How to buy guns illegally
on
Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
The "Mariano DiVittorio" named in the article cleary acted as a straw man purchaser, which is a federal offense. As indicated by the article, he could be easily identified by the 4473, and he commited a crime by purchasing that gun for Escobedo. But, notice how the article makes no mention of DiVittorio ever being arrested, charged, or convicted of the crime he commited. Moreover, the Stephen Young in the article is suing the manufacturer of the gun rather than the man who introduced the gun into the black market.
The obvious conclusion that I reach from this article is that we need to crack down on straw man purchases. It is really easy to catch the straw man purchasers, so I'm not sure why no one bothers. It's also really easy to catch the stores who sell to them (also a crime.) The BATF used to run stings to catch the stores that were known to sell to straw men, but it's been years since I've heard of them doing this. I'm sure that there are a handful of lax gun sellers around the country, but the records exist to make them easy to identify. I find it mind boggling that people call for more gun control when the police aren't using the tools they have now. I find it even more disturbing that people are suing the manufacturers instead of going after the lax gun sellers. As an analagy, suppose you live on a road where lots of people speed excessively. Well, speeding is illegal and it's pretty easy to catch speeders. The logical thing to do is put pressure on the police to enforce the law. Instead, people are suing car makers and asking Congress to ban speeding if children are in the car.
In theory, Congress passed a law banning "assault-weapons". In fact, it banned a bunch of guns based on their cosmetic appearance. In no way did it take into account the ability of a gun to kill people or do damage. The term "assault weapong" is a meaningless phrase used to associate semi-automatic rifles (which no army in the world uses, AFAIK) with military fully automatic rifles (which every army uses, AFAIK, and are heavily regulated, although they are not illegal. A fact that shocks many people who are ill informed about gun laws.). It's basically a propaganda term. Emotionally charged, but totally devoid of any actual meaning.
In fact, the law passed by Congress banned certain rifles by name, while specifically exempting others by name. The kicker is that it was easy to find pairs of guns which were functionally the same, yet one was banned and one was exempt. Case in point, the Colt AR-15 is banned by name. It is the semi-automatic equialent of the US Army's M-16. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, which shoots the.223 Reminginton bullet. The Ruger Mini-14 was exempted by name, yet it is also a semi-automatic rifle which shoots the.223 Remington. High capacity magazines are available for both.
Another example is the AK-47. The semi-automatic variations were banned by name. Yet, the Ruger Mini-30 shoots exactly the same bullet, is semi-automatic, and is exempt by name. Go figure.
Now, that particular law also banned the manufacture and import of high capacity magazines (defined as being able to hold more than ten rounds.) In theory, this should have some effect on crime, but since all pre-ban magazines were grandfathered, and hence perfectly legal, they are still readily available. One interesting result of that law is a new generation of tiny, easy to conceal handguns. Since manufacturers are required to limit the capacity of the magazines to ten rounds, they figured why bother to make the gun any larger than it needs to be to hold ten rounds.
It's my experience that most people crying out for gun control really want to ban all guns. Take for example those who claim they only want to ban "assault weapons". What they really mean is that they want to ban all semi-automatic guns, leaving only bolt-action rifles. But, then they will begin calling bolt-action rifles "sniper" rifles, so that they can ban those too. What's left is black-power muskets, but of course you have to ban the black powder because you can use that build pipe bombs.
Despite the fact that VA has what you feel to be "lax" gun laws, there are lots of things in place to make it easy for the police to catch these gun-runners. As you may or not be aware, guns are required to have a serial number. A number which is actually quite difficult to remove despite what you hear in movies. If the police recover a gun, they can contact the manufacturer who has a record of exactly who that gun was shipped to, and so on. It is my understanding that this system is automated to the point where the police can find out the retail point of sale where the gun was finally sold in under 72 hours. That store is required to keep forms that detail exactly who they sold the gun to.
As a result of these records, the police should be able to just go pick up these supposed gun-runners within days of finding an illegal gun in NYC or DC. Why they don't is a mystery to me. Either the criminals are using more sophisticated means to get their guns then you are claiming, or the BATF just doesn't have much interest in reducing the amount of gun-running going on. Actually, it's probably a bit of both. The criminals are probably obtaining fraudulent ID's, which is a problem the state DMV's need to address. The BATF probably doesn't want to deal with the reduction in their budget that would follow any real decrease in gun-running.
Either way, enforcing the laws we have now makes a lot more sense then just passing more laws that the police and criminals will ignore.
This idea makes perfect sense when you realize what the product is and who the consumer is in TV land. The product is you, the viewer. The consumer is the advertiser. The consumer pays big bucks for access to your eyes. The shows on TV are just there to get your attention so that you will watch the ads.
The TV companies are hoping to increase their revenue by keeping better track of how many viewers they are "selling". You can also look forward to increased junk mail as your cable company begins selling lists of "everyone who watches golf" or "everyone who watches 90210" to advertisers. This process is the TV companies breaking the product into more categories, because the consumer will pay more for a targeted product than they will for a generic one.
I think you may be putting the cart before the horse. The artists are "in demand" because they have widely distributed CD's, not the other way around. However, I think that within a couple of years there will be bands which are widely known and whose success is built on MP3 distribution, not CD distribution.
With respect to 3), I think the jump program was there to teach you how to exploit the bugs. To see someone make the jump would convince you that the bugs could be exploited. To make the jump was the "proof" that you could do it.
Not to mention the fact the the three sites are in three different countries. Does anyone really believe that some company managed to get injunctions in the US, Canada, and England at the same time? Even if some company was pursing litigation against all three, the timing would not be identical. Come on, they all got their regestered letters on the same day? On two continents? They were all served with injunctions from three different courts in three different countries on the same day? IANAL, but given that such court actions are a matter of public record, what would stop them from naming the comany involved? Nothing! Unless, it's a joke. In which case, since it's being presented as "true", they WOULD be in a heap of trouble if they named some specific company. They would get their pants sued off if they falsely claimed that MS or LA, or whoever was sueing them. It would clearly be slander
Now, if we can just get ZDNet, or CNET to pick up the story, the joke will be complete!
This move is simply a re-organization of their existing structure. Nothing more, and nothing to get excited about. In fact, unless you work for MS,you probably won't be affected by it at all.
It would not suprise me if RIAA sues the CDDB.com folks either way. After all, CDDB's whole business model seems to be based upon their "ownership" of a database of information which is copyrighted by RIAA members. You better bet that the names of the bands, and the title of the albums in that database is the intellectual property of RIAA members. It's possible that they would ignore a free, non-commercial database. But I can't imagine that they would let CDDB off the hook.
My bet is that CDDB is currently being sued, and isn't advertising the fact. Or that the RIAA's lawers haven't heard about CDDB yet. Maybe we should all send them email and "remind" them that there is a company out there whose entire business model is distributing their "IP". After all, CDDB seems to be out to destroy the competition. Well, two can play at that game!
This whole idea that the RIAA is showing a revenue loss to MP3's is an outright lie. By their own numbers, if you follow the links, sales are up in '98 vs. '97, after a decrease from '96 to '97. To wit:
In fact, 1998 was the best growth year since 1994, ending a three year slump. Yet, 1998 was really the year that MP3s hit the big time. And CD sales went UP? Say it isn't so!
Their other so-called statistic was that the 15-24 year old age group is a smaller percentage of the total. Notice that they didn't say that sales to this group went down, only that they are a (4%) smaller piece of a (12%) bigger pie. Also, this group has been on a downward trend since 1990, when it dropped like a rock.
In fact, the largest single group is now the 45+ group, with an 18.0% chunk of sales. This is up from 10.2% in 1989. Note that 15-24 is two groups in the original stats. Given that this study primarily measures American consumers, it's pretty clear what's probably happening: Baby Boomers. It's not that kids are buying fewer CD's, but that Boomers are buying more CD's.
In summary, it's pretty clear that the RIAA is both doing better than it has in years, and that it's so-called declines have been going on for longer than MP3's have been popular. Basically, the whole news story is a sham. The only "common-sense" conclusion is that the recording industry is doing great, due in part to increased sales to Baby Boomers.
So, what exactly is illegal about using a ripper to pull tracks off of a CD? Making an MP3 for personal use is not illegal, although the RIAA might want you to believe that that is the case. I fail to see how including instructions for performing a legal process is "advocating the illegal use of copyrighted materials." Maybe if the instructions they had were along the lines of 1) rip CD's, 2) install anonymous FTP server 3) put all of your MP3's on said FTP server 4) tell Lycos about your site so that we can include it in our search.
By your logic, the RIAA should be sueing all of those consumer electronics folks who build stereo's that will copy a CD onto a blank tape. That's illegal, right;-)>
I can understand your frustration, but is it really with Be? They are not the ones that promised that Blender would be available on a certain date. Also, it's not that Be is holding Blender back from anything. Blender is the one that is asking Be for a favor. I would guess that Be has a very good reason for not letting Blender distribute the library. For one, they may not feel confident that it will be reliable when used with the 4.0 release of the OS. They may also have contractual obligations that prevent them from letting anyone else ship it. This is the most likely. Be did not write OpenGL from scratch, and they are not just using Mesa. So, they bought it from somebody, and I'm sure they did not get the right to license it again to somebody else (which is what they would be doing if they let Blender ship it.)
My point being that your analogy is not very good. It would be better to say that your lover has not come to bed yet because they have important business that must be completed first.
Ummm, where on earth did you get the idea that Be was going to drop OpenGL? All Be has done is refuse to give Blender the right to distribute the 4.1 version of Be's OpenGL library. It will still be on the 4.1 CD when it ships (or when the update is made available on the net (or both)).
I don't understand what Blender's problem is. They have a product that works under BeOS 4.1, but does not work under 4.0. So, users will have to wait until 4.1 ships. What's the big deal? Have they verifed that the the version of libGL.so works perfectly with BeOS 4.0? Do they know for a fact that all of the relevant bug-fixes are in that one library, and not in some other part of 4.1? It's not as though libGL can draw to the display by itself. Nor can it talk to a graphics accelerator by itself. More over, Be does provide tech support to users. Is Blender going to pay Be for their costs if users start calling when they fsck their system because they are mixing and matching libraries from different versions? I don't think so.
Personally, I think Blender looks like a great product, and plan on trying it out. But, I don't think it's unreasonable for Be to require that 4.1 be released as a whole. It's not like Linus would have allowed some developer to stick parts of 2.1 into the 2.0 kernel and ship it because they just had to ship today, not in a few weeks.
I think a lot of people gripe at any opportunity they can at closed-source companies. To which my reply is, shut the fsck up and start coding! You want an open source system that has the cool features of the BeOS? Grab the API/documentation off of the web site and start writing one. Here, I'll make it easy for you: Archived Be Book
Actually, IIRC, the population was "attacked" by another species that wanted to take over the Ringworld. I won't give any details for people who might want to read the book, but basically someone attacked their technology and caused the civilation to fall.
Even better, they would find out that the humans who spent an extra 500 years developing better engines have been there for 1000 years and trashed the place. Ha ha.
Slashdot Mirror
The "Mariano DiVittorio" named in the article cleary acted as a straw man purchaser, which is a federal offense. As indicated by the article, he could be easily identified by the 4473, and he commited a crime by purchasing that gun for Escobedo. But, notice how the article makes no mention of DiVittorio ever being arrested, charged, or convicted of the crime he commited. Moreover, the Stephen Young in the article is suing the manufacturer of the gun rather than the man who introduced the gun into the black market.
The obvious conclusion that I reach from this article is that we need to crack down on straw man purchases. It is really easy to catch the straw man purchasers, so I'm not sure why no one bothers. It's also really easy to catch the stores who sell to them (also a crime.) The BATF used to run stings to catch the stores that were known to sell to straw men, but it's been years since I've heard of them doing this. I'm sure that there are a handful of lax gun sellers around the country, but the records exist to make them easy to identify. I find it mind boggling that people call for more gun control when the police aren't using the tools they have now. I find it even more disturbing that people are suing the manufacturers instead of going after the lax gun sellers. As an analagy, suppose you live on a road where lots of people speed excessively. Well, speeding is illegal and it's pretty easy to catch speeders. The logical thing to do is put pressure on the police to enforce the law. Instead, people are suing car makers and asking Congress to ban speeding if children are in the car.
In theory, Congress passed a law banning "assault-weapons". In fact, it banned a bunch of guns based on their cosmetic appearance. In no way did it take into account the ability of a gun to kill people or do damage. The term "assault weapong" is a meaningless phrase used to associate semi-automatic rifles (which no army in the world uses, AFAIK) with military fully automatic rifles (which every army uses, AFAIK, and are heavily regulated, although they are not illegal. A fact that shocks many people who are ill informed about gun laws.). It's basically a propaganda term. Emotionally charged, but totally devoid of any actual meaning.
.223 Reminginton bullet. The Ruger Mini-14 was exempted by name, yet it is also a semi-automatic rifle which shoots the .223 Remington. High capacity magazines are available for both.
In fact, the law passed by Congress banned certain rifles by name, while specifically exempting others by name. The kicker is that it was easy to find pairs of guns which were functionally the same, yet one was banned and one was exempt. Case in point, the Colt AR-15 is banned by name. It is the semi-automatic equialent of the US Army's M-16. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, which shoots the
Another example is the AK-47. The semi-automatic variations were banned by name. Yet, the Ruger Mini-30 shoots exactly the same bullet, is semi-automatic, and is exempt by name. Go figure.
Now, that particular law also banned the manufacture and import of high capacity magazines (defined as being able to hold more than ten rounds.) In theory, this should have some effect on crime, but since all pre-ban magazines were grandfathered, and hence perfectly legal, they are still readily available. One interesting result of that law is a new generation of tiny, easy to conceal handguns. Since manufacturers are required to limit the capacity of the magazines to ten rounds, they figured why bother to make the gun any larger than it needs to be to hold ten rounds.
It's my experience that most people crying out for gun control really want to ban all guns. Take for example those who claim they only want to ban "assault weapons". What they really mean is that they want to ban all semi-automatic guns, leaving only bolt-action rifles. But, then they will begin calling bolt-action rifles "sniper" rifles, so that they can ban those too. What's left is black-power muskets, but of course you have to ban the black powder because you can use that build pipe bombs.
Despite the fact that VA has what you feel to be "lax" gun laws, there are lots of things in place to make it easy for the police to catch these gun-runners. As you may or not be aware, guns are required to have a serial number. A number which is actually quite difficult to remove despite what you hear in movies. If the police recover a gun, they can contact the manufacturer who has a record of exactly who that gun was shipped to, and so on. It is my understanding that this system is automated to the point where the police can find out the retail point of sale where the gun was finally sold in under 72 hours. That store is required to keep forms that detail exactly who they sold the gun to.
As a result of these records, the police should be able to just go pick up these supposed gun-runners within days of finding an illegal gun in NYC or DC. Why they don't is a mystery to me. Either the criminals are using more sophisticated means to get their guns then you are claiming, or the BATF just doesn't have much interest in reducing the amount of gun-running going on. Actually, it's probably a bit of both. The criminals are probably obtaining fraudulent ID's, which is a problem the state DMV's need to address. The BATF probably doesn't want to deal with the reduction in their budget that would follow any real decrease in gun-running.
Either way, enforcing the laws we have now makes a lot more sense then just passing more laws that the police and criminals will ignore.
This idea makes perfect sense when you realize what the product is and who the consumer is in TV land. The product is you, the viewer. The consumer is the advertiser. The consumer pays big bucks for access to your eyes. The shows on TV are just there to get your attention so that you will watch the ads.
The TV companies are hoping to increase their revenue by keeping better track of how many viewers they are "selling". You can also look forward to increased junk mail as your cable company begins selling lists of "everyone who watches golf" or "everyone who watches 90210" to advertisers. This process is the TV companies breaking the product into more categories, because the consumer will pay more for a targeted product than they will for a generic one.
I think you may be putting the cart before the horse. The artists are "in demand" because they have widely distributed CD's, not the other way around. However, I think that within a couple of years there will be bands which are widely known and whose success is built on MP3 distribution, not CD distribution.
With respect to 3), I think the jump program was there to teach you how to exploit the bugs. To see someone make the jump would convince you that the bugs could be exploited. To make the jump was the "proof" that you could do it.
Not to mention the fact the the three sites are in three different countries. Does anyone really believe that some company managed to get injunctions in the US, Canada, and England at the same time? Even if some company was pursing litigation against all three, the timing would not be identical. Come on, they all got their regestered letters on the same day? On two continents? They were all served with injunctions from three different courts in three different countries on the same day? IANAL, but given that such court actions are a matter of public record, what would stop them from naming the comany involved? Nothing! Unless, it's a joke. In which case, since it's being presented as "true", they WOULD be in a heap of trouble if they named some specific company. They would get their pants sued off if they falsely claimed that MS or LA, or whoever was sueing them. It would clearly be slander
Now, if we can just get ZDNet, or CNET to pick up the story, the joke will be complete!
This move is simply a re-organization of their existing structure. Nothing more, and nothing to get excited about. In fact, unless you work for MS,you probably won't be affected by it at all.
It would not suprise me if RIAA sues the CDDB.com folks either way. After all, CDDB's whole business model seems to be based upon their "ownership" of a database of information which is copyrighted by RIAA members. You better bet that the names of the bands, and the title of the albums in that database is the intellectual property of RIAA members. It's possible that they would ignore a free, non-commercial database. But I can't imagine that they would let CDDB off the hook.
My bet is that CDDB is currently being sued, and isn't advertising the fact. Or that the RIAA's lawers haven't heard about CDDB yet. Maybe we should all send them email and "remind" them that there is a company out there whose entire business model is distributing their "IP". After all, CDDB seems to be out to destroy the competition. Well, two can play at that game!
This whole idea that the RIAA is showing a revenue loss to MP3's is an outright lie. By their own numbers, if you follow the links, sales are up in '98 vs. '97, after a decrease from '96 to '97. To wit:
year sales % change
1989 $6,579
1990 $7,541 15%
1991 $7,834 4%
1992 $9,024 15%
1993 $10,046 11%
1994 $12,068 20%
1995 $12,320 2%
1996 $12,533 2%
1997 $12,236 -2%
1998 $13,723 12%
In fact, 1998 was the best growth year since 1994,
ending a three year slump. Yet, 1998 was really the year that MP3s hit the big time. And CD sales went UP? Say it isn't so!
Their other so-called statistic was that the 15-24 year old age group is a smaller percentage of the total. Notice that they didn't say that sales to this group went down, only that they are a (4%) smaller piece of a (12%) bigger pie. Also, this group has been on a downward trend since 1990, when it dropped like a rock.
1989 44.0%
1990 34.8%
1991 36.0%
1992 34.3%
1993 31.8%
1994 32.2%
1995 32.4%
1996 32.2%
1997 30.6%
1998 28.0%
In fact, the largest single group is now the 45+ group, with an 18.0% chunk of sales. This is up from 10.2% in 1989. Note that 15-24 is two groups in the original stats. Given that this study primarily measures American consumers, it's pretty clear what's probably happening: Baby Boomers. It's not that kids are buying fewer CD's, but that Boomers are buying more CD's.
In summary, it's pretty clear that the RIAA is both doing better than it has in years, and that it's so-called declines have been going on for longer than MP3's have been popular. Basically, the whole news story is a sham. The only "common-sense" conclusion is that the recording industry is doing great, due in part to increased sales to Baby Boomers.
So, what exactly is illegal about using a ripper to pull tracks off of a CD? Making an MP3 for personal use is not illegal, although the RIAA might want you to believe that that is the case. I fail to see how including instructions for performing a legal process is "advocating the illegal use of copyrighted materials." Maybe if the instructions they had were along the lines of 1) rip CD's, 2) install anonymous FTP server 3) put all of your MP3's on said FTP server 4) tell Lycos about your site so that we can include it in our search.
;-)>
By your logic, the RIAA should be sueing all of those consumer electronics folks who build stereo's that will copy a CD onto a blank tape. That's illegal, right
I can understand your frustration, but is it really with Be? They are not the ones that promised that Blender would be available on a certain date. Also, it's not that Be is holding Blender back from anything. Blender is the one that is asking Be for a favor. I would guess that Be has a very good reason for not letting Blender distribute the library. For one, they may not feel confident that it will be reliable when used with the 4.0 release of the OS. They may also have contractual obligations that prevent them from letting anyone else ship it. This is the most likely. Be did not write OpenGL from scratch, and they are not just using Mesa. So, they bought it from somebody, and I'm sure they did not get the right to license it again to somebody else (which is what they would be doing if they let Blender ship it.)
My point being that your analogy is not very good. It would be better to say that your lover has not come to bed yet because they have important business that must be completed first.
Ummm, where on earth did you get the idea that Be was going to drop OpenGL? All Be has done is refuse to give Blender the right to distribute the 4.1 version of Be's OpenGL library. It will still be on the 4.1 CD when it ships (or when the update is made available on the net (or both)).
Personally, I think Blender looks like a great product, and plan on trying it out. But, I don't think it's unreasonable for Be to require that 4.1 be released as a whole. It's not like Linus would have allowed some developer to stick parts of 2.1 into the 2.0 kernel and ship it because they just had to ship today, not in a few weeks.
I think a lot of people gripe at any opportunity they can at closed-source companies. To which my reply is, shut the fsck up and start coding! You want an open source system that has the cool features of the BeOS? Grab the API/documentation off of the web site and start writing one. Here, I'll make it easy for you: Archived Be Book
Actually, IIRC, the population was "attacked" by another species that wanted to take over the Ringworld. I won't give any details for people who might want to read the book, but basically someone attacked their technology and caused the civilation to fall.
Even better, they would find out that the humans who spent an extra 500 years developing better engines have been there for 1000 years and trashed the place. Ha ha.