Month: September 2013

Semiautomatic 3D Printed Handgun

I guess my prediction came true. The year hasn’t even closed yet and we now have designs for a semiautomatic 3D printed handgun. As with most 3D printed firearms so far it’s an ugly thing but one that uses several easily acquired firearm components:

***UPDATE: Files available on Defcad.com and Fosscad Twitter!***
I have designed a .22 LR Semiautomatic firearm. Unlike former designs such as the Shuty, this design uses almost all plastic parts (All non-plastic parts currently except the FCG cannot physically be plastic or a semiautomatic will not function) and uses weights to bring the bolt to a correct weight. You will need the following parts:
*3D Printer with ABS capability
*AR-15 FCG
*AR-15 Buffer Spring
*Ruger 10/22 Mag Spring
*AR-15 Firing Pin
*1x8mm metal insert (Case extraction)
*.44 bullets to weigh down bolt (More info in the .readme)

It’s very interesting to see how quickly 3D printed firearms are advancing. The rate of advancement really shows how powerful cooperation between a group of people from around the world can be. Thanks to 3D printer technology we are beginning to see a world where prohibitions on physical goods are infeasible. I believe it’s also important to note that these prohibitions aren’t being killed by political activism but by direct action. People from around the world who believe in freedom of information created designs for physical objects that can be replicated by anybody with a 3D printer, which are becoming cheaper and more capable every day.

Check Back Later

There’s not much here right now. My weekend was spent helping my girlfriend move and settle into her new place so, needless to say, I didn’t much time to write blog posts. If you check back here later tonight I’ll probably have something for you. Until then sit back and hope that the federal government will kind of shutdown for a day or two.

Seriously, this shutdown debate would be far more interesting if a government shutdown actually meant the entire government completely shutdown. Instead we get this wishy washy “emergency services only” malarkey.

Civil Forfeiture Strikes Again

Pop quiz ladies and gentlemen. How do civil forfeiture laws differ from outright theft? They don’t. Government agencies use civil forfeiture laws to confiscate property when they lack actual evidence of wrongdoing. When you think about it civil forfeiture laws are a wonderful scam. The very concept of innocent until proven guilty gets turned on its head since civil forfeiture mandates that you prove that your confiscated property wasn’t tied to a crime (which is really hard to do in a country where most people commit and average of three felonies a day). Traditionally civil forfeiture laws have been used by drug enforcement agents but the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) likes to get in on the action as well:

I’ve always paid my taxes and have never been arrested or charged with any crime in my life. I am a successful small-business man. But in January of this year, I woke up to find that my business’ entire bank account — more than $35,000 — had been wrongly seized.

Read the story. It’s a sad case of an independent business man having his assets seized by the IRS without being accused of any criminal activity. This brings up an interesting point that I’ve been discussing with people. Putting your assets in a bank is dangerous. While we often think of banks as secure strongholds the truth is they are willing to hand over anything they’re holding to government agents. That means the money sitting in your business account could disappear tomorrow because some IRS agent felt the need to harass you.

The more I think about it the more I’m beginning advocate the idea of holding cash assets in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a very nice feature: the only way to transfer funds out of a wallet is if you possess the private key. A government agency can’t simply seize your Bitcoin unless they are able to obtain your private key, which can be protected from seizure in many ways. Instead of taking deposits to a bank and leaving the money in an account you transform that money into Bitcoin using any number of Bitcoin services. Once that’s done you then transfer your Bitcoin from the wallet created for you by the service to a wallet solely under your control. At that point surprise seizures become very difficult because government agents will have to obtain your private key from you to transfer your funds.

As the state become more greedy we’ll probably see more businesses, especially small ones, utilizing things like Bitcoin to keep their wealth from prying hands.

At Least the ATF is Consistent

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have a track record of losing things. For several years the ATF has been “losing” firearm across the Mexico border and now the agency has lost 420 million cigarettes:

The US agency tasked with stopping illegal tobacco trafficking lost track of 420 million cigarettes purchased in undercover operations, justice department auditors have found.

In addition, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) made $162m (£100m) selling tobacco undercover, it found.

To those who want to grant the ATF more power so it can further control firearms I ask you this: How is an agency that can’t even keep track of cigarettes supposed to effectively control firearms? Furthermore, I must point out that it is unlikely that anybody within the ATF will be punished for this loss. Once again we must acknowledge that the state fails to punish wrongdoers within its ranks and that make government jobs attractive to the irresponsible. Putting irresponsible people in positions of power is always a recipe for disaster.

Nobody Likes Fascists

What happens when a group of neo-Nazis decide to take over a North Dakota town? Well, not surprisingly, the resistence shows up:

In an update to the story we ran yesterday on the town of Leith, North Dakota being taken over by Neo-Nazi racists, Michael Pugliese tells us from the ground that “Lakota, Dakota, Anishinabe, Apache, African, Irish, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and other anti-racist individuals stood together to fight against the attempted nazi takeover of Leith, North Dakota.”

The bottom line is nobody likes a fascist. Even fascists don’t like fascists, which is why their history is peppered with events like the Night of the Long Knives. So it should surprise any group that is openly declaring itself fascist to meet resistance in everything it does. By announcing their intention to take over Leith, North Dakota those white supremacists basically set themselves up to meet resistance form every anti-fascist (which is almost everybody) in the area.

Another Online “Black” Market Bites the Dust

With the exceptions of alcohol and caffeine I don’t take drugs. It’s not that I’m opposed to taking drugs I just choose not to. I believe many drugs have beneficial properties (violence would probably plummet if people would just take to smoking cannabis) and am therefore a fan of online “black” markets like Silk Road (link only works if you’re using the Tor Browser Bundle). Silk Road is an interesting site because it was the first large online drug market. The operator(s) of that site are smart and have remained anonymous. They have also chosen not to advertise the site, instead relying on word of mouth. That being the case, many people believed that Atlantis, a competing online “black” market, would crush Silk Road because of its major advertising push. It appears that the operators of Atlantis weren’t as smart as they thought they were because they shut down the site for “security reasons”:

Atlantis Market, the online bazaar for illegal drugs, has suddenly shut down permanently due to “security reasons outside our control.” The site gained some notoriety after the circulation of an animated commercial that explained how a “stoner” named Charlie uses Atlantis to find “dank buds,” part of a broader advertising push aimed at chipping away market share from the reigning drug underground kingpin, Silk Road.

When it comes to “black” markets, it pays to keep a fairly low profile. Most major advertisers won’t accept Bitcoin, which means there is no truly anonymous way to pay for their services. Anybody buying advertisements from traditional outlets therefore put their privacy at risk. Assuming Atlantis wasn’t a government sting operation (which is quite possible) it’s likely the people operating the site had their identities revealed through ties to their bank accounts.

Meanwhile Silk Road is likely to continue running for some time since the operator(s) refuse to even communicate outside of his/their website forum. If you’re going to run an agorist business that specializes in verboten substances keep a low profile.

McCain’s Senility

There are times when I feel bad for John McCain. While he is a bloodthirsty war monger I still wouldn’t wish senility on anybody. In a Code War-esque maneuver, John McCain decided to retaliate against the letter submitted to the New York Times by Vladamir Putin’s public relations people. How did McCain go about his retaliatory strike? By having his public relations people submit a letter to Pravada, Russia’s state new paper… during the Cold War:

Sen. John McCain, a man of his word, published his editorial — a stirring defense of the rights to free speech, dissent and political expression — in Russia’s Pravda, just like he said he would.

One small problem: As people are now finally pointing out, this isn’t the famous Pravda. After the Soviet Union was made to collapse, its official propaganda organ was sold off and eventually closed. There is no more “Pravda,” omnipresent national newspaper in which the Kremlin disseminates the party line to the oppressed masses. There is now Pravda, the struggling, thrice-weekly organ of the remains of the Communist Party, and Pravda.ru, a sensationalistic online-only news site few people in Russia take seriously.

Being such a war hawk you would think McCain would keep up on world affairs. While Putin had his people submit a letter to what is probably the most famous newspaper in our country, McCain had his people submit his letter to a failing newspaper that nobody seems to be reading. That has to be embarrassing.

Never Call the Police

A lesson that bears repeating time and time again is that you should never call the police. Why? Because police forces are heavily populated with psychopaths who will make matters worse more often than not. Take this example. A woman called the police to investigate a car she and her roommate suspected was stolen. What did the police do when they arrive? Shot her dog, of course:

JONES COUNTY, GA — A woman says that her ten-month old puppy was shot in the head after asking officers not to shoot it — twice.

On September 22, Anna “Chrissy” Music-Peed, of Macon, GA, drove to the Jones County Sheriff’s Department to request an officer come to and investigate a vehicle that had been brought to her property by an acquaintance, that both she and her roommate strongly suspected to have been stolen. Music told policestateusa.com that it was a Nissan Xterra from Virginia Beach, VA. As Music wrote in a blog post, “I will not have that influence around my family,” saying she was trying to do the right thing by making a report. The acquaintance was still on the property and Music had not let on that she had gone to talk to the police.

Modern policing in the United States looks more like Judge Dredd than Andy Griffith. It seems as though one cannot call the police without somebody or something getting shot as a result. I believe part of this is due to the fact that police officers are seldom held accountable for misdeeds. Hell, in Minneapolis there have been 439 complaints filed against its police department and not a single disciplinary action has come of it. You can see how such an environment would attract psychopaths looking for a way to hurt people without getting punished.

Trying to Salvage a Sinking Ship

It’s a miracle! The housing market is bouncing back! Three cheers for our central planners:

US house prices rose 12.4% over the 12 months to the end of July, the biggest annual increase since February 2006, according to a closely-watched measure.

Are you ready for another bust? I hope so because that’s what we’re going to experience in the near future. Let’s discuss economics for a moment. Our glorious central planners have been busy shoveling money into the economy in the hopes of propping it up again. But it seems the more they shovel the harder the crash is. This fits with the Law of Erisian Escalation, which states that the imposition of order equals the escalation of chaos. Trying to instill more order in the economy only results in more chaos.

I’m going to put forward a theory. Do note that I’m not saying this theory is correct nor am I claiming that I have thought this through fully. But I’ve been considering it for a while now and I feel as though it’s worth putting out for others to consider.

History is noted by various paradigm shifts. These shifts can be caused by many things including technological advancements and the need to escape coercive control. The Industrial Revolution is an example of the former, the move away from serfdom is an example of the latter. Could it be that our societies are in the midst of an economic paradigm shift? Rick Falkvinge has an interesting theory he calls the Swarm Economy:

The industrial model with lifetime single-employer careers is dying, and it is not coming back. The first sign was a change from lifetime-marriage employments into its serial-monogamy equivalent, where people change jobs every three years at the most. The next change, one which is already happening, is that most people have more than one employment — or employment-equivalent — at one time: this is an enormous change to society, where people are going to be juggling five to ten projects at a time, some for fun, some for breadwinning, some for both. I have called this the coming swarm economy.

Although I disagree with his idea of a universal basic income, I believe his statements regarding the increasingly decentralized nature of our economy has merit. Technology has allows us, as a species, to become less tied to physical locations and specific employers. Independent contractors are great examples of this shift to more decentralized workplaces. Contractors often lack a specific employer. Instead they go from job to job and sometimes work on multiple contracts simultaneously. Advances in travel and communication technology allow for this.

If the economy is in for another paradigm shift what good will central planners do? Preventing change is what the state does but the more it tries to force us into the current economic paradigm the messier it makes the transition to the new paradigm. Instead of a gradual shift enabled by new technology we suffer under a series of very painful busts as the old paradigm continues to fail again and again.

Being an anarchist I’m obviously against any form of central planning. But even advocates of central planning may want to stop and consider the possibility of a complete paradigm shift. For all we know the entire world is in for a change and that change could bring economic prosperity of the likes we’ve never seen. I think we should step aside and let the economy move in the way it wants instead of trying to prop up the current shambling mess so many seem to worship.

Glitch or Design

The debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been heating since the House voted to defund the law. Of all the revelations that have come to light regarding the law I believe this one may be the most telling:

WASHINGTON — Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what’s being called a glitch in President Barack Obama’s overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president’s plan had hoped.

[…]

The affordability glitch is one of a series of problems coming into sharper focus as the law moves to full implementation.

Starting Oct. 1, many middle-class uninsured will be able to sign up for government-subsidized private coverage through new health care marketplaces known as exchanges. Coverage will be effective Jan. 1. Low-income people will be steered to expanded safety-net programs. At the same time, virtually all Americans will be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government program, or by buying their own plan.

Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, an advocacy group for children, cited estimates that close to 500,000 children could remain uninsured because of the glitch. “The children’s community is disappointed by the administration’s decision to deny access to coverage for children based on a bogus definition of affordability,” Lesley said in a statement.

I’m left wondering if this is a glitch or by design. A number of my posts have been dedicated to the states are on the homeless and the fact that the state has no interest in helping those with nothing to steal. I would find it surprising if the (ACA) wasn’t specifically designed to prevent very poor individuals from obtaining healthcare. If they are allowed to obtain healthcare that means the state would have to spend resources on them, which is not something it has a history of doing.

Washington DC runs on corporate dollars. The ACA was the result of large health insurance companies buying legislation that mandated every American become customers. It was never about helping those in need, that was just the line of bullshit fed to us to drum up public support. From the beginning the ACA was about enriching the wealthy bastards that have been shoveling money into the pockets of “representatives” for almost a century.