The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
On the government-mandated incineration of private property
Posts
fwiw, if it's not clear, burning a suspect building is part of standard procedure for disposing of a relatively small but unknown amount of explosives hidden in the building
There are limits dude. Cops have to risk their lives on a regular basis, but that doesn't mean they have to risk them more then necessary. Trying to remove dangerous explosives from a residential neighborhood by picking up the potential volatile explosives and driving it away in a van is stupid any way you look at it. Its up there with demanding cops should shoot armed assailants in the leg to "disable them".
As for due process, cops can strip search you and search the glove box of your car if they have probable cause that they will find something illegal. They can detonate your stockpile of explosives if they think it poses a immediate threat to the public safety. They can do so the moment they feel they can detonate safely. Which could take a a week if planing is involved.
All the talk about this guys rights makes me wonder if people forget that he stockpiled explosives in the middle of crowded residential neighborhood. Risking his neighbors lives and forcing them to spend a week evacuated from their homes. If they had taken the long court route, the neighbors would have had to stay evacuated for the duration of a long court process. What about their right?
My bet of the reason his house is gone?
"What instructions did you follow in making your black powder? How much is there, where is it stored?"
"Oh, I don't know. A couple of recipes I found online. One didn't work so well, too much zip for pistols. I got that in a coffee can somewhere. I think there's another few pounds in the kitchen, or maybe the bathroom? Although that might not have been a black powder recipe... I don't really keep track, just seal em up nice and tight and put them out of the way for my next projects. I figure I've got maybe 8 pounds in there? Though it might be 20 if I didn't throw out that bad batch from last christmas. It stank something awful!"
There is a pretty huge difference between not letting cops strip search everyone and asking them to walk into a house filled with an unknown amount of explosives and start poking around.
My memory is a little fuzzy because that was 20+ years ago, but, I think black/gun powder is a big component of it. Potassium chlorate might have been his answer to the delay charge that deploys the chutes on model rockets. Not sure if that's right/wrong.
Shotgun shells are almost the right size for making rockets too, so it's not out of the question. What else is he making, bombs out of gunpowder? The fuck? Talk about pointless for anything but blowing up dirt or your own hand.
@diplominator
He got the materials to make it in his house there safely. That does not mean his home made blasting caps were safe.
Look, there's a reason why you'll find a good number of trained and licensed pyrotechnicians in model rocketry; this stuff is dangerous, you need to be licensed to have certain amounts, and you need to know how to make this without blowing off your hand.
In fact, a quick glance at the California laws tells me that you have to be licensed to build, test, store, or operate untested and uncertified rocket motors.
Also important to note is that East and his lawyer were not fighting the decision to burn it. They said it seemed extreme but understandable under the circumstances.
This is not just a bunch of cops who decided to torch it without checking the housr or talking to the owner. They spent a week checking the house, and talked to the owner.
-He's being charged with a misdemeanor as part of a plea deal where he told them exactly what was in the house. If it sounds like he's getting off light, he also lost a hand and was blinded in one eye.
-Part of the discrepancy between the lawyer's description and the sheriff's is that apparently the lawyer wasn't counting the HMDT because he was pretty sure he didn't make it right. I guessing that didn't reassure anyone much.
-According to the bomb techs, HMDT doesn't have any model rocket applications.
-Evidently he was working on a mercury fulminate blasting cap when it went off and that's what caused all this ruckus.
Were model rocket parts or equipment at least found at East's house?
In this case though, I'd really like to see the guy tell a jury about all the improvised explosives he kept haphazardly in his house in the middle of a drought stricken forest and then hold out his hand and wait for them to put a check in it.
It seems weird to me that the city/state would even bother to pay out for damage to his property since he was acting in such a negligent fashion. If they do have to pay him, I hope they get to subtract out all the costs incurred as a result of the demolition.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I like how the fact that there was an accident in the house that didn't result in the house exploding is evidence that there's a public health hazard.
This whole scenario seems to be based on a slippery slope ("he had some quantity of explosives, therefore he might have had even more explosives!"), an argument from ignorance ("who knows how much explosive material he had hidden?"), and willful blindness ("the police decided that the house was a public health hazard, and we all know that police never inaccurately judge something to be more dangerous than it actually is").
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I hope the government doesn't discover that I have 90 pounds of explosive material in my garage.
or that I have explosive material pumped into my house through a dedicated pipeline
or that I cook with explosive material on a regular basis
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Houses tend to collapse when they burn down.
Trusses falling all over the place and such!
They're not nukes.
Explosive goes off while you're carrying it out of the house: Maiming and/or death.
Explosive goes off inside a burning house while everyone stands well back: House is destroyed slightly faster.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
A crazy old fuck was playing with explosives and made some that were illegal and dangerous. He maimed himself doing so and authorities realized shit was going down. Rather than risk officers searching a mobile home full of unstable improvised explosives they burned it down.
They could have charged him with felonies. They took pity on an elderly guy who had just blown off his hand, arm and broke his other arm and plea bargained him down as long as he helped them deal with the issue. I doubt they figured all the extra work of burning a trailer down and evacuating/monitoring the area for like 2 weeks was just for shits and giggles if they also were facing a potential lawsuit.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Take a step back. You're really comparing mercury fulminate, HMDT and black powder to flour?
Gasoline, Natural Gas and flour are not classified as explosive materials unless there's evidence of you making explosives with them. If we classified every explosive hazard as "explosive materials" then oxygen would qualify.
If I called it "amlyose-potassium bromide mixture in powered form," would that be sufficiently frightening?
Yet you know what all of the above substances have in common?
It's not illegal to own them.
If private unlicensed ownership of any quantity of the substances you list is a public health hazard, then they should be illegal.
If private unlicensed ownership is not a public health hazard, then there was no need to burn this guy's house down.
If it is a public health hazard above a certain quantity, but not below, then perhaps we should discuss what quantities should be legal, and whether the quantities in the house in question were above or below that threshold.
But I don't see a whole lot of that discussion, except from tinwhiskers and a couple of other folks. Instead, I see a lot of (paraphrased) "but HMDT is scaaaaaaaary!"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
He's an unlicensed amateur who was making explosives in his trailer, what about that isn't a hazard to anyone in proximity to his trailer?
The only use he could have for HMDT is to start explosions or rockets. It's not a matter of which is scariest. HMDT is grosely more dangerous to the public than gasoline because it has a singular intent.
well considering that they burned it down and nothing happened to any other trailers (at least as far as I've read), I'd say it wasn't hazardous to anything but the guys hand and eyeball.
I expect to see you tailing the bomb squad and running in to grab the bomb and carry it to the cops because it'd be a shame to lose a building, but people we can replace.
I agree that there are no legitimate civilian uses for HMDT, and unless somebody has a good argument otherwise, it should be illegal.
But without knowing how much HMDT he had, even in a general ballpark range, there's no way to know whether this posed a legitimate public health hazard.
"HMDT is scaaaaary."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
pleasepaypreacher.net
actually, feral is arguing that they should be illegal.
But also that they aren't illegal, and this is important until they are illegal.
In this particular case?
Since the 'bomb' was only enough to mess up his hand, I'd say that maybe a bomb squad suit and a long handled carrying device would have worked.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It was hazardous because it was contained unstable explosives likely to go off accidentally, injuring and killing those inside, and then starting an accelerated fire, endangering the nearby homes.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
It's a chemical. It has no intent. Your ascribing intent to an inanimate object and using that as a reason to feel emotional about it.
As Feral mentioned, you might as well ascribe the same fear to flour as grain elevator explosions are a very real danger.
Exactly.
I also recognize that law enforcement may occasionally need to intervene in situations where there is an imminent threat to public safety even when no laws have been explicitly broken.
I just don't take it on face value that there was an imminent threat to public safety here just because he had some unknown quantity of a substance that is sometimes used by nasty people. Nor do I have faith in police officers who only describe a quantity of a substance as "significant," given how loosely that term is used in drug cases.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://m.redding.com/news/2014/feb/17/power-restored-but-no-change-in-evacuation/
Seriously, it's in the OP. The guy admitted to having a fairly large amount of explosive material. He's not even supposed to be making rockets eninges without proper licensing. So it is illegal for him to be making it and be storing materials to make it.
(See:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CC4QFjAE&url=http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/strucfireengineer/pdf/fireworks/FireworksHandbook2011.pdf&ei=eR0FU82CIeSTyQHvrYDwBg&usg=AFQjCNGARmakjzGvPyW9wcA0wA3Q4NSTwA)(PDF)
So the relative equivalent of 14 ounces of black powder?
Sounds like it should have been a non-factor compared to the other, less scary, stuff he had.
I missed where this was. I believe you, but I'm just curious where I missed it. Which link was it in?
Edit: I see now.
I'm with DA on this one.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
So because a controlled incineration / destruction of the explosive materials proved safe, this means that they weren't really dangerous, and that the materials should have been left with the amateur who already wounded himself trying to handle them?
Or are you saying that someone else should risk their life/limb to remove explosive materials from this house, when the materials did not appear to be properly secured/stored or labeled?
MWO: Adamski
Because that's the only substance listed without legitimate civilian applications.
Which isn't that much?
As I alluded to above, a 15-gallon automobile gas tank contains 90 pounds of gasoline. A single acre of farmland requires about 40 pounds of fertilizer.
Any of these things detonated in a crowded area could maim or kill people, but there's no evidence that he had malicious intent.
60 pounds of HMTD would be quite frightening, but he didn't have 60 pounds of HMTD.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
There was a large amount of it which was improperly labeled/stored as well as several blasting caps he said the cops didn't find (bomb techs found one of five).
That is why it was a danger to the people removing the paraphernalia and to nearby residents.