Tag: You’re Doing it Right

The Liberator Pistol

On Thursday some of us Defcon attendees went to Sunset Park for the Toxic BBQ (the food wasn’t toxic but the 100 degree weather was pretty brutal to this Minnesotan). During the BBQ I met Dallas, a speaker at Defcon who invited us to attend his Skytalk at 0900 the next morning. His talk was about this little guy (pardon the shitty photography, I’m not a photographer and the lighting in the hallway wasn’t ideal):

If you don’t recognize it it’s the 3D printed Liberator Pistol. While I’ve read and written about the Liberator many times on this blog, this was the first time I was able to look at and touch one. It’s a rather crude weapon, which I expected since it’s a prototype, but a novel idea. If you look at the picture you’ll see the main pistol, which was printed in black polylactide (PLA), and the internal parts, which were printed in green PLA. The green parts were printed smaller than the design requires so assembling the parts wouldn’t allow one to have an operating weapon (this was done because security at the Rio was apparently uncomfortable with the idea of bringing in a working pistol).

The two presenters, Dallas and Sean Wayne, did a marvelous job of presenting the weapon. They covered the legal matters involved with manufacturing a Liberator (namely you must include at least 3.7 oz. of ferrous metal in the design and you cannot transfer it), the capabilities of the pistol, their adventure with getting the pistol through airport security (as checked baggage, which is what you must always do to legally fly with a firearm), and why the Liberator, at least as it currently stands, is impractical.

The Liberator isn’t the most capable weapon. Considering the entire weapon, with the exception of the firing pin and the legally mandated chunk of metal, is made of plastic the weapon has some notable weaknesses. During the presentation we were told that 10 firing is the generally accepted maximum a Liberator can handle. Since the pistol brought by the presenters was printed on a MakerBot with PLA, instead of something like acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), it wasn’t safe to fire (PLA is brittle and the pistol at the presentation would have exploded if one tried to fire it). Furthermore, the pistol has an issue with leaking gas from the trigger cutout, which is likely to burn the person shooting it. Once again, being a prototype, none of these issues surprised me.

I found their experience trying to travel with the pistol interesting. Because they didn’t want to chance being locked in a cage the pistol was transported just like any other firearm, by declaring and checking it. What was interesting was that the employees at the airline were rather baffled by the plastic pistol (in my experience airline employees are often baffled by any firearm) and ended up calling over a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. Unlike the entirely clueless airline employee, the TSA agent recognized it as a pistol and allow the declaration and checking to commence as usual. This may be one of the few times an agent of the TSA performed a competent job. It’s also nice to know that flying with a Liberator is treated no differently than flying with any other firearm.

The Liberator is a cool concept but, as it currently stands, is impractical. Reloading it is a ponderous task because you must remove the barrel, and the gun can’t survive many firings. As a member of the audience pointed out, one would have better luck going to the hardware store, buying a few dollars worth of metal parts, and slapping together a zip gun that would almost certainly be more reliable than the Liberator.

Of all the presentations I attended this was one of the most interesting (in part because I’m a gun nut but also because I love the concept of 3D printers). I’ve wanted to look at and touch a Liberator since it was first unveiled by Cody Wilson. Now that I have seen one I can say that my initial impressions were correct. It’s a really cool idea that will only get better in time. According to Sean and Dallas, the Defcad community is has already released a fourth major version of the Liberator design. With such rapid improvements it’s likely that we’ll see a reliable single-shot 3D printed pistol in no time. Once that’s been accomplished it’ll be time to move on to a semi-automatic 3D printed pistol.

The State Fails to Stop the Signal

Earlier this year the United States government attempt to suppress Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models for 3D printable firearms from being distributed by placing them under the control of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). By bringing ITAR into the equation the state was able to label those CAD models as munitions and prevent them from being legally exported from the country. Since those CAD models are under ITAR regulations I’m completely baffled by this story:

Less than two months after the debut of the first almost entirely 3D-printed handgun, a Canadian gunsmith has created the first 3D printed rifle.

The gun maker, who goes by the online handle CanadianGunNut, is an active user on DEFCAD, the primary online forum for 3D-printed firearms.

Doesn’t he know that the idea for 3D printable firearms originated in the United States and it is therefore illegal to export that idea, now that it has been labeled a munition, to his native country of Canada?

Information control, like gun control, is a foolhardy dream that can never be realized. Throughout our history handfuls of individuals have attempted to suppress information they believed to be harmful but failed as other individuals discovered more effective ways to disseminate information. 3D printable firearms are in their infancy but this will change as 3D printer technology improves and becomes more widely available to the masses. Eventually we will be able to print off firearms that are every bit as good as, or better than, currently manufactured firearms. Now that the state is in a position where it has to stifle both information and physical firearms its goal is completely unattainable.

I’d Give Them a Medal

Last week a group of Satanists did the entire world a giant favor by trolling the shit out of the Westboro Baptist Church. The group held a “pink mass” on the grave of Catherine Idalette Johnston, the mother of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, which they claimed would turn her gay in the afterlife. Finally, to add insult to injury, the man who officiated the ceremony, Lucien Greaves, placed his penis on the tombstone. While I don’t support defacing graves, I also don’t support the douchebaggery performed by the Westboro Baptist Church. In the end I have to deal with the latter so I’m willing to overlook the former in this case.

I was about to nominate this group of Satanists for a medal of awesomeness but, as is often the case, the state took a slightly different view of the event:

The officiant of a ritual in which gay couples kissed at the gravestone of the mother of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps Jr., has been charged with desecration of a grave in Lauderdale County, Miss.

In a phone interview with The Huffington Post July 24, Meridian Police Capt. Dean Harper confirmed that the spokesman for New York’s Satanic Temple, who goes by the name Lucien Greaves, faces a misdemeanor charge stemming from the July 14 incident.

Fortunately, they’re only being charged with a misdemeanor. Still, I’d strongly consider giving the group the keys to the city for proving themselves to be excellent trolls trolling for a good cause.

Jeffery Tucker on Optimism

Jeffery Tucker, for those who don’t know of him, is one of my favorite activists in the anarchist community. The man is well spoken, well dressed (I’m convinced that his bow tie is surgically attached), and ever optimistic. His optimism is probably my favorite trait because many anarchists seem to have a never ending feeling of hopelessness and it’s nice to see somebody who has an apparently never ending feeling of hope in the community. On his Facebook page, Tucker posted an explanation of his optimism that I thought was worth sharing:

The state in all times and all places wants a population of despairing, dreary, hopeless, and weighted-down people. Why? Because such people don’t do anything. They are predictable, categorizable, pliable, and essentially powerless. Such people offer no surprises, threaten no change, destabilize nothing. This is the ideal world that the bureaucrats, the plutocrats, and the technocrats desire. It makes their life easy and the path clear. Today is just yesterday and tomorrow – forever. This is the machine that the state wants to manage, a world of down-in-the-dumps and obedient citizens of the society they think they own.

In contrast, hope upsets the prevailing order. It sees things that don’t yet exist. It acts on a promise of a future different from today. It plays with the uncertainty of the future and dares imagine that ideals can become reality. Those who think this way are a threat to every regime. Why? Because people who think this way eventually come to act this way. They resist. They rebel. They overthrow.

And yet look around: we see progress everywhere. What does this imply? It implies that non-compliance is the human norm. People cannot be forever pressed into a mold of the state’s making. The future will happen and it will be shaped by those who dare to break bad, dare to disagree, and dare to take the risk to overthrow what is in favor of what can be.

I realized all this some years ago, and then when you begin to look around and see how the power elites do not and cannot rule, you discover the whole secret to social order. It turns out that they are not really in control, not finally. Then it all becomes fun. It is a blast to see the powerful topple from the thrones they want to sit in so badly. It is a thrill to use and hold technologies that no one among the elite ever gave permission to exist. It is a kick to see how the market — meaning human beings acting with vision toward the future — is so constantly outwitting the arrogant planners who want to freeze history, control our minds, and wreck our world.

To defy them is so simple: just imagine and future better than the present. You become a enemy of the state, and you begin to love every minute of it.

The Problem with Anarchy

Critics of anarchism always claim that anarchy results in lawless chaos where survival of the fittest becomes the law of the land. That isn’t the problem with anarchy. The problem with anarchy is that it sneaks up on your and blindsides your ass:

As Detroit’s call-it-anything-but-bankruptcy budget crisis drags on and the city government is unable to provide the most basic of services, residents have discovered an alternative to lawless anarchy: cooperative anarchy!

[…]

On the wealthier side, the philanthropic Krege Foundation coordinated with automakers and local businesses to purchase 23 new ambulances and 100 new police cars. Okay, perhaps providing equipment to the municipal government doesn’t fall under cooperative anarchy. But at the rate the city’s going, they’ll probably all be driven by volunteers any day now.

The chaos of ever dwindling statism hasn’t stopped at a handful of crazy philanthropic individuals buying ambulances:

Dale Brown and his organization, the Threat Management Center (TMC), have helped fill in the void left by the corrupt and incompetent city government. Brown started TMC in 1995 as a way to help his fellow Detroit citizens in the midst of a rise in home invasions and murders. While attempting to assist law enforcement, he found little but uninterested officers more concerned with extracting revenue through traffic tickets and terrorizing private homes with SWAT raids than protecting person and property.

In an interview with Copblock.org, Brown explains how and why his private, free market policing organization has been so successful. The key to effective protection and security is love, says Brown, not weapons, violence, or law. It sounds a bit corny, yes, but the results speak for themselves.

[…]

The reasons TMC has been so successful is because they take the complete opposite approach that government agencies, in this case law enforcement, do. Brown’s philosophy is that he would rather hire people who see violence as a last resort, and the handful of Detroit police officers who actually worked with Brown in the earlier years and have an interest in genuine protection now work for TMC. While governments threaten their citizens with compulsion, fines, and jail if they don’t hand over their money, TMC’s funding is voluntary and subject to the profit-loss test; if Brown doesn’t provide the services his customers want, he goes out of business.

A security group that’s more concerned about protecting its customers than expropriating wealth through traffic citations? Is there no end to the insanity anarchy is bringing? What’s next, efficient bus services?

Law enforcement isn’t the only “essential government service” that the private sector is taking over and flourishing in. The Detroit Bus Company (DBC) is a private bus service that began last year and truly shows a stark contrast in how the market and government operates. Founded by 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, the company avoids the traditionally stuffy, cagey government buses and uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; a live-tracking app, a call or a text is all you need to get picked up in one of their buses run on soy-based biofuel. All the buses feature wi-fi, music, and you can even drink your own alcohol on board! The payment system is, of course, far cheaper and fairer.

As you can see, anarchy really sneaks up on a society suffering collapsing statism. At one moment people are enjoying the rampant crime and wealth expropriation taking places as the state begins to collapse and its employees strive to expropriate whatever wealth they can manage before the inevitable end then, out of nowhere, people get sick of that shit and begin to bring a cooperative attitude that raises civilization from the ashes.

Johnny Cannabis Seed

Repeat after me, prohibitions never work. The simpler the thing being prohibited is to do or create the more miserably the prohibition will fail. Cannabis, being a weed, is very easy to grow and therefore the prohibition against growing, using, and selling cannabis was doomed to fail. Supporters of cannabis legalization in Gottingen, Germany demonstrated the futility of banning the weed:

Cannabis plants are sprouting up all over a German town after pro-marijuana supporters planted tens of thousands of seeds last month.

Supporters of the group A Few Autonomous Flower Children spread several kilograms of seeds around the university town of Gottingen last month.

[…]

Scores of the plants have sprouted all over the town this week to the fury of the local police and council.

A website shows dozens of photos of the cannabis plants blooming in public parks, allotments, gardens and window boxes all over town – with some even growing outside the local police station.

Police have been ripping out the illegal plants on sight but the sheer number of blossoming plants became noticeable in the past week.

The act of planting cannabis seeds throughout a territory has been a form of civil disobedience discussed by many but executed so effectively by few. Hopefully the success experienced by A Few Autonomous Flower Children will encourage individuals in other cities to perform similar facts. Nothing would demonstrate the futility of cannabis prohibitions so succinctly as millions of plants growing in every major city. If nothing else, such actions sap resources from the state by forcing it to redirect police resources from writing citations and shooting dogs to ripping up cannabis plants. The more time the police waste ripping up weeds the less time they have to cause actual harm to people.

Things are Looking Up in Spain

Spain has been suffering a great deal of economic distress. Fortunately, there is a silver lining to the country’s storm clouds. While the “legitimate” economy is floundering the “underground” economy is flourishing:

Spain’s illicit economy–all that is unaccounted for because it’s illegal or unreported–is worth an unseemly 20% of the country’s GDP, according to a new report by Spain’s Foundation for Financial Studies (FEF). That’s higher than every other country in the European Union except Italy, with 21%.

Spain only has a little catching up to do before it overtakes the current leader of the European Union, Italy.

While a Keynesian would look at such news in despair, an agorist, such as myself, would point out the fact that a country’s economy isn’t in the toilet simply because the state says it is. In the eyes of the state an economy’s health is measured by the rate rate of expropriation. If the state is able to expropriate a great amount of wealth from the general populace then, in its eyes, the economy is health. On the other hand, if the state is unable to expropriate a great amount of wealth from the general populace then it believes the economy is failing.

Markets don’t cease operating because participants are unable to fulfill the state’s demands. When the state begins to demand more than market participants can or are willing to surrender then those markets move underground. The state sees such “underground” markets as its enemy because they are its death knell; they are the the result of the people finally standing up a saying “Enough! Go bad to Hell from whence you came you evil plunderers!” As we can see by the estimated size of Spain’s “underground” economy, the people there have finally grown so sick of their rulers that they are refusing to surrender any of their hard earned wealth even under the threat of being thrown into a cage or murdered by costume clad thugs with badges.

I only hope that Spain’s overall disgust in rulers will eventually spread here to the United States.

Anonymous Going After America’s Second Largest Slave Owner

Many people mistakenly believe that slavery ended in the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. I understand why so many people make that mistake, it’s taught in all of America’s public schools (at least the ones that still teach history, which is an ever decreasing number of them). What isn’t covered is the fact that slavery wasn’t ended, the rules were simply changed. Previously white individuals were able to own individuals of African decent as slaves; today the state and those it grants special privileges to are able to own individuals who have received the label “criminal”, which, ironically, is a label that is entirely defined by the state (but I’m not saying there’s a conflict of interest or anything).

Today there are two major slave owners in the United States. The first is the United States government, which owns slaves through it’s wholly owned corporation Federal Prison Industries (also known as UNICOR). The second is the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), an entity given the legal right to own slaves by the federal government. Anonymous is planning to go after the latter:

The oldest and largest for-profit prison company is not what it would have you believe, at least according to Anonymous. A faction of the hacktivist group released a report Tuesday morning concluding that the publicly traded prison operator Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is not an efficient, profitable free-market solution — but a bad investment for shareholders.

Companies like CCA currently profit from America’s addiction to incarceration – converting a bloody trail of prison riots, deaths, and general human misery into black balance sheets. The conventional financial wisdom is that CCA will be reliably profitable in the future because of its strong history of growth over the past thirty years. But this growth has been fueled by a historical anomaly. Between 1970 and 2005, the U.S. prison population grew by 700 percent, far outpacing both population growth and crime. As a result, our country now has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.

The only reason the CCA has been a reliable growth industry is because the state has continued to create new jailable offenses. Let’s face it, the war on drugs (not produced by politically connected pharmaceutical companies) has been a boom for slave holders in the United States. It has ensured that any poor schmuck found to be in possession of a certain verboten weed is eligible for slavery. When your business makes money by employing slave labor, and the slave labor pool you draw from is constantly increased by the state, there’s nowhere to go but up.

It’s nice to see that somebody has an issue with the prison-industrial complex. Although I can’t imagine Anonymous will be able to cause any significant long-term harm to the CCA it will be entertaining if they are able to cause some short-term damage. Furthermore, through their targeted activism, Anonymous may be able to raise public awareness of the slavery institution still practiced in the United States. Someday this country may even be able to move away from the barbaric practice of imprisonment and find a more effective alternative.

Do it Yourself Glock

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man, I really want a Glock but I don’t want to register a firearm.” Fear not, the same man who brought up an AK receiver fabricated from an old shovel has now posed instructions for building a Glock frame out of scrap metal pieces.

Have I mentioned the fact that gun control is dead?

There’s Still Hope for Minnesota

When looking at the Minnesota government’s rules and policies one is often left with a feeling of hopelessness. Fortunately, this is a weird state politically and from time to time hope arises:

Say hello to Mayor Robert ‘‘Bobby’’ Tufts. He’s 4 years old and not even in school yet.

Bobby was only 3 when he won election last year as mayor of Dorset (population 22 to 28, depending on whether the minister and his family are in town). Dorset, which bills itself as the Restaurant Capital of the World, has no formal city government.

If you’re going to have a mayor you should elect one that is harmless. Some cities have accomplished that by electing a cat while other, such as Dorset, have done so by electing a small child. I hope other cities can learn from their example. In fact, now that I think about it, there is a Minneapolis mayoral election coming up.