Comment by dclowd9901
1 year ago
You'll have to excuse me if I don't take the word of the website "pewpewtactical" as gospel on this matter. Especially with lines like this: "Aside from the fact the ATF hates anything fun..."
There's nothing earnest or in good faith here, and you can't reasonably make me believe otherwise. The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
From the justice.gov link:
> The ATF examined the Auto Key Cards and a firearms enforcement officer was able to remove the pieces of a lightning link from an Auto Key Card using a common Dremel rotary tool in about 40 minutes.
So in effect, the ATF was able to manufacture an unregistered machine gun conversion device from a legal piece of steel with a drawing on it, using tools. Steel is not illegal, nor are drawings. As mentioned by rpmisms, we have a first amendment right to freedom of speech in the United States.
The same thing can be accomplished, arguably more easily, by bending a metal coat hanger into the required shape, but Target isn't being raided by the ATF.
And of course, anyone with access to a 3d printer and the gatalog can create a lightning link in about 22 minutes. Guess it's time to ban the Internet!
Consider this: the kind of people who wouldn’t know how to do this otherwise are exactly the kind of people I don’t want given a die cut model for how to do it.
4 replies →
Oh my god, you can make things with tools?! /s
1 reply →
> Aside from the fact the ATF hates anything fun.
This is an objective fact.
> The person was trying to skirt the law and got caught.
What law? The law that says you can't distribute a chart of a lightning link? That's not a real law. The point here is that the ATF created the law out of whole cloth.
> Or let me put it another way: if this keycard isn't a big deal, why do gun owners care?
Are you serious? The guy is going to jail under the charge that he distributed a machine gun, for distributing legal information in a country that has freedom of speech as the first amendment. He didn't even violate ITAR. I have a shirt with the CNC instructions to create a lightning link printed on it. Should I go to prison too?
"First they came for the $some_group..."
If your underlying intent is to distribute information that helps a person more easily murder other people. Yeah. Yes I think you should go do jail.
Guess what I and almost everyone else doesn’t do: that.
A large part of my life has been dedicated to distributing the means to self-defense to as many people as possible. The right to armament is inherent to humanity, and encoded in our DNA as a nation. I design, prototype and build guns. Too bad for you, everything I do is legal. There's no moral difference between what I do and installing a giggle switch to magdump into trash faster.
Machine guns aren't evil because they're regulated.
The idea of freedom of speech, and the Constitutional amendment that enshrines and protects that human right, doesn't exist to protect sending birthday cards to your grandkids.
In 1944 hundreds of thousands of liberator pistols were air dropped to the French resistance to fight Axis occupation.
In Myanmar today, 3d printed FGC-9 rifles are being used by rebels to resist a coup staged by the military.
In Ukraine, as I'm sure you're already aware, weaponry donated by NATO and the United States is being used in combination with improvised munitions delivered by drone to resist a large scale genocidal invasion by Russia.
Weapons are tools, no more good or evil than the person wielding the tool. Freedom of information destabilizes monopolies on violence and empowers people to communicate, organize, and defend themselves from aggressors.