You can't cover up an atmospheric nuke, you can hardly even cover up an underground one. people will find out. we're good at spotting the radiation and fallout and unique shockwave if it's underground.

the rest of the world wouldn't agree to stay quiet about things

26 years ago I was given a .22 LR for Christmas after I turned 6.

So far, I've not accidentally shot anyone with it. Or intentionally, honestly, but that's hardly something I'd worry about. I'm both a good dude who'd only shoot at someone for the best reasons, and quite a marksman who'd only hit what he shot at. But listen to me go on..

You teach your kids about vehicle safety, right? Buckle up, look both ways, don't speed or drink and drive or ride with anyone who does? Right?

Those are important lessons regardless of whether or not you own a car yourself. Even if none of your friends own cars. Those are important lessons because teaching children isn't about teaching them what you want the world to be like, it's about TEACHING THEM ABOUT THE WORLD THEY LIVE IN.

As a parent you've got a lot of leeway with what you do and do not teach your kids, but basic firearm safety should be touched on at some point. Because reality, that's why. Because maybe you don't own a car, and maybe you can't teach your kid how to drive -- but you better fucking teach them how to cross a road safely, and to respect vehicles for the harm they could cause, because at some point they might need to drive or cross a road. They'd be much better off having learned long ago what things are not to be trifled with, and how to act safely around things that are dangerous.

UMMM, you underestimate kids.

At 7 I knew how guns worked, I was horribly bullied and friendless, and yes the thought occured to me "well I could just kill them if it's really that bad". Thing was, it wasn't -- it was bad, but a 7 year old knows whether or not killing somebody is bad. You teach them that you only shoot what you intend to kill, that you only POINT a gun at what you intend to kill, and when practicing shooting with them if they make a mistake and swing the muzzle across an unsafe path you jump down their throats and yell at them. Yeah, they might cry, but they will remember the lesson and you can apologize for making them cry, and explain it's simply *that* important.

It's an absolute non-issue, if gun safety is taught correctly, and if the kid is actually raised with some morals and half a sense of responsibility. You just don't do it. Some things are toys, and some aren't -- you don't see kids running around stabbing each other "for fun", because they understand the seriousness of knives and the seriousness of the consequences of getting stabbed. When a kid shoots another kid with a gun "accidentally" it is because that seriousness has never been conveyed to them. Likely because the parent was shy about guns with their kid and opted to wait until they were older to begin gun safety, or worse yet tried to pretend guns don't exist so their poor widdle wooby wobby knew about one less big bad ebil ting.

I grew up in a house with many firearms that I had access to, I knew where they were and where the ammo was. I was never inclined to play with them. If I wanted to go out shooting, I'd let my dad know and we'd go out when we had time. I was given a .22 LR for Christmas when I was 6, but was told and knew that even though it is mine, I can only use it when my dad was around (my mom has shot, she's OK with guns, but she's not a gun person).

Never had a problem, I was raised right.

Hell, I was even bullied pretty hard in elementary school, and friendless since I lived in the wrong part of town to be going to that school. Getting even sure crossed my mind, but having been raised right and thinking things through I faced the endless escalation that may result, and wound up realizing that whatever happened I could kill any of these kids causing me problems. I didn't want to, obviously I never did, but there it was. A little kid realizing that they had the capability to use lethal force wantonly, and also realizing they had the responsibility to never do so except in the defense of life.

It actually turned out well, having those guns where I could get to them. I did have to grab a shotgun one time when I was about 12, because some guys my idiot-asshole cousin owed money to found out we were related and came looking for him. They didn't believe he wasn't at my house and tried to just open the door and walk in to look for him, after I told them he wasn't here, and to leave, and closed the door on them (they're 17-18, what's some preteen gonnOH SHIT SHOTGUN!).
One of the most terrifying moments of my life, honestly. Not that they might have meant me harm, or could have caused me harm -- that simply wasn't going to happen, and I was afraid of what I would need to do to make sure that wasn't going to happen.

That somehow turned into a story, not sure how.

Why in the flying fuck was he allowed into an interrogation room with a firearm? AFAIK those are to be left outside. For that very reason.

I'm facepalming so hard, and a little upset with myself because all I can think of is that the community probably would have had problems with that guy in the future but won't now that he took care of himself..

Wait, there *was* a non-zero percentage of those being prosecuted?

Next thing you'll be telling me is there are actually cases where a felon in possession of a firearm is actually prosecuted, or use of a firearm in commission of a crime.

There's a big, big difference. You put that in a car, and worse case.. it fails, the car doesn't start. You can try again.
Put it on a gun. If it fails... well, what was the gun being used for? Defense? Well, grats, your safety device just killed someone.
Cars also don't regularly experience the forces exerted on firearms. When they go bang, they're not stationary in the hand like in movies. That's a lot of recoil. It's physics. It's a pretty tremendous force, really, and tends to break things pretty spectacularly.

Cars need to run reliably, but if they don't *start* reliably nobody is ever in any danger. The failure mode is the same as the resting mode. A gun can be called upon to defend someone's life, either from another person or a critter (you might laugh, but bears and cougars are serious business). The failure mode there is someone getting killed and/or eaten.

This is more akin to those devices in cars being used *while it's driving*. You wouldn't want the car to suddenly turn itself off at 65mph because of a software glitch or broken hardware, that's dangerous. So is a gun not firing when called on to fire.

the problem with the ring/wrist tag is the thing they were intended to 'solve' -- guns being taken from cops and used against them -- is both not a large problem, at all whatsoever, and isn't solved by the ring/wrist tag. Unless your RFID tag and receiver is accurate to a few inches.. but then there was that post the other day about Brits getting double-charged at stores because their cards which were in their pockets were charged, unknowingly, and they also paid otherwise, under the foolish belief that the card would only get charged if it was within 4cm of the receiver.
If a criminal takes a gun from a cop, they'll be pretty close to the cop's hands when they use it the first time. After that.. they can take the ring/wrist tag off the dead cop's body. Nothing is solved, all you've done is given the cop a gun that has a chance to not function (ok, all guns have a chance to not function, either mechanical breakage or bad ammo -- the latter is quickly solved by chambering a new round, the former is hopefully discovered during routine maintenance).

That would defeat the purpose, as most people would just yank the batteries out immediately. Give me a tool that works reliably, that I can have confidence in -- and let *me* worry about keeping it safe. I don't want a tool that will PROBABLY work, hopefully, that I still have to worry about keeping safe anyway because it's a damned gun and if you're not worrying about keeping it safe you don't deserve to have it.

Plus all this mess actually isn't trying to add anything to guns, it's all just gun prohibition in the disguise of technology that is not available or possible.

Every time there's been a demonstration of this sort of technology, it has failed. The one time it didn't, it was quickly revealed that the only reason it worked is because it had been disabled -- that is, it was just a regular gun going bang.

Biometrics are great in a controlled environment, but you're talking about a gun. Maybe a rifle, maybe a handgun. Maybe it's a hunting rifle, and maybe it's covered in snow. Or sand. Or mud. Maybe the hand holding it is wearing a glove. Or is covered in sweat.
It's not *reliable*. Making a gun *NOT* go bang, that's easy. Making it go bang every time you want it to, that's the hard part. Making it go bang every time you want it to, but *never* when you don't? That is impossible. Shit, even with some pretty clever mechanical safety mechanisms on guns, people still wind up getting shot accidentally. They could be made more robust, but then the gun would likely fail to function when needed.

The solution then, is to use those mechanical safeties, but to not *rely* on them, because the gun might still go bang.

This sort of tech, though? You can't use it but not rely on it -- if you are using it, you MUST rely on it, or else the gun WON'T go bang. Unless it does because of some sort of breakage or something, which can happen. That's why you never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot.

There was tech that involved bracelets or rings with RFID tags, but those were useless. Again, they didn't work when tested, and even if they had.. the purported purpose was to be for law enforcement, to prevent criminals from stealing their sidearms and using them against the cop (.. that's really a problem large enough to justify replacing millions and millions of dollars in sidearms apparently (it actually isnt.)). Except the tags either worked from too great a distance -- so that it wouldn't prevent the gun from firing if the ring was within a few feet -- or just didn't work 100% of the time because the distance was too small, and a little interference meant the cop pulling the trigger was in for a surprise.

There was also a bill I believe around the early 00s out in California to require bullets to be microstamped *BY THE BARREL OF THE GUN THEY WERE SHOT FROM*. Yeah, the bill sponsors even had a company out there who had "perfected the technology" that everyone sane knew was impossible. Turns out the company was, in fact, impossible. Just an empty office in an industrial complex somewhere, nothing more. There wasn't ever any big investigation, it just sort of went away, but that's the kind of bullshit that goes on here. Politicians and their allies (fwiw i personally think that shell company was set up by the brady campaign /tinfoilhat) will create a fake company, have that fake company put out fake claims, and use those fake claims to de-facto ban guns because that fake technology doesn't exist. Eventually it would be sorted out, sure, but in the meanwhile NO GUNS FOR ANYONE!

Kutztown's pretty nice. Tiny lil rural/suburban type of place, not too overrun by development sprawl with their shitty never-straight, never-connect roads.. got a pretty nice college which usually makes it a more.. accepting sort of place (I'm near Annville, which actively hates its college, which confuses the shit outta me..). Stick to the smaller towns, they're not half bad. In the future, Harrisburg will become the new term for urban decay.

Lawmakers have been introducing these bills since at least the mid-90s, with Judge Dredd being the first movie I'm aware of directly tied to it.

The tech was not then, and is not now, possible. They're MOVIES. That's not REALITY.

Our elected officials are dumber than you could possibly imagine.

You can get all the machining you need for under 2 grand, it won't be great, you won't be shooting sub-MOA groups at hundreds of yards.

We're not talking about making a proper firearm, and these 3D printed things aren't proper firearms. They're zip guns, and as zip guns go they're expensive and bulky and not terribly useful.

It's already easy to make your own gun. It's easier to do it without a 3D printer than it is with, actually.

Printing your own money hasn't ever been legal (blah blah yeah it was, but making counterfeit money which is what the issue at hand is, that's not legal). Making your own firearm has and is legal.
Printing counterfeit money is illegal not because it's easy but because making counterfeit money is illegal.
Printing a firearm should be illegal because making your own firearm is.. legal?

It's a dumb argument.

You'd do better to ban the private ownership of metals and chemicals. I mean gosh they are so dangerous!