That “utility” is the same utility as target shooting: I make things go boom for fun. The difference between pipe bomb building and amateur rocketry is the mechanical equivalent of (and possibly literal) rubber bungs.
In this context, the context of making certain kinds of possession or manufacture a crime, guns == crime. Not a casual guns==crime.
But so many arguments about futility in legislation often center around “determination.” As in, “if a criminal is really determined, laws won’t stop them.” I think it’s strange that the determination argument is only allowed to move in one direction.
No I don’t think that’s what you were arguing, but when you speak a thing on the Internet, sometimes it feels like you’re arguing with the whole of the Internet, and I was addressing the issue beyond what you raised. Should have separated the thoughts more clearly.
In this context, the context of making certain kinds of possession or manufacture a crime, guns == crime.
Ah, it is illegal, therefore it is a crime!
Just like copying MP3s and putting commercial music in the background of your youtube videos. Or exceeding the speed limit. Crime wave!
When math (algorithms and coordinates) outlawed, only outlaws will use math.
Development of 3D printing is not about determined criminals finding a way - it’s a technological inevitability predicated on the idea that we are not in some sort of dark ages stasis.
Not so fast. The ideal is it’s illegal for a utilitarian reason, rather than a blanket, “shit’s illegal because we say it is.” It’s begging the question to skip over the issue of whether it would serve a purpose to make it illegal, but in this context it became a side-issue and was taken for granted. I do think in principle that it’s possible to make the easy and quick a crime, even when it renders certain things such as numbers a crime. I don’t think that’s inherently absurd.
Child pornography is reducible to mathematics, and hence certain “numbers” (i.e. JPEGs) are illegal. To an extent, that means that certain bitmap functions are illegal- which is potentially devastating to the technology in principle, but the reality turns out to be very different. The nature of math doesn’t mean that we cannot make child pornography illegal. So in principle, making it illegal to print a gun is not so absurd as making it illegal to print a picture. I mean, it’s not like anyone with the determination and desire can’t do already do the latter.
My thinking did change somewhat when I noticed the similarities between the arguments for guns and drugs.
But that was when I started to focus more on context and empiricism. These are not theoretical questions: both drugs and guns have seen varying degrees of prohibition, and we’ve been able to observe the results.
It also focussed my attention on the difference between "prohibition " and “regulation”.
