I think the point was: it might be a bit more expensive for them, but it wouldn't stop them from getting guns. Guns are important to their business, they would manufacture them themselves if they could not buy them.
Would it cost them more? yes. would it be the "number 1 priority" because it's so impactful? no, obviously not.
Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of making guns. But I'm aware of zero conflicts in which small arms were manufactured in situ. Even in e.g. Myanmar/Burma. The fact that even remote conflicts go through the trouble of importing arms suggests this might be more difficult than you suggest.
> Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of making guns
These are centuries-old objects. Manufacturing technology and materials science have advanced nearly 100 years since Ma Deuce first rolled off the line. Society didn't get dumber, and manufacturing has only gotten more accessible.
Just look at the current state of 3D printed firearms: they're completely useful and viable. CNC machining has never been cheaper or easier to do.
I'm fascinated by your point on Myanmar/Burma since I'm quite sure you used that point since it's common knowledge that is the most commonly cited example of the use of in situ firearms by militia. Maybe you're inviting a debate on why you think the reports on in situ firearms reported there are false, or maybe you just randomly came upon that, but it doesn't seem a coincedence.
Myanmar/Burma the strategy was build-to-capture: make improvised, unreliable firearms that could be used to ambush security forces and take their firearms.
Evidence against the point above that it's trivial to replace professionally manufactured small arms.
It's quite evident their point is that they don't want gun control and have pre-committed to whatever opinions are necessary to prevent it, including an opinion as absurd as "having to manufacture their own firearms would not be a significant impediment to their operations."
Mass synthesis of the drugs that cartels produce is trivial (that's why they produce them)
Putting drugs on trucks is trivial (that's why they do that)
Rudimentary semi-submersible vessels are impressive but you only need a few and they're not that hard to make (again, that's why they make em)
The telecom stuff they do is legitimately pretty impressive, but this too is just significant capex for long term benefit -- not so with self-made guns which are significant capex and you get out the other side a low volume of low-quality, non-dependable, often-breaking guns.
This is a popular idea amongst American liberals who rejoice at any possible means to eliminate/curb/add friction to lawful firearms ownership and manufacturing.
Where are they buying firearms in America at an "industrial scale?" An AR-15 receiver can be turned out in tens of minutes on a fast VMC - good luck stopping this.
What’s the relevance of who “this is a popular idea” to? It’s either a good idea or it’s not.
If it’s so easy, then why aren’t they doing that today and instead we just encounter thousands of guns bought in the US? Must be because that’s easier, correct?
I get the sense you’re a bit pre-committed to your position here though and perceive this as a bit of an identity question.
Yes, showing the preponderance of evidence against your easily disproven argument is actually "my agenda." Great job on calling that out.
I grew up hunting. Like any other redneck, I fired a .308 at 13yrs old, and yes it knocked me to the ground, lol. Skinned a dear that same year. I just didn't choose to make guns my entire identity.
All I am stating is the obvious. The USA is a major firearms manufacturer and exporter.
How do you know "empirically" that they aren't? Who says that the US-sourced guns that they are tracing are even a substantial fraction of the overall guns in use? How can you prove empirically that the data provided by the notoriously-reliable and agenda-less Mexican government is accurate?
> Who says that the US-sourced guns that they are tracing are even a substantial fraction of the overall guns in use?
Statistics?
Believing your implication that homemade firearms or widespread and just don't show up in the seizure data is a little silly unless you can explain why this would be the case.
I think it's still a relevant point. The point isn't necessarily that it's easier for cartels to make it themselves than to smuggle guns or divert them from military sources. It's that the cartels can easily replace smuggled guns with manufactured guns and their demand for them is inelastic enough at either price point it's unlikely to effect the access to cartels.
The more likely effect is it disproportionately stops normal Mexico citizens from obtaining "illegal" guns to protect themselves but the cartels still have them, making things even worse for the Mexican people.
I mean yes if they can truly just replace all the labs and people for not much addition cost, then you're only hurting yourself to raid/jail/prosecute by arresting and raiding the labs because it comes at great cost to yourself while costing your enemy very little and not changing their operations.
You've just explained why the drug war failed and ultimately hurt us more than helped us while doing nothing to destroy the profits of the cartels.
If that's the argument the other fellow would like to make, then sure. But that's not the argument he's making. He's specifically taking issue with trying to add friction to small arms manufacture and trafficking.
I know for a fact that mass methamphetamine and fentanyl synthesis is more technically-difficult, more time consuming, and more capital-intensive than mass-manufacture of firearms - but good luck pushing your "Iron River" narrative lmao.
At the risk of setting off the flame war detector on this website, please explain to me why simple chemistry that can be done anywhere, is easier than setting up a mass-manufacturing factory.
I challenge you to explain to the exact relative differences.
Also, why did you bring up fentanyl? How is that related to the very well documented Iron River? Well, I suppose it actually is, as the USA's very well documented supply of guns to Mexican cartels helps them bring up fent into the USA. Yay! Sorry to interrupt your previous narrative. Please, go on king.
Gee, one requires huge industrial laboratories complete with niche equipment, highly-controlled precursors in massive quantities, and trained chemists.. the other requires commonly-available machinery and universally-obtainable, cheap materials and a scrappy high-school student who excelled in shop class.
Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about. I can have a receiver milled from billet in the time we've spent discussing this.
Even the data you linked explains:
Privately Made Firearms
Law enforcement agencies recovered and submitted 37,980 suspected privately made firearms4 (PMFs) to
ATF for tracing between 2017 and 2021. It is probable that current trace data significantly
underrepresents the number of PMFs recovered in crimes by LEAs due to a variety of challenges
presented by PMFs, to include:
• PMFs involvement in crime is an emerging issue and LEAs are just beginning to institute
uniform training on the recognition, identification, and reporting of PMFs that can lead to more
accurate PMF data being collected.
• PMFs by their nature may have no markings at all, duplicative markings, counterfeit
markings, or markings that appear to be serial numbers on parts of the firearm other than the
frame or receiver. These duplicative, counterfeit, or erroneous markings can be mistaken for
authentic serial numbers and markings causing law enforcement to not recognize the firearm as a
PMF and/or potentially follow false leads based on these markings.
As Figure OFT-04 reflects, the number of suspected PMFs recovered by law enforcement agencies and
submitted to ATF for tracing increased by 1,083% from 2017 (1,629) to 2021 (19,273).
So, just domestically, home private firearms manufacturing totaled more units than all guns traced into Mexico in every given year.
lol making meth or fentanyl doesn’t require very sophisticated knowledge or expertise.
From readily available precursors, you can make fentanyl in less than one day.
The Gupta method (from readily available precursors) takes three steps, all at room temperature, and no specialized equipment at all.
That’s why it’s everywhere.
Versus non-professionally manufactured guns which… statistically pretty much don’t exist. Rounding error on any statistic you could come up with on firearms.
Yep, I'm sure cartels worth billions of dollars in annual revenue are producing tens of thousands of kilos using one-pot tweaker methods. Also which "readily-available" precursors are you referring to here? Can I pick up 10000 kg at Wal-Mart?
Non-professionally-manufactured firearms do exist, the aforementioned ATF traces indicate that they are far more prolific than Mexican imports. VICE produced a documentary almost 15 years ago on cartels in the Philippines manufacturing completely viable firearms without issue - in the woods.
Now you're making a different claim. You said that manufacturing fentanyl requires all sorts of specialized equipment and knowledge. It simply does not.
Does that mean cartels aren't sophisticated manufacturers? No, of course they are.
Second straw-man: no one said homemade firearms literally don't exist. The claim is that they are a rounding error.
> If Biden had bragged about what Khan, Kanter, etc. were doing, instead of hiding it in embarrassment (and letting other parts of his admin sabotage it), he would have been popular.
lol
that is a remarkable take
you think far too highly of the American public to think they have anything close to this sophisticated (or aware) of a view of antitrust!
Not really. The entire premise of the structure was that obviously AI would be immensely valuable and that they needed binding contract structures to prevent themselves from falling victim to the greed and ambition that would obviously consume those at the helm.
Unfortunately their contract structures weren't strong enough to protect from the combination of the "king of the cannibals" and completely absentee regulatory oversight.
The movement itself is consistently aligned with Tech Bros interests, the philosophical foundation is interesting, but the movement itself is quite problematic
Huh? Leverage to... coerce the company into serving all DoD usecases?
No it's not. They can invoke DPA.
The supply chain risk designation is not logically able to be used to coerce a company into integration. The whole premise is that its integration would be an unacceptable risk, therefore it must be banned from being integrated!
I think I'm saying it's leverage as punishment: "do what we want or this happens to you" combined with "we can un-do this pain, if you do what we want"
Oh yeah, I'm not doubting that's functionally what they're trying to achieve.
I'm saying 1) it's not the only tool they have (they have DPA), and 2) this use of the supply chain risk designation will likely get struck down in court (regardless of these interim rulings like TFA), and Anthropic knows it, so it's not even a great coercive instrument. But such is life under the rule of retards.
Couldn’t help but laugh at the irony here— you’re not wrong! The fact of the matter is that anthropic is an “unacceptable risk”… that the government had contracted with to use with classified milnet.
That contract was already signed and active, the government had already agreed to Anthropic’s terms, and contractors were already cleared to use Claude on the classified networks; only until anthropic started enforcing those pre-existing guardrail clauses (probably for good reason) did Hegseth get pissy.
Guess it should go without saying: if you cannot support clause A.) surveillance of Americans, and clause B.) AI assisted weapons systems, then you are a /supply chain risk/. Lord knows we don’t need heroes here.
But you know, if abiding those terms is a legitimate threat to your supply chain, then why would you agree to those stipulations to begin with ;)
Edit:
So to more respond to your point: big disagree, this can absolutely be used for compliance. The crucial thing you’re missing is that the government /threatened/ to designate them a risk in response to the CEO’s enforcement of the clause. The government gave them a -timeline- to desist and comply… which debases the claim that they are a supply chain risk. The judge is a moron.
The -only- legal argument for the designation is the ugliest one: the fact that Anthropic is willing to play dead canary. “You’re not a supply chain risk a priori, but you’re a supply chain risk for asserting this work violates 1 and 2”
By the way… the same two stipulating terms exist with OpenAI’s contract with them… nudge nudge wink wink
> By the way… the same two stipulating terms exist with OpenAI’s contract with them… nudge nudge wink wink
Actually if you read Sam's statements closely (which you must, because he's a snake), this is not necessarily true.
What he said is that they "are working towards adding" similar protections. He did not say they even proposed them to DoD, never mind that DoD agreed to them. So maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but I've never seen any public info that actually provides clear evidence of it. All the reporting comes back to Sam's rather nuanced statement.
Nobody knows what "the actual deal" is because we have pathological liars on both sides (well, especially pathological on one side, most just utilitarian on the other)
Iran's version of events includes the Iranian military controlling the Strait and incurring fees.
And yes the solution to things like organized crime is always just a continuous chipping away and adding friction where you can.
Not giving them massive amounts of cheap, high quality firearms seems like a meaningful goal.
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