Apparently someone at CNN Money heard of a company selling surplus flamethrowers for $1600 bucks, and laid an egg when they found out that they are totally unregulated. It seems even more silly to ban flamethrowers as it does firearms. A super soaker would not be the world’s safest flamethrower, but if you were hell bent on harming people it would do in a pinch. It won’t set you back $1600 dollars either. I believe it is Joe Huffman who often argues that anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted with matches and gasoline either. It would seem there are plenty of people who agree! But probably not in a way that promotes freedom.
CNN Wets Themselves Over Legal Flamethrowers
“it does use a Terra Torch, which behaves like one. However, it’s fueled by a tank mounted in a truck, which isn’t portable.”
Something mounted on a truck is NOT portable. The stupidity of that statement is astounding.
Not man-portable, which is pretty important in context.
I’ll give them a pass on that one.
All through High School, I would write “Legalize Flame Throwers” or “Flame Throwers Should Be Legalized” on chalk boards and whiteboards everywhere I went. Since I participated in Debate, that meant I was putting this in all sorts of diverse places!
My “campaign” lost a lot of its umph when I learned that (1) flame throwers were, for the most part, legal, and (2) they never really were illegal. :-)
The funny thing is, anti-gun types like to say “Nukes and artillery are illegal, which means we should be able to ban BB guns and squirt guns too!” but if you think about it, even if all the Big Stuff were legal, no one would do anything with it, because it’s so darn expensive! How hard would it be to figure out who used that cannon to rob a bank, after all, if there’s only five people in the town who could afford that cannon? (And if you have the money to purchase this stuff, there’s probably not much than any government can do to keep it out of your hands…)
Unless, of course, you’re Iran, but then, there’s not much you could do to keep someone from getting this stuff, if they have the money to build it secretly from scratch, anyway…(particularly if you have an ally like, well, the United States Presidency…)
Sadly logic isn’t relevant to the motives propelling the anti-gun witch hunters.
nukes and artillery aren’t illegal. They’re classified as destructive devices and are perfectly legal with the appropriate NFA paperwork and taxes. If you look around there are tanks and artillery with functional weapons that are available for purchase and transfer. The problem with possession of nukes is just the fact that the cost is astronomical, really beyond even the richest of the rich….
They are classified as destructive devices, but they are regulated through the Atomic Energy Acts. Nuclear weapons technology is classified as “born secret,” meaning if you developed one, you wouldn’t keep it. You’d be in deep doo doo. The government regulates fissile materials pretty closely too. So they really aren’t legal to own, because they aren’t really regulated by the Gun Control Act or National Firearms Act. There’s a whole other body of law that handles nuclear weapons.
You’re right. I totally didn’t think about the AEAs. Even still, even if those didn’t exist, the facilities required to produce both Plutonium and U-235 are so astronomically expensive nobody could afford them and that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Other components like Beryllium reflectors are just has hard and expensive to come by as well…
I like reminding people that artillery isn’t illegal per se; muzzle-loading cannon with non-explosive shells are no more regulated than a musket.
Which is to say “be 18 and not a felon” in any free and some non-free states.
Someone slip them a note that “weapons of mass destruction” can be bought on the internet. All you need is a bottle of Chlorine gas.
Anyone with $50 can build their own flame thrower from parts bought at the local Home Depot.
If only they could figure out how to make the flamethrower using 3D printing, the anti crowd would starts having seizures.
When I was a kid I was messing with an old pump-up garden sprayer, using it with the spray tip removed to spray a stream of water (much better than a super-soaker). An older cousin who was watching me told me that if I filled it with gasoline, I’d have something very much like the flamethrower he had used on Iwo Jima. He told me how it should work, then told me if he heard of me doing it, he’d thump my head. But sixty years later I still remember the concepts.
I believe the Throwflame X15 flamethrowers are not military surplus flame weapons.
Are those the things that came out a few months ago? I seem to remember a kickstarter, or something like that.
The XM42 was the most recent. It’s more of a “Ripley” type.
The super soaker flame thrower has been done plenty…just check YouTube. Here’s a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCCKyZOsNH0
And it’s totally unregulated!
Great, now we are going to have some nut job use an improvised flame thrower when on a future massacre spree.
Think of the constant headlines for this horror which the media will actually fuel and bring to fruition from the irresponsible reporting they have done in the past and glorifying the guilty.
Just look at the cover of Rolling Stone (POS magazine) with one of the Boston Bombers to see that they are complicit.
Of course, fertilizer and fuel oil, gasoline, cars, chemicals, and knives have all been used for mass killings so you have to work to make yourself stand out. So, even if all firearms were “disappeared” tomorrow we would still have issues.