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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.

(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.