Lawsuit Challenging New Jersey Ban on Distributing "Digital Instructions" for 3D Printing of Guns

An interesting motion for a temporary restraining order, arguing based on the First Amendment, the dormant Commerce Clause, 47 U.S.C. § 230, and more.

A new New Jersey statute (enacted by SB2465) bans

distribut[ing] by any means, including the Internet, to a person in New Jersey who is not registered or licensed as a [gun] manufacturer …, digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture or produce a firearm, firearm receiver, magazine, or firearm component.

Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation, represented by Chad Flores (Beck Redden LLP), Matthew Goldstein (Farhang & Medcoff), and Prof. Josh Blackman (South Texas College of Law), have just filed a motion for a temporary restraining order seeking to block enforcement of the law. I'm slammed and can't analyze this in detail now, but I thought I'd pass it along. (I blogged a bit about the general First Amendment issue here, but there are also Commerce Clause, 47 U.S.C. § 230, and other claims in this case as well.)

Comments

[DonP]

Hmm, are they going to also ban the use of instruction manuals for the use of machine tools and distribution of blueprints to non gun manufacturers as well? Or just maybe have a big bonfire outside a NJ courthouse and burn all those potentially evil books?

[ThomasW]

Nothing appears to prohibit instructions on how to make a gun using non-3D printer tools. Depends on whether they defined 3D printer someplace.

[rsteinmetz]

is a CNC machine a 3D printer?

[Brett Bellmore]

Some are.

[AmosArch]

Opposition to the 2nd Amendment will eventually have to morph into opposition to the 1st Amendment as well. But of course proggies are way ahead of the curve.

[The original jack burton]

I have noticed thru the years that if you scratch an anti-2nd Amendment person deeply enough you'll find they are also against the 1st Amendment.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

And the 4th.

[MatthewSlyfield]

The 4th was killed and buried decades ago.

[Brett Bellmore]

You're not the only person who's noticed this. The only question is whether the causality runs from advocating gun control, to destroying other rights to make implementing it feasible, or from destroying other rights, to implementing gun control to avoid an armed insurrection.

Probably a bit of both.

[The original jack burton]

I have noticed thru the years that if you scratch an anti-2nd Amendment person deeply enough you'll find they are also against the 1st Amendment.

[DiegoF]

I have noticed thru the years that if you scratch a pro-2nd Amendment person deeply enough you'll find you'll have to answer for your violation of the NAP.

[Mike45]

It's not about guns, it's about control. The 1st amendment says freedom of speech and of the press are rights of "the people"

For those that say state restrictions are Ok, the 10th amendment makes a pretty plain statement about rights reserved to the people:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, --OR-- to the people."

[LiborCon]

There's no law prohibiting the existence of data files. Specifically data files that are:

"?digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture or produce a firearm, firearm receiver, magazine, or firearm component."

So New Jersey calls that a loophole and enacts a law that criminalizes the actions of people outside its jurisdiction. Simply making these files available on the internet is a crime. If I were to put these files in Google Docs and share them, I'd be subject to criminal prosecution by New Jersey. I think I'll do just that.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm pro-gun; I think the Second codifies a right to self-defense that I believe to be individual and important in a free society. (I'm also fine with registration, but that's neither here nor there).

But in the circles I run in, I know lots of people who want to ban guns. They are not tyrants, nor are they broadly anti-Constitution. They merely see a growing horrific problem and favor the most direct solution.

Pro-gun threads on this blog are pretty troubling because of the unanimity in their narrative of anti-gun folks as not just being wrong, but being evil. Secret conspiracies abound, as does speculative telepathy that they all want a dictatorship.

I see it everywhere on a low-level (on both sides btw), but it's everyone when it comes to this subject. That lack of disagreement alone should trouble you; that it's turned towards making your countrymen not just your opposition but villainous enemies should trouble you more.

[Smooth Like a Rhapsody]

Hillary called them "deplorable"; Obama called them "clingers": and these were both people trying to procure or maintain a national political base.
If your point is that only, say, 10% of libs want to ban all guns, you are deeply mistaken.
There is a large and persistent chasm in the American polity, as Tuesday's election showed, yet again.
No amount of Gergenizing is going to change that.

[Smooth Like a Rhapsody]

(I should add that I've never owned a gun.)

[Sarcastr0]

My point is not about party support. It is that those who do want to ban guns aren't the monsters everyone posted about in the comment chain above.

Deplorable and clingers sure does come up a lot.
You don't seem to like it when people make blase assumptions about your side. And you enthusiastically agree with one another that if you don't like guns you must hate the entire Constitution, indeed democracy itself, but lie about it.

[Brett Bellmore]

The phlebotomists who bled people to death trying to cure anemia weren't monsters, either. In practice, the difference between being a monster, and being utterly devoted to something that just doesn't work, is pretty slim.

It's a good analogy, because gun control doesn't work, and the only response gun controllers have to that is more gun control.

And for people who aren't monsters, they don't have a lot of compassion for anybody who refuses to knuckle under.

[Sarcastr0]

Making stuff up about people is not excused by you disagreeing with them super hard.

[Brett Bellmore]

Man, you're so deep in denial you must be risking nitrogen narcosis. I'm not making up anything here. How often do you encounter a gun controller who, on finding out a particular proposal doesn't accomplish squat, throws up his hands and gives up, instead of proposing something even more restrictive?

[Sarcastr0]

'How often...' I'm betting never. The outcome-oriented argument is in no way clear on either side. And if you do think it's clear, that's about your desires being author of your reality, not what's really going on.

You do not prove bad faith on the other side because they disagree with what your confidence of.

[Sarcastr0]

'How often...' I'm betting never. The outcome-oriented argument is in no way clear on either side. And if you do think it's clear, that's about your desires being author of your reality, not what's really going on. I'm down with the moral/Constitutional argument; the policy argument isn't clear.

You do not prove bad faith on the other side because they disagree with what your confidence of.

Either your assumption of bad faith allows you to be sure of things you shouldn't be, our your overconfidence requires you to believe bad faith in all who challenge it. Either way, you're the one with a reality problem.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

They are deplorable and clingers because of the backwardness, the lousy education, the diffuse bigotry, the lack of marketable skills, etc.

[perlchpr]

You should really try and add a few more notes to your symphony.

[The original jack burton]

Johnny One Note by Rodgers and Hart pretty much describes AK, eh.

[Krayt]

Oh yeah...he gets "clingers" from Obama talking about hicks clinging to their guns...that he and the Democrats "have no desire to take away, prove where Democrats say that fight me!"

[perlchpr]

They merely see a growing horrific problem and favor the most direct solution.

And apparently haven't thought about what will be involved at all.

There is no registry of who owns what. If the cops get the order to start looking for holdouts, it's going to make the most sense to go with the highest crime areas first. So, that'll be door to door in areas primarily inhabited by minorities and the poor. I'm sure the optics of that won't suck at all.

That lack of disagreement alone should trouble you; that it's turned towards making your countrymen not just your opposition but villainous enemies should trouble you more.

They want to annihilate a basic human right which is enshrined in the Constitution. How else should I view them?

[Sarcastr0]

Well yeah, I agree. They are wrong, largely for the oversimplification fallacy you discuss.

The jump you make towards evil is impressive, considering how you seem to understand from whence their error arises but then go deep into emotional territory.

[Brett Bellmore]

Remember Ruby Ridge and Waco? Your people who weren't monsters had a defenseless woman shot while holding her baby, they burned down a building with children in it.

The line between being determined to get your way no matter what, and evil, isn't as clear cut as you'd like. People have done monstrous things in the name of gun control, and if they weren't evil, I'm not sure why I should care.

[Sarcastr0]

Remember Ruby Ridge and Waco

You...don't want to get into an anecdote-off with anti-gun people.

Your reasoning that maaybe they're evil so why not assume it works just as well for liberals about Republicans. In other words, it's not actually reality-based, it's factionalist bast.

[Brett Bellmore]

My reasoning is that, given I know their behavior, I've got no reason to care what's going on with their souls. If it wasn't evil that resulted in Waco, it was an adequate substitute.

If ever the gun control movement wanted to be able to utter the phrase, "reasonable gun control", they shouldn't have opposed the Heller decision. You don't get to defend the most extreme anti-gun law in the country, and then claim to be a moderate.

[Sarcastr0]

I know their behavior...Waco

That's far too thin a reed to build your sweeping thesis on.

And your insistence that anyone who disagrees with you on Heller cannot be reasonable is just more of the same.
Just because a decision uses the word reasonable doesn't mean all who disagree with it must be unreasonable; it's not a magic word - function matters.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sarcastro, you can't expect people to believe you only want reasonable gun control, if you scream bloody murder when the most unreasonable gun control law in the nation gets overturned.

If DC's gun laws were "reasonable", what would they think "unreasonable", the death penalty for owning a BB gun?

[Sarcastr0]

the most unreasonable gun control law in the nation

See, that's you reifying what is just about definitionally your opinion into Objective Truth. Once you do that, yeah you have to assume liberals are bad-faith lying liars because it's the only way to keep that Truth as Truthy as it's gotta be.

I think the DC gun ban was dumb as well, as a policy solution and in a denying our culture sense. But your insistence that anyone that comes at this from a different angle is doing so to try and pull one over on you isn't them; it's you.

[Brett Bellmore]

It wasn't "just dumb", it was the almost complete erasure of a fundamental Constitutional right. You could have a gun, if it was grandfathered in, and you kept it in pieces is a safe.

Would that level of protection of printing press ownership satisfy you? I suspect not, because you care if THAT right gets erased.

I get it, I really do: You don't much care if the 2nd amendment is violated. So you're willing to cut the gun controllers a lot of slack, because it's no skin off your nose if you're wrong about their motives, and they score some wins because of it.

It's no big deal to you. It IS a big deal to a lot of people, and we've got no reason to cut the other side enough slack to tie into a noose and hang us with.

You want us to forget the history we went though with them. It's a stupid demand, it's never going to happen. You sound stupid even asking for it, so you should cut it out.

[Sarcastr0]

This is becoming a common change of thesis. From the secret thoughts of anti-fun people to how they're bad regardless.

Your high dudgeon about the erasure of a Constitutional Right puts the cart before the Heller horse. Condemning people for living in the Constitution regime they did is not useful unless you're looking for just empty anger.

That you hate that I don't share your fury is fine; that's how advocates are and should be. Your speculation about what I want and how I feel is a bit overboard, but that is your thing.

But you can't go making stuff up about the other side's secret plans to stoke your anger. And comparing a policy loss to getting lynched isn't healthy either.
Treating any disagreement with the angry narrative you read into this one incident as a plot to make you turn from your ideology shows how little truth value you actually put into that. All about the narrative.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Yes, exactly. Will Smith was lambasted several years ago for saying:

"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today," "I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."

However, he was absolutely right. People who are doing evil often (usually?) convince themselves that what they're doing is right. Some undoubtedly know they're doing evil, but most probably don't.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

The doctors (not Nazis) that were giving the lethal injection to mentally defective children thought they were doing the right. It is easy to convince self that self is doing the right thing whatever that is.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Exactly. And that's especially true when combined with herd mentality.

[perlchpr]

They don't have to be evil to end up being villains.

[Sarcastr0]

Fine. So stop making stuff up about what they're secretly thinking.

[perlchpr]

What did I make up? Are you trying to claim that they don't want to annihilate the Second Amendment?

[perlchpr]

I suppose that for someone who thinks Heller was decided incorrectly, and that 2A doesn't actually protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, a total ban on individual firearms ownership wouldn't constitute destruction of 2A. Is that what you're trying to get at?

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

This is the most bad faith argument of them all. Claiming you support a right while simultaneously supporting an interpretation of it that would remove all of its teeth is the height of intellectual honesty

[perlchpr]

I'm just trying to comply with Sarcastr0's "not putting thoughts in other people's heads" thing. (I guess that turn of phrase isn't quite as neat as "putting words in some else's mouth", but, oh well.)

[Sarcastr0]

Your problem is different from the post that initially set me off - the ones that tied being anti gun to a bunch of other policies that are not supported.

Your issue is laid out very well in your 11:38AM post.

Paragraph 1-2: the implementation problems of banning guns are clearly absent from the reasoning of anti-gun folks.
Paragraph 3: Therefore, they are effectively evil, regardless of their good faith or no.

3 does not follow from 1 and 2. Disagreeing about policy upshots, even if you think the upshot is horrific, isn't alone enough to write someone off.
I think if conservatives get their dream agenda, it would be a nightmare world and millions of Americans will die. But going down the road of 'they want to annihilate good society, so screw them all!!' is not how you do in a Republic.

[perlchpr]

I've actually gone out of my way to attribute good intentions to gun banners in my posts, because I understand the problem they are trying to solve.

Feel free to continue to declare that I'm calling them evil if you want, I'm done.

[Sarcastr0]

Nah, I was misunderstanding you. See below.

[Brett Bellmore]

"3 does not follow from 1 and 2."

Yes, it does. We just need to look back to the last time the anti-gun folk were actually in control of policy, and what happened: They ended up burning people alive!

Soak that in: The federal government, just to net the BATF some good publicity around budget time, attacked the Davidians, and instead of looking at what they'd done and de-escalating, they escalated to the point of burning people alive.

[Sarcastr0]

We just need to look back to the last time the anti-gun folk were actually in control of policy, and what happened: They ended up burning people alive!

So Obama and the Democratic supermajority he had was pro gun?

Your enthusiasm for the thesis that all gun control roads lead to Waco very much shows how you're not arguing from anything other than narrative, since that's not how history or policy or anecdotes or human nature or anything works. Hell, even your narrative ABOUT Waco is oversimplified.

[Brett Bellmore]

Gah, too long reply got swallowed. So I'll make this short and sweet.

Yes, all gun control roads DO lead to Waco, at least in the US, and for fundamental reasons.

This isn't an ordinary, low stakes fight over policy. It's a crusade. A crusade to erase a fundamental civil right. Opposed by people who cherish that right.

The gun controllers don't disagree with us. They despise us, they hate us. And we despise and hate them right back. This is personal, on both sides.

It wasn't an accident the Davidians got attacked, the BATF never had any plan to do anything but attack them, agents have testified to that under oath. Koresh invited them in to tour the place, they responded with an immediate armed assault.

Because Waco wasn't a law enforcement action, with police concerned about following procedure and safeguarding the lives of the presumed innocent. It was part of that crusade.

All gun control roads lead to Waco in the US, because they can't accept us continuing to own guns, and we can't accept letting them take them away, so you go down those roads, eventually you're always going to arrive at Waco.

[Brett Bellmore]

As for Obama and his Democratic supermajority, "The fool's burnt and bandaged fingers go wabbling back to the fire", but why is it "back to"?

Because he snatches them back out each time he gets burned. Being a fool, he just keeps forgetting that fire burns.

The Democrats keep burning their fingers on gun control, and each time they avoid it for a little while. That's why Obama limited himself to criminal conspiracies like Fast and Furious, or Operation Choke Point: Because they fool still remembered the pain in his fingers.

You can see they've forgotten it again, and the fingers are headed back to the fire.

[Sarcastr0]

Your post about a crusade and the other side hating you is silly. This issue is not special, you can find high emotions and turning the other side into the enemy on issues from gay marriage to immigration to taxes.

You were very wrong about the last time anti-gun folks were in charge of policy. But that's not a counterexample, you insist, it's just Waco was in the back of their minds! Which of course makes your narrative unfalsifiable - Waco 2 is forever imminent even when it's not.

Your argument that everything is Waco reminds me of the talking point that all liberal economic policies lead to Venezuela. That's not analysis, it's narritivisim.

[Brett Bellmore]

"This issue is not special, you can find high emotions and turning the other side into the enemy on issues from gay marriage to immigration to taxes."

Try finding people burned alive over gay marriage, immigration, taxes. No, this issue IS special. You'll never understand what's going on around it, so long as you insist that it isn't.

It's an explicit civil right, and a moral crusade to abolish it. You'll never understand the gun control movement, and the opposition to it, until you accept that: It isn't a normal policy disagreement, it's a moral crusade.

[Sarcastr0]

I can find deaths over abortion, that's for sure. And about racial integration. That's a dumb metric anyhow because then our foreign policy becomes the only truly moral issue, death-for-death. And maybe car safety and smoking.

This issue is special TO YOU. And you generalize that for everyone. Ask someone protesting over global warming about moral crusades.

No one wants Waco again, no one wanted what happened while it was happening. Which you realize but then seem to forget.

[Naaman Brown]

They don't have to be evil to end up being villains.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis

[perlchpr]

Longer answer: It doesn't matter how pure at heart they are, or how noble their motives, if what they end up accomplishing is villainy.

I actually do get it. They are horrified by children being shot in schools, and concert goers shot from adjacent hotels, and university students being shot at bars. I am too. I am highly sympathetic to their desire to end the slaughter of innocents.

But it would require a police state like the Soviets only dreamed of to actually round up all the guns.

100 million gun owners. 600 million firearms. 1.5 trillion rounds of ammunition.

It won't just be 2A. It would require absolute, wholesale destruction of 4A to even attempt to accomplish it. Entire police departments, or entire National Guard units, invading entire neighborhoods, and conducting full searches of every dwelling, roof to cellar. Every underwear drawer rifled through, every mattress overturned, every wall swept with metal detectors, every inch of every yard swept with ground penetrating radar. And they'll have to keep doing it, over and over again, in order to catch the people who moved their guns to a friend's house that wasn't in the target area, and then brought them home at night.

Villainy with the noblest of intentions.

[Sarcastr0]

What kind of public support do you suppose there is for your scenario? Certainly way below the broad generaliztion AA made in his 11.9.18 @ 7:18PM that set off a bunch of bullshit posters explaining what people who don't like guns are REALLY thinking.

Your argument that they are so wrong that you might as well treat them as evil ends up rationalizing some bad stuff, no?

[perlchpr]

You're the one who keeps using the word "evil". In fact, I could pretty justifiably accuse you of the same sort of "secretly thinking" behaviour you keep accusing me of.

I would presume there is very little public support for what it would actually take to accomplish the goal of people who want a complete gun ban. Which is why I'm not excessively worried about the civil war that such actions would undoubtedly touch off.

Your argument that they are so wrong that you might as well treat them as evil ends up rationalizing some bad stuff, no?

Seriously, where did I say anything about treating anyone as evil? What action did I try to rationalize? Because I agreed that I view them as villainous enemies? I mean, they certainly aren't my friends, and the means to accomplish their goal requires massive villainy. Would you prefer "painfully misguided people who haven't thought things through at all whose policy goals will require the destruction of the Constitution"?

[Sarcastr0]

The speculative telepathy that you swooped in to defend and what your thesis appears to be are two different things.

Are you making some distinction between your argument of functional villainy and functional evil? Because I use evil and villainy interchangeably and you seem to object to that.

[perlchpr]

Yes. Evil requires intent. Villainy only requires action.

[Sarcastr0]

OK, fair clarification. I shall not quibble with our differing definitions, but will continue to use yours. It's sorta fun, because by that definition, I think many on this blog are villains.

What do you think of the commenters above who do think gun controllers are evil, but lying about it as evil people do?

Also, what means do you think are justified in combating this sort of 'good faith' villainy?

[perlchpr]

Goddamnit, fuck the comment system at this place.

*sigh*

I'll try to recreate the comment I was going to leave.

I think most gun prohibitionists really think that they're trying to prevent needless deaths. I think many people on "my team" attribute too much to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance. And I think that there probably actually are some people on the "other side" who meet even my definition of "evil". (There are probably people on my team who do as well. It's humanity. There are some rejects in the mix, whatever side you're on.)

As far as "what means are justified", it depends on what's happening. I think the best answer is education, and I donate to groups that work to advance my goals legislatively and in the court system. I've been a member of JPFO and SAF since way back in the ugly days of the Clinton Ban.

But in the end, I'm not going to sit idly by if someone tries to kick in my door and take my stuff. I won't shoot first, but I'll certainly shoot back. I don't have to think someone is evil to defend myself from them.

(Most people would probably benefit from not being this candid in a public forum, but I was in "Armed America", so if there's "a list", I'm already on it, and nothing is going to change that. 😉 )

[Sarcastr0]

I cannot disagree with your understanding of the anti-gun movement. I will note how different that is than the initial speculation above (that you were not part of) that they are all secret Stalins.

No argument on the methods you think are fine as well.

Guns aren't my personal cause, but for stuff that is my cause [death penalty, procedural stuff, science policy), I tend to act exactly like you, although perhaps with a bit less drama, but that might be my problem not yours 😛

[Toranth]

A "growing horrific problem"?
Gun violence is down, and has been going down for decades - even as gun ownership has gone up.
At the same time, we're seeing more and more research about the benefits of private gun ownership. For example, even the Brady Foundation admitted that private ownership of handguns prevents at least 500,000 crimes per year. The CDC publicly estimated twice that, and their private research they tried to hide says it may be almost 2,000,000 crimes prevented per year.

And in the end, banning ownership of guns rarely works if the underlying culture doesn't change. Tell me, how is violence in Mexico? Venezuela? Both of which have banned private gun ownership. Or take Colombia, which has your "reasonable gun laws" (permits only upon government investigation and approval) has massive gun violence - even without counting the FARCers.

It's hard to believe people that say they have no ulterior motives when they knows these things, and yet still persist in their actions.

[Sarcastr0]

Spree killings are up. So is domestic terrorism via guns. That's the problems they talk about.

Your second paragraph is pretty insightful - if gun violence is a problem, it is a symptom not a disease.

Your last paragraph is exactly the lack of reasoning I'm complaining about. 'They are so super-duper wrong, they gotta be lying' is a failure of empathy and imagination.

[Brett Bellmore]

Media coverage of spree killings is up, so spree killings are up. It's a copycat phenomenon, and has been known to be such for a long time.

It goes through a regular cycle of spikes caused by coverage, followed by lulls because the supply of lunatics has been used up.

[Sarcastr0]

I concur - the media responding to spree killings as they previously did for suicides would be a very effective way to deal with this problem.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

I think Malcolm Gladwell's theory for what is happening is the most plausible. He posits that mass shootings are like a riot. Most people aren't willing to shatter the first storefront window, but many people are willing to join in on the rioting and looting once it's started. As the frequency of mass shootings ticks up, more and more people (who are unready mentally unstable) are willing to join in.

[Brett Bellmore]

Here's the way I see it: People who'd be willing to gain massive notoriety by mass murder occur at some low rate, and accumulate in society. At some point, one of them "goes off", shoots someplace up.

Now, if the media reported it as, "Some scum sucking lunatic whose name and face we will not dignify with coverage killed a bunch of people, and then died like a dog.", we'd probably get the occasional mass shooting but not too often. Because, what do you get of it? Dying anonymously like a dog, that's what.

But they don't, they splash the killer's name and face across the nation. They, in effect, promise to make anybody who copies the attack famous.

They get taken up on the offer, and you get a spate of copycat killings, until the supply of willing lunatics is used up for a while. Then the coverage stops only because of the lack of mass shootings to report, and the lunatics start accumulating again.

We've gone through several cycles like this since the media started making rock stars of mass murderers. Basically everybody in the media knows they could put a stop to it, but, "If it bleeds, it leads.", so they don't.

[Toranth]

Gun violence, overall, is undeniably down.
"Mass shootings" are up according to some definitions, down according to others. If you exclude all criminal related shootings, then they are up. If you including criminal shootings, they are significantly down.
If you adjust for per capita, they are dropping precipitously by either definition.

"Domestic terrorism" wasn't a term people used before quite recently. An few have attempted to go back to categorize the econimic-based political violence of the socialists and anarchists and unionists in the 1880s and 1910s. Not to mention the 1850s and 60s (and 70s and 80s), which were full of race-based political violence. Or the 1820s and 1840s, which featured widespread religious-based political violence. Again, coverage is up... but domestic terrorism is way down. Adjusted for population, the drop is even more dramatic.

Finally, let me ask *you*: If gun violence is down overall, and guns are used to protect between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 people from crimes each year, WHY would you support a gun ban? How can you justify doing that much harm for a minor problem that is getting better anyway?

[Sarcastr0]

What might have happened recently that made us distinguish foreign terror from domestic terror?

Playing devil's advocate, because I do not support a gun ban, just because we were okay with something in the past doesn't mean we need to condone it now.
The causal connection between guns and gun deaths is clear; the causal connection between guns and 'protecting people from crimes' is less clear. Even factually supported is the refrain about 'a good guy with a gun' being a panacea against gun violence.

I think it's a way of looking at the issue that lacks proper nuance (hence how many gun-control luminaries come from an emotional place), but the reasoning is that the direct relationship is stronger than a speculative counterfactual one.

[Naaman Brown]

I do not consider "a good guy with a gun" a panacea (universal cure) against gun violence.

I do consider a good guy or gal with a gun often to be a cure against violence, gun or non-gun variety.

More gun control will only apply to the guy or gal who abides by the law.

James Wright and Peter Rossi were hired in 1977 by the Carter Admin to study guns, crime and violence in America. Their various reports (eg Under The Gun 1983) showed criminals were more likely to be armed outside the legally regulated channels.

US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
Firearms Use by Offenders
2004 Source of firearms possessed by state prison inmates at time of offense

11.3% Retail Purchase or trade
7.3 - Retail store
2.6 - Pawnshop
0.6 - Flea market
0.8 - Gun show

37.4% Family or friend
12.2 - Purchased or traded
14.1 - Rented or borrowed
11.1 - Other

40.0% Street/illegal source
7.5 - Theft or burglary
25.2 - Drug dealer/off street
7.4 - Fence/black market

11.2% Other source

Gun control in its extreme means the only people legally armed are agents of the State, with everyone else legally disarmed or illegally armed.

[Sarcastr0]

The argument on the other side is that fewer legal guns pretty shortly means fewer illegal guns; these are not independent numbers.

[Absaroka]

I think an assumption that they are highly correlated is unwarranted.

Suppose you ban guns. The fact that 75% of soccer moms hand theirs in is unlikely to imply that 75% of muggers do. The soccer mom probably bought the gun like she bought a fire extinguisher - to be of utility in a high stakes/low probability event. For the mugger, using one isn?t a low probability event - he?s going to use it the next time he goes to ?work?.

There will presumably be some supply reduction, from reduced burgled guns for example, but violent criminals are likely to be the very last people to be disarmed,simply because the utility to them is so high.

[Sarcastr0]

I agree that we really don't know how it would end up - Canada has more guns per capita and fewer deaths. But countries that ban guns do have fewer illegal guns as well.

Your reasoning only holds immediately following a gun ban. Where do you think a muggers' gun comes from? Eventually, that supply is going to become a constraint compared to now when guns and ammo are manufactured every day.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, rather comparable to meth, really. Without a legal market, the illegal supply reliably dries up after a while.

[perlchpr]

The thing is, guns "wear out" very very slowly. I have three rifles that were used in WWI (not a typo) that are still perfectly functional.

Ammo, too. I regularly run ammo through one of those rifles that was manufactured for the Korean War. It works just fine. And most of the time a mugger won't need to actually fire his gun, so he's not going through ammo all that fast.

So that's ammo that's 70+ years old through a gun that's 100+ years old. We'd have armed criminals for a long time after we had no armed civilians.

[Absaroka]

"But countries that ban guns do have fewer illegal guns as well."

Mexico??

"Where do you think a muggers' gun comes from?"

Today they mostly start in a legit gun factory, and get burgled or bought by a non-prohibited accomplice.

That's because a small machine shop owner who's behind on his lease payments can't profitably compete with Ruger or Remington. It's the same reason people aren't making illicit aspirin. Once Ruger and Remington shut down, then it's game on for illicit manufacture. You don't need giant factories to make guns - and illicit guns don't need a lot of the niceties that legit purchasers require today, so the price might not even go up that much.

I only took freshman chem, so if I tried to make meth I'd probably get a FOOM!, but I don't think you need a pharma factory to make it. I've made guns in my basement hobby shop, so I know you don't need a factory to make them.

(also, old joke: Q: when guns are banned where will crooks get them? A:they will smuggle them in hidden under the drugs)

[Naaman Brown]

"how is violence in Mexico?"

Researcher Georgina Sanchez (Collective for Security with Democracy and Human Rights) quoted a "conservative estimate" of 15 million illegal weapons in Mexico. Another more liberal breakdown by Georgina Sanchez for a Mexican agency estimated 12 to 15 million miltary type weapons and 40 million conventional civilian rifles, shotguns and handguns.The estimates of illegal weapons (unregistered with the Mexican government) is thus a range of 15 to 55 million versus about 3 million legally registered civilian owned firearms.

Anecdotal accounts from US citizens legally working in Mexico is that their hosts -- legitimate businessmen or professionals -- have contempt for Mexican gun laws and see the restrictions as justification for patronizing the black markets used by criminals.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Except that they won't accept the "most direct solution" for anything else. Banning Hispanic immigration would drastically reduce crime, as they commit violent crime at a rate of 5 times the average white population. But if anyone suggests that, the left will call them racists, and say that the ends don't justify the means. Why do they for the gun horrific problem?

[Harvey Mosley]

I don't think all of the activists who push for more gun control are evil. I think some are just stupid. I really don't see any other option. And I'm not talking about the people on the street who just think we need to "do something". I'm talking about the people who are actively pushing the gun control agenda.

It has to be one of the two (evil or stupid) because gun control just doesn't work. If they know it doesn't work and keep pushing for it anyway they're evil. If they don't know that it doesn't work they're stupid.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, I think people that disagree with my worldview are stupid as well.

[Harvey Mosley]

What would you call someone who advocated for a policy that has never worked but each time its failure is highlighted they advocate for more drastic versions of that policy? Again, I'm not talking about the average person on the street. I'm talking about people that have the money, power, or platform to have a potential effect on policy.

What would you call someone who deported legal immigrants each time an illegal alien committed a crime?

[Naaman Brown]

The advocates of alcohol prohibition, of defacto prohibitory taxes on marihuana, of banning "Tales from the Crypt" comics to prevent seduction of the innocents into juvenile delinquency, of banning "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to restore decency in Boston, of burning Beatles' White Albums to prevent further Helter Skelter murder sprees, of crusades against satanic ritual abuse by daycare workers, all were not of evil intent and many had university degrees, but in my not so humble opinion, that does not excuse the evil results of their useless advocacy. And I include in that list the Sullivan Act of 1911 and the efforts beginning in 1924 by unemployed alcohol prohibitionists to start the modern crusade against guns.

In November 1962, I was fourteen and had bought a selected volume of Edgar Allan Poe. It was in the midst of the local option prohibition of alcohol 1953-1968, and the eve of the modern crusade for gun control resulting in the Gun Control Act of 1968. I discovered this in Poe's Marginalia:
"He that is born to be a man," says Wieland in his Peregrinus Proteus, "neither should nor can be anything nobler, greater, or better than a man."
The fact is, that in efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it. Your reformist demigods are merely devils turned inside out.

[Allutz]

I think the reason that pro-gun people in this debate see the opposition as evil is because they see them as deceitful.

Its plain enough that the DC and Chicago laws in Heller/Macdonald essentially eliminated gun rights in those cities, yet people in favor of those laws often insisted that they did not eliminate gun rights.

I think the easiest way to explain it would be like this: Lets pretend the pro-life movement did not use language like, "Murder" and instead always insisted they wanted common sense restrictions (also lets pretend we are in a Roe-less world). However, whenever there is a critical mass of pro-lifers (about 70% seems the threshold) they enact extremely restrictive laws like, "No abortions after 5 weeks, and at least 2 doctors must sign off that the fetus is not more than 5 weeks old." Would the pro-Choice movement think these are common sense restrictions? If such a restriction was struck down in a Roe 2.0 and the majority of the pro-life movement decried the decision as extreme would the pro-Choice movement not think that most pro-Lifers are extremists who want to ban all abortion? Why would the pro-Choice movement be wrong?

That the pro-Lifers are explicit in their motivations: Banning abortion because they think it is baby murder, makes it much easier to engage with them and not feel you are constantly having to check to see if they are lying.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Yes, exactly. I have a lot more respect for liberals who admit they want to ban all guns than ones who claim they just want "common sense" restrictions and then demand a ban on semi-autos, which would be a ban on nearly every gun out there.

[Gozer the Gozarian]

If you want to disarm me, in clear violation of the 2A, you should expect that I will view you with contempt, suspicion, and disdain.

You might be okay with surrendering your rights, I am not.

[rsteinmetz]

The gun control crowd seem to be pushing some pretty useless "common sense" requirements. As far as I can tell if their current proposals had been enacted 20 years ago pretty much none of the recent crimes would have been prevented.

Can anyone point out any?

The only one I can come up with is the Parkand shooting because the shooter was under 21.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

And even that is stupid. There are plenty of AR-15s (and other weapons) available on Armslist in South Florida. Many sellers only ask for a bill of sale and an ID showing 21. It's not hard to produce one of those.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Those of us on the pro gun side won't compromise anymore because we know what the end game is. Look at the most recent shooting in California. California has EVERY SINGLE "reasonable common sense" restriction on the Brady/Bloomturd list. Waiting periods, enhanced background checks, bans on "assault weapons," no private sales, 10 round magazine limits, handgun rosters (I believe only those with chamber indicators are allowed), red flag laws, no online ammo purchasing, and so on.

Most mass shooters had clean records prior to their crime, so no background checks would have stopped it. Sure, nearly all of them were somewhat "off," but 99% of "off" people will never commit a violent crime, so denying based on that, if you can even find a way to make that determination, will result in many unconstitutional denials.

If there was any solution to this problem, it would have been done long ago. But the fact is, the left's demonization of AR-15s and other center fire semi-automatic magazine fed rifles is a lazy red herring. A rifle's advantage is range and accuracy. Period. In a mass shooting situation, which, with the exception of Las Vegas, are from close range, a Glock 19 with a 33 round magazine is just as effective and deadly as an AR-15. Hell, you don't even need a 33 round magazine. Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, used 10 round magazines. It simply isn't hard to change magazines. I can do it in under 2 seconds, and I'm not even close to "good" at it.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Continued:

Liberals like to spew the stupid line, "There's nothing we can do, says the only country where this problem exists." But it's the truth. There's nothing we can do to reduce the occasional mass shooting in a nation where firearms ownership is a right. If we treated it as a privilege, and instituted a massive police state to seize the hundreds of millions of guns already out there, maybe we could. But the fact that liberals can't point to a single measure that would actually work shows what their end game is.

[Naaman Brown]

Also, claiming US is the only country with mass shootings, is false. Even if you exclude "military" mass shootings (civil war, organized terrorist cells, etc), other countries have "civilian" mass shootings, many with legally acquired weapons but also many with stolen military/police weapons or with illegally manufactured oe smuggled weapons.

Norwegian 22 Jul 2011 attacker killed 77 people, wounded 319. He actively started preparing for his attack in 2009, making both legal and illegal contacts in seeking weapons.

Gun crime is not different from other crime: you have an actor with motive and intent, seizing opportunity to utilize some means to a bad end. Actor, opportunity, means. Obsession with restricting means misses strategies aimed at identifying actors or denying bad actors opportunity to act.

[Naaman Brown]

The panick over 3D printed guns is ludicrous.
Back in the 1960s I found a book in the public library showing a zip gun.
Block of 2x4 lumber sawed into an "L" shape.
A hole drilled to accommodate a section of car aerial or gas pipe with inside diameter suitable for a .22 or .25 or ,32 cartridge diameter.
A "U" shape of bent sheet metal for a tipping breech block. Pivoting on a nail or screw or bolt.
A pivoting wooden or metal piece bearing a firing pin, powered by a spring or rubber bands. Pull it back and let it slip to fire. Or get fancy and add a trigger to hold it back until pressed by a finger.
Could be built with hand tools. If care were done, it would be more durable than that 3D printer oversized single shot derringer.

And I could go on to point out the Fillipino slam-bang, the Australian biker gangs "bikies" building MAC-10 submachine guns in their garages. Not to mention the Khyber Pass gun makers who can replicate any sample gun sitting in a hut before a vise, hand drill, and file.

The powers-that-be already have had no control over home-built weapons for generations.
That they panick over 3D printer gun plans shows we are being ruled by ignoramuses.

[perlchpr]

To play devil's advocate, doing any of that requires some level of skill. The 3D printer turned it into a literal "push a button" sort of thing.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a welder and a machinist. I know just how futile "ban all the guns" would be. I'm actually working on a "sequel" of sorts to Luty's "Expedient Homemade Firearms", which I am tentatively entitling "The Hundred Dollar Home Depot Shotgun". (Which includes buying all the tools needed there, too.) But that still requires the ability to use a hacksaw and a file. It's a step beyond that to "push button, receive gun".

*shrug*

[Brett Bellmore]

Speaking as somebody who owns a 3d printer, 3D printed guns are a step beyond "push button, receive gun", too. The things aren't as user friendly as people who don't have one tend to think, at least if you're talking about producing solid parts with some real strength to them.

Yeah, eventually they'll get there. Both sides are trying to establish the precedents before that day arrives. But with current 3d printers, I'd rather use the hacksaw and file; I'd be less likely to blow my hand off.

[perlchpr]

Sure, but every day we're one step closer to the Diamond Age.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Exactly. There are no circumstances under which I'd prefer a 3D printed AR lower than a 80% one that I cut and drilled myself.

It's only a matter of time before liberals demand that all gun parts be serialized and subject to registration.

[TxJack 112]

The 3D instructions are free speech just as the Anarchist's cookbook is free speech. This book has been available for decades and tells you how to make explosives, hallucinogenic drugs and other illegal items, but no one ever challenged its distribution. This ban is nothing more than the government attempting to ban guns. the only problem is all the claims about this "gun" are total BS. The design is for a one shot plastic gun that is worthless after that one shot. Gun powder burns at 800 degrees and the plastic used in 3D printers melts at 340 degrees. The original intent was to determine if making a 3D printed plastic gun were POSSIBLE, not practical. The problem is the people who want to ban these instructions are the same ones who insist the 2nd amendment is about hunting, but then argue hunting should be banned because it violates animal rights, or they argue the 2nd amendment only applies to government run militias which would totally eliminate the private ownership of guns. Guns are the only item sold in the US that when misused, the immediate call is to punish everyone.

[ruhishown]

They do not tell a 3D printer how hot the plastic needs to be or how thick each layer should be. They do not tell a CNC how deep to make its cuts and what size bit the router is using. also, check out lexmark 900 firmware error

[Roy Pherae]

this is a great article explained in a very good manner anyone beginner can understand this. epson error code 0x10

[Sarcastr0]

That is true of just about every issue. It has nothing to do with whether it's okay to characterize the other side as demons when they are, in fact, humans.

[Sarcastr0]

You are conflating Democratic politicians, who don't have a strategy in anything much less this, with advocates, who make no bones about their end-goal of banning guns.
Noting that the positions of one don't match with the position of the other isn't bad faith any more than when Republican politicians argue for common sense immigration security while much of their base wants to seal the border.

But you demonize them, relying partially on how much you don't like it when they do the same to you. That's just lazy hypocrisy.

[Sarcastr0]

Just because you don't say libtard doesn't mean you're not demonizing. You accuse them of bad faith via spurious logic; you call them controllers, putting imaginary agendas into their heads; you insist they are being willfully deceitful with no evidence.

You are doing exactly what I'm complaining about, and then you are sad I'm predictably complaining you do it.

[Sarcastr0]

By that logic, compromise exists about guns as well.

Your assumption that advocates' extreme agenda is the entire policy agenda of the other side also holds for taxes, social security, interest rates, etc. - advocates in that arena usually want some pretty extreme things as well.

Indeed, you opaque characterization of 'gun rights' shows how you aren't even sure what your side's victory looks like. That's because you are an advocate - you pay attention to momentum and call it a position.

[Brett Bellmore]

Democratic politicians made not bones about their end-goal of banning guns, until they figured out that it was hurting them politically. Do we really have to pull out that long list of quotes again?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, Sarcastro: When we accuse gun control advocates of bad faith, it's via not being amnesiac. The presumption of good faith is rebutable, and it long since stands rebutted for the gun control movement.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

There's no 'like' button, so...

Like.

[Sarcastr0]

The main reasoning of rebuttal I see is that they're just so wrong. That's more emotion than evidence.

[Sarcastr0]

How far back do you need to go for an overt Democratic consensus on banning guns?

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

They're projecting. Their side uses violence to shut down opposing viewpoints, so they sincerely believe that conservatives will do the same.

[Brett Bellmore]

We're not obligated to ignore a consensus just because it stops being overt.

[Krayt]

This isn't a joke.

How soon people forget the panic in the twitterspace right after Trump's election, "What if they do to us what we've been doing to them?"

In other words, what if the power of social and professional ostracism was wielded against them as they had been doing for several years.

Tolerance and live and let live was killed, and they were right to fear reprisals (which never happened.)

[Sarcastr0]

You can't just make up a consensus, though, Brett.

[Sarcastr0]

Blah blah bad faith. Secret agenda. Meh.

[Sarcastr0]

It's a zero-sum policy debate

So is taxes, under that rubric. Anti-tax people won't stop until there are no income taxes at all. So we'd better run them out of the country, eh?

Even slavery kept convict labor and the draft. Look a reconstruction if you want to see a crapload of concessions on a 'zero-sum' issue.

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, even you're not denying that, at one time, there was a Democratic party consensus in favor of banning guns.

If they'd stopped proposing gun control laws, gun bans, I suppose I might have some reason to think that consensus had evaporated. But since they never stopped, I don't.

Now, if the Democratic party came out and said, "The Heller and McDonald rulings were correct, there's an individual right to own guns, and we now accept that.", you'd have a case.

But they haven't. Overturning Heller is still on their wish list. Getting rid of the PLCAA, that stopped the attempt to bankrupt the firearms industry, is still on their wish list. The last, Democratic, administration was illegally conspiring to deny firearms companies access to banking services.

Is that how you respect this right? No, that's how you attempt to abolish it.

[Sarcastr0]

If you're reaching back to the politics of the 1980s, you're...reaching.

I assume you will write-off modern Democrats co-sponsoring gun control legislation as just more bad faith posturing for their constituents?

Your thesis has drifted from 'Democrats all want to ban guns and any that don't are lying about it' to 'Democrats don't like Heller.' Those are not the same thing. Momentum is not position.

We've gone though Chokepoint before. Straw-gun sales and money laundering had a proven tie; it's not the conspiracy you wish it was.

[Brett Bellmore]

Gee, why would I reach back to the politics of the 1980's to explain something Nancy Pelosi is up to?

Yes, I'm reaching back to the 1980's. It's called, "not having amnesia". You're not denying the facts here, you're just insisting that we forget about them.

You're insisting that we just assume, for no good reason, that even though the Democratic party was proposing gun control with the explicit aim of eventually banning them a few decades ago, today they're doing the exact same thing for different reasons.

No, I'm not buying it. I've got no reason to buy it. The only thing that happened is that they learned that admitting what they were up to was bad politics.

And, yes, we've gone through Choke Point before. You're still in denial about it, I see.

[Brett Bellmore]

Except that there are very few people who are committed to the idea of a 100% tax rate, and there's a whole movement committed to the idea of banning all guns...

[Sarcastr0]

Flip it - lots of people committed to ending income taxes.

[Sarcastr0]

You're insisting the politics of the 1980s are the secret politics of today. That's not having a memory, it's picking a story you like and damn the current facts.

I'm insisting we believe what people say - that when an anti-gun advocate says he wants to ban all guns, he does, and when a political party is moving away from that position that's what they're doing.

That you continue to ignore or declaim that gun sellers were laundering money shows how you love your simple narratives that bolster your position. Which keeps your engine running, but won't keep it clean.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"You're insisting the politics of the 1980s are the secret politics of today."

Did you support the Democrats reaching back to the 1980s and Kavanaugh's behavior in high school as relevant to the confirmation hearings for his nomination to the Supreme Court?

[Brett Bellmore]

If you have evidence specific gun sellers are laundering money, you initiate prosecutions for money laundering. You don't secretly pressure banks to cut off financial services to all gun sellers. In our legal system, guilt is individual, and innocence is the presumption.

So I don't have to claim that no gun seller ever laundered money to denounce Operation Choke Point. Whether any ever did is utterly irrelevant, because Operation Choke Point wasn't about money laundering. It was about abusing regulatory power to attack legal industries the administration just didn't like.

Your defense of Operation Choke Point is absurd. If it had been defensible, they wouldn't have had to do it secretly, and shut it down when it was discovered. They would have publicly announced it, and bragged about doing it.

In fact, your defense of it is worse than absurd, it's horrifying. You might as well defend lynch mobs on the basis that at some point at least one of the guys they lynched must have been guilty!

[Sarcastr0]

Personal behavior isn't the same as party ideology.

But I, and just about all my liberal friends, think Kavanaugh's problem was blatantly lying about his past, not his drunken fratboy douchbaggery.

[perlchpr]

I think you might be vastly overestimating the number of people who are actively pushing for a repeal of 16A, compared to the number of people who would support effectively complete gun control. I mean, you've got the LP advocating for that, but an "assault weapon" and standard capacity magazine ban is in the Democrat platform.

[Sarcastr0]

Stats on money laundering risk are hard to come by, but guns being in the mix seems to be common practice.
FFEC
Perterson Institute
Some bankers discussing how it's common practice

My defense is not that it's good policy, it's that it does not support your paranoid theorizing and subsequent rationalization of treating all who disagree with you on this issue as monsters.

[Brett Bellmore]

Again, which is as irrelevant as citing racial statistics for rape when discussing lynchings. Operation Choke Point wasn't cutting off banking services based on individualized evidence particular businesses were breaking the law, it did so based on being on a laundry list of industries, whose only unifying characteristic was that the Obama administration didn't like any of them. Only a few of them were even illegal:

Ammunition Sales
Cable Box De-scramblers
Coin Dealers
Credit Card Schemes
Credit Repair Services
Dating Services
Debt Consolidation Scams
Drug Paraphernalia
Escort Services
Firearms Sales
Fireworks Sales
Get Rich Products
Government Grants
Home-Based Charities
Life-Time Guarantees
Life-Time Memberships
Lottery Sales
Mailing Lists/Personal Info
Money Transfer Networks
On-line Gambling
Pawn Shops
Payday Loans
Pharmaceutical Sales
Ponzi Schemes
Pornography[5]
Pyramid-Type Sales
Racist Materials
Surveillance Equipment
Telemarketing
Tobacco Sales
Travel Clubs

It wasn't just the 2nd amendment under attack here, the 1st amendment was pretty heavily impacted, too: Some of these categories are just 1st amendment exercises where Obama didn't like what was being said!

[Bruce Hayden]

As I read your first and third references, they don't prove your contention, but would almost disprove such. One of the things that Operation Chokepoint did was to shut off accepting credit cards and the like for gun sellers and manufacturers. The whole point about the alleged money laundering, that you seem to be basing your argument on, is that unbanking these companies cut them off from accepting credit cards, forcing them to accept cash, thus increasing, not decreasing, the opportunities for money laundering.

The thing here is that small gun sellers (and not gun wholesalers or manufacturers or moderate or larger sized retailers) are the only ones who are cash businesses, and they weren't the companies targeted or most affected by the unbanking. Someone who sells a dozen or so guns a year might operate on a cash basis, in order to evade primarily the IRS, but those selling probably a hundred or more guns a year are much more likely to need access to credit cards and the like, and so would want to minimize cash transactions. Making things worse, this affected gun parts, which can and very often are, sold over the Internet (guns themselves cannot be, unless delivered through an FFL after the required background check), and this unbanking effectively shut these companies down, because they couldn't take credit cards any more, or use PayPal either (which requires an underlying bank account).

[Sarcastr0]

My contention is not that this is good policy. My contention is that it is not a secret evil plot.

[Brett Bellmore]

And my contention is that you're full of it. It was most certainly secret, and a plot. It was a criminal conspiracy to use threats of abusive regulatory action to coerce financial institutions into cutting off services to perfectly legal customers. Which is why they did it secretly in the first place, and why they had to stop when they were found out.

Evil? You've clearly set the bar for admitting that anything is "evil" pretty high.

[Sarcastr0]

So you think that the list above, which happens to comport with the conventional wisdom in the private sector, is actually Obama secretly ordering the FDIC to make a list of groups he didn't like, and then secretly ordering the DoJ to use that list in their initiative going after money laundering.

That's not me being full of it, that's you jumping to crazy conclusions. You don't even have proof Obama doesn't like some of those other than that they're on the list!

[Gozer the Gozarian]

It's not a secret agenda. It's a well-known and often shared public agenda.

If you had a clue, what would you do with it?

[Brett Bellmore]

My God, you're being infuriating in this thread. There's no question whatsoever that it was compiled secretly. Thanks to it being compiled secretly, without any of the normal traceability legally mandated for formal decision making in government, we can't prove who originated it. The list just appeared out of nowhere, policy by spontaneous generation, and the bureaucracy ran with it, like they always do with lists that just show up on the table one day without any providence.

If you're credulous enough to believe that, which you seem determined to be.

And, again, they were ILLEGALLY using threats of adverse regulatory action to coerce banks into cutting off entire categories of LEGAL businesses from financial services.

That's not how you go after money laundering, or any other crime. You go after crime by identifying specific individuals for whom you have probable cause to suspect have committed the crime, and prosecuting them. Not just illegally coercing banks to deny services to the entire industry they belong to.

WHICH IS WHY THEY HAD TO STOP WHEN THEY WERE CAUGHT.

[FlameCCT]

Simple question Sarcastro,

Can you identify the actual change to the Democratic Party policies? Not the change in rhetoric?

Seriously, it was the Democratic Party that denied POC their Constitutional Rights including 2A for over 100 years. They denied MLK his 2A Rights in the 60s just like they continue to deny people their 2A Rights today. That is just one policy that the Democratic Party hasn't changed.