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Build Your Own Gauss Pistol
BdosError writes "A Russion software developer has developed a homemade Gauss pistol. It's not very powerful yet, but as a proof of concept, it's interesting. Nice, non-chemical slugthrower that should appeal to fans of Science Fiction and related games, like Traveller and many others."
Niiiiiice. Ramp up the power a bit more and you have the perfect sniper gun. You could shoot someone and people around them would not even know a shot had been fired, let alone what direction it came from.
Interesting concept. Just one Q though, as it doesn't seem to be discussed on the site in the link, and that is how does it achieve the effect of a normal rifled barrel in causeing the iron bullet to spin and therefore be stabilized in flight?
use the same fucking units, asshole
SkArcher (676201) : >Gauss Rifles are from battletech Though that's a fairly well known usage, the Gauss Rifle and Gauss Pistol (and VRF Gauss Gun) date *at least* to 1978, when they appeared in the aforementioned SF RPG "Traveller" by GDW. FASA later "adopted" the Gauss Rifle for use in Battletech, but FASA got its start as a licensed producer for Traveller... Chirp.
The guns used by those kids were:
1. Illegally purchased (They were purchased by someone who could purchase them legally, but with the intent to illegally provide them to minors, which makes the act of purchasing them illegal.)
2. Illegally owned (In the state of Colorado handguns may only be owned by persons 21 and older.)
3. Illegally possessed (In the state of Colorado it is illegal for a person under 21 to possess a handgun without supervision.)
4. Illegally carried (Carry of a concealed handgun is only allowed by permit.)
5. Illegally possessed (It is illegal for non-LEOs to possess a firearm on public school property without a concealed carry permit. Yes, this makes it "doubly" illegal for them to have had them.)
6. Illegally carried (It is illegal to carry a concealed firearm on school property without a permit . . . ditto above.)
So, discounting all the petty things (like illegally possessing handgun ammo, etc) the young lady and boys involved broke no fewer than SIX "gun control" laws before a single shot was fired.
Any insinuation that this situation would have somehow been improved by more "gun control" laws (aka further erosion of the second civil liberty enumerated in the Bill of Rights) amounts to strong evidence of a hopelessly irrational mind.
-Peter
I don't think you actually read my post entirely. Please note the opening where I mention my gun-toting drug dealing cousin (with a felony!) has access to weapons easier than I do as a law abiding citizen.
He shot two men two months ago after a drug deal went bad.
Nuts do own guns, illegally. There is nothing I can realistically do to stop them from having them. However by being armed I can protect myself and those around me. Because I'm armed I raise the probability of a nut-job encountering an armed citizen when they want to commit armed robbery -- and they begin to think twice. If they knew every damned person in the city had a gun on them and that 99% of them were law abiding peaceful people do you really think they'd pull half the crap they do?
You don't have to thank me for protecting your freedom and livelyhood. I get enough satisfaction out of knowing that I'm doing my part while you whine and moan about it.
NRA folks are constitutionally (pun intended) UNABLE to quote the whole of the Second Amendment(see their own masthead , here ) because it it directly refers to regulation.
The whole of the Second Amendment reads thus:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
>"Shall not infringe" sure has come to mean "shall not entirely infringe" over the years.
and apparently "A well regulated militia" sure has come to mean "a bunch of drunken rednecks shooting deer crossing signs with automatic assault rifles loaded with bullets designed to pierce body armor" over the years.
oh, please.
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
The problem with most 2nd Amendment folks is that they forget that it starts "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." and think that the Amendment implies that gov't cannot regulate anything about gun ownership.
2nd Amendment fanatics typically do not know their history very well. The vast majority of citizens in Colonial America did not own guns. Guns were hand made and quite expensive at the time of the American Revolution. As a result, all of the colonies were faced with critical shortages of arms and ammunition during the first years of the war. Also, the Continental Army came very, very close to a coup d'etat after the war when the Continental Congress could not pay the officers and men what they were owed for their service. It was averted at the last moment by Washington who gave a tearful address to the officers begging them not to. These experiences with a lack of preparation for defense and distrust of a standing army led the feds to pass the 2nd Amendment in 1791 and The Militia Act of 1792 which required all able bodied men, 18-45, to serve in their local militia and provide their own weapons and equipment. The problem with the act was that most people do not want to be forced to serve in an army of any kind and by the 1830s, most people were regularly dodging the requirement. Gun ownership in America really only got started after the Civil War when many returning soldiers were allowed to take their guns home with them. It was at this point that the myth that America had always been defended by heavily armed individual citizens began. The myth was eventually perverted into the notion that the 2nd Amendment was written as a protection for individuals and not an attempt to create a gov't regulated alternative to a standing army.
FreeSpeech.org
Interestingly enough, the per capita number of guns in Canada is a mere fraction of that in the U.S.. Coincidentally, so are violent crimes and home firearms accidents. Heck, even our military is pretty touchy feely. Half the time we're not sure whether to call it an army or a "peace-keeping force"! The world knows we're F'ing peaceniks, but our biggest fear is the nuclear fallout we're going to get when some pissed off terrorists finally nuke our Southern neighbors.
There is a fine line between a fun hobby and weapons research. The weapon described in the above article is powerful enough to cause severe injury or even kill a target, is silent, and is small enough to be concealed. It's a gun, not a toy. Construction parts and ammunition for these guns are not currently controlled, unlike conventional firearms ammunition. It is quite likely a round fired from one of these guns cannot be matched to the gun that fired it, as with conventional firearms. To sum up, what we have here is a recipe for a gun that can be made from readily available parts and may also not leave incriminating evidence on every round fired. Ammunition for these suckers could be as simple as some batteries and ball bearings. Sounds like a tailor made gang weapon to me.
Is this man's website then, evil? I'd say it isn't. He's an innocent. He has no idea what people will do with his small evolutionary contribution to gauss gun technology. In this sense he's a lot like Pandora. However, the box was probably already open. There are probably several other similar and perhaps even more advanced designs out there anyways, some possibly on the net.
What is important is that theis site's readers realize that designs as refined as this one are not fun projects. They're dangerous weapons. If you build one, make sure you have adequate firearms safety training and follow the proper safety precautions when storing it. Sooner or later somebody's kid is going to shoot themselves with one of these. Don't let it be yours.
I'm only going to concentrate on this part of your post as the rest goes into what are very well factual things but have absolutely no bearing on the intention of the 2nd ammendment.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
You are correct on the beginning, but the ending is what really gives it a punch. This is a -SINGLE- sentence. The beginning nearly states why the following occurs. The 2nd half of the sentence states what actually is being guaranteed.
" the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.". This is the -ONLY- "action" of the sentence.
Granted, I didn't write it, and it's meaning is still up for debate apparently but there are a few people out there that agree with my interpretation of it:
Thomas Jefferson:
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
George Washington:
"A free people ought to be armed." Speech Jan 7, 1790.
Thomas Jefferson:
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Letter to William S. Smith, January 30, 1787, in Jefferson, On Democracy , pg. 20 (S. Padover ed., 1939)
John Adams:
"Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self defense." A Defense of the U.S. Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787-88)
James Madison:
The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." The Federalist #46.
Thomas Paine:
"...arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them," Thoughts on Defensive War, (1775)
Thomas Jefferson:
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment (1764)
Richard Henry Lee:
' A militia when properly formed is in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms..." Additional Letters From the Federal Farmer 53 (1788)
Samuel Adams:
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." During Massachusetts' U.S. Constitution Ratification Convention (1788)
Alexander Hamilton:
"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." Federalist Papers, Article 29 January 10, 1788
I have thought a lot about that problem. I would like to be able to have a gun, but I know that most illegal guns come from legal purchaces. Not to mention that if the flow of ammunition was stopped, most criminals would not be able to fire their guns.
Imagine having to find powder ingredentes, mix and test the powder, find spent casings, form the bullet, pack the casing, and finally, insert the bullet. That, to me, would be too much work for a criminal to go out and "gang bang".
Along with ceacing bullet production, I suggest a NRA maintained list of owners cross-referenced with the guns they own. If a firearm is recovered from the scene of a crime, then the original owner should be charged with accessory to that crime. This would make people less likely to leave the crate of Glocks on their back porch to be "stolen".
And if you ever sold a gun, you'd be damn sure to see that the license was transfered.
In exchage for the cops having access to the database, we'd get access to "assault weapons". After all, how are you going to defend your home from the Army if all you have is a shotgun?
Personally, I think that the right to bear arms should include firearms, rockets, grenades, bombs, missles, nukes, chemicals, biological agents, and strong crypto. That cop thinking about arresting me for smoking a joint needs a moment of pause to think about drug policy.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
OK, I'm a pro-gun-ownership person myself, although I don't own any guns. I also happen to be a strict constitutionalist, meaning I hold the framers and their ideas in very high regard and the current legislative Supreme Court in equally low regard.
But I will point out that if you read not only the clause, but the text of the different colonies' suggested amendments and correspondence around this issue, it is abundantly clear that the reason the various "right to keep and bear arms" proposals were made were entirely in the context of PREVENTING the establishment of a standing army in the United States.
One could thus either say that SINCE we have a standing army, private ownership of guns should be strictly regulated since the point is now moot.
OR, one could conclude that, with the establishment of a standing army by the United States government, we have progressed DIRECTLY down the road toward an over-intrusive and domineering Federal Government. In which case the citizenry should fight ever stronger AGAINST the further restriction of firearms because it is exactly this which the Founding Fathers prophecied in the case of an over-powerful Federal system: the disarming of the citizenry as a prelude to tyranny.
Take your pick.
-Styopa
While I can see why you posted this one as AC, "Better, I think, admitting that freedoms come with associated risks and arguing that the freedom is worth it" is such a clear way to phrase things.
Unfortunately, while I understand this and accept it, apparently few others can.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Why would it matter if we could own "firearms, rockets, grenades, bombs, missles," etc., if we don't have access to ammunition? Or was that your point all along?
By the way, your reference to giving the cop "a moment to pause and think" is asinine. You may not agree with certain laws, but that's why we have them: they apply to everyone.
If a cop has to hesitate before arresting you on a drug charge because he's worried about getting blown away...you're one sorry ass MF. It's one thing to defend yourself or your family from personal injury - it's totally another to think you're above the law.
Don't like the drug laws? Write your congressman, march outside the state house, have benefit concerts, promote "awareness." But the second you threaten the life of a cop so you can smoke a joint is the second when I could care less if you occupy the planet.
Cops don't write the laws. They get paid shit wages to do their job and for the most part they do it well.
So fuck off.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Imagine having to find heroin ingredients, mix and test the powder, find syringes, and finally shoot it into your vein. That, to me, would be too much trouble to get high - yet 1 in 11 adults in Baltimore city is a heroin addict. Anyone who wants it can get it.
If you can't keep crack and heroin away from people, what makes you think you can keep ammunition off the black market?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yes and of course we all know that none of those people could possibly have been wrong.
When it comes to "what did they mean when they wrote the consistution", yes we all know that none of those people could possibly have been wrong. Duh.
Whether it was a good idea or not (it was, btw) can be debated. What they wrote, and what they THOUGHT and SAID they wrote cannot.
Don't like it? Amend the constitution. They even included a mechanism to do so. Built right in.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
All of you gun-nuts think the gob'mint is going to come grab your precious shotgun and then you'll have nothing to keep the IRS man away with. Cut me a fucking break (yes, I know this isn't an appropriate level of discourse, and I apologize--I'm tired, both physically and metaphorically). All "fundamental freedoms" crucial to our freedom, even the very essence of our freedom, our right to individuality, free thought, and free expression, takes its limits. Such is the nature of living in a society; we are not anarchists, and the rights of the individual to do whatever the fuck he wants do not always take precedence over what is best for society as a whole.
Hell, the government has the right to send me off to war to kill people I don't have anything against or to die for some rich old man to get a little richer. So what if you can't buy the biggest, baddest gun you want? (Seriously, why do people get angry at laws restricting them to three guns per month? Is that not enough around Christmass? And should we really allow people to buy anti-aircraft guns or shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles?)
This is of course, only if you ignore the fact that the kids had the fucking propane tanks in the school rigged to explode. Suppose they didn't have a gun, what would have happened? They probably would have just blown up the school, causing many more deaths than happened with their illegally obtained guns. Care to counter?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Ahh, so why didn't they do anything against Saddam? Didn't Bush claim that almost every Iraqi hated him? Yet they wait to start fighting until the Americans come?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
So lets remove firearms. Then these gang bangers won't be using guns but knives, baseball bats, tire irons, and what not.
You say that's not too bad... well add another 20 years, and then they start outlawing these things.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that the police are not responsible for your safety. Nothing against the people who will put their life on the line for me.
The National Gaurd is called upon by the President to handle both foreign and domestic situations. They don't protect your interest.
In the end, the only one who can protect you and your family, is you.
Oh, and lets forget that a portion of the ammo sold in the US, is actually manufactured outside the US, and that anything outlawed just becomes more expensive, and the criminals have the money to do it.
Two points:
1) It is difficult to accurately interpret the second ammendment, primarily because the way the sentence was constructed is ambiguous, primarily because it has at least one comma too many and is missing another punctuation mark.
It could be interpreted to say "The right of the people to keep and bear arms can not be infringed", with the first half of the sentence being background information.
It could be interpreted to say that the right of a militia (armed group of citizens) group to keep and bear arms can not be infringed.
It could be interpreted to say that there can't be a law prohibiting militias, nor a law stating that their right to keep and bear arms can not be infringed.
It could be interpreted to say that there can't be a law prohibiting militias, nor a law stating that the people's right to keep and bear arms can not be infringed.
I personally think the last item is the most accurate one. I also think that at the time, such a statement made a lot of sense -- the common man could afford the arms to defend his country. Today, in the age of 16 million dollar military jets, multi million dollar tanks, and guns that can empty a clip of ammo before you can react to the first shot, I don't think it does make a lot of sense.
2) (didn't think I'd ever make it to the second point, did you?) While I may not necessarily agree with it, the Supreme Court has interpreted it as meaning that the people will always have the right to keep and bear arms -- however, they also have stated that the constitution says nothing about being able to keep and bear any/all kind of arms, so as long as there is a single firearm available to a common citizen (even if it's a lousy 9mm pistol that holds 1 round) gun control laws are constutional.
Your fundamental lack of understanding the aurguments about gun registration show your prejuces on the matter.
This country was founded to keep men free. With freedom comes responsibility. Part of the resposibility of a grown person is the ability to take care of themselves and their property. In order to do this we must have self defense, which in turn requires ownership of firearms by the general population.
Nobody gives a rats ass about registration. The only thing people give a damn about is that registration is a precurser to seizure of firearms. You make lists of people with firearms so that you can take those weapons away easier.
Registration serves no purpose other then that. Criminals do NOT buy weapons from gunstores or private responsible individuals. They buy them from other criminals who are experts at working around the buerocratic net set up to stop this activity. The only people who would register guns are law-abiding citizens. This makes the concept of regulating firearms null and void from the offset.
Criminals already break the law. If you kill someone with a firearm, what is that compared to breaking a firearm registration law? Nothing. If you break the law you make it easier to get away with the murder, if you follow the law it makes it harder. Which would do you think criminals choose? If a person is willing to risk exicution or life in prison, what is a extra 5 years penalty going to accomplish for fighting crime.
Registration is useless exept for gun seizeres. It treats everyone who would by a gun as a potential criminal. This is not the behavior of "a government for the people and by the people"
This is the behavior of a socialist state, which by it's nature subverts freedoms for better control over the populace.
Another aurgument is that gun registration can make "finger printing" a gun possible. This is were the groves on a bullet and impressions on a case can be matched to a database.
It's actually pretty retarded. A unskilled person with a file and a pair of pliers can change this "finger print" the firing pin on a case to make it untracable in five minutes. Or they can simply replace the pin with a different one.
The bullet type finger printing is worthless, too. The impression of the barrel on a bullet changes over time and can be affected by stuff like lead fouling, dirtyness and other uncontrollable factors.
This makes this system makes it close to trash for prosicuting criminals. Especially if they intented to use a illigal unregistared gun in a illigal criminal act, and had time to prep for the criminal act.
OH, BTW if drugs are harmless compared to guns how about this...
Alchohol killed 110,000+ people, perscription drugs killed 32,000 people, illitic drugs killed 17000 people in 1998... how does that compare to 32000 in 1997?
Looks like you could save 3 times as many lives if you make alchohol illigal. Or maybe you should start a registration of people buying alchohol so that they can be tracked by satalite with a transiver they must wear to buy a drink and if they get in a car, they should be tracked down and arrested on the spot.
Oh, another thing. A full 2/3 of gun deaths are drug related. If poeple stopped addicting themselves to that crap, then you would have a dramit drop in gun related deaths.
In Greece there was a sudden supply of really cheap (i mean 30 Euro cheap) stolen Kalasnikof (or what's it called). This is a combat rifle , not a toy. This supply was braught by the uprising in the neighbouring Albania. So it is really safe to say there are many many "war" weapons in the hands of many citizens (and mostly criminals i may add). Do you know how many die from these weapons every year? No? Well neither do i. I can not recall the last time there was a murder.
So don't blame the owning of guns or the breaking of gun laws. Blame the society and the rules and values on which it is based that drive these kids to something like that.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
"Thank you for officially beginning the obligatory Second Amendment flame-war. I will counter by making the obligatory mention of Columbine. "Columbine". Your turn."
... And I in turn will make the obligatory rest-of-the-worldian observation
"wow, aren't these crazy Americans obsessed by guns?"
Yet, despite all those 22.000 laws - the US sees regular shootings at factories, schools and companies.
About 2 or 3 a year we read about in the newspaper here (and about double that when you follow US news papers closely).
At the same time, I have a hard time recalling any incident even remotely similar in Holland, Italy, France or the United Kingdom.
Perhaps just a single law; No guns for anyone, would be a tad bit more effictive.
And given the number of revolts or swapping of governements/those-in-power we've seen in those countries in the past centuries (while these gun laws where in place) - I have no worry about citizens not being able to rise against their governement should they feel like it.
Call it 'try by experience' - but that part seems to work fine and not require some amendment or constitution to allow them to bear arms. In fact the newbies in power seem to generally relish in rewriting the darn thing from scratch. (Nor does it seem to stop the criminals from getting guns either).
Dw.
Maybe someone Swiss can throw perspective on this. The Swiss murder rate is low, gun ownership is very high [the stats I've seen are for handguns, but as in Canada a higher proportion of guns are rifles than in USA]. (I'm not going to karmawhore with links to stats--the gun debate uses stats like bullets, anyway--google away.)
Even in Canada, where we have very low handgun murder rates compared to our neighbour, we don't just leave rifles unattended in public spaces. What that spoke to me of was a trust that everyone else around is more or less responsible, understands and respects the rules around guns, and is not desperate.
Since the country has survived with great stability through some incredible historical pressures, I figure the trust wasn't naive. (Maybe things are different in the EU now.) They had/have a cultural understanding around guns and poverty, about getting along politically, perhaps, an expectation of honesty, smaller town sizes...?
Everyone was involved in public military service in some way, at various times. They certainly weren't a big melting pot at the time. Who knows. But it's obvious that gun proliferation is damaging to US society... Not because of the arming of the people, but what they're arming with, and why. Maybe gun advocates should also be anti-poverty activists, in order to achieve their goals.
Damn those pesky terrorists
"Who knows. But it's obvious that gun proliferation is damaging to US society... Not because of the arming of the people, but what they're arming with, and why."
It has nothing to do with what they are arming with, your visit to Switzerland proves that. There is an automatic weapon in nearly every home there and they don't have the murder rate the US does. By contrast automatic weapons are illegal here (since 1934) and we have a higher murder rate. I think your last sentence is a good summation the problem has more to do with poverty and intelligence than access to firearms.
In Switzerland, they don't carry guns around on their hips! What are you thinking, the wild west? The answer is NOT "extremely simple" -- and I think you've never lived there. Plus, the murder rate by guns isn't as low in Switzerland as other places that have restricted access to handguns, like Canada (I guess Canucks prefer knives or broken beer bottles).
I would be interested in knowing just which countries you've been in where the murder rate is astronomical compared to the USA. If you mean places that are an economic disaster, with widespread desperate poverty, well big surprise! But if you mean heavily industrialized nations, please enlighten.
"You're a criminal, you've got your gun. You know that the honest folks don't. Now how scared are you of sticking up a cafe?" -- Well, thank you for illustrating my point about culture perfectly. You exhibit an acceptance that crime carries an acceptable risk of lethal violence. I think that that is a cultural attitude that suggests societal immaturity, rather than an abhorrence of lethal violence... in other words, a culture where someone wants/needs to steal but is more likely unwilling to kill, will have a different relationship to guns -- "you" would be scared of sticking up a cafe because of the risk of killing someone! No it's not naive to think this, but it is dependent upon social and cultural conditions, everything from income disparity to racism to what's on the tube.
Damn those pesky terrorists