that the Nova could de-orbit on command an return to Earth at convenient locations for recovery; ballistic lobs would essentially throw the Nova away. The orbital capsule was at least illustrated with a drawing.
Finally, Nova could be used to launch offensive weapons. One million pounds were the weights given, so presumably these were meant to go into orbit. The weapons loads were remarkable, and more than a little spooky:
Note… these weapons loads are for a single launch.
Not provide in the presentation – or anywhere else that I’ve seen – is NASAs reaction to the idea of using their rocket to launch a million square miles worth of biological horror.
Well, the US FedGuv has finally waded into the debate on 3D printed guns. Wielding the sort of bludgeon that authoritarians like Bloomberg and Schumer can only dream of, the US Department of Defense Trade Controls has shut down Defense Distributed via the dubious power of ITAR. ITAR – International Traffic in Arms Regulations – is supposed to prevent US citizens and corporations from sending overseas technologies and designs for advanced weapons and the like that might aid enemies of the US. But as it’s being used here, it is being used to prevent the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Whatever from being able to build unreliable, expensive zip guns.
Much as it pains me to link to Infowars, they seem to have the details.
Here’s one of many things to consider: if the exact same files had been created by, say, a Canadian, and were hosted on a Canadian website, the US FedGuv would have neither the power nor the interest to shut them down. Why would they? Printed guns are, and will be for some time, substantially crappy devices compared to properly manufactured firearms. However, as printing technology evolves, and as design capabilities and experience progress, printed guns will become substantially better, potentially eventually becoming competitive or even superior in some ways. So what the government is doing, in effect, is turning over the future of not only weapons development but advanced manufacturing systems and basic entrepreneurship itself to foreign powers.
In their zeal to violate the second Amendment, some New York lawmakers are rushing headlong into violating the first Amendment.
DD is planning on releasing plans for a 3D printable all-plastic (except for a firing pin made from a nail) within a week. Senator Schumer is having a conniption that people might be able to make their very own terribly crappy .22 caliber pistols, and thus wants new laws to tell people what ideas they can have and what data they can posses.
A vintage PR film about Scaled Composites Ares ground attack aircraft from the late 1980s. It was a neat plane, and the idea of a cheap, small, nimble ground support plane sure seemed like it made sense, but the DoD didn’t want it. Why? Well… among a number of reasons both good and bad, take a look at the video when the GAU-12/U 25mm Gatling gun goes off… and throws the bitty lightweight aircraft all over the sky (at 1:48) . Accuracy must’ve been atrocious… which can be seen in the shots showing the target (2:18) with rounds hitting all over the place.
Lightweight and nimble are often good features. However, accurate gunnery with powerful, high-recoil weapons requires heavy and stable… or really, really effective computer-controlled active stability, which adds cost in a hurry.
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Report: Boston attack suspects not licensed to own firearms
Massachusetts is one of those states where you have to have a license to own firearms. And as it turns out, the Boston Bombers did not have those licenses. But yet they had guns. Huh. It’s almost as if criminals don’t follow laws. But what’s really confusing is this:
The news that the suspects were not authorized to own firearms will likely add fuel to calls for tougher gun laws
Ummm… why? How would increased-scope background checks and licensing have helped here?
The Chicago-political-machine-dominate House in Illinois failed to pass a bill allowing concealed carry permits. This actually moves concealed carry in Illinois closer to reality. Illinois, the only state to not recognize this basic right, is under orders from a federal appeals court to get on the ball and start issuing permits. If Illinois misses a June 9 deadline, then “Constitutional carry” will automatically become the law of the land in Illinois. In other words, if the organized crime family that is “the Illinois State House” fails to pass a law regulating concealed carry permits, then *every* Illinois resident (barring felons) would be default be legally allowed to carry whatever they want.
Awesome!
Some people are trying to make some amendments to the gun control/background check/gun show loophole/pre-confiscation legislation:
In short, there are efforts underway to insert national reciprocity into the gun control bill. This would allow a holder of a valid state concealed carry license to carry their weapon concealed anywhere they go within the United States. You know, kinda like how if you have a drivers license in, say, Nevada and you go to California for a few days, you don’t need to get a California drivers license. or how if you are married in Massachusetts, you are still married if you go to Alabama.
But rely on New York Senator Chuck Schumer to go bugnuts over the idea:
“Somebody could come from Wyoming to the big cities of New York or New Haven or Bridgeport and carry a concealed weapon, which is so against our way of life and the needs here in New York.”
Read that one more time. Let it sink in.
Not only is it the very pinnacle of hypocrisy coming from someone so determined to make the laws of his uncivilized urban dystopias the laws of the land as a whole (bans on “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines is against the way of life of a whole lot of places that aren’t the big cities of New York), there is an implicit insult against the honor of people from Wyoming.
| State | Violent crime (total) |
Murder | Forcible rape |
Robbery | Aggravated Assault |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N.Y. | 398.1 | 4.0 | 14.1 | 145.9 | 234.1 |
| Wyo. | 219.3 | 3.2 | 25.7 | 12.5 | 177.9 |
| State | City | Population | Violent Crime | Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter | Forcible rape | Robbery | Aggravated assault | Property crime | Burglary | Larceny-theft | Motor vehicle theft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | New York, New York | 8,211,875 | 623.6 | 6.3 | 13.3 | 240.8 | 363.2 | 1,710.4 | 221.1 | 1,374.4 | 114.9 |
| Wyoming | Casper, Wyoming | 55,761 | 184.7 | 1.8 | 17.9 | 39.5 | 125.5 | 3,689.0 | 514.7 | 3,036.2 | 138.1 |
| Wyoming | Cheyenne, Wyoming | 59,944 | 245.2 | 3.3 | 43.4 | 41.7 | 156.8 | 3,418.2 | 425.4 | 2,892.7 | 100.1 |
| Connecticut | New Haven, Connecticut | 130,019 | 1,344.4 | 26.2 | 42.3 | 589.1 | 686.8 | 4,983.1 | 1,086.8 | 3,171.8 | 724.5 |
| Connecticut | Bridgeport, Connecticut | 144,496 | 1,001.4 | 13.8 | 80.3 | 422.2 | 485.1 | 3,880.4 | 1,065.8 | 2,093.5 | 721.1 |
If Schumer was honest (HA!), he’d be *begging* for concealed carriers from Wyoming to replace the relatively violent thugs who must make up his constituency.
The Cookson Repeater was a type of firearm that originated in the late 1680s and lasted into the 1800’s. It was a black powder flintlock, but with a difference… internal magazines were provided for powder and balls, up to at least 12, and the turning of a lever would cause a ball and a proper charge of powder to load into the breech. Thus the weapon could fire two shots in only a few seconds, rather than twenty or thirty seconds with a conventional muzzle loading flintlock.
These would have been the machine guns of their day, and likely would have had an appropriately high selling price.
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