Sure, but you don't know about that because you're not interested in guns. Like, how many people know you can legally build and fly an RC drone from a kit? Or that you can legally build and drive a car from a kit? There are enthusiasts, and there's everyone else. The things you don't know may be interesting to you, but that doesn't make them news.
But, sure, you could see a piece in Vanity Fair about my trip across the country in my hand-build automobile, why not. What we have here is this article coming out in the midst of a huge argument about how to reduce traffic fatalities, noting especially how there is absolutely no oversight over hand-assembled vehicles. (Okay, those have to pass inspection, but leave that aside.) Where hand-assembled vehicles account for roughly no traffic fatalities. Surely you can see how that article in that context is rather disingenuous, to put it charitably.
Are you proposing that "news" should only count if it's something that a person who already follows the field closely wouldn't know? Is "news" only current events, and not reporting on old facts that are not well known?
My thoughts on this article are roughly equivalent to my thoughts on my hypothetical Vanity Fair piece, which I think I made clear. Since your questions don't seem to relate to that hypothetical, I don't have much to add.
I guess I passed that over because I couldn't see the point to your hypothetical. No, I don't see how such an article would be at all "disingenuous". What is the hypothetical supposed to illustrate? I imagine a "kit-built cars are perfectly legal to build at home with no oversight" article would be interesting to read too.
But you wouldn't consider it to have any relevance to the broader cultural problem of traffic fatalities and vehicle registration? Or you don't think others would?
Or you think that any misleading effect is regrettable, but not a reason to alter the tone of the article?
I think someone who didn't know a lot about the facts could easily read TFA and come away with the idea that there exists some connection between our gun violence problem and some or all of rifles, military rifles, AK-47s, kit-build rifles, bump-fire stocks, build parties, or armslist.com. But we know no such connection exists. Do you really not find that misleading?
The facts of this report should be a part of our conversation, as a great many facts should be that are not. I only worry that this article seems written to imply the opposite of its facts.
I went back to double-check the article to make sure I hadn't missed some important piece, because I didn't recall any such implication that any of this was related to gun violence. I still couldn't find anything that implied such. So no, I don't find it misleading.
I personally find the article to be very narrow and factual. It seems to go out of its way to refrain from implying much of anything, and just tells the story.
It's odd that gun advocates are coming out of the woodwork to criticize it despite that. One gets the impression that gun advocates find straight facts to be problematic.
> I think someone who didn't know a lot about the facts could easily read TFA and come away with the idea that there exists some connection between our gun violence problem and some or all of rifles, military rifles, AK-47s, kit-build rifles, bump-fire stocks, build parties, or armslist.com.
...then we likely don't have much to discuss. I agree that the article doesn't imply much of anything, which as I've said is what I find misleading. Because it should imply that these rifles and kits and parties and people are harmless, because that's true.
My worry is that reporting about these "legal, untraceable" rifles which doesn't include a note to the effect of, "But in practice, it's just a hobby, this really isn't dangerous at all," baldly factual though it may be, will have only the effect of spreading FUD about harmless rifles, which since they also happen to be the very coolest and frankly most Second-Amendment-appropriate guns will only further radicalize gun owners and drive us further from compromise on legislation that will really save lives.
If that makes me a "gun advocate" in your eyes... Well then I'm not sure what that makes you.
Let me make sure I understand this properly. You're coming right out and saying that you object to factual, unbiased reporting because it doesn't go out of its way to make the implications that you personally feel it should, to advance your agenda?
If that's correct, then you're right, we don't have much to discuss. I cannot even remotely fathom that attitude.
He did not build an AK. He built a copy of the defanged, non-fully-autmatic, "for gun enthusiasts" version of the gun. He did not build a fully automatic machine gun. He built something that is in every way equivalent to a hunting rifle you can buy at a sporting goods store: he built a semi-automatic rifle.
Technically, the part of it that's legally considered a weapon, the receiver, is not built from a kit, it's built from scratch.
If the rest of the parts were not legal to purchase, they could be built from scratch too. A skilled craftsman can make an entire AK-47 replica in ~one day. An unskilled one following plans on the internet working from what's procurable from any hardware store and using cheap tools from the same source can make (a much shoddier one) in a few weeks.
Making guns is not hard. They are, in their basics, very simple pieces of gear, and can be built from the same materials with same tools as any other metalworking project.
In conflict zones where gun imports are successfully blocked, the locals invariably build their own. These weapons range from AK-47 replicas to zip guns [1] that make 15 minutes to make. I'd argue that for crime, the zip gun is the more practical one.
I know that making guns is not hard. It's not all that interesting that people are able to build guns themselves. After all, it's ancient technology, and people build far more complicated machines at home.
What's interesting to me is not that a gun can be built by an individual, but that this particular kind of gun can be built legally by an individual in the US without informing anyone.
People build their own airplanes, for example, but at the end of the day they have to get them inspected and registered before they can legally fly them. That one can build an AK-47 without any such controls, and still be completely within the law, is interesting.
How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit?
How many of them do you think understand what a receiver is, or what the difference is between an automatic and semi-automatic?
If you genuinely think this is information that more people should not know then say so explicitly.
There is a debate about guns going on in the US, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you want people to make informed decisions or not.
> How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit?
Order... hundreds of thousands? Millions, maybe? It depends how you define a kit, I guess. It's quite common to put together uppers and lowers and barrels and triggers et cetera when building a rifle, and I imagine most of those who do so understand the rules that govern it. Frankly building an AK from parts isn't a lot harder than that, you can do it with hand tools.
> How many of them do you think understand what a receiver is, or what the difference is between an automatic and semi-automatic? ... If you genuinely think this is information that more people should not know then say so explicitly.
Has this information been removed from Wikipedia? It's all public, that's the point.
> There is a debate about guns going on in the US, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you want people to make informed decisions or not.
I don't believe this will help anyone to make an informed decision (unless they want to build an AK, maybe). As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, we do not have a problem with rifle violence in the US. We just don't. It's not worth having a national discussion about.
But people on both sides want it to be about rifles, because that's where the political hay gets made. The anti-side loves to hate rifles because they're scary looking, while the pro-side loves to love them because, well, same reason. They're talking perfectly past each other, and can likely continue to do so indefinitely. But while this debate is going on, while this very article was being written to make whatever point it will be used to make, our children continue to kill themselves and each other with cheap, legal, store-bought handguns.
Well, we can quibble about this, but i'm betting you that the vast majority of people in the USA haven't put together a gun from a kit, and most of them probably don't own a gun, or if they do own a gun, probably haven't thought about modifying it.
Irrespective of who's right on that point, there is a cultural issue here. People who have not lived with/around fire arms, and who do not hunt, have essentially no reason to ever encounter a fire arm. It is, save for violent crime, just not relevant to their lives.
Expecting them to be informed about firearms kind of isn't reasonable is it? So even if the information is out there, they've had no cause, nor frame of reference for figuring out how guns work.
So, when an explainer like this pops up on how easy it is to put together a gun, it's worthwhile to point out that turning some sheets of metal into a gun is really freaking easy, and banning all guns (even if it were legal) would be from a practical standpoint really really hard.
> As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, we do not have a problem with rifle violence in the US. [...] Let's fucking talk about that.
Dude, I could not agree with you more. But despite that, having even the most basic explainer on firearms is still a good thing.
So, anyway, how do we stop handgun deaths, deliberate or accidental? :P
I can understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, I don't think this article is the explainer you're looking for, for a lot of reasons discussed in these comments, but primarily this: he destroyed the gun.
He bought it, he built it, he fired forty rounds through it and then he found it so distasteful that he didn't want it in his life, so he destroyed it. Even after mentioning how much it might have sold for, he didn't sell it. He didn't even give it away to one of the hobbyists he met, which he would have no difficulty finding takers for.
Imagine you help someone buy and put together their first computer. Not a monster machine, but a nice solid, balanced build. Later you learn that they booted it up once, played thirty minutes of World of Warcraft, and didn't like it, so they smashed all the parts with a hammer and left it out with the trash. How does that make you feel?
To a normal person, whatever, that might be a bit of an overreaction. But an enthusiast is shocked, confused, dismayed. Why? Why did you do that? I could have taken it off your hands. I could have paid shipping.
And that's the lethal problem: The author of the article, himself, could not or did not come to an understanding of how and why it is that these hobbyists feel safe and comfortable with what they do. He didn't understand them, from the sound of it he didn't really try to, and he still doesn't.
And if he doesn't understand it himself, what can he possibly hope to teach anyone else?
I think it's interesting how people who will vehemently defend a person's right to own a gun will turn around and criticize him for destroying his own property, harming nobody in the process. Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but it strikes me as an attitude of "freedoms are great as long as the person does things I like".
I'm reminded of the recent incident in the US Southwest somewhere (Arizona?) where a city started a gun buyback program with the intention of destroying the guns, and the NRA sued them to prevent them from destroying guns that they had legally purchased from willing sellers.
Heh. It's a bit ironical, but I don't think it's really hypocritical or anything. To go back to my computer example, I can argue for your right to smash it with a hammer and still not be able to understand why you would choose to. Or take a look at the comments on gadget destruction videos some time. Or I wonder if anyone has ever tried to stop a religious institution from burning books they paid for with their own money?
To be honest, it's exactly the point I think the article missed so closely. It's different when you're an enthusiast. You see a mass-produced object worth what it will cost to haul away; I see a unique work of art, low born perhaps but with a history and a soul, with countless beautiful features and imperfections. (Mind, this isn't guns for me personally.) Yes it's yours, but it shouldn't be destroyed, that's disgraceful!
All that being said, it is unfortunate that so many of the most vocal gun advocates seem to have so little respect for people who don't like guns.
It was posted elsewhere that the gun, while legal to manufacture and possess, is illegal to transfer to another person in any way. Given that, destroying it is perfectly reasonable if he didn't feel like owning a homemade AK-47 forever.
That's a good point, but it's not completely true as stated. It is illegal to manufacture a firearm for sale or transfer without an FFL (a Federal license). However if I'm reading this[0] right it is probably not illegal to manufacture a firearm for personal use, and later sell or transfer it to another individual.
It would need to be a legal sale under CA law, meaning I guess it would need to be serialized and registered by an FFL. Mind you this is all subject to the capricious opinion of the ATF, which has pretty broad discretion over who gets to go to jail-- but even if transfer were utterly illegal, that's something hobbyists have been dealing with for decades.
All he would need to do is remove the receiver -- the folded sheet metal, the only part he "made" -- destroy that, destroying the firearm, and give away the rest as so much unregulated junk. As soon as he cut that receiver in half, he was holding a legal, untraceable nothing in the eyes of the law. Then he says he cut the parts into pieces. He really, really did not have to do that.
And what I reduce this to is-- you're right in that transferring this firearm could be a huge hassle that might lead the average person not to bother with it. So this is a journalist researching a story, and he turned down an opportunity to find out first-hand just how burdensome these regulations are on hobbyists. That's an entire missing half of this article. Why? Because it was hard? I'm not trying to question his motives, but it really seems like he didn't even try to understand.
I think your example of book burning is the most interesting bit here.
Book burning used to be seriously reprehensible, because it was a potentially effective way to destroy or deny information. If you were burning Bibles in the 14th century or whatever, you were making it vastly harder for locals to find out what was in a Bible. A successful book-burning program could seriously alter the information available.
Today, though, book-burning is pointless except in some rare cases. It's definitely pointless to burn Bibles or anything else that exists in multiple copies. Yet we still find it to be reprehensible. Why?
I think part of it is just history. We remember that it used to be really awful, and we're slow to catch up.
But part of it is the symbolism. We know that it's not really destroying information or impacting anyone's access to it. But that's still the intent. By burning books, you're declaring that you want to deny people this information, even if you can't. Well, sometimes you are. Other times you're just disposing of paper and ink to no ill effect. It can be hard to tell them apart.
I think the AK-47 here is much like burning a widely available book. There are tons of AK-47s out there, so destroying one won't impact its availability in any meaningful way. It ultimately does nothing to destroy one. On the other hand, it may be symbolic, saying that you want to deny people to these guns, even if you can't. Or maybe it's just pragmatic. Hard to tell exactly which one applies here.
What "this"? That somebody built a rifle from a kit is not exactly newsworthy.