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Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

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242 points LinuxBender | 3 comments | 18 Nov 24 00:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.609s | source
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plagiarist ◴[18 Nov 24 01:29 UTC] No.42168920[source]▶
It should really not be possible for a single anonymous phone call to dispatch a heavily armed response team to break down someone's door.

Aside from that, people who do so are despicable. 20 years is a light sentence. Taking money to put people in situations that could easily become deadly.

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rgmerk ◴[18 Nov 24 03:46 UTC] No.42169561[source]▶
To be ever so slightly sympathetic to American cops, unlike just about anywhere else in the developed world, it is plausible that the person behind the door is armed with anything up to an automatic rifle, and any random person they stop may be carrying a concealed firearm.

Given that, if I was busting down doors in the US, I’d want to be armed to the teeth, equipped with the best body armour money can buy, and wouldn’t waste a lot of time on niceties until I was sure that nobody was going to attempt to kill me.

Blame the Second Amendment as currently interpreted.

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1. Clubber ◴[18 Nov 24 16:01 UTC] No.42173644[source]▶
>Blame the Second Amendment as currently interpreted.

It's been largely interpreted this way throughout most of our history, until around the 1960s when civil rights activists started carrying them. All the modern gun regulation started then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

Of course 1934 gun control came about due to people like Al Capone and the like.

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2. larkost ◴[18 Nov 24 18:06 UTC] No.42175078[source]▶
No, you have history on its head. It was not seen as an absolute until the , and 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, then strengthened in 2010 in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Prior to that reasonable regulations were allowed (and what is reasonable was hotly debated) were permitted, so long as there were legitimate government interests.

The main point of the Second Amendment from the framers perspective was to prevent the need (or even the existence) of a standing army. Of course from a modern perspective this is near-ridiculous.

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3. Clubber ◴[18 Nov 24 18:09 UTC] No.42175109[source]▶
You could have fully automatic Thompson sub machine guns mailed to your house before 1934. You could have any other type of gun shipped to your house before 1968. All this is (relatively) recent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968