Gun Law Brain Teaser
Is a robot programmed to fire a semi-auto as fast as possible a machine gun?
14 Responses to “Gun Law Brain Teaser”
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
 |
|
Find Local
|
Categories
- ATF (769)
- Death Match (10)
- Eminent Domain (225)
- In the bag (9)
- Notes to Junior (546)
- Poker (74)
- Recipes (142)
- Shotgun Noob (11)
- The Airing of Grievances (19)
- uncategorized (47,725)
January 24th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Can you activate the robot with one stroke of the “ENTER” key?
January 24th, 2011 at 10:44 am
It is a machine gun.
January 24th, 2011 at 11:00 am
Now, if you give the robot AI, and it does the firing, who gets charged for having a un-reg machinegun?
What do you do with a robot felon?
January 24th, 2011 at 11:33 am
For the sake of argument, the robot responds only to verbal commands. There is no on switch, just hooking up the battery. Would hooking up the battery be the trigger?
January 24th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Whatever you do don’t ask Mythbusters…
January 24th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Only if the robot is planning on becoming self aware
January 24th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Havent you seen terminator? They all become self aware!
January 24th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
wizardpc, that’s an interesting legal decision. The weapon in question was modified to contain the electric motor that actuated a fishing real inside the trigger guard.
What if the firearm wasn’t modified at all? Even better, what if the thing holding it was a general purpose device, like a pair of robot arms with human-like articulation. These arms could repair an engine, fold clothes, make julienne fries, whatever. If those arms were commanded to hold a firearm (like an AR-15), and then commanded to actuate the protuberance that happens to be touching the trigger at 5 Hz for 6 seconds, then put the firearm down on the table… where’s the machine gun? Is the software a machine gun: just that copy, or all copies of that software, or just the configuration files, or any software or config file that can control and produce repetitive action? Is the AR-15 a machine gun because it had once been fired multiple times at the single command of a human, even though it is 100% identical to every other non-machine gun of its type or any other? Are the robot arms the machine gun, and by extension, all robot arms like them machine guns?
January 24th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
If you add an electric motor to a Gatling gun, you now have a minigun, which is an MG.
Replacing the electric motor with a robot makes no difference. If you can issue one firing command, and have more than one round shoot out of the weapon, it’s an MG.
January 24th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
@Sebastian:
In that case, the “trigger” would be the verbal command. The court case I linked makes it clear that the “trigger” (for purposes of declaring something a machine gun) is “whatever you do to make the gun go bang” not “the physical lever on the firing mechanism normally referred to as the ‘trigger'”
January 24th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
This is like the accountant joke:
Q: How much is two plus two?
A: How much do you want it to be?
If some overreaching antigun politician, bureaucrat, or judge wants this to be a machine gun it will be — regardless of the law.
January 24th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
@Kristopher: That’s the point: WHAT is the MG? If I take four everyday objects, one of which is a firearm, and I can arrange them (without modifying any of them) in such a what that with one single action, more than one bullet comes out, then dis-arrange them into a pile of unmodified part, what part is the MG?
The firearm is not the MG: it is exactly the same as every other firearm of its type, and cannot by itself fire more than one shot.
The three or more other objects, are they the MG? The clamps or vises surely aren’t. A drill surely isn’t. A dowel inserted into the bit slightly off-center surely isn’t. The power strip that the drill is plugged into surely isn’t an MG, neither is the table all this stuff was clamped to.
Yes, all put together, it’s an MG, but remember what kind of trouble we can get into with the ATF: once they’re determined that you can make an MG with a certain combination of stuff, then by having the stuff you are have a MG, even if you’ve never put them together or fire a shot. Is everyone that owns a firearm, a couple vises, clamps, a drill, a stick and a power strip in illegal possession of a MG? Say you did put it together once, fired two shots with one action, then took it all apart and sold the stuff (less the firearm) in a yard sale. Does everyone that bought your stuff have a MG component because that specific thing once was an MG?
That’s why the hypothetical example of the robot arms is important. Those arms could do anything a human could do. They could notionally be as common as microwave ovens. Does everyone that owns a set of general purpose robo-arms and a firearm constructively possess a machine gun?
Let’s take it further: suppose you had the robo-arms, and told/programmed the robot to shoot any squirrels in your back acreage, then took a nap. Suppose the robot arms fires twice in a two hour period. You told it to do something once, it fire twice: it’s a machine gun.
Let’s go even further: one of those robot arms is a prosthetic arm on a war veteran. They’re working on neural connections for powered prosthetics now. Suppose this gun owner noticed (with some preparatory neural commands, or minimal manual programming) that with a single thought, he can cause the trigger finger to twitch 10 times per second. Is his arm a machine gun? Is anyone with that prosthetic arm and a firearm in constructive possession of a machine gun?
January 25th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Tirno: The ATF has administratively ruled that having an object that can convert a firearm into an MG is the same as constructing one.
And yea, they abuse the snot out of it. But they have been backed up by the courts when they were right about it, and not just making shit up.
You can bet that if someone calls the cops about full-auto fire from your back forty, and you own an M1 Carbine and a shoelace with knots in it in certain positions, that they will prosecute you.
January 25th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
As for the war veteran … they will examine the arm for the programing in question, bet on it.