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Technology vs Gun Control

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 10:03 pm
by xl_target
I recently read an interesting article about how technology can overcome dictatorship, censorship and despotism. We have already seen how the Internet helped the Arab Dawn. How it spread awareness in China. Remember when the Soviets tried to control copiers in the 70's to stifle the spread of information? Technology marches on, it waits for no man ...or Government.

Below he talks about Computers, Machine Tools, Moores Law, etc and like any good conservative, he gets guns in there somehow. Either way, it’s kind of humorous.
Zaphod told us that the secret is to ‘bang the rocks together’, but Zaphod was a liberal arts major and probably should have stuck to opining on Womyn’s studies issues and pomme frittes upselling. The real secret is heat treating. Bring some steel up to temperatures that you can reach in your basement with an oxy cutting rig that you can buy for less than the cost of taking your wife to dinner and a show then plunge it into cold water, and you’ve got a nearly diamond-hard object where the carbon atoms have been do-si-doh-ed into proper body-centered cubic alignment…and then throw it in a $20 toaster oven from Target and you can relieve some of the internal stresses and create a cutting tool that can slice through regular steel…and
cut through aluminum like Tipper Gore through the 1st amendment.
…or, if you prefer metal over plastic, download the plans for a a full AR-15 lower that you can crank out with your fresh-from-the-box $1k Sherline CNC milling machine and $15 worth of aluminum, then kit it out with $410 worth of barrel, shoulder stock, and such.

Due to forces of technology (CNC controlled machine tools, cheap computation, open source ethics, and social sharing of designs) gun control is utterly dead. It’s a corpse, staggering along, not yet aware that it’s been gut shot, it’s blood pressure has dropped to zero, and its brain (such as it is) is about to die the True Death.

Read the Rest here:
"The Third Wave, CNC, Stereolithography, and the end of gun control

Re: Technology vs Gun Control

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:58 am
by essdee1972
Please do not show this to Indian law makers - they will make CNC milling machines, oxy acetylene torches, ovens, etc. subject to license!! And then we have to eat raw food :)

(we anyway don't get CNC stuff for less than a few lacs here!)

Cheers!

Re: Technology vs Gun Control

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:08 pm
by nagarifle
as the saying goes "if you outlaw guns then the outlaws will have guns" those who want will have regardless of the law.

Re: Technology vs Gun Control

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:26 am
by Priyan
essdee1972 wrote:Please do not show this to Indian law makers - they will make CNC milling machines, oxy acetylene torches, ovens, etc. subject to license!! And then we have to eat raw food :)

(we anyway don't get CNC stuff for less than a few lacs here!)

Cheers!
Thats what I was about to say but CNC milling machines can be built at home too. Actually I'm in the process of building one.

Re: Technology vs Gun Control

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:19 am
by xl_target
You'll be surprised with what can be done with just a decent drill press. :D

When I was in high school, one of my class mates wanted to build a handheld cutting laser. He didn't know that it couldn't be done :). I laughed at him but I'll be damned if he didn't do it (with discrete components - no IC's at that time). The issue back then (late 1970's - early 1980's) was getting enough portable battery power. He could never get his battery pack portable enough.