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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   28524 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Ok so... i'm often seriously confused about what safety people actually care about.

I understand fear of handguns a handgun is an easy to procure object in a hurry that allows someone to commit a crime suddenly and violently.

But it seems any type of premediatated or planned operation is just super legal and easy to get? (except of course using it to commit a crime is obviously very illegal)

Nitromethane is freely available for purchase, which can be easily made into very dangerous chemicals using stuff you can buy in the hardware store. From there we have other things, while you have to either break the law or DIY it for a lot of parts you can make your own drone (or just use a kids RC helicopter toy, seriously it may not work for heavy payloads but you'd be shocked at how far you can go with mediocre toys these days.) and drop an explosive on anyone. You can also make actual war crimes in your basement by mixing iron powder, and sulfur then heating it, sealing it in a glass bottle with water as it builds up H2S. Alternatively if you want to make cyanide gas, buying sodium cyanide (i'd be willing to post links but I don't want this forum to actually get in trouble with the FBI, I already got searched once) and mixing it with sulfiric acid is doable (and ok like hyper dangerous beyond belief and you would have to basically get rid of it the moment you make it but....)

Again the delivery mechanisms for this stuff isn't complicated and the main limiting factor of these does not appear to be that obtaining the means of violence is hard it's that anyone smart enough to do this is also smart enough to realize that violence is a bad idea.

A handgun is a very convenient tool for the casual homicide. You don't have to be smart to use it, and it is a minimal inconvenience to carry it around while you go about your daily business until one day, you decide that someone needs to die (or be stopped from whatever he is doing) and can enact your decision within a few seconds.

There are plenty of other tools which can be used for murder in a pinch, you can use screwdrivers to stab someone, or hit them with a blunt object, or run them over with your car, or pierce them with sharpened Hufflepuff students' bones.

If a reasonably smart person wants to off her neighbor and does not care about the consequences to herself, she will probably find a way to do so. Most likely, it will not involve any flashy homebrewed chemicals. (H2S is a terrible choice in particular because humans can detect it in trace amounts and find it deeply unpleasant, and having your victim inhale HCN is difficult unless you have trapped them in a gas chamber.)

Of course, if she cares about not getting caught, she will most likely use a method which is already common (such as handguns), because anything clever and original will exclude 95% of the suspects immediately.

I think most of people who are afraid of handguns (I don’t mean people who just support gun control, I mean the ones who are genuinely scared of guns), haven’t been around much violence in general, so they don’t realize how easy it is to hurt someone with your bare hands or literally any object (just ask a prison guard). So to these people a gun is kind of like a magic totem of death.

Well, a gun could be described as a magic wand which any Muggle can use to cast a single spell, Avada Kedavra.

Sure, people kill each other with bare hands, but this requires either very bad luck or substantial intent on the killers part.

Suppose you see a road rage incident, with two agitated drivers exiting their vehicle and confronting each other. If both are unarmed, death is a possibility, but unlikely. If both are holding guns, that changes the dynamics entirely, now death is an outcome on the mind of any observer.

Prison guards need to worry about psychopaths, but in normal life they are actually quite rare.

Most people, including most criminals, have some built-in barriers.

  • Choking someone to death while they are struggling is hard.

  • Getting within stab range and stabbing someone is easier, but still not trivial. For one thing, you need to get into their range first.

  • Pointing a firearm at someone and pulling the trigger is comparatively easy.

  • Pressing a button on a joystick to have a drone fire a missile on a target you see on a computer screen is easier still.

  • Donating to an organization which kills kids is really easy.

The anti-gun people expect that a youth might start a fight with another one, but reasonably do not expect that once his opponent is down, the he will proceed to will crush their windpipe. This is not always true, of course, but it is true often enough to matter.

A handgun is a very convenient tool for the casual homicide. You don't have to be smart to use it, and it is a minimal inconvenience to carry it around while you go about your daily business until one day, you decide that someone needs to die (or be stopped from whatever he is doing) and can enact your decision within a few seconds.

Very true. When you work in the criminal justice system you will often have a sort of yo-yo on your positions on gun control as you see more and more gun crime. Initially you will see something like an armed robbery gone wrong and think gun control sounds pretty good. The fact is that most criminals do not have grand criminal plans, everything is basically a crime of opportunity, and disarming people in those situations would be a social good.

But then you realize those people just get guns anyways. Even after they are convicted felons. And you realize the only people who ever actually face consequences for violating gun laws are 45 year old tow truck drivers who use a revolver to stop a 20 year old punk from attacking him because he's towing the car the punk parked in a tow zone.

But then you realize those people just get guns anyways.

I would argue that it is somewhat harder in Germany to buy an illegal handgun than in the US, not that I have tried either, personally.

A lot of legal guns being in circulation makes it easy to steal them. I expect you need to break perhaps into 10 cars and search the glove compartments until you find a gun in the US. In Germany, you might have to break into 1000 cars instead because not only is gun ownership rare, legal owners are also required to keep their guns locked up. Not that this helps too much, you can probably still source illegal weapons from Eastern Europe. (I would expect most smugglers not to deal in illegal guns, because the risk-to-profit ratio is much worse than for drugs. If you sell 10k$ worth of cocaine, you can reasonably expect that the authorities will never find out, and if they do, they might have resigned to the fact that there will always be someone selling cocaine. If you sell 10k$ worth of handguns, your average customer will be someone who just likes to own a gun to feel manly or a drug dealer who wants a backup plan (but has no plans to shoot anyone), but chances are much higher that someone will use them in some flashy crime, and the eye of Sauron will fall on you.)

If you're interested, there's plenty of actual research on the supply chains for criminals to get their guns. The US could choose to crack down on these supply chains, and gun rights groups often support doing this, without affecting normie joe sixpack gun owner very much(the growth in concealed carry has drastically reduced the number of handguns left in cars; most guns used in crime are currently straw purchased, just like how teenagers get alcohol). This is never a popular proposition, because no one involved in the gun control debate in the US really cares about crime.

I expect you need to break into perhaps 10 cars and search the glove compartments until you find a gun in the US.

One in three USAian adults owns a gun. (Naturally, this proportion varies wildly between states, and probably between areas within states.) Therefore, your estimate that one in ten USAian cars contains a gun implies that one in three USAian gun owners leaves a gun in his car (rather than in his domicile or on his person) all the time. IMO, that's rather high. Why would a person buy an entire extra gun just to leave it in his car?

Some people have long guns in their car almost all the time. But they dont have much interaction with the criminal elements we are currently discussing. And you sure as hell don't want to be caught by one of them breaking into said truck.

(H2S is a terrible choice in particular because humans can detect it in trace amounts and find it deeply unpleasant, and having your victim inhale HCN is difficult unless you have trapped them in a gas chamber.)

This is why you homebrew phosgene or sarin. Although I think that explosives are better if you want to terminate someone with extreme prejudice.

Phosgene works best if your victim is hiding in a trench, which went out of style 100 years ago. And the synthesis of organophosphates is so impractical for murder and terror that only one group of crazies have done so. Homebrewed explosives are not that common either but definitely more practical than chemical weapons.

Sarin is quite easy to make from what I remember from high school. The hard part was surviving to deploy it.

Homebrewed explosives are not that common either but definitely more practical than chemical weapons.

If this is not a proof that department of education should be disbanded, I don't know what else could be. Organic chemistry is what - 8th grade?

Poisons are tricky, ask the Australian lady.

Low impulse control, high violence, tendency to react disproportionately, and a handgun - blast away first, ask questions never.

Succinylcholine is the plot of a Tom Clancy novel.

Somewhat (in)famously just recently in Utah they found guilty a woman who tried the fentanyl thing exactly. And failed. Partially because the husband literally suspected her of poisoning him and told others as much, partially because obtaining the fentanyl when you don't previously have a drug network is nontrivial (the housekeeper who the lady knew to have had a prior drug conviction was hit up for some), and partially because more broadly speaking even smart people (idk if Kouri was though) don't kill people without a motive and motives are pretty legible. That's kind of a big one.

Regardless of the chemistry involved, I don't think there's much chance of getting away with this kind of murder. The authorities have access to other types of records -- surveillance footage; cell phone records; purchase records at stores; internet search histories; etc. If you have a motive to kill the person, e.g. you and your neighbor were having some kind of dispute, they are going to look at all this stuff carefully. And if it seems like you are probably the culprit, they are skilled at putting a case together, even if it entails doing ethically questionable things.

I agree, people who are not career criminals are literally trying to get away with murder for the first time in their lives. The detective on the case is literally looking at his hundredth stiff.

There's always a chance that the death is overlooked as a natural one, but if someone dies and the coroner finds the circumstances suspicious, the cops open their "solving poisonings" handbook on page 2 and go from there. "Who had access to the things that could've contained the poison?" is usually a good first question.

but if someone dies and the coroner finds the circumstances suspicious, the cops open their "solving poisonings" handbook on page 2 and go from there. "Who had access to the things that could've contained the poison?" is usually a good first question.

Yes, and of course "who had a motive to kill this person?" If one person satisfies both those criteria, they will almost certainly be called in for questioning. It's really hard to present a false story which is consistent and clear in the face of hours of interrogation by a practiced detective. The best choice is probably to assert your 5th amendment rights but if you do that, the police will likely see it as an admission of guilt. Maybe they can't use it against you in court, but they will very likely use it in deciding how to allocate investigative resources. And whether or not to (ethically or unethically) build a case against you.

Approximately half of all murders each year in the US end up going unsolved.

There are active hoods in the United States of America that have murder rates higher than the we had at the height of the war in Iraq.

What percentage of the unsolved murders are gang-bangers in the ghetto, getting away with it in large part because the authorities don't really care all that much? I don't know the stats, but I bet it's a pretty high percentage.

Here's what I said in my post:

Regardless of the chemistry involved, I don't think there's much chance of getting away with this kind of murder.

Do I need to spell out what I meant by "this kind of murder"?

True, but you can’t effectively convict someone on circumstantial evidence alone

So that I understand what you are talking about, would you agree that Bryan Kohberger was convicted (or would have been convicted) on circumstantial evidence alone?

But I can put it to you this way; the people in our hood growing up who were known to have been shooters or involved in them are either still free to this day or are doing time for non-homicide related offenses.

And is that mainly because these people were master criminals who carefully planned the perfect crime and succeeded in their plans? Or is it because when one gang-banger shoots and kills another in the 'hood, the authorities don't put a lot of priority on solving the crime and in any event there is a culture against cooperating with the authorities?

You quoted someone else in your reply to me here, but I’ll go ahead and respond anyway.

I quoted myself. The point is that when I was referring to "this kind of murder," I was referring to a specific kind of murder; the kind that attracts intense scrutiny from the authorities.

How many murders do you think are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence?

On an absolute basis? I have no idea.

On a percentage basis as to the kind of murders I am talking about? I would guess that a large percentage of the kind of murders I am talking about are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence. I think it depends on whether or not the killer hires a hitman to do it. When the killer hires a hitman, the authorities use circumstantial evidence to nail the hitman, then, if they can, they get the hitman to testify, e.g. the case against Charlie Adelson. If there's no hitman, then the authorities go by circumstantial evidence.

On a percentage basis as to murders in general? I would guess it's relatively low. A very large percentage of murders are just gang-bangers killing eachother in the 'hood. In those cases, the big question is whether witnesses will testify.

More comments

There was that lady in Australia that poisoned like five dinner guests and got away with it by claiming ignorance and that was an accident, despite her food being safe to consume.

There was that lady in Australia that poisoned like five dinner guests and got away with it by claiming ignorance and that was an accident, despite her food being safe to consume.

It looks to me like she was convicted. Maybe you were thinking of someone else?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdezzxnn7kjo

Edit:

If this is the person you are talking about, it seems like a good illustration of my point. There was some kind of family dispute which gave the woman a motive; apparently surveillance video showed her disposing of a food dehydrator which she later denied having; there was evidence that she had traveled to an area where poison mushrooms are available; etc.

It's just really hard to put together this kind of murder without leaving forensic evidence of guilt. The police are going to question you for hours and it's really hard to present a straight, consistent story. etc. etc.

Ah I was thinking of her, but misremembered the outcome.

She also turned out to be a multiple-time poisoner who hadn't been imprisoned previously for prior attempts which kinda swings the needle back to 'you will get caught if you go over the top but also people will kinda shrug a lot of stuff off'

She also turned out to be a multiple-time poisoner who hadn't been imprisoned previously for prior attempts which kinda swings the needle back to 'you will get caught if you go over the top but also people will kinda shrug a lot of stuff off'

If by "kinda shrug a lot of stuff off," you mean stuff that falls outside of what I refer to as "this kind of murder," I would agree. The authorities still have limited resources and they can't investigate everything with the kind of intensity used in situations like those of Charlie Adelson, Bryan Kohberger, etc. But if they do decide to go for a full court press, it's just really hard to get away with murder.

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