Effective Gun Control

If you have a drill, a hacksaw, and $30-$40 of hardware, you can make a single shot pistol. It doesn't even require any specialized knowledge. For additional $20-$30 and a moderate amount of knowledge, you can make an (admittedly low quality) open bolt SMG.
And of course, this is buying that hardware in US stores. In Brazil or the Philippines, there are entire illicit industries devoted to making firearms of varying quality.
In the end, implementing effective gun requires two things:
1. Killing off everyone who has enough knowledge to make a gun on their own.
and
2. Destroying all the tooling and hardware usable for making a gun.
And then, after we've returned to the stone age because we destroyed all our industry and killed everyone who had the knowledge to rebuild, we'll finally be free of the firearms menace.

National (or Universal) Injunctions and Free Speech

A Washington District Judge has issued a Nationwide Temporary Restraining Order (TRO, also known as universal injunctions) to prevent DEFDIST from distributing the DEFCAD files. Given that at least one SCOTUS justice has commented on such injunctions in a fairly derogatory fashion (see Justice Thomas' concurrence, starting on pg 47 of the PDF), it seems likely that such injunctions are on thin ice... But since the TRO only mentions DEFDIST, and pretty much all the other interested parties are happily distributing the files (See codeisfreespeech.com and fosscad.org, among other places, and note that some of these places only provide links to Magnet URIs for torrents or links to an external download mirror), it's not likely going to have much effect, even if SCOTUS doesn't decide to slap it down ASAP. Especially since at least a few are going to respond to any such TRO with "Make me" at which point the judge either finds out just how little power he has, or the case gets fast tracked to SCOTUS.  The Streisand effect is in full force.
Links to the magnet URIs for the original DEFDIST mega pack (the one that predates the State Department cease and desist, the settling of which set off the current to do), and the current FOSSCAD mega pack can be found on the Gun Related Downloads tab. As Mr. Universe said, "You can't stop the signal."

3D Printed Guns Aren't the Boogieman

The response to the settlement between Cody Wilson’s DEFDIST and the State Department has been nothing short of excessive, for a variety of reasons. If you listen to the right broadcasts, and read the right articles, no one could blame you for thinking that there will be blood in the streets. A district judge in Washington state has issued a temporary restraining order to keep DEFDIST from distributing their files through the DEFCAD portal. Leaving aside the obvious technical problems in his reasoning (the cat is well out of the bag, and trying to stuff it back in just invokes the Streisand Effect), and potential legal issues (at least one SCOTUS justices is less than equitably inclined towards universal injunctions issued by lower courts, not to mention that this WILL get challenged on first amendment grounds), there is absolutely no reason for preventing the distribution of the DEFCAD files.

There are two ways to make a gun with a 3D printer. The first is to 3D print the entire gun. The type example of this is Cody Wilson’s Liberator pistol (named after the WWII era gun). As with it’s namesake, it is a single shot pistol with limited uses, albeit in a smaller (and not terribly adequate) caliber. It is useful mostly for causing freakouts by people who don’t realize how useless it is. Most of the freaking out seems to be due to the the fact that it’s plastic, and the chunk of metal included in the design isn’t structural and can be removed (illegally) without adversely affecting the gun, making a weapon that could theoretically slip past a metal detector. Just what someone is going to do with only one or two rounds of ammunition and a single shot handgun I’m not sure, but it isn’t going go well for them. I’d be more concerned by all the Swiss Army knives , actual useful guns and high explosives the TSA keeps missing. There’s no point in getting all worked up over a single shot, single (assuming you want to keep your fingers) use pistol when it seems like pretty much everything else already gets past the TSA.

The second method of making a gun involves making a receiver (or lower receiver, depending on the gun), which, in a factory produced gun would be the serialized (with exceptions, home made firearms aren’t required to be serialized) and controlled part. AR-15s are quite popular for this, due to the ease of assembly and a multitude of interchangeable options. Of course, most of those parts are metal, so your homebuilt AR isn’t going through any metal detectors. It is, however a useful gun… but people have been building them in their garages for decades, using everything from plastic, to wood, to the traditional aluminum, and even steel, using various tools and techniques, some of which wouldn’t be out of place in the late 19th century.

In fact, 3D printed firearms should be very far down anyone’s list of priorities, and that includes people who want to get rid of guns. Slamfire pipe shotguns are significantly easier, have a lower entry point, have a very minimal cost per build, and require no specialized knowledge to produce. Open bolt submachine guns have been produced using common tools and materials purchased from a hardware store, and there are a multitude of how to manuals that make it so you need only minimal knowledge for production. There are even a couple that are aimed at mass production, as opposed to small and individual scale production. This particular brouhaha is about sixty years out of date.

On "Compromise" Part 2

So you want to stop, or at least mitigate school shootings?
Other than getting rid of public schools (a discussion for another day), your options are pretty simple. You can't get rid of the guns. Even if the political will was there, there are too many already in circulation, and they are too easy to make, for you to accomplish complete gun confiscation.

Here is my proposal:

1. No one shall be forced to carry. However, all teachers so inclined should be allowed to carry.
2. If possible, there should be an armed school resource officer in every school. If not possible, for example in many rural schools, and there are no firearms inclined teachers at the school, a firearms inclined teacher should be transferred from another school. The sooner there is an armed response, the better the outcome is for everyone else. They don't even have to win, just slow him down enough for the police to get there.
3. Single entry, multiple exits. New construction should be set up so that there is a single point of entry for all buildings, next to a manned entry control point (the secretaries can pull double duty on this one), with each classroom having it's own exit. This also makes sense from a fire safety standpoint. Obviously, you can't do this with old buildings, but that's why this isn't a simple point idea.
4. Instead of "hide in place" teach "run and dodge". Get the kids outside ASAP, and running away and dodging, instead of staying in their classroom to get shot like fish in a barrel.

 Obviously implementation is more complicated than concept, but that at least would mitigate the shootings. As for root cause... There are no simple answers to that, other than to say that it's clearly not guns, or this would've been an issue well before the 1990s.

On "Compromise"

Gun control isn't the answer to the recent spate of school shootings. In fact, there are sources out there that suggest that the most recent one was committed not just with a shotgun, but a sawed off one at that - a class of firearm that has been highly regulated since 1934, such that making one is expensive, and requires government permission and registration. "More gun control" on top of the thousands of federal, state, and local laws is throwing good money after bad, and giving the government power that it not only doesn't need, but shouldn't have.

If you really want more gun control, you're going to need to offer an actual compromise. Not some wishy washy "we didn't take everything we wanted". That's not compromise. Compromise is give and take. For example, we classify bump-fire stocks as machine guns, in return for repealing the Hughes amendment and reopening the machine gun registry. Of course POTUS may very well have rendered that a moot point (we'll see once the legal challenges hit SCOTUS).

More to follow.

Gun Control: The Law Says what we Want it to Say edition

At Trump's directive Jeff Sessions and the ATF just put out a new interpretation of the NFA that bans machine guns.
This is, of course, a hilariously bad idea, even if you think that gun control in general is a good idea.
Don't understand why? Well:

1. This action relies upon deliberately bad logic to re-define bump stocks as machine guns. Basically, they're lying about bump-stocks being covered.
2. Bump stocks have been legal for over a decade. There have been MULTIPLE ATF letters that said they were legal.
3. The ATF is taking the position that they were always illegal, they just didn't realize it. Therefore the takings clause doesn't apply.
   

So, the government decided that an item met the definition of another, illegal item, despite the language of the law not supporting that interpretation, and retroactively banned it after over a decade of it being legal, while denying compensation, because it was always illegal. Now imagine if they did this with anything else. If this is allowed to stand as precedent, you can be damn sure that they'll do it again.

On Gun Laws and Tragedy

I have some notes for any anti-gun individuals who might read this post, and a couple for the people on my side.

For the Anti-gun folks:

1. Police were called to the Parkland shooter's (I refuse to learn the names of these assholes) home MULTIPLE times. As in 39. He posted credible threats on the internet UNDER HIS OWN NAME. People called the FBI twice about him. The armed school resource officer, rather than do his job, decided to sit the shooting out. For all intents and purposes, Law Enforcement at every level failed to do their jobs. These are the same people who'd be enforcing any new gun laws that get passed. What makes you think that they're competent do do that?
2. If you read the Second Amendment, the operative clause says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There's a distinct lack of "unless it'll make people safer" or "unless it saves one child."
3. Even if the Second Amendment did allow for that, the problem isn't guns. Here are some data points:
1. 19 dead in a knife attack in Japan
2. 33 Dead in a mass stabbing at a Chinese train station
3. 22 stabbed outside a school (according to this article, knife attacks are apparently not uncommon in China)
4. 334 dead in the Beslan School Siege
5. 87 Dead in Happy Land arson
6. 168 dead in the Oklahoma City Bombing.
7.   
   
8.  If guns were the problem, our murder rate would make Honduras' look like kindergarten play. In fact, if there is a correlation between guns and homicide, it's a negative one.
9. If you refuse to accept Honduras' homicide rate as relevant, you're admitting that it's more complicated than "Guns cause crime".
4. Bump stocks aren't the problem either. They've been used once for a mass killing - mass killings are more likely to involve arson, explosives or trucks, than they are to involve a bump-fire stock. And yet people are getting all worked up about a piece of plastic that any chump with a 3d printer (and, if you're willing to do the assembly yourself, 3d printers are surprisingly affordable) can push out by the dozens or hundreds, depending on how committed he is. And you don't actually need a bump-fire stock to bump fire - it just makes it more comfortable.
5. Do you really want to give Trump more power?
6. Luty, Metral, Sten, Uru. Do you know what all those names have in common? They're all submachine guns that can be built with minimal tools and hardware store components. The Luty SMG was actually designed with that in mind. Variants of all those guns (except, AFAIK, the Luty) get mass produced by illegal arms factories in various nations and sold to criminals. most of these nations have very strict gun control. 
7. Gun control is not the answer, not even a part of it. There is, in fact, no simple answer. Allowing qualified teachers to carry, and putting armed LEOs in as many schools as possible is a start, but it isn't a complete answer in and of itself.

For my side:

1. Specifically for those who voted Trump in the primaries: now that Trump is advocating a useless ban on bump-fire stocks and raising the buying age of guns to 21, do you feel stupid? I hope you do. Just because someone says they're on your side doesn't mean that they actually are.
   EDIT: I'm not blaming anyone for voting for Trump in the General Election. Maximilien Robespierre is a more attractive choice than Hillary.
2. For the NRA - You quisling fuckweasels. I hope you're happy with yourselves for proposing a ban on a piece of plastic. The president apparently agrees with you.

They won't stop

Yes, I'm going to "Die" on that Hill

I've seen a LOT of pro-second amendment gentlemen and ladies saying that Bump-Fire stocks, being a useless accessory, and the anti-gun narrative being what it is right now, that we need to sacrifice Bump Fire to avoid another assault weapons ban. Some of these people have been calling the rest of us out for calling the NRA everything from retarded to traitorous, and saying that we don't want to die on this particular hill. It turns out, we were right, and they were wrong.
If the anti-gunners want me to support a bump-fire ban, they'll have to trade something for it. I'm not compromising, because with anti-gunners there is no compromise. We give them an inch, and they take a mile. We let them write laws, and they churn out poorly thought out garbage that doesn't achieve anything other than pissing people off.
I'll waste political capital defending an accessory that I literally have no tactical use for, in any situation. And that includes if I was the one taking potshots at people to validate my pathetic existence. I'll waste that capital, because the bill is so poorly written that it'll affect things that are actually useful, and because if this bill passes the anti-gunners will smell blood in the water and go for more. I'll waste that capital, because, even if the bump-fire had made the jackass more effective (and it didn't, because bumpfire is less effective than pulling the trigger as quickly as you can) the actions of one depraved individual are no reason to take away the rights of all the law abiding citizens out there. I'll waste that capital, "die" on that hill, because this isn't going to do anything to stop the next guy, because bump-fire stocks are ridiculously simple, all you need to bump-fire is a belt loop and your thumb, and because the government has no right to decide what I can and can't own.

Well... Sh*t

I guess the Supreme Court simply doesn't want to hear second amendment cases, for better or worse. Having lived in California (and recently) I can say that this is distressing. Depending on where you live in CA, getting a concealed carry permit can be as easy as any shall issue state, or the next best thing to impossible. Given that California bans open carry, many residents of California are facing a de facto ban on bearing arms, a clear infringement of the second amendment. I fully endorse the dissent voiced by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, who called the decision "indefensible".

EDIT: And I thought that they were doing, a perhaps not great job, but an acceptable one. This is rather disappointing, especially since the court still has the same number of conservatives, liberals, and swing votes as it did for the McDonald and Heller decisions.

Well, It's a Start

Today the Supreme Court denied an appeal concerning non-violent misdemeanor offenses and gun rights, letting a lower courts decision stand. This makes it so that you can't be denied your gun rights for a non-violent misdemeanor. I don't support having any misdemeanor turn someone into a prohibited person - if a person's crime is so bad that they shouldn't be allowed to own firearms, it should be a felony - and I'm ambivalent about prohibiting felons, particularly non-violent felons, for a variety of reasons, ranging from the massive number of felony laws on the book, so many in fact, that no one even knows how many there are, let alone how to avoid committing one, to the fact that a reformed felon is just as prohibited as an unrepentant felon, and the unrepentant one won't have any issues with using the black market or other illegal means (i.e. theft) to obtain a firearm.

So the fact that the crimes that can lead to becoming a prohibited person have been significantly reduced makes me more than a little happy.

Moderates

For all those talking about how horrible the NRA is, I want you to consider something:
The NRA are the squishy moderates of the Pro-Gun crowd.
The NRA has a past record of being willing to "compromise" or, if you go back far enough, straight up sponsor gun control (See the 1934 National Firearms Act). The NRA, in fact, has a very strong contingent of "Fudds"*, and WILL accept some gun control - although we're pretty close to the limits they'll tolerate, and it's quite rare for the politicians to propose the sort of gun control that the NRA would be willing to support.

Of the other major pro-gun groups, almost all of them are significantly more hard-line than the NRA - for example, Gun Owners of America (GOA) which emphasizes their "No Compromise" stance on gun control. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all those gun owners who aren't in the NRA are going to side with you. Oh, some of them will - there are plenty of Fudds who don't even care enough to be in the NRA - but many, perhaps even most of those gun owners view the NRA as being anything from "good, but not enough" to "barely better than quislings".

So the next time you complain about the NRA blocking a piece of gun control, you might want to consider something: Why are the Squishiest, most moderate of the gun owners  opposing this? If the moderates on the "pro-gun" side are so worked up about "common-sense gun legislation", how do more extreme groups feel? Are they actually serious about "from my cold dead hands"?

*Fudd, a hunter/recreational shooter of a single gun, who supports or fails to oppose most gun control for a variety of reasons including:

1. They don't think that their gun will ever be banned
2. They believe ownership of firearms should be limited to hunting weapons 
3. They just don't care 
4. Rank hypocrisy.

Gun Control and Orlando

I'm a bit late to this - as part of my job, I'm often without internet for days to weeks - but since the "debate" is still going on, I'm going to put my two cents in.

1. If you say anything about a magazine limit, you're either stupid or ignorant. The man killed 49 people and wounded 53 more. Even if he only used one round per person, that means that he had to reload multiple times, during which times he was not shooting. Magazine limits just mean that he has to reload more often. Given that even inexperienced shooters can change a magazine in seconds, this doesn't really give a tactical advantage to anyone, except the shooter, because it reduces the ability of concealed carriers to carry ammunition covertly.
2. The same thing goes for banning removable magazines. Before removable magazines became popular, stripper clips enabled easy reloading. There are disadvantages to stripper clips (which is why removable magazines replaced them), but don't think for a second that someone couldn't take an SKS (with a 10 round fixed magazine), and a bunch of stripper clips and produce similar levels of carnage.
3. Assault Weapons Ban.  I've already covered, in detail, why an AWB is stupid and counterproductive. We're not going to get another one.
4. If these assholes were smart (which, fortunately for us, they aren't) they'd stop trying to shoot places up, and instead use fertilizer bombs. The Oklahoma City Bombing had more than 3 times as many dead, and more than 12 times as many wounded. Shootings can (and have) been stopped by ordinary citizens with guns. A bombing doesn't take that chance.
5. Stop using the word "Compromise". Compromise implies a give and take. Anti-Gun "compromises" so far have offered nothing in return to gun owners. If you offer me universal background checks, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself. If you offer me universal background checks, in return for which, you'll repeal the Firearm Owners Protection Act and the Gun Control Act of 1986, I might consider it.
6. Stop acting like you can actually control guns. Outside of the US, criminal arsenals (i.e. gun factories) and individuals make guns, ranging from "You couldn't get me to shoot that for a million bucks" to "professional quality sub-machine guns". Inside of the US, hobbyists (and criminals) make guns with the same range of quality - although the hobbyists tend to avoid making sub-machine guns, if only to avoid a felony conviction.

If you're willing to agree on those points, we might have a constructive conversation and figure out something that actually has a chance of working - since it probably won't involve trying to keep track of well over 300 million guns. Otherwise, we'll get stuck in the loop, where people like me explain why gun control won't work, and anti-gunners try to sell us their load of bull.

California's obsession with Gun Control

There's no doubt about it. California is unhealthily obsessed with gun control.
11 new gun control bills have passed the state Senate. Should all or most of them get passed, it will effectively be impossible to be a gun owner in California.
My comments are in Bold, original article in Italics.

Here's a quick overview of proposed gun control measures approved Thursday by the state Senate.

• Ammunition regulation: SB 1235 by Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) requires background checks to buy ammunition. It also creates a license to sell ammunition, and creates a new system for collecting information about those sales.

Are they going to track reloading supplies? Gunpowder ingredients? Fulminate of Mercury and Potassium Chlorate? It's not like ammunition is particularly hard to produce. We are talking about a technology that dates from the mid 1800s, when black powder was in vogue. I'd like to know if California politicians are going to pass a bill banning charcoal and bat shit just to prevent people from making their own gunpowder. Not to mention the criminals will still be able to get ammunition on the black market.

• Ban on large ammunition magazines: SB 1446 by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) bans the ownership of any ammunition clip that holds more than 10 rounds

First off, a clip is not a magazine. Second, most magazines are literally a box with a spring and a piece of plastic inside. Thirdly, what the hell makes you think that criminals will comply with this?

• Bullet buttons: SB 880 by Sen. Isadore Hall (D-Compton) expands the legal definition of an "assualt weapon" to include a group of rifles with ammunition clips that can be quickly swapped out by using a bullet to push a small release button.

It's nice to know that you're working hard to ban almost all semi-auto rifles in your state. I expect compliance to be low.

• SB 894 by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) requires reporting most lost or stolen guns within five days.

 Do you want people to not report stolen guns? Because this is how you get people to do that.

• "Ghost guns": SB 1407 by De León requires a person to get a serial number from state officials before making or assembling a gun.

I, personally, would like to know just how they intend to enforce this one without violating the fourth amendment. And even then, I don't think they can do it.

• Gun violence research: SB 1006 by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) creates a new University of California center for researching gun-related violence.

You make it sound like they'd do something besides waste the money.

All in all, it's a crock of shit. All that will happen is making legitimate firearms ownership incredibly inconvenient.

Ex-ATF Agent Doesn't Know Firearms

Color me surprised.

What’s missing from Heller is a comparison of guns at the time the Second Amendment was written and now. Had the Framers time-traveled to a contemporary gun store, they probably would have been astonished at just how lethal firearms would become. They might have even graced the Second Amendment with an additional clause that placed limits on the madness.
But they didn’t. Neither did the Heller justices, who completely ignored the stark contrast between then and now. One wishes that a law clerk looked up Section 921(a)(16) of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which exempts weapons with antique ignition systems or that do not use fixed ammunition – in other words, the guns of the Framer’s era – from the definition of “firearm.”

For someone who was supposed to enforce firearms law he doesn't seem to know firearms or their history all that well. After all, the Cookson repeater (a flint-lock lever action), the Belton Flintlock, and Girondoni Air rifle were all in existence at the time.
Also - using the Gun Control Act of 1968 to justify his interpretation of the constitution is pretty stupid, given that the GCA isn't a part of the Constitution and post dates it by over 150 years.

The Inanities of Anti-Gunners

I came across an anti-gun blog post the other day. It was really quite inane. Consider this quote:

"Gun ownership isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being."

And she's not the only one who feels this way - some of the comments are just as ignorant and foolish:

"Indeed! And it’s already an amendment. So….it can be amended"

I of course, responded:

It did not actually include the right to own a human being. It did prevent any slave import bans before 1808 (And a ban on importation did take effect then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_Prohibiting_Importation_of_Slaves). For the purposes of representation, it did count “three fifths of all other persons” (Having previously mentioned “free Persons” and “Indians not taxed”).

There is no mention of a “right” to own slaves, and the only part of the Constitution that might be construed to grant that right is the 9th Amendment,

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

And it doesn’t say anything about owning slaves. In fact, the 9th amendment works better as an argument against slavery (even without the 13th amendment) that it does as an argument for slavery.

A word to the wise among anti-gunners: Don't try to use the Constitution to justify your argument unless you've actually read the Constitution and can pull a direct quote to try justifying your argument. Otherwise you just look stupid.

Crazy is as Crazy Does, Colorado Edition

This isn't the first mass shooting where the media has pointed a spotlight on the crazy's personal beliefs as if those beliefs are the reason why he went and shot as many people as he could.

Let's be honest. The issue here isn't abortion, just as the issue with the Charleston mass shooting wasn't racism and segregation. Their political beliefs are nothing more than an excuse, something to satisfy us when we ask "Why would anyone do this?" In reality the answer is much simpler, and remarkably consistent across mass killers of the lone gunman persuasion. They want media attention. They want 15 minutes of fame and their name to become, for a short period at least, a household name. These monsters have found that, by killing a few people, they can become the most powerful person in the world. The President of the United States will talk about them and at the very least pretend to do something. While the Federal Government might not do anything, you've got a fairly iron-clad guarantee that the individual states will do something. Any controversial political ideas held by the killer can change the ways that multi-national mega corporations do business.

In short, it's a chance for a disaffected, mentally unstable loner to change the way that America, and possibly the world, does business. Individual congressmen have less effect upon the course of events than a single successful mass shooter. Every time a successful mass killing happens, the other monsters take notes. They see that gun free zones are easy targets. They see that they're practically guaranteed to to get an anti-gun reaction that often leads to a lasting legacy built upon legislation. They see that a manifesto with controversial opinions can lead to a backlash against those opinions. They become a household name, more famous than some A-list celebrities. In short, we give them everything they want.

It's time we stopped enabling the pathetic scum who engage in mass killings. Rather than spread their name far and wide for the world to know, make them an unperson and never refer to them by name. Rather than dropping everything to deal with it, the POTUS should treat it just like he treats the daily murder rates for high crime cities like Detroit and Chicago (i.e. ignore it). Rather than making sweeping policy changes after a mass shooting we should leave things as they are. If we must do something, loosen restrictions on gun control so that the next time, there's a higher probability that they'll get stopped by someone with a gun. Stop doing what the crazies want and start treating them like any other murderer. No recognition. No fame. No power. You can't stop these attacks from happening, but you can minimize them by refusing to give them their prize.

"Putting Weapons Back On the Street"

From CNN:

New laws force police to put guns back on the street

Well that's one heck of a charged headline. The implications of blood in the streets and dead police officers are par for the course as far as the anti-gun agenda goes. There are a few other real gems in the article, such as:

"My job is to keep my officers safe," said Fred Fletcher, the police chief of Chattanooga, where there have been more than 100 shootings this year. "To send them out to face the same guns they risked their lives to get off the street is a big concern."
While some law enforcement officials support the sale of confiscated guns, a number of police chiefs like Fletcher are speaking out against the practice -- arguing that the risk of selling a gun back to a criminal far outweighs the amount of money they could make.

 Do they not run background checks? You know, the same background checks that every FFL has to run when they sell someone a weapon?

... For those police departments that sell the guns, some only sell to federally-licensed gun dealers, which include everything from online gun emporiums to brick-and-mortar firearm stores. Other law enforcement agencies sell the guns directly to the public through auctions, often at a steep discount compared to what the gun would cost new from a gun store. Safeguards, such as background checks, are required. But that's not always enough.

 Oh, so they do use background checks. Just like FFLs. I'm still waiting to see how this is different from the business that a gun store does - in which used guns are sold for a significantly lower price than new.

... This kind of transaction, known as a straw purchase, is illegal. Garant, who pleaded guilty to making the straw purchases, was sentenced to a year in prison. Meanwhile, the Duluth Police Department told CNNMoney that it has suspended the sale of firearms "until our department develops sound strategies in keeping firearms from individuals who are ineligible to lawfully possess them."
"A gun that should have been destroyed instead was sold back to the public," said Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek, who oversaw the investigation of the shooting. "This is the worst nightmare that could have happened."

You know, a straw purchaser would have been able to do the exact same thing to an FFL. They are literally complaining something that their policies concerning selling guns off or destroying them will have no effect on.

...As a result, a number of Arizona law enforcement agencies have started selling seized guns. And major departments like Phoenix have discontinued buyback programs altogether -- which had previously resulted in the destruction of thousands of guns.

 Buyback programs are about as useful as tits on a boar hog anyway. There are three types of people who sell guns to buyback programs: People who don't want guns anyway, but ended up with one for one reason or another, Criminals trying to get rid of evidence/broken guns, and Gun Owners scamming the system by selling low quality improvised guns/broken guns to make a profit. Most of the guns destroyed by buybacks are pieces of shit that nobody cares about.

..."What's really concerning is the political power of some of these groups that at end of the day are more focused on getting guns on the streets than getting them in the right hands," said Austin, Texas Police Chief Art Acevedo.

 The right hands? It's impossible to keep criminals from getting guns. They steal them from legitimate gun owners. They conduct straw purchases. They make their own. They buy them on the black market. No department's policy on sale or destruction of seized firearms is going to have an effect upon crime. Spare me the stupidity.

No, You don't Need a Factory To make Firearms

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The original AR-15 design is 58 years old (it's precursor design, the AR-10 is 60), the original AK design is 68 years old. The 1911, one of the definitive semi-auto pistol designs, dates from, you guessed it, 1911, with precursor designs and prototypes from the late 1890s. Machine guns predate the 20th century, and rapid fire crank weapons predate the American Civil War. Sniper rifles with effective ranges in excess of 800 yards were used to great effect in the aforementioned American Civil War, and current top-line sniper rifles are generally bolt action, which predates smokeless powder and metallic cartridges. Since all of these inventions, manufacturing technology has done nothing but improve. Basic machine tools, available to everyone, can be used to produce professional quality firearms. New developments, such as desktop CNC mills and 3-d printers simply reduce the amount of space and skill required.

So it should come as now surprise when criminals circumvent the law with homemade firearms.

"Combat Vets" and "Gunslinger Fantasies"

Some people think that those of us who are in favor of defensive firearms usage want to be a real life John McClane, and bring in combat vets and LEOs to support their argument. To to start with, there are plenty of combat vets and LEOs out there who disagree with them (also, I'd like to hear a recording of their interviews with the combat vets).
Of course, the police don't really have a leg to stand on in this argument:

According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time.

From Pennsylvania MPOETC:

The handgun course of fire for the police firearms course that all Waiver of training applicants must successfully complete with a minimum score of 75% and all police officers must successfully complete annually in order to satisfy mandatory in-service re-certification requirements will meet the following minimum standards:
A handgun course of fire must be considered a generally accepted police qualification course consisting of at least fifty (50) rounds of duty ammunition. A minimum of ten (10%) percent of the rounds must be fired at a distance of 25 yards or greater.
The course shall include stages to determine the applicant's or officer's overall proficiency; including, but not limited to marksmanship, safety, weapon operating procedures or tactical skills (i.e., use of cover, tactical reloading), with the weapon s/he will use in the performance of their duties. Requirements for distances of firing positions are: Stages no closer than one (1) yard and at least one stage of fire from the twenty-five (25) yard line or greater distance.

 Speaking from personal experience, it is entirely possible to meet the minimum requirements for qualification that are required for Pennsylvania LEOs the first time you pick up a gun. While standards are not completely uniform across the US, they tend to be similar. Some LEOs shoot once a year, and others only shoot to familiarize themselves with their weapons and for qualification.

They use SWAT members and infantrymen to make their point that "civilians" don't have the requisite training to successfully defend themselves (despite defensive gun use estimates ranging from 67,740 to 2 million and comparable justifiable homicide rates to cops) and ignore the fact that you can literally pick up a handgun for the first time and match LEO qualification requirements, and that non LEO civilians regularly stop mass shootings.