Comment by rpmisms
1 year ago
> 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.