(FWIW, I’m a graduate student in an overwhelmingly left-leaning economics department. If believing in the importance of assessing the costs and benefits of policy means you’re an Objectivist, I know a few guys whose heads would explode.)
Leftists are terrified of standing alone. RTFirefly has to check The New York Times and Huffington Post to make sure that he’s in sync with his herd on an hourly basis. He needs me to know that it’s not just his view – the whole community of progressive, like-minded elite are in solemn agreement.
You already have one, obviously - that doing anything is stupid. So, back it up.
No, you just put it in quantitative economic terms, like an acolyte of Rand would. Except you refuse to put an actual number on it, you just laugh at anyone who thinks there’s anything else in life worth considering - even to the point of positing that there could be such a thing as a “sufficiently small” number of murderers allowed to go free in the cause of not even mildly inconveniencing a few hobbyists. You don’t give basic human life any more than a financial value, and not only do not understand that you’re stunting yourself that way but laugh at those who suggest there’s more to life.
Not every problem in life is containable within the realm of monetary quantification, but you don’t realize that yet. So, you’re not all that different from the people you call Randroids after all. Don’t pride yourself on it.
ETA: And our friend Bricker is now reduced to the Shodan/SamStone “hive mind” crack. It’s like reading the last few chapters of “Flowers for Algernon”.
Each serial number is a unique number, but…
To get a unique “trace” for each buisness that sells or resells gunpowder (as well as a way to narrow a particular batch/purchase to a useable time stamp, even if it is narrowed down to a three month period at this buisness, for example), it seems to me that this would require millions of unique taggant signatures, wouldn’t it?
No. For several reasons, no. For one thing, the taggant is going to be embedded into the gunpowder so far that you will have to separate all of the components, then remake the gunpowder. At that point, you will have to test your gunpowder, and that will attract a lot of attention.
This would be made even more difficult by the fact that the taggants will be in such low concentrations that simple techniques are simply not going to work well. In order to know that you have removed the taggant, you will need access to the very same equipment the FBI will be using to detect the taggant, and that will certainly narrow the suspect range.
The ideal taggant, IMO would be parts per billion concentration ratios of common contaminants like calcium. I would be suprised if even the highest quality gunpowder didn’t already have 10 ppb of calcium, but it won’t have a 10:1 ratio of 43Ca to 44Ca and 10 parts per billion is thousands of times higher than the lower detection limit of either isotope.
What terms would you like? “If it saves one life?” “If it costs 50 people their jobs?” “If it adds 30 minutes to every day’s commute?” “If it has a carbon footprint larger than Al Gore’s big toe?”
Yes - when making policy decisions we should examine the impact on costs, on individuals, on commerce, on freedom - and then decide if it is worth it.
For taggants in powder sales, there has yet to be a proposal made that would work, or that would prevent any deaths (at most it MIGHT help catch someone after the fact).
How about some that make adding taggants less acceptable, in whatever terms you like, than leaving a murderer to go free? If you have something to present to us, you’d be the first.
Yes, and why do you dismiss that as not worth considering?
One might not get quite as unique as millions, but there are enough isotopes to make thousands. I’ll bet I can find 10 reasonable isotopes, if you give each 3 levels of concentrations you get 1000 different combinations. That would do a lot to narrow an investigation.
FIne.
Risk to people who shoot (unknown impact that could kill more than it saves)
Cost to add. Costs result in lower profits. Costs result in fewer jobs. Few jobs puts people on the street and children starve to death in the gutters.
But if you have a secret Taggant based addition system that can take into account how black powder is made, sold, and used - please suggest it.
You want to catch murderers? Eliminate the Constitutional right as expressed in Miranda and various search laws. We will catch and convict more murderers if the police didn’t have to get warrants, could profile, and could stop anyone that they wanted to.
In the absence of a system that would allow accurate tracking of the product back to an individual purchaser (or at least to an individual store), I’m not sure it does. Just knowing that the bomber used Brand X gunpowder isn’t all that helpful, and neither is knowing that he bought it somewhere within a 5 state area. Taggants only work with high explosives because the sales volume of those is small (relative to gunpowder, at least) and those sales are individually tracked.
Is the cost of setting up such a tracking system for every gunpowder, ammunition, and fireworks sale in the US worth the benefit we’d get? Such a system would be expensive and cumbersome to run, and bombers determined not to be caught could sidestep the whole issue by making their own taggant-free black powder at home, so color me doubtful.
I suspect more widespread use of public surveillance systems would be a more cost-effective approach (although, like other in this thread, I don’t particularly like the idea of cameras on every street corner).
Since, in my scenario, they would use stable isotopes of common environmental contaminants, the risk is quite low.
A part per billion is a really really small amount of material. There would be minor equipment adjustments like adding an aerosol of the taggant early in the process.
I just did. You are welcome.
Yes, you keep claiming that gunpowder has less tracking than the sodium chloride I buy from Aldrich. I don’t believe you, but if that is the case, it needs to be resolved with or without taggants. Hazardous materials should be tracked from buyer to seller under all circumstances.
No, you did not. You missed the part about needing unique taggants assigned to serial numbers for every box of ammo, every can of powder, etc. and then a database established and means of tracking every purchase to that particular taggant.
Please do re-read the thread and try again.
Too bad, because it’s true. Gunpowder sales, ammunition sales, and fireworks sales are not tracked in any meaningful fashion. Even in the most restrictive states, like Illinois, you only have to show the appropriate card before you make the purchase; the actual purchase itself is not recorded.
Impractical in this case because of the sheer volume of those sales. (And I’m really looking forward to hearing how we’re going to implement such tracking with gasoline, bleach, acids, etc. Hazardous substances aren’t limited to gunpowder, and your local Home Depot has plenty of things on sale which can be used in terror attacks.)
Childish fighting between Bricker and ElvisL1ves aside what I think is key is that no country on earth other than Switzerland follows this policy nor has anyone in my opinion elucidated a really compelling argument for taggants.
I’m someone who has no real problem with putting them in powder if you can demonstrate that they provide some utility and they do not cost too much, but no one seems to have any data on that. That suggests to me this isn’t really a researched issue, and I feel pretty confident in saying there aren’t very many crimes committed with gunpowder. Not every regulation needs to happen, the onus is on the regulator to provide some evidence it serves some societal purpose. When we seem to be talking about something that might occasionally help police solve a very low number of crimes, then it’s probably not worth anything to society at all.
Imagine if there was a piece of equipment that cost $1m and provided a very, very marginal benefit to police in investigating crime. Would most taxpayers or municipal/county/state governments approve of the machine? The answer is typically going to be no. Just because there is some minimal law enforcement usage does not by itself justify anything.
Easily quantifiable by test, especially considering that the amounts are in the parts per billion level. More likely a red herring, IOW footdragging bullshit, but still, easily dealt with.
I don’t see any numbers anywhere. I thought you offered to provide an analysis.
Please read the fucking thread, then.
Oh, wait, I thought for a moment you might actually be serious about engaging in an actual discussion. My mistake.:smack: Bye.
Just because no one agrees with you doesn’t make you an independent thinker.
You supercilious twit.
No other country has such a number of gun deaths and therefore would benefit nearly as much from it. But I’m pretty sure you know that, even if it gets in the way of your attempts at dismissiveness.
Solving fucking murders isn’t compelling to you?.
You really aren’t interested in being taken seriously, are you?
Perhaps you can be the first here to put a number on acceptability. Or, more probably, not.
I’m sure the taggants wouldn’t bee too expensive; the database you’d need to track sales in order to make those taggants useful would be an entirely different matter, though. I bet more video surveillance would be cheaper - and would have broader applicability as well, as it would be effective in helping solve crimes other than rare bombings (such as flash mobs, wilding, muggings, etc.)
I don’t like the idea of cameras everywhere - but I have to concede that in a public place I have no right to complete anonymity, and so no right is violated by using video surveillance of public places where crowds gather. And given that it was photographic evidence which led to the identification of the bombers in question, it would seem to be a better investment of resources. Maybe taggants would have helped identify the Unibomber more quickly, but he was unusually clever - most bombers aren’t as careful as he was.
I thought we were talking about putting taggants on black powder sold in cans etc. What does that have to do with our gun deaths? If we’re talking about putting taggants in all gunpowder and tracking it as it makes its way into every round of ammunition I see that being very laborious record keeping.
Solving murders is certainly compelling, but at what cost. If you’re on the county commission or city council and the local police says, “we have a machine that will only cost taxpayers $10m but will help us solve 1 murder every 10 years” would you approve that tax expenditure? You seem to have carefully ignored my point, that something that will probably only help solve an extremely low number of murders is probably not justified by its societal costs.
I think this is a clear case where your liberalism is making you act in a way you otherwise wouldn’t. You want to look at the taggants as an “I hate the NRA and gun owners” argument. I personally don’t see it as a gun argument at all FWIW, because until you just mentioned it I was not aware we were talking about ammunition-level tracking of taggants. I very seriously doubt if the police wanted say, a $10m piece of equipment to help them catch a very small number of criminals you’d approve it in general because you’d recognize that as public waste.
But a system with no quantified utility and no quantified cost you take a presumption that the only reasonable response is to support such a system and anyone opposed to it is a crazy person.
When I said gunpowder, I meant loosely sold black powder. Do you have evidence that it is used in very many crimes? Again, if we’re talking about tagging all gunpowder down to single round or cases or ammunition then we’re talking about something very different than what this thread started with. The overhead in being able to track individual case taggants would be a lot higher and would require very sophisticated inventory tracking of all ammunition sales. Further, it would also mean people who claim taggant deployment is designed to erode gun rights would have a point (something I initially disagreed with because loose black powder is a general purpose combustible and not intrinsically linked to being able to buy guns and ammunition.)
Maybe I’m crazy but I think new proposed regulations on society need to be justified by the person proposing them. If the person proposing them isn’t even prepared to make a case for them, I don’t see why we should go even a step further in discussing the matter.