oh, so that makes it alright.
I’d assume they either had a warrant, or (more likely) the requirement for one was waived in this case due to exingent circumstances. When the police have tried to use such cameras to randomly check houses looking for marihuana grow operations, the courts have blocked them.
Why are you assuming the bomber in my example is already on the FBI’s radar?
So why is GIGO droning on about research done on producing and using taggants? Most of us that are against their use agree they work from a physical/chemical perspective, what we are saying is there do not appear to be many people buying black powder and using it to commit crimes so we question the utility of the system relative to the number of crime and crime investigations it would affect.
I think we should tag ball-bearings and nails.
I get the feeling that many of the pro-taggant people just don’t get just how much gunpowder (both in loose from, and within ammunition and fireworks) is sold to the general public every year. They’re thinking the system would be similar in scope to the ones used to track high explosives, and not seeing the difference in scale between effectively tracking a true commodity substance versus a substance manufactured in smaller lots for tightly restricted sale. If they thought about what would be required to tag gasoline or those barbecue propane tanks so that every gallon of gas or propane tank sold could be traced back to a unique sale point (or a small number of possible points), they’d probably dismiss such a system immediately as impractical (at least for now). But somehow with gunpowder it’s all different, even though in reality it’s not.
Right. Never mind that you can make your own. Never mind that our risk from gunpowder bombs in negligible. And even if you eliminated that, there are innumerable substances that go boom, as anyone who has spent time in the lab trying to make one’s reactions NOT go boom can tell you.
So now the NRA is at fault for simply passively failing to partner with organizations that want to do more research?
But it’s OK for the ACLU to actively oppose deployment of cameras – the technique that was actually proven to be of great value in solving this particular crime – because … actually I missed this reason. Why, specifically, can we excoriate the NRA for its lack of support for further research (after initial research that proved taggants were impractical) but praise (or at least fail to criticize) the ACLU for its active, involved opposition of the very approach which solved the fucking crime?
How about the simple fact that you cannot vicariously assert someone else’s Fourth American rights?
If I am a trespasser hiding on someone else’s property, an infrared scan of the property violates the rights of the property owner, not the trespasser.
Sounds like someone needs to start a parallel pit thread!
Well, that is ok, but it ignores what happens in real life, in real life there are many examples of things things that were used responsible by many, but as soon as a property like illegal drug makers figure out how to extract meth from over the counter medicine the result is more regulation, the point here is that while a product in the past had a few users the evidence here points to black powder as becoming now a weapon of choice for the asshole terrorists.
Speaking of things that are common and evidence suddenly shows a very good reason to regulate or remove from the shelves we get a very relevant example on the use of lead in ammunition:
I bring this as yet another point that shows how uninterested in science… actually this and other issues demonstrate hostility against science by the NRA, IMHO it is a common denominator coming from several issues from several right wingers in this board.
Once again, I have to mention that it was with good research that I was convinced that it is silly to regulate assault weapons differently from others, but one should not allow outfits like the NRA to then turn around and fight against good science, (or to fight against doing any science!) I think that what I’m trying to say here is that gun right proponents should drop the NRA as they are nowadays working actively to defund research or continues to discredit good research, any group that claims to be dedicated to the rights of Americans should not resort to the manufacture of ignorance to defend them.
Once again, this obtuseness works only by ignoring that politicians in the pocket of the NRA have to wait for what the NRA says, one should be aware that political cover is the “beesnees” for those politicians.
I would not call what the NRA is doing “passive”.
It bears no comparison to medicine used to produce methamphetamine. Across much of Appalachia and parts of the Southeast (I don’t know about the rest of the country) meth is basically an epidemic. Hundreds and hundreds of labs, destroying neighborhoods and communities.
That’s a valid time for government to take a regulatory response.
On the other hand, you have black powder that was used to kill three people and otherwise appears to be basically absent from the crime statistics. That’s not a compelling case for government regulation. On the financial side of it, it seems a lot more like Maryland’s Ballistic Fingerprint Registry which is an acknowledge waste of money than it does restrictions on products containing pseudoephedrine.
I can grant you that, but it misses the point that Al-Qaeda and others are using this more often, the situation is changing as we are discussing.
According to your linked article -
*Unique identifying markers incorporated into individual lots of explosives are called taggants. One of the most common explosives taggants in use today consists of tiny multicolored plastic chips bonded to a magnetic material, acting as a bar code of sorts to identify the factory that made the explosive material and on what date, in what batch, as well as its distributor and the places that sold it.
When a material is detonated, the taggants are released and can be collected from the area with magnets. But the technology has its drawbacks. Someone conceivably could fabricate counterfeit taggants, thereby subverting the identification process.*
WHAT? You can use a magnet to remove taggants?!?! Where could terrorist bombers possibly find a magnet? :smack:
I especially enjoyed the referrence to a “DNA taggant”.
DNA can also be valuable as a taggant, but it, too, has its limitations. One of the biggest flaws of current DNA taggant systems is that the equipment necessary to read the genetic code is fairly expensive, is not portable and requires skilled technicians to operate. So instead of being able to read the code quickly and easily in the field, officials have to send the genetic taggants to a laboratory for analysis that could take days to complete.
Considering that the “DNA taggant” would be at the center of a high pressure explosion and flame, I wonder how the bacteria would survive? Or does that matter to your anti-NRA rant?
The article also mentions several other studies/efforts by groups to develop taggants. Taggants that would actually work in the real world and could not be easily defeated. None of those efforts seem to be controlled or influenced by the NRA. How is that possible, in your NRA-obsessed world view?
I not only missed the point, I missed the news. AlQ is using black powder for bomb making? I would need to see something more about that. Somewhere between the first and the 110th repeat of the explosion on TV, I started saying to myself “That ain’t much of a bomb.” And in most cases, is there any real question about who did what, don’t they announce themselves pretty much openly?
And I would be remiss if I did not, once again, thank Bricker for pointing out, once again, the hypocrisy that is so typical of people who disagree with him. We would all do well to sit quietly at his feet and take notes as he explains, once again, the principles of honest candor and straightforward debate.
Your own supplied link shows that there are efforts to develop a taggant that would work, maybe, eventually. It appears that your intention is to blame the NRA for something/anything/everything and is not based on reality.
Cherry picking, as you tried to avoid but could not, it is precisely because DNA can degrade after an explosion (Not all elements in an explosion burn, there is always some residue left) is that scientists are coming with solutions to that problem, you are only showing ignorance by concentrating on the magnets (hence the clumsy cherry pick by you), I cited that because of the DNA angle and the bacteria solution is very interesting, of course more research is needed, but once again, who is opposing doing more on this front?
It is the deployment and research that is affected by very reprehensible politics, I can notice that you only ramble to avoid dealing with the already cited anti-scientifc efforts of the NRA.
Sorry for your forced ignorant points, but I already cited what the NRA is doing, you are not only denying reality but idiotically telling others that what was cited does not exist.
Good luck with that.
And actually this post of yours is more idiotic that I thought, the writers of the piece mention those taggants that are affected by magnets to make the point that indeed the old fashion ones are not good to use, it is a very common move by researchers when cutting edge science is reported, the old ways are mentioned so as to **dismiss **them in favor of the new system.
Only someone that is not paying attention would use that point that even I already made. What do you think was the reason I mentioned already that you are stuck in the 90’s? I already pointed out that science has marched on so you are reduced to make a straw man of even what the scientists in the piece report.