Love Spooner. Should be required reading in every high school.
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Agreed. I call Spooner a “paleolibertarian” – much closer to the ground truth of what it takes to build a civilization than later libertarians. There were a number of such Dangerous Minds running around during the closing of the American Frontier. Henry George was another. Spooner’s “mutual insurance company” should have been adopted by George in “Progress and Poverty” to frame his land value tax, and George’s notion of a “citizen’s dividend” should have been framed as a corporate dividend. There are a number of other practical matters that, if brought into consilience, could have denied the Marxist camel’s nose in the tent. It was so close. “Progress and Poverty” was the most widely read book other than the Bible for some time but George just didn’t quite have what it took either theoretically or politically.
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This might be because he didn’t have the German university connections to make his theories “acceptable”. That was how the Progressives brought their cockamamy ideas into the country - by first “exporting” them to the German Universities - to be “laundered” and returned as “legitimate”.
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What about possessing a design file for an auto sear? Suppose it takes only one keystroke to transmit the design file to a 3D printer and suppose it takes a 3D printer thirty-nine minutes, i.e., one minute shorter than it took the ATF agent to create a lightning link from the AutoKeyCard, to print the auto sear, is the file itself now considered a machine gun since it is easily convertible to a physical auto sear? Is there any precedent on this?
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I wrote about this craziness in “Code is Speech”. The question is whether a design is a weapon is fundamental to freedom of speech.
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That’s an interesting question. I would guess if you had the design for a military auto-sear you would have a machine gun, since all you need to do is drop it in. But if you’re looking at the usual method of making an AR full-auto, then having the auto-sear is NOT having a machine gun, since you can’t drop it into a lower to make it full-auto. You have to drill the third hole. THAT’S what makes it a machine gun - even if you don’t have the other parts.
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Suppose the design file is for a drop in auto sear, which allows one to convert a civilian AR to a machine gun without any modification to the lower receiver. Would the feds consider the design file itself to be a machine gun, since the design can be easily fabricated using a 3D printer or CNC milling machine?
The AutoKeyCard is similar to a design file in that both the design file and the AutoKeyCard are basically drawings of a machine gun part. It just so happens that the drawing on the AutoKeyCard is a laser engraving on a piece of metal. What if the AutoKeyCard featured the same design printed on paper instead of metal? One could easily position the paper over a sheet of metal and use the diagram as a stencil to cut out the same parts.
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This was precisely the issue in the battle between the U.S. State Department and Defense Distributed which I discussed in “Code Is Speech” that I mentioned in comment #1908 above. In that case, a federal judge in Washington state issued an order to block distribution on the Internet of 3D printing part definition files which could be use to print a pistol called the “Liberator”. In essence, the judge held that an ASCII file from which a weapon could be manufactured was a weapon for the purposes of export control regulation (ITAR).
Interestingly, in this case, the BATFE had already issued a decision that as long as Defense Distributed was federally licensed as a firearms manufacturer (which, after an extended process of jumping through hoops, it was), they had no problem with its distributing the design files. As I wrote:
This is a fundamental attack on freedom of speech. It asserts that computer files and their dissemination via electronic means are not protected speech, and that the design of an object can be restricted in the same way the physical object can. These are ideas so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.
In this case, Defense Distributed v. United States Department of State, the State Department settled, granting Defense Distributed a license to publish and US$ 40,000 in costs. Explaining the settlement, a spokeslizard for the State Department said on 2018-07-31:
We were informed that we would have lost this case in court, or would have likely lost this case in court, based on First Amendment grounds … The Department of Justice suggested that the State Department and the U.S. government settle this case, and so that is what was done.
So, as is often the case when a citizen is about to beat the Eagle in court, they settle because that avoids creating a legal precedent others can use against them, preserving ambiguity they can continue to use to intimidate. The State Department had adopted this strategy in cases involving attempts to revoke U.S. citizenship for various “expatriating acts” after being badly burned in 1967 when the Supreme Court eviscerated their power to revoke citizenship in Afroyim v. Rusk. Subsequently, they’ve tended to settle whenever an expatriation was contested rather than lose again in court and further narrow their discretionary power.
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His own government’s goddamned policies!!!
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Sadly Tucker couldn’t afford me and Lemon doesn’t have enough money to get me to help him.
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Well, despite @1787Libertarian’s complaints, the constitution, when taken with the meaning of words used at the time it was written, makes a fairly cohesive argument. It is only when the Left substitutes idiotic “laws” which ought to be unconstitutional that you run into all manner of stupidity.
Take same-sex-marriage. No rational person would consider two gays ”married” just because they are living together. It simply boggles the very definition of “marriage”. But in their zeal to “solve” some legitimate complaints of not only gays but others (say brother and sister) living in the same home, they go all nuclear. And we get this.
NFA 1934 was passed in response to all the killing the gangs were doing back then. BUT rather than remove prohibition, they instead made “machine guns” so difficult to own, no regular citizen could. The $200 tax stamp was a reflection of the cost of purchasing a Thompson or BAR back then - about $200.
And just like now, it seems back then the majority of “Tommy guns” were held by the cops and military - and the crooks got them by raiding National Guard armories. OR today by smuggling them over the border.
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No the corruption is deeper than that. The words are already in the parchment. They are deliberately vague so that it becomes necessary for a judge to narrow down what the vague words mean. Phrases such as “necessary and proper,” “due process,” and “privileges and immunities” are all meant to be trap doors for the freedom lovers. It’s a bunk document crafted under nefarious circumstances all because Little Jemy was upset that Mr. Henry was governor of Virginia and wouldn’t play centralizer games.
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I went looking for the ironic aphorism that places theory above observation, so I googled “validated by theory”. All of the hits were unironic uses of the phrase.
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I would respectfully disagree.
Some degree is necessary. One is building a structure of government within which one is to govern. Notice that much of this “vagueness” has been introduced by lawyers; the average person understands at a basic level what “reasonable and proper” means. It is the lawyers and courts that have pretty much hijacked rational behavior. Once-upon-a-time they knew their place; now they lord it over “their” empire. Judges even take it upon themselves to reverse jury finding! What an affront! But that’s not the fault of the constitution; that’s the fault of the “legal system” we have - which is no real system of justice but a kangaroo court.
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