New Zealand man building cruise missile in garage, posting details on Net

AFP ^ | Tue, Jun 03, 2003

[spectr17]

Igor, you did load lat and long coordinates and not UTM right?

[GovernmentShrinker]

Call me a nutcase, but as I read the 2nd Amendment, our right to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed". Background reading proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the purpose of this is so that the people will be able to successfully defeat a tyrannical government with force. How is the freedom to own a cruise missile inconsistent with this? Yes it COULD be used to inflict great harm on innocent people. Shall we also prohibit farmers from keeping significant quantities of ammonium nitrate, which can be mixed with the tank of heating oil at their home to create a powerful bomb?

[presidio9]

That's not my point. Surface to air missles are a weapon of mass destruction. My point is that the framers of the Constitution had no conception of airliners flying around with hundreds of people in them.

[presidio9]

White knuckled reliance on the Constitution is not the solution to all our problems. 225 years ago the founders had no concept of jet airliners packed with people or smart weapons that could be used against them. Or that there would be people who would want to use those weapons. If you are so far gone in your Second Amendment obsession that you can't understand this logic (or if your natural response is "why don't we outlaw boxcutter???") I really don't feel like wasting my time explaining it to you. It is simple common sense, and it can only rarely be hammered into the fanatics.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

Surface to air missles are a weapon of mass destruction.

No they're not. they're weapons of airplane destruction. Not even the UN thinks of Stingers as "weapons of mass destruction".

It's amazing how a term can be abused and misused by the general population once it escapes into public use. There are three recognized types of WMD's...nuclear, including both explosives and radiological weapons, biological (germs warfare), and chemical (poison gases and such).

Napalm is not considered a WMD, even though it was used to kill hundreds of thousands of people in WWII.

Stingers? A flying firecracker, nothing more.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

Let's just say that Stingers are available as box cutters. How many airliners would we lose every day?

Not many, and not every day. The raghead terrorists from Afghanland already have stingers, and not once has one been used to attack a commercial passenger flight.

But people own radios, and one was used to camoflage a bomb on PanAm Flight 103.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

White knuckled reliance on the Constitution is not the solution to all our problems.

Yellow bellied and pinko deviation from the Constitution is the cause of almost all of our problems today.

225 years ago the founders had no concept of jet airliners packed with people or smart weapons that could be used against them. Or that there would be people who would want to use those weapons.

Oh, really? They may not have imagined airplanes, but they certainly knew about people willing to commit mass murder for political purposes. Certainly the Founding Fathers were quite familiar with The Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Yet no move was made to outlaw gunpowder. Quite the opposite, since a right to keep and bear arms automatically confers on the people the right to own powder for those weapons.

[presidio9]

Um, professor, gunpoweder has other uses than WMD. Surface to air missles have only one conceivable use for a civilian.

And the understanding of this fact is neither communist nor cowardly.

[IvanT]

Eeeeek! What if he fires it at Malaysia??!!

[presidio9]

Name me one other thing a civilian would use a stinger missle for, other than to shoot down an airliner.

oh, please say "alien attack," please say "alien attack," please say "alien attack"...

[DugwayDuke]

Manportable air defense missiles have been used to attack commericial aircraft. Remember the incident in Africa involving an Israeli aircraft?

Whether terrorists have a few stingers is not the issue. (You can make a credible argument that the stingers given to the Afghani resistance in the 80s are not very useful due to their shelf life) The issue is what would happen if the terrorists could get stingers as easily as they could get box cutters.

The answer to my question (how many airliners would we lose every day) is pretty simple. The first day we would lose a lot, the second day, and each day there after we wouldn't lose a single one. None would be flying. And, none would fly until the terrorists were disarmed.

[dark_lord]

It doesn't really matter that the only purpose for a stinger is to shoot down aircraft. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is two-fold. It ensures that the militia (organized and unorganized) of the United States is able to:

(1) back up the regular military for defense of the US, and
(2) be able to overthrow a tyrannical government that no longer supports the will of the people via the Constitution.

The 2nd amendment was not put into the Constitution just so that people had the right to carry handguns to protect themselves from muggers. That is a right that is protected by the 2nd amendment, but that is not why the 2nd amendment was put into the Constitution. It was primarily put in so that the people could ensure that their govenment was their government and that that government governed according to the Constitution.

And, therefore, a stinger should be covered. A prior Supreme Court decision has been interpreted to mean that the 2nd amendment declares that any member of the militia should be permitted any weapon "in current use" by the US military that can be used by a single person. Whether the Constitution should be amended to more clearly deal with this issue is an entirely different question.

[presidio9]

Neither one of these arguments holds much weight, and we've heard them all before. You need a rifle, even an automatic rifle to ensure that your government can't tyranize you? Fine. After that it gets stupid. There are plenty of nuclear weapons that can be used by a single individual. Learn where the line is appropriately draw, and we will welcome you back to the world of the sane.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

The answer to my question (how many airliners would we lose every day) is pretty simple. The first day we would lose a lot, the second day, and each day there after we wouldn't lose a single one. None would be flying. And, none would fly until the terrorists were disarmed.

Really? Do you know that each and every year approximately 40,000 people are killed on the highways and streets of America, and many more wounded, and no one is seriously discussing putting the car in the garage and keeping it there?

[Ten Megaton Solution]

Um, professor, gunpoweder has other uses than WMD. Surface to air missles have only one conceivable use for a civilian.

Ummm....let's see. Replace the explosive warhead with a barometer and investigate the turbulent wake of a 747....install a camera for those hard to get special effects shots for the amateur video contest you just entered...use it as a first stage for your amateur infrared astromony project...and those fancy mock airshows celebrating John McCain's invitation to the Hanoi Hilton.

You shouldn't limit your imagination, sir. There's clearly plenty of novel uses for civillian Stingers.

[joesnuffy]

My mother made me a queer
but I sold it on ebay and bought
some magic beans

[dark_lord]

You are really missing the point of the argument. I am not arguing about whether or not people "need" stinger missiles, or whether it is "sane" that they have them, or anything like that at all. I am merely pointing out that a strict interpretation of the 2nd amendment, along with the few SCOTUS positions regarding it, would permit it. Get the difference? I think you seem to be arguing from a position of what "should" be, what is "rational", etc. That is a different argument.

[DugwayDuke]

Using your logic, we would have kept our airliners flying after 9-11.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

We have. Last time I checked, ....(looking out window)...yes, there's an airplane up there right now. Doesn't look like air travel was stopped.

You're not thinking that the little pause we had during the initial panic meant anything, did it? No, that was not much different than the cops checking the inebriation levels of the victims of an accident before letting them resume their drive home.

[DugwayDuke]

And, you don't think there would be panic if terrorists shot down a few airliners? You have advocated widespread availability of short range air defense systems. Just how would you protect the airliners from these systems? How would you respond to maybe five or ten 747s being blown from the skies?