WSJ: Private Equity and the AR15

[WobblyPossum]

Can you build one in your backyard from common sources materials

I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with that.

[0ddl0t]

Can you build one in your backyard from common sources materials

There was a college kid in the late 70s who designed an A-bomb after piecing together bits and pieces of plans from open-source materials just to show that anyone - including terrorists - could do so if they really tired.. One of the middle eastern countries tried to buy it and the FBI confiscated his mock-up and classified many of the documents he used to plan it. He went on to create, maintain, and sell access to a massive database of voters...

It wasn't something that needed to be proven, but that kid didn't know it because the prior feat was classified. In the mid 60s the Army took two recruits - physics phds with no nuclear experience - and stuck them in a lab at Lawrence Livermore telling them to use open source material to figure out how to built an A-bomb. This was to see how feasible it would be for an enemy nation to build a bomb from scratch. They took 2 years and found the missing link in some atomic propaganda released by the Einsenhower administration.

An eagle scout in the 90s built a homemade reactor that became a superfund site. He obtained the materials from old watches and smoke detectors.

A few years later a couple of physics students built an improved version

In the 00's a high school-aged kid won $50,000 after he achieved nuclear fusion for a science fair

[MickAK]

I like this idea. Enough people and state governments could probably agree that private citizens shouldn’t own WMDs that I’d like to see that amendment passed, if only to prevent any future conversations where someone says “do you think the second amendment covers private citizens owning nuclear weapons or labs that create weaponized viruses?”

I wasn't sure if this was a thought exercise people were doing or not.

There's no ban on possessing nuclear weapons or manufacturing nuclear weapons. The restriction is on the possession of the radioactive material needed to build one, which isn't much different than the laws regarding storage of explosives that have been on the books for hundreds of years. It wasn't very long after people started using gunpowder that people started accidentally blowing up their neighbors with it and laws were passed to prevent that.

Yeah, you could outfit a privateer with cannons in the Revolutionary War days but there where definite restrictions on how you could store and handle the powder for same. It's all about the zone of control. There's nothing different happening now. You can't build a nuke because you can't get the weapons grade plutonium/uranium necessary to build one, because long before you were at a point to produce it you would have potentially poisoned a large group of people, similar to some yokel blowing up half the town because he kept a bunch of barrels of gunpowder in a shed.

tl;dr, We don't need a constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting private ownership of nuclear weapons because the laws that prohibit private ownership of nukes fall under long tested laws about blowing up or poisoning the shit out of your neighbors and the courts have settled that pretty damn well.

[Joe in PNG]

Can you build one in your backyard from common sources materials?

There's a big difference between "mini-Chernobyl" and "earth shattering kaboom". Making a mini-Chernobyl out of commonly available ingredients isn't all that difficult.

However, an earth shattering kaboom requires a whole lot of uncommon ingredients. There's a good reason not a lot of nations have joined the Instant Sunshine Club, and it's not because they didn't study physics.

The law enforcement interest is less about homebrewing Sunshine in a Can, and more about not dusting your neighborhood with a lot of nasty particles. They don't exactly let you spray your yard with PCB's or dust your plants with asbestos powder either.

[CleverNickname]

There's no ban on possessing nuclear weapons or manufacturing nuclear weapons.

42 U.S. Code § 2122 (a): It shall be unlawful, except as provided in section 2121 of this title, for any person, inside or outside of the United States, to knowingly participate in the development of, manufacture, produce, transfer, acquire, receive, possess, import, export, or use, or possess and threaten to use, any atomic weapon.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

MUH NUKLEER RIGHTZ!

[MickAK]

42 U.S. Code § 2122 (a): It shall be unlawful, except as provided in section 2121 of this title, for any person, inside or outside of the United States, to knowingly participate in the development of, manufacture, produce, transfer, acquire, receive, possess, import, export, or use, or possess and threaten to use, any atomic weapon.

Look at the date and the use of the term 'atomic weapon". Compare that to the laws regarding possession of source materials. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-c...t040-0022.html

[CleverNickname]

Look at the date and the use of the term 'atomic weapon". Compare that to the laws regarding possession of source materials. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-c...t040-0022.html

I don't get whatever point you're trying to make. Yes there's limits on the amount of materials that anyone can possess, but there's definitely also a law preventing anyone under US jurisdiction from doing anything with atomic weapons.

[MickAK]

I don't get whatever point you're trying to make. Yes there's limits on the amount of materials that anyone can possess, but there's definitely also a law preventing anyone under US jurisdiction from doing anything with atomic weapons.

There aren't laws on the books prohibiting that because there are any number of theoretical ways to achieve fission or fusion and such a law would have to cover all of them then someone would come up with another one. It would be a pointless game of whack a mole. Prohibiting the source material makes more sense. Explosives are already regulated.

The point is the 'Well if the Second Amendment is so broad why can't you have nukes haha' argument is bunk. Regulations stopping you from carelessly blowing up or poisoning your neighbors have just as much history as the right to bear arms.

[camel]

There's a big difference between "mini-Chernobyl" and "earth shattering kaboom". Making a mini-Chernobyl out of commonly available ingredients isn't all that difficult.

However, an earth shattering kaboom requires a whole lot of uncommon ingredients. There's a good reason not a lot of nations have joined the Instant Sunshine Club, and it's not because they didn't study physics.

The law enforcement interest is less about homebrewing Sunshine in a Can, and more about not dusting your neighborhood with a lot of nasty particles. They don't exactly let you spray your yard with PCB's or dust your plants with asbestos powder either.

That’s more of what I was talking about. Plus a bunch of the posts above seemed to hash it out well.