Trust Your Federal Government? A Trip down Memory Lane

Ron Brown and Plane Crash in Croatia

The American Thinker blog has an article taking us down memory lane, in light of the multiple disgusting Obama administration scandals currently dominating the headlines, about the events and coverup of the death of Clinton Administration Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.   It's a multi-part article detailing the electoral politics around a series of events beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and a still-unidentified "foreign-looking man" in 1995 and including the crash of the Air Force transport plane carrying Secretary Brown in Croatia in 1996.  Though I was familiar with these events at the time, I had forgotten the controversies.  Very interesting reading, both for review and if these events of the mid-90's are new to you.

What these articles show is the extent that our government leaders will go to cover their own ass and do what is right for them politically, rather than what is right for the nation.  All these scandals show what a hypocritically disgusting thing our completely amoral president said at Ohio St University on May 5th

"Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems," Obama told graduates. "Some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices."

The American Thinker article is a good primer on what was going on back in the mid 90's.  Interesting that it was also a Democratic administration, but I'm not trying to make the point that Democrats can't be trusted (though that is certainly true).  My point is that doubting our elected leaders is a very proper, right, healthy thing to do.  And doing things like, oh, Obamacare, that gives the Federal government even more control in our lives, even in the alternate universe where it would be economical, is the wrong thing to do.  Not news to RTP&GGers of course.

Voters need to make sure that the right thing for politicians is the right thing for America.  That is what the ballot box is for.  Unfortunately, I don't know that the majority of Americans care what is right for America anymore.

Print Your Own Gun

In the not-too-distant future this will be possible. The world's first 3-D printed gun,,, called the Liberator, has been successfully fired by Defense Distributed. This is in addition to an AR-15 and AK-47 magazines and an AR-15 lower receiver that has been successfully made and used with this new technology.

On May 1st, Wilson assembled the 3D-printed pieces of his Liberator for the first time, and agreed to let a Forbes photographer take pictures of the unproven device. A day later, that gun was tested on a remote private shooting range an hour’s drive from Austin, Texas, whose exact location Wilson asked me not to reveal.

The verdict: it worked. The Liberator fired a standard .380 handgun round without visible damage, though it also misfired on another occasion when the firing pin failed to hit the primer cap in the loaded cartridge due a misalignment in the hammer body, resulting in an anti-climactic thunk.[...] 

The group’s initial success in testing the Liberator may now silence some of its technical naysayers, too. Many skeptics (include commenters on this blog) have claimed that no plastic gun could ever handle the pressure and heat of detonating an ammunition cartridge without deforming or exploding. But Defense Distributed’s design has done just that.

The gun is composed of 16 parts. Only the firing pin was not made with the 3-D printer, a nail was used. The gun was made using a 9000 dollar 3-D printer. Defense Distributed is currently working to improve the gun so that it can be made with a less expensive 3-D printer. The current design is still fairly crude. The accuracy, reliability, and safety of the gun is questionable but this will be improved upon in time.

Almost immediately after the successful firing of the world's first 3-D gun the government is already working to regulate the technology. The gun's creator has faced many challenges and roadblocks along the way, and there is no doubt that this technology has many more to come. This technology in its early development, but it will continue to be improved upon. Eventually this technology has the ability to prevent the government from being able to completely ban guns. This is a "game changer".