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Texas is suing Roblox, alleging the company misled parents about safety, ignored online-protection laws, and allowed an environment where predators could target children. Texas AG Ken Paxton said the online game platform is "putting pixel pedophiles and profits over the safety of Texas children," alleging that it is "flagrantly ignoring state and federal online safety laws while deceiving parents about the dangers of its platform." The Verge reports: The lawsuit’s examples focus on instances of children who have been abused by predators they met via Roblox, and the activities of groups like 764 which have used online platforms to identify and blackmail victims into sexually explicit acts or self harm. According to the suit, Roblox’s parental controls push only began after a number of lawsuits, and a report released last fall by the short seller Hindenburg that said its "in-game research revealed an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech." Eric Porterfield, Senior Director of Policy Communications at Roblox, said in a statement: "We are disappointed that, rather than working collaboratively with Roblox on this industry-wide challenge and seeking real solutions, the AG has chosen to file a lawsuit based on misrepresentations and sensationalized claims." He added, "We have introduced over 145 safety measures on the platform this year alone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Roblox, accusing it of ignoring state and federal safety laws. In his announcement on X, Paxton said the children have been “repeatedly exposed to sexually explicit content, exploitation and grooming” on the online game platform, because it chose to prioritize “pixel pedophiles and corporate profit” over the safety of children. “Thank you,” Schlep posted in the comments of his announcement. Schlep was a popular Roblox user who was known for staging sting operations à la To Catch a Predator on the platform, which had led to multiple arrests. He was controversially banned from Roblox in August, because he violated the company’s new rule that prohibits “vigilante behavior.”

“We share Attorney General Paxton’s commitment to keeping kids and teens safe online," the company said in a statement. "We are disappointed that, rather than working collaboratively with Roblox on this industry-wide challenge and seeking real solutions, the AG has chosen to file a lawsuit based on misrepresentations and sensationalized claims.”

Roblox has implemented several measures meant to protect children over the past few years. It blocked any user under 13 from being able to play, search or discover any unrated experiences on the platform, and it restricted DMs for that segment of users, as well. It also added an age estimation feature that requires a video selfie for a user to be able to prove that they’re 13 or older. The company intends to roll it out to everyone by the end of this year.

Texas isn’t the only state suing Roblox and accusing it of failing to protect children from predators, though: Kentucky and Louisiana had previously filed their own lawsuits against the company. Louisiana argued that the platform contains user-created experiences with troubling themes, such as “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party,” despite the majority of its users being under 16. It also pointed out that it was possible to initiate voice chats within Roblox’s experiences, even between users who weren’t friends, until November 2024. In one instance, a man who was arrested for possession of child sexual abuse materials was discovered to have used voice altering software to pretend to be a young girl in order to exploit children on the platform.

“Roblox must do more to protect kids from sick and twisted freaks hiding behind a screen,” Paxton wrote. “Any corporation that enables child abuse will face the full and unrelenting force of the law.” To note, the Texas AG also previously sued TikTok, alleging that it has insufficient parental controls, as well as Meta and Character.AI for potentially misusing data collected from underage users.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/texas-ag-ken-paxton-sues-roblox-over-alleged-child-safety-lapses-131500288.html?src=rssEngadget

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Ladies and gentlemen, (and I DO mean ladies and gentlemen), do you ever feel like this? 👇

Not the Bee

Bruce66423 shares a report from the Los Angeles Times: The board of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Tuesday approved a controversial plan to convert part of the city’s largest natural gas-fired power plant into one that also can burn hydrogen. In a 3-0 vote, the DWP board signed off on the final environmental impact report for an $800-million modernization of Units 1 and 2 of the Scattergood Generating Station in Playa del Rey. The power plant dates to the late 1950s and both units are legally required to be shut down by the end of 2029. In their place, the DWP will install new combined-cycle turbines that are expected to operate on a mixture of natural gas and at least 30% hydrogen with the ultimate goal of running entirely on hydrogen as more supply becomes available.
The hydrogen burned at Scattergood is supposed to be green, meaning it is produced by splitting water molecules through a process called electrolysis. Hydrogen does not emit planet-warming carbon dioxide when it is burned, unlike natural gas. […] Although burning hydrogen does not produce CO2, the high-temperature combustion process can emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a key component of smog. […] [T]he approved plan contains no specifics about where the hydrogen will come from or how it will get to the site. "The green hydrogen that would supply the proposed project has not yet been identified," the environmental report says. Industry experts and officials said the project will help drive the necessary hydrogen production. "Burning hydrogen produced by ‘excess’ solar or wind power is a means of energy storage," adds Slashdot reader Bruce66423. "The hard question is whether it’s the best solution to the storage problem given that other solutions appear to be emerging that would require less infrastructure investment (think pipes to move the hydrogen to the plant and tanks to store it for later use)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot

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Here’s a tab-clearing roundup of longer videos on the Russo-Ukrainian War, drones, tanks, etc. I’m not going to go point-by-point on everything covered here, just pull out a few of the more important bits.

First up: Perun does one of those “tier rankings” so popular on YouTube, this one about supposed “game changing” weapons in the war.

He ranks glide bombs, used heavily by the Russians, as one of 2025’s most effective weapons. “In 2025 there has been no month where the Ukrainians claim the Russians dropped fewer than 3,000 of these things, roughly 100 per day. In April that number was north of 5,000, getting close to the likes of 170 per day.” I had no idea the numbers were that high.

Also top tier: Drones. “Far from drones fading away as people found ways to counter them over time, I’d argue that drones have just become more dominant with every month that passes. Drone performance improved, their payloads became more dangerous, their operators more expert, the tactics of their use evolved, and the relevant production figures added progressively more zeros. To the point where, while in 2022 drones were a significant enabling element on the battlefield, in 2025 they are one of the most definitive elements. Back in February, RUSI assessed that Ukrainian drones now account for about 2/3 of Russian losses. But if you factor in their contributions to the use of other systems, providing reconnaissance for the infantry, spotting for the artillery and the air force, resupply for forward elements, and all the tasks the Ukrainians leverage UAS to do, I’d argue it goes well beyond even just that. And at the core of the military challenge here is the fact that drones are just very effective, very accessible, and hard to counter.” “So far I’d argue in Ukraine for example, small drones have evolved faster than the defenses intended to counter them.” He also covers the rise of fiber-optic drones. More on drones in another video below.

Also ranked very high: Ukraine’s passive acoustic drone detection systems, which are cheap and widely dispersed, and are key to guiding anti-drone kill teams deep behind the front lines to the right spots to take out drones.

Ukraine is also having a lot of success designing and manufacturing cheap interceptors to take out drones. “During one recent Russian attack, about 20% of all the incoming Russian UAVs were brought down by interceptor drones.”

Just about all the Russian wunderwaffen (like the Oreshnik missile) gets ranked pretty low. (He also wants to see more of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missle, as he had only one confirmed strike on that. See below for more on that topic.)

Combat shotguns are making a return as anti-drone weapons, but they’re last-ditch options and not ideal.

Russia is still using turtle tanks (AKA “assault sheds”) as the leads for mechanized assault columns. They can soak up a lot of punishment and mount a lot of drone-jamming equipment, but are still getting taken out by skilled drone operators or artillery. “A lot of Russian shed-equipped vehicles now appear to dispense with the main gun.” They also look even more Mad Max now, with arrays of spikes and branches to further tangle drones. “This isn’t just an approach being used by armored vehicles, and also it is not just the Russians. Drones are a survivability problem for everyone.”

Next up: Nicholas Moran talks about what armies can do to counter the drone threat without shiny new anti-drone weapons. “Getting away from the M is US Army speak for talking about something other than equipment. The M stands for material and is one of the factors in DOTMLPF.” (Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leader Development and Education, Personnel, Facilities.)

“Drones have been around since World War II, but it’s only been ten years since the US military officially declared the small UAS as a significant threat. We are still very much in the early phases of integrating such drones into warfare. And nobody knows exactly where the chips are going to lie down when they complete their fall.”

“We’re now some five years on from what quite a few would consider the first war in which drones were highly influential and three years into a major large power conflict. So, I think we can at least have a couple of trends observed by now, which are forming.”

“We see lots of videos of drones killing things which are selectively released often from equipment which inherently has inbuilt cameras. The 60 to 80% of drone strikes which don’t kill their target normally aren’t released as there’s not much propaganda benefit to doing so. Artillery shells don’t have cameras and an ISR drone footage of an artillery strike is not really particularly dramatic anymore.”

“The whole truth does not come from videos. The big killers in war today are the same that they’ve always been. Mines, then artillery. Not for nothing are we seeing the largest minefields in history, or a shortage of artillery ammunition and tubes.”

“Now, to be fair, in early 2025, drones were being estimated to have caused more Russian casualties than artillery, but that was also during a period of shortage of indirect fire assets in Ukraine. At the same time, both armies on the front lines of Ukraine have dispersed to incredible amounts by 20th century standards. Not for fear of a small drone with an explosive charge, which frankly really doesn’t care if you dispersed or not, but because they don’t want to be a tempting clustered target for artillery or SRBMS.”

“Infantry is still king or queen. Ultimately, to take and hold ground, someone with hand grenades and a rifle, maybe with a stabby thing on the end, is going to have to close with and destroy the enemy supported by everything else in the inventory. And it’s going to be someone in the dugout with their own grenades and rifles, supported by everything else in the inventory, trying to stop them.”

“Drones are also not great at killing tanks. As one general put it, the only place more dangerous than being in a tank in the Ukraine battle area is not being in a tank in the Ukraine battle area.” More on this below as well.

“There there are always exceptions, but the vast majority of tanks which have been destroyed by drones have first been immobilized by something else, such as mines, artillery, ATGM, cannon fire, whatever. The response times for kinetic drones right now are just too long to have practical effect unless they happen to be in the right place and they don’t show up in mass. Then when the tank is immobilized by these other assets, the drone can come at its leisure and try to hit the stationary or abandoned tank which likely has the hatch still open as nobody bailing out after a hit is going to be standing on the top of the tank trying to close the hatch in an ongoing battle. And if something happens to that drone, which historically is quite likely, another drone can be sent and another and another.”

“Some disabled tanks have had a score of drones try to destroy them. Still didn’t work until finally one drone might show up, which actually does the job. Now, yes, an argument can be made that this is still beneficial on a pure dollar value basis, but it also comes with a slew of caveats related to anything from the availability of recovery assets through to the lack of anything more important for those drone operators to be doing that particular moment in time.”

“Some Ukrainian crews have simply given up counting how many times their tanks have been hit by drones. The best Ukrainian units are reporting a 40% hit rate with their FPVs. Typical units won’t be that good, and that’s flying one drone at a time over the course of hours. Hardly something suitable when a major battle starts, but perfectly suited for the current static warfare environment that we see. Now, that’s the hit rate, not the kill rate.”

“They are also not capable of all weather operations, at least the flying ones. Many are just too small. And when it gets to nighttime, for obvious reasons, the drones used are a little bit more expensive. If an enemy attacks in a storm, you want to have something other than quadcopters to rely upon for your defense. What drones have also failed to do is change the nature of war. The principles of war have not changed. The fundamentals of the offense or the defense have not changed.”

“Drones come and kill things, hardware. Then jammers come to get them to lose control, hardware. Then fiber optic cables come to reduce the vulnerability to jamming hardware. Then kill systems like cannons come. Hardware.”

But we don’t fight with things, we fight with formations that use things.

“A drone may not be able to easily kill a tank but it certainly has a reasonable effect on a bunker, on somebody riding an ATV, or on a supply truck for that tank.”

“I believe the claim is that DJI are making a drone a second and they are being used by both sides in Ukraine. The leader being the Mavic 3.” For more information on that, see here.

“As of early last year, 10,000 drones a month were being expended. And the chances are that that figure is well higher now. The things are being expended like ammunition and a low proportion of them are self-exploding. Most are being shot down, forced down, or crash.”

“Currently, the pendulum is swung in favor of the offensive use of drones. And well, defense is playing catch-up. As it currently stands, the dollar exchange is pretty much in favor of the drone.”

“Using a $200,000 stinger to drop a $10,000 surveillance drone is economically questionable, even if it has to be done. Because if you don’t do that, that $10,000 surveillance drone is going to call in a target for a $400,000 ballistic missile, which will then drop on your $2 million brigade headquarters if you don’t expend a $3 million Patriot missile to kill it. As a result, kill mechanisms need to get cheaper, and the drones need to be forced to become more expensive. And both are happening again.”

“Things like DJIs are civilian grade. They’re not equipped to handle electronic attack. The change and counter change in EM spectrum right now is its own battle which is apparently going on four-week cycles. But if you want to equip the drone so that loss of signal doesn’t immediately result in loss of drone or worse that the drone doesn’t just get hijacked, other measures need to be taken. Be it some form of self-targeting, the use of fiber optics, which leads to its own set of limitations and expense.”

“Then there is resistance to hard kill electronic systems. Currently, microwave weapons are the leading contenders. A single microwave can quickly and efficiently fry the electronics of a whole bunch of drones at once for not much cost.”

“Systems have been demonstrated that are in effect remote weapon stations such as you’ll find on top of a Stryker, or you can put in the back of a pickup truck. They are capable of autonomously detecting, identifying, tracking, and engaging small UAS with a short burst.”

“The reality is the drone swarms don’t work for the simple reason that they take up too much jammable bandwidth talking to each other or controllers. And there aren’t enough operators with enough magazine depth to make a go of it by coordinating conventional operations.”

“Drones may end up flying in packages. Bandwidth concerns may limit the feasibility of true automated swarming.” Better AI may help solve that problem.

“One of the organizational problems or doctrinal problems that the army needs to work on, and this will apply to all armies, is how do you set up the layered network so that the most efficient system is used to engage the best target. So, just because you can shoot down a bomber drone with a Coyote doesn’t mean it’s the best move. Maybe it’s worth letting him get a lot closer to be shot down with a caliber 50 or a microwave.”

“The intent is that ground troops will always make first contact with the enemy by use of a drone or UGV. Now, there are advantages to both. I still haven’t seen the front line of robots in official doctrine, but I still think it’s coming.”

The army is already experimenting with self-driving road vehicles for logistics.

Some of the lessons the Ukrainians have learned may not be appropriate for the more modern and well-equipped U.S. armed forces. ” To kill Orlan and the like at altitude, the Ukrainians have been resorting to things like mothership drones and balloon lifted drones. The US has an air force capable of dominating at 15,000 ft and an F-35 or F-15 with a couple of APKWs hydropods would be a reasonably cost-effective and more responsive way of dealing with the problem. The US has satellite or airborne recon abilities which may take care of tasks that other nations may need drones for. Just how good is an F-35’s radar? Can it detect a number of drones and then hand off to a cheaper system to engage? Or maybe it can illuminate for passive radar purposes without being at risk itself.”

“If we are dramatically reducing our command post sizes, increasing dispersion, massively increasing our air defense EW components, reintroducing air guards, or telling people to break out their ET tools like in the old days, then it’s very obviously demonstrating the case that the US has understood that we need to change things.”

“Remember the [Hans] von Seeckt appraisals after World War I? Nearly four years of terrible trench warfare followed the German attempt at maneuver warfare. After chewing on the matter a bit, the German response about 1921 was the key is still maneuver warfare. And they were right.”

“The trend appears to be that we’re going to use automation to further enable what we’re doing, not change what we’re doing. Is the how, not the what.”

“The characteristics of the offense remain concentration, audacity, tempo, and surprise.”

LazerPig takes aim at what he calls Hurr Durr Drone Syndrome (HDDS), including the idea that drones have made tanks obsolete. He goes into more detail about how the ability of drones to take out tanks is considerably overstated, noting that “cheap” drones capable of taking out tanks aren’t really cheap any more.

“Symptoms of HDDS include flashy clickbait titles that proclaim any new technology from tanks to jets is doomed, because why spend billions of dollars on a weapon system if a 20 buck drone can take it out?”

“It makes casual references to the ever-increasing loss of Western tanks on the Ukrainian front. Makes grandiose gestures that inflate the actual capability of small FPV drones and surreptitiously, usually just by not knowing any better, parrot Russian propaganda that all Western tanks are too big and too heavy.”

“It ignores the actual opinions of Ukrainian tank crews and fails to take into account that of the 95 Western tanks that have been lost on the Ukrainian front, very few of those were actually taken out by drones. And of that 95, 73 were highly outdated models that have either since been replaced or are in the process of being replaced. Out of those 73, 71 were models built before 1990, and 21 of those were tanks designed in the 1960s.”

“Even under the less than ideal conditions Ukraine fights in, with a comedic list of tanks from various periods and in various states of repair, at the time of recording, for every one Western tank they have lost, 43.7 Russian tanks have been destroyed.”

He says those $20 commercial drones are useless for combat. “The simplest of drones currently on the Ukrainian front cost in excess of $400 to make each. And that is with volunteers, 3D printers, and importing the cheapest made parts from TEMU. And these factories don’t run at a profit. They absorb the full cost through donations, not selling the drones to the military.”

“In the UK, a vast number of drone factories were set up in the hopes of cashing in on the drone military craze. And most of them have failed to expand beyond a single office, 3D printers, small teams of eager 20somes, and a dream. simply because, well…

“Firstly, the actual cost of setting up mass production is far greater than first anticipated, especially when one realizes that it’s not just drone parts they’d need, but camera equipment, night vision, thermals, long-range battery packs, and radio equipment capable of resisting interference, triangulation, and interception, most of which is beyond the capability of these companies.”

“All of this is how a $400 drone becomes a $10,000 drone. Even then, those $400 drones carry about enough munitions to kill a person or knock out light vehicles or generally unarmored targets.”

“In some of these interviews, they have talked about how tanks generally survive multiple hits from drones because the Russians don’t always have access to the heavier munitions required to take them out. Those are considerably more expensive, harder to produce, and considerably more rare, allowing those tanks to race into drone hotspots, take out their target, and withdraw before those munitions arrive.”

“A good example of one of those munitions is the famous Russian Lancet. In a full-time war economy, one of these costs around $20,000 to manufacture, or to put that in perspective, the cost of five artillery shells. This is of course assuming Russia is telling the truth when it gives these numbers up and aren’t just calculating the cost of materials and not including labor setup or the cost of the launcher.”

“The thing about the Lancet is it’s a drone in name only. It’s technically a loitering munition which have been around for quite some time. Every country has been developing them for the past 10 years and some of those were given to Ukraine.”

Just about every country that produces tanks is working on loitering munitions versions for tanks to launch.

“The Switchblade, currently in use by both the US and Ukrainian Army, costs around $60,000 per unit, with the more dedicated anti-tank version costing somewhere in the region of $100,000 per
unit.”

He says he had to delete a long rant about the difference between the Lancet and the Switchblade. “What you need to know is the Switchblade can be carried by one soldier in a backpack, thrown on the ground, and then fired like a mortar within seconds. It’s got infrared as standard. It can do a whole bunch of really clever things like guide other Switchblades onto targets or coordinate with other drones and have multiple Switchblades hit multiple different targets simultaneously, you know, to lower the chances of your enemy going, ‘Oh no, a drone.’ And then doing something really wild like taking cover.”

“The Lancet does none of that. It’s basically just a TV missile on a catapult.”

Cheap drones started out effective until units adapted. “As they develop new systems or techniques or tactics against this cheap weapon, then that system is going to gradually become less effective over time and therefore must evolve to remain potent. The Lancet has gone through multiple versions, each time trying to increase its lethality or counter the defenses Ukraine has developed specifically against it.”

“The Lancet, though it is estimated at costing roughly $20,000 to manufacture via various Russian reports. It was offered at export at $32,000 back when it was only seeing use in Syria. And now it’s no longer offered for export. And that $20,000 number has never been updated as the weapon has grown in complexity…the reality is we don’t know how much it actually costs.”

“It has more than likely now matched the Switchblade in terms of cost.”

We don’t know how effective Lancet is because our information comes from Russian propaganda websites, and Russia has claimed Lancet tank kills on western tanks that were clearly taken out by other means.

“In the later stages of 2022, in response to Ukraine’s increased counterbattery effectiveness, the Russians began pulling hordes of towed artillery out of storage, some of which dated as far back as the Second World War. Yet with the limited ability to retain these units in service due to excessive barrel wear or move them around after they had been fired through the loss of transport vehicles, Russia’s artillery dominance has finally began to wane. And as a result, systems like the Lancet have been forced into this role. The irony here being that a $20,000 drone system, is now doing the work of an artillery shell, which the Russians once bragged they could make for under $1,500.”

“Both sides are potentially lacking the equipment that would have traditionally performed that job and are falling back onto cheaply-made drones to fill the gap.”

HDDS also ignores all the anti-drone technology developed in the last three years.

“In spite of the existence of heavy drone-based munitions that can take out tanks, Ukraine still uses tanks quite a lot.”

One correction: LazerPig says the cope cage were deployed in response to Ukraine’s use of drones, but mentions actually date to the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022.

“In the first days, Lancets were being used on mass, the Russians would be forced to stop jamming the frequency that the Lancet was being used in. The Ukrainians would simply cycle through frequencies, find the one that wasn’t being jammed, and then jam it themselves, causing the lancets to just fall out of the sky.” The technical difficulties involved here make me wonder if this is a “just so” story.

“In a response, the Russians are now forced to turn off their jamming systems when firing a Lancet to prevent the Ukrainians from figuring out the frequency.”

Counter-jammer technology is not something you find on a $400 drone.

“You might think the best defense against [jamming] is to simply have the drone change frequencies, and you’d be right. But changing frequencies isn’t as easy as pressing a button or changing a dial. In fact, in many cases, the aerial assembly has to be completely ripped off and replaced with one with a newer frequency. Hence why a lot of drones [are] shipped without an aerial, allowing the receiving unit to add their own as needed.”

“Sometimes the drone automatically picking one that is not actively being jammed is quite expensive. And another reason why things like the Switchblade are more expensive than the Lancet. But that’s the old idiom, you get what you pay for.”

“Putting soldiers lives at risk with cheaper equipment that might not always work is the lesson the US military has learned the hard way. Ask any US veteran and they will happily bitch to you about any number of equipment problems based entirely on that topic, often for several hours without ever stopping for breath. It’s quite impressive.”

The response to drone jamming has been the advent of fiber-optic drones. “These drones have caused all kinds of hell for both sides, to the point where parts of the front lines are littered in webs of fiber optic.”

The response to fiber optics has been barbed wire and more cages. “In the front lines of both sides, supply routes are now covered in large arc structures, a cope cage supreme, if you will, that prevent drones attacking convoys and supply trucks. And both sides will typically spend days or often weeks trying to find holes or discreetly make holes in these nets and then have several drones lie in weight across the road ambushing any vehicles they find.”

“This has led to Ukraine up armoring everything from medevac to supply trucks in order to minimize the damage caused by these ambush drones. In much the same way US and British forces in Iraq were forced to up armor their patrol vehicles owing to the threat of IEDs.”

“Ukraine’s best counter to drones remains, and has surprisingly remained, old radar-guided anti-air systems from the Cold War.” Most drones are not remotely stealthy.

“Mobile anti-air systems like the Gepard have proven exceedingly effective at taking them down. Meaning to avoid systems like this, drones have to fly low to the ground, which makes finding targets considerably harder.”

Countries are also developing electronic warfare and laser systems to take out drones. “Where these systems fit into our current doctrine is still being written. And where these things are now technologically will be considerably different in a few years time. Ultimately, these weapons will need mounting onto something. And why can’t that something be a tank? Laser tanks are finally here.”

“It is not the biggest army that wins. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

A lot of this is true, but I’m wondering if the atomized nature of the Ukrainian front isn’t a big factor against cheap drones here. I imagine smaller, cheaper drones with only a few pounds of explosives might be considerably more useful in an urban combat environment that limits jamming and countermeasures. There’s also, I think, a drone class heavier than the lightest drones but lighter than Lancet or Switchblades that could still be racking up mobility kills against tanks and other armored vehicles in such an environment.

Next up: Megaprojects Simon Whistler breaks down Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile.

“If the missile you’re launching at the enemy is easy to take down because it’s not very fast or stealthy, the least you can do is pack it with so many explosives, you basically guarantee complete destruction if just one of them breaks through the enemy lines. And this at least is the basic logic behind the FP5 Flamingo, Ukraine’s new heavy hitter missile.”

“Experts, both domestic and foreign, hailed its arrival. But they warn against obsessive optimism. Because while the Flamingo packs a hell of a punch, it also leaves a lot to be desired.”

“The missile “is constructed mostly of recycled ordinance and aircraft parts.”

“The Flamingo excels in two key areas: warhead capacity and range. The missile is armed with a 1.15 ton or 2500lb warhead, which is just a comically large amount of explosive material for a single missile. For comparison, the BGM 109 Tomahawk land attack missile, which is a reliable American long-range missile, packs about 450 kilos or 1,000 lb of explosives, and the Flamingo comes with 2.5 times that.”

“The engine used with the Flamingo is believed to be the AI-25. This engine is comparably much larger than engines on similar missiles, and it’s used with several aircraft, including Turkey’s combat drone, the Bayraktar. The use of a large engine, one that measures 3.3 m in length and 62 cm in diameter with a weight of over 350 kilos or 770 lb, allows the engineers to skip miniature turbo jets and turbo fans. These propulsion systems are usually preferred for long-range cruise missiles, but they’re really expensive, unlike the AI-25.”

“The AI-25 was incredibly available for Fire Point to purchase in huge numbers from stockpiles. Officials said that they found thousands of these engines at dumps and landfills around Ukraine, in a very practical and literal showcase of the adage, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ Fire Point did not restore these engines to full usage, which would allow them a maximum flight time of 10 hours, but only enough power for the Flamingo to go for 4 hours. They replaced the titanium parts with cheaper materials to save both time and money, and engines that were deemed too damaged were used for spare parts.”

“The biggest advantage of such a powerful engine, which is usually used with much heavier aircraft, is the incredible range of this missile, which is reported to be 3,000 km or about 1,850 miles. This is almost double the range of the block five Tomahawk missile mentioned earlier, and it’s more than enough to strike Russia anywhere in the European part of the country.” Though he notes that claim hasn’t been verified yet.

“The missile travels at speeds about 900 km or 560 mph, which is comparable to the speeds of western missiles.”

“The Flamingo does not have a complex visual guidance system, such as terrain contour matching systems or digital scene matching area correlation systems, which are very common with Western missiles, which are also, of course, a lot more expensive. It does, however, use satellite navigation to guide itself toward the target.”

“The Flamingo uses a jamming resistant controller reception pattern antenna layout, which kind of feels like word salad, doesn’t it? But what it means is that the antenna layout is designed to resist radio jamming and spoofing, keeping the missile on its course.”

“However, the Flamingo lacks any technology to hide from radar, which makes it extremely unstealthy.” But it’s fiberglass construction is less visible on radar than metal.

“Similar to how the A-10 Warthog is an aircraft built around a 30mm rotary cannon, the FP5’s airframe is built around its massive warhead.”

“At first glance, it might remind you of the V1, but the Flamingo is much larger at a length of between 12 and 14m and a wingspan of six.”

He notes the missile’s vulnerability to Russian fighter aircraft, but given how heavily those are overtaxed, I wonder how much they can “fly cap” over the vast distances of Russian airspace, especially after the further dispersion away from Ukraine following successful drone attacks on Russian airbases.

Skipping the history of Ukraine development/acquisition of long range strike platforms.

“After the official unveiling on August the 17th, 2025, production rolled out at a rate of about 50 missiles a month, and Fire Point announced that they plan to increase production to seven missiles a day by the end of the year.”

“The majority of the missile is created from already existing components that can be put together in a factory that’s relatively safe. Even if the factory were to be destroyed, the Flamingo is so easy to put together, the entire manufacturing process can be moved as long as the warheads and the engines are kept safe.”

“And Ukraine’s not alone in this task either. To help streamline production, Denmark announced that a Fire Point subsidiary would start solid fuel production in Denmark by the end of the year.”

“At the time of recording, there is only a single documented use of Flamingo missiles by Ukraine. And their effectiveness is, to quote the Chernobyl TV show, not great, not terrible. Three missiles is a nice reference. Not great, not terrible.”

“Three missiles were launched in a poorly defended target in northern Crimea, and yet only two arrived on site, proving the Flamingo is fairly easy to shoot down. One of the missiles that actually arrived missed the target by about 100-200 meters. The second missile, however, caused significant damage to the building, also damaging six hovercraft despite landing between 15 and 40 meters away from the target.”

“This shows that there are still a lot of kinks for Fire Point to work through to perfect these missiles. The claimed accuracy of the Flamingo is 14 meters, but neither of the two missiles hit within that mark. However, the missile that hit the closest still managed to cause enough damage to deem it a successful strike, showing that the massive warhead can compensate for the lack of accuracy.”

Skipping over his analysis of which Russian air defense systems can shoot it down, since there’s ample evidence of numerous Russian systems letting a wide range of drones and missiles through without shooting them down.

Also skipping over his analysis of the Ukraine campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, as that’s been well documented here. But: “To add insult to injury, the FB5 Flamingo makes the drones used in those attacks look like firecrackers.”

“With this in mind, it’s almost guaranteed that Ukraine won’t be mindlessly launching flamingos at Russia, but will instead carefully plan the flight routes to maximize their effectiveness.”

The Flamingo currently takes a lengthy 20 minutes to set up and launch.

“Valerie Romanenko, a leading aviation expert and researcher with the Ukrainian State Museum of Aviation, says that upon exploding, the Flamingo will destroy any production plant. The facility will be impossible to rebuild because the explosion will result in complete destruction, leaving behind itself a 20 meter crater.”

Large Russian oil facilities are, naturally, likely to be targets.

“It’s interesting how all of the news outlets used Novosibirsk as the designation point of the Flamingo’s range capabilities, because Novosibirsk just happens to be close to Biysk, the home of the Biysk Oleum plant. The Biysk Oleum plant is Russia’s largest producer of military grade explosives and artillery shells. Every month, Russia supplies its forces with about 120,000 artillery shells. And normally, these shells are produced in Nizhny Novagrod, which is about 1,300 km away by road from Ukrainian borders, which means that the shipments are well within the reach of Ukrainian weapon systems. Because of this, Moscow decided to move their production to the Biysk Oleum plant, thinking that production there would be safe.”

“Cue the Flamingo: A huge missile that could in theory destroy the entire plant with one strike and a 3,000 km range. The is just outside of the Flamingo’s range by a few hundred km. But both Ukrainian and Russian forces are well aware that the Flamingo is a huge threat for this production plant.”

“The Biysk Oleum plant isn’t the only arms manufacturing factory at risk. Shahhead drones, which Russia has adopted from Iran, are produced in Yelabuga and Izhevsk factories which are well within range for the FB5. And the same can be said for the Oreshnik missile factory in Votkinsk.”

“Ukraine, for its part, obtains the capability to destroy virtually any defense industrial facility on the Russian territory. This entails a fundamental change in the balance of power.”

The usual new weapon system caveats apply.

As I’ve stated before, one of the first targets for a long-range drone with a large warhead (assuming they can make the targeting more accurate) should be the Omsk Transiberian railway bridge over the Irtysh river, some 2500km from Ukraine. As far as I can tell, that’s the only rail line in Russia that connects Moscow with Russia’s far eastern territories, and is presumably a key supply gateway to China. Russia could reroute some traffic through Kazakhstan’s rail network (which runs on the same Soviet 1,520 gauge rails), but I imagine there would be considerable pain in rerouting things that way. Plus the sort of floating bridges needed to repair that span seem to be in short supply.

Anyway, I though all of those videos had interesting points to make, even though that’s a lot of video to watch (or texts to read).

Lawrence Person’s BattleSwarm Blog

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Some people are just too damn opinionated about their gear, whether it’s camping, hiking, or just wandering around outdoors. But I never saw that same level of bias in the world of knives. A good knife with good steel was, well, good. And that was true whether it was large or small.

But I now find myself in a world where the idea that EDC folding knives for hiking and backpacking should hover around 3 ounces and remain under 7 inches in length. This idea spread like an infection, and now I see people frolicking around in the woods using knives that are underpowered for many common situations in the outdoors.

This bothers me not just because people are putting themselves in situations where they are unprepared. It is also because there are some incredible folding knives out there now that are passed over because of their size and weight.

Enter the Kershaw Broadside.

At nearly 8.5 inches long — and a whopping 5.1 ounces — this knife is a workhorse that, given current ideals, might not ever see the chance to bag a peak, or at least enjoy a few miles out on trail. I am here to tell you that this is exactly the kind of knife that deserves to live that life.

In short: Though it may be a large knife, the Kershaw Broadside is dependable and well-balanced and could serve as the only edged tool you need on your outdoor adventures. Due to its incredible size-to-weight ratio, it’s the perfect genesis of a ballerina and a brute. Best of all, it won’t break the bank.

Kershaw Broadside Review

Design and Features

Built off of a coated steel frame, the Broadside has G10 handle scales, a deep-carry pocket clip, and a 3.5-inch Scandi-ground D2 spear point blade.

For lock-up and easy deployment, the knife also has Kershaw’s version of a crossbar lock, the DuraLock. This works incredibly well with the KVT ball bearings that surround the pivot, making for some of the smoothest opening action I’ve ever experienced on a manual knife. Considering the Broadside’s overall size, this is a welcome bonus.

D2 steel has been around for decades because it’s hard to beat. It’s tough and easy to sharpen, but the edge may not get to skin-popping sharp without some serious effort. Either way, it’s one of my favorite steels due to how well it holds up in all conditions, especially being that it’s a high-carbon tool steel and not stainless.

For an oversized knife like this, the Broadside is lightweight and balanced. With a total length of 8.35 inches and an overall weight of 5.1 ounces, that’s only about half an ounce per inch. (But seriously, who’s counting?)

First Impressions

Even though I don’t subscribe to, or support, the trend that knives need to be only so long and so light, I do have a sweet spot for knives I prefer. Physically, the Broadside falls outside of that. However, I’m still impressed.

Yes, the knife is big. It’s visually obvious in its bigness. However, it’s still light and balanced. The action also carries a level of smoothness that large knives usually do not have. With the knife held vertically in my hand, a slight upward push on the thumb stud swings the blade open and locks it up solid.

I get the same results holding the Broadside horizontally with the blade opening down. Gravity doesn’t seem to phase the action. I also like Kershaw’s choice to go with a full Scandi-grind on the spear-point blade. This should provide a level of ease in slicing and chopping that continues the general theme.

Further, in the right light, you can see where the tip tapers inward on the face of the blade around the 1-inch mark. Spear-point blades are meant to puncture and stab; little details like this in the grind will amplify that ability.

In the Field

In terms of carry, even in a pair of jeans, you can feel the Broadside fill up the hip side of your back pocket. But take note, that’s my only complaint about this knife.

However, on a cold day, in heavier pants, it won’t make much of a difference. The knife tucks in nice and low, disappearing in the pocket (aside from any lanyard you add to it).

Overall, the Broadside is great for demanding tasks. It cuts, slices, carves, punctures, and chops, which makes it shine for food prep and getting wood ready to start a fire.

Though it’s commonly frowned upon to baton with a folding knife, you bet your bippy I broke down some medium-sized bits with this knife. And I bet it could chop through some wet, frozen rope, or even chop through some ice.

And this brings me to my original point: For folks committed to light-duty EDC knives, what do you do for fire prep? I know the answer — you carry a hatchet or belt knife, both of which weigh more than the Broadside. So why not have a single-bladed tool to rely on?

Conclusion: Who’s It For?

Right now, the market is saturated with more knives than ever. And there are just as many opinions filling the air like butterflies in a field of wild flowers.

Why don’t we cut the BS and get back to picking out the gear that works for us? Not according to norms or implicit rules — just the gear that does the most we need it to.

I think it’s time people stop focusing on inches and ounces, and start honing in on what knife works best for them.

Knives like the Broadside aren’t a burden, they’re an opportunity. Leave your belt knife or hatchet behind, and you can still keep your pack weight down. Is it as strong as a fixed blade that’s the same size and materials? No. But it’s stronger than a 3-ounce light-duty knife and, really, what do you need that hatchet for?

All in all, I have found the Broadside to be reliable and well-balanced for its size. It’s fast to open, and the DuraLock isn’t going to fail during regular use. This is the kind of knife you can rely on to do a variety of tasks very well.

GearJunkie

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About this free book collection. Below are some of the highest-quality university textbooks that you can legally read and download for free. Each entry lists the title (in bold), the author(s) in italics, and the available formats with notes on whether a sign-up is required. Links point directly to the free books – I have manually checked the link quality (by hand).

1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – Harold Abelson & Gerald Jay Sussman (HTML, no sign-up) – the classic MIT programming text is released as an open-access web edition under a Creative Commons license

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3. Deep Learning – Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio & Aaron Courville (HTML, no sign-up) – the authors and MIT Press offer a complete online version that will remain freely accessible.
4. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces – Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau & Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau (PDF, no sign-up) – a comprehensive OS text that the authors explicitly intend to remain freely available.
5. Category Theory for Scientists – David I. Spivak (PDF, no sign-up) – MIT’s open-courseware site links to this freely downloadable textbook.

6. Algebraic Topology – Allen Hatcher (PDF, no sign-up) – the author and publisher allow free download of this standard graduate-level text.
7. Linear Algebra – Jim Hefferon (PDF & HTML, no sign-up) – Hefferon’s textbook is free to download and is licensed for redistribution.
8. Introduction to Real Analysis – William F. Trench (PDF, no sign-up) – a free, Creative Commons–licensed edition of this undergraduate text.
9. Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications – Thomas W. Judson (PDF, no sign-up) – an open textbook published under the GNU Free Documentation License.
10. Introduction to Probability – Charles M. Grinstead & J. Laurie Snell (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – the authors distribute this complete text under a free documentation license.

11. The Elements of Statistical Learning – Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani & Jerome Friedman (PDF, no sign-up) – a highly regarded machine-learning reference with a free PDF.
12. Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction – Richard S. Sutton & Andrew G. Barto (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – the authors provide free HTML and PDF downloads under a Creative Commons license.
13. Convex Optimization – Stephen Boyd & Lieven Vandenberghe (PDF, no sign-up) – Cambridge University Press permits the authors to host the PDF for free.
14. Open Data Structures – Pat Morin (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – the book and source code are free (libre and gratis) under a Creative Commons license.
15. Algorithms – Jeff Erickson (PDF, no sign-up) – this self-published textbook remains free; anyone may download, copy and redistribute it under a Creative Commons license.

16. Think Python – Allen B. Downey (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – a beginner-friendly Python book released under a Creative Commons license and explicitly described as a free book.
17. Think Stats – Allen B. Downey (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – the author’s site hosts a free, online version and encourages readers to share it under a Creative Commons license.
18. Eloquent JavaScript – Marijn Haverbeke (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – the fourth edition is available online under a Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial license.
19. Dive Into Deep Learning – Aston Zhang, Zachary C. Lipton, Mu Li & Alex J. Smola (HTML & PDF, no sign-up) – this open-source interactive book offers free online and PDF versions.

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21. OpenIntro Statistics – David M. Diez, Christopher D. Barr & Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel (PDF, no sign-up) – the OpenIntro collection notes that all its textbooks have free PDF versions.
22. Introduction to Modern Statistics – Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel & Johanna Hardin (PDF, no sign-up) – an OpenIntro statistics text; the series offers free PDF downloads.
23. Introductory Statistics for the Life and Biomedical Sciences – Nathaniel Horton & Benjamin S. Baumer (PDF, no sign-up) – another OpenIntro textbook with a freely downloadable PDF.
24. Advanced High School Statistics – David M. Diez & Christopher D. Barr (PDF, no sign-up) – OpenIntro’s AP/advanced-high-school statistics book; the PDF is free.
25. Introductory Statistics with Randomization & Simulation – David M. Diez, Christopher D. Barr & Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel (PDF, no sign-up) – part of OpenIntro’s free-PDF series.

OpenStax textbooks (free PDF & web view, no registration)

OpenStax, a nonprofit initiative at Rice University, publishes a wide range of peer-reviewed textbooks. Their policy explicitly states that the books are free to read online or download in PDF with no passwords or registration required. The following OpenStax titles are excellent resources:

26. Calculus Volume 1 – Gilbert Strang et al. (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – first-semester calculus with interactive examples and problem sets.

27. Calculus Volume 2 – Gilbert Strang et al. (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – covers sequences, series, and multivariable calculus.
28. Calculus Volume 3 – Gilbert Strang et al. (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – advanced topics such as vector calculus and partial differential equations.
29. University Physics Volume 1 – Samuel J. Ling, William Moebs & Jeff Sanny (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – covers mechanics and thermodynamics.
30. University Physics Volume 2 – Samuel J. Ling, William Moebs & Jeff Sanny (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – electromagnetism and optics.
31. University Physics Volume 3 – Samuel J. Ling, William Moebs & Jeff Sanny (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – modern physics and waves.
32. Chemistry 2e – Paul Flowers et al. (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – a full general-chemistry text.
33. Biology 2e – Mary Ann Clark et al. (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – comprehensive introductory biology.

34. Microbiology – OpenStax (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – covers microbial structure, physiology and genetics.
35. College Algebra – Jay Abramson (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – functions, polynomials and graphs for precalculus preparation.
36. Linear Algebra – Jim Hefferon (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – a modern introduction to linear algebra and matrix theory.
37. Differential Equations – William F. Trench (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – an OpenStax adaptation of Trench’s classic book.
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39. Principles of Microeconomics 2e – OpenStax (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – microeconomic theory and applications.
40. Psychology 2e – OpenStax (PDF & Web, no sign-up) – foundational topics in psychology.
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These books span mathematics, computer science, physics, statistics, economics and the life sciences. Because they carry open licenses and are distributed via trusted publishers such as MIT Press, Caltech, OpenIntro and OpenStax, they are excellent resources for self-learners and educators alike.

You may also be interested in my collection on free Artificial Intelligence books!

42 Free AI Books (PDF/HTML)

Be on the Right Side of Change

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1. The Tax Law That Now Finds Itself Without a Tax

In the recent discourse around the potential removal of suppressors and short barrel rifles from the provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) and its tax and registration requirements, a point made repeatedly was that if the tax was repealed but the registration stayed, the latter would be illegal as it was only ever justified by the former.

This is indeed correct, as from its inception, the NFA was justified as a tax, with the registration being incidental to that tax and only existing ostensibly to ensure the tax was properly paid for each NFA item sold. Then-Attorney General Cummings was clear about this in his testimony to Congress during the debates over the bill in 1934:

Courts have consistently upheld the NFA, and its registration provision, on the grounds that it was a tax. Some who tried to challenge the law even argued that the tax was a pretext, with the real aim being to unconstitutionally restrict the arms included in the NFA. The Supreme Court rejected this argument in 1937, just a few years after the NFA was first enacted in Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506, 512-514 (1937):

“Petitioner. . .insists that the present levy is not a true tax, but a penalty imposed for the purpose of suppressing traffic in a certain noxious type of firearms, the local regulation of which is reserved to the states because not granted to the national government. . . But a tax is not any the less a tax because it has a regulatory effect. . . Here the annual tax of $200 is productive of some revenue. We are not free to speculate as to the motives which moved Congress to impose it, or as to the extent to which it may operate to restrict the activities taxed. As it is not attended by an offensive regulation, and since it operates as a tax, it is within the national taxing power.”

Ever since then, dozens of rulings have upheld the NFA on those same grounds. For example, in 2018 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals explained that “the NFA is a valid exercise of Congress’s taxing power, as well as its authority to enact any laws “necessary and proper” to carry out that power.” United States v. Cox, 906 F.3d 1170, 1179 (10th Cir. 2018).

Unfortunately, the Senate Parliamentarian either didn’t grasp this or didn’t care, and struck the repeal of the registration requirement from the “Big Beautiful Bill,” deeming it unrelated to the budget and thus inappropriate for reconciliation. Thus, only the tax was repealed, and so a registration provision that has been justified for over 90 years as necessary only to ensure a tax was paid now finds itself seemingly vulnerable to legal challenge.

The first lawsuit filed against the NFA’s registration requirement unsurprisingly focused on this argument:

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress and the President enacted on July 4, 2025, zeroes the manufacture and transfer tax on nearly all NFA-regulated firearms. That means the constitutional foundation on which the NFA rested has dissolved.”

The Plaintiffs in that lawsuit are right to try and exploit this open wound, given courts will no longer be able to lazily uphold the NFA’s provisions on the ground that it is a tax (because there is no longer any tax, at least as to suppressors and short barrel rifles).

But one thing has been strangely missing from this whole discourse: the NFA never had any constitutional foundation, even when it was a tax. Taxes on arms, besides universally applicable sales taxes, are unconstitutional. The NFA should never have been upheld on taxation grounds in the first place, and other taxes such as the 11% assessed under Pittman-Robertson, or California’s similar “sin tax” on guns and ammo, are also unconstitutional.

2. The Bruen Standard, in Brief

To understand why taxes on arms are unconstitutional, a short summary of the Second Amendment analysis is helpful.

In 2022, the Supreme Court unequivocally reaffirmed the original public meaning standard for analyzing Second Amendment challenges set forth in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). Applying that test, the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment protects the right to armed self-defense in public. N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 19, 31-33 (2022). The Bruen Court reiterated that courts may not engage in any form of “intermediate scrutiny” or even “strict scrutiny” in Second Amendment cases and unambiguously instructed how a proper Second Amendment analysis is to be conducted by a reviewing court:

“We reiterate that the standard for applying the Second Amendment is as follows: When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

Moreover, the government cannot simply proffer just any historical law that references firearms. Rather, when challenged laws regulate conduct or circumstances that already existed at the time of the Founding, the absence of widespread historical laws restricting that same conduct or circumstances indicates that the Founders understood the Second Amendment to preclude such regulation. Id. at 27. In contrast, uniquely modern circumstances that did not exist at the time of the Founding call for an analogical analysis, based on the government’s proffered historical record. Id. at 28-29. Outlier statutes do not satisfy the requirement. A law must be a “well-established and representative historical analogue.” Id. at 30.

Courts may not uphold a modern law just because a few similar laws may be found from the past. Id. Doing so “risk[s] endorsing outliers that our ancestors would never have accepted.” Id. (quoting Drummond v. Robinson Township, 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d Cir. 2021)). In fact, in Bruen the Court acknowledged that two pre-1900 state laws were insufficient to uphold New York’s carry restrictions, despite them being similar to the New York laws. See 597 U.S. at 65 (“the Texas statute, and the rationales set forth in English and Duke, are outliers. In fact, only one other State, West Virginia, adopted a similar public-carry statute before 1900.”).

Finally, as to Bruen’s observation that “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach” (597 U.S. at 27), this case is “fairly straightforward” because there is nothing new about arms, sales of arms, or taxation. In this sort of circumstance, the Supreme Court made clear that the “lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.” Id. (emphasis added).

Further support for this position can be found in the Second Amendment Foundation’s recent victory in a challenge to a California law limiting gun purchases to one per month. There, California argued that the limits were about stopping “trafficking” of arms, and one of the State’s experts stated that during the nineteenth century, “black markets in stolen goods” were a problem and so “Americans were concerned about firearms being sold into the wrong hands.” The panel rejected this argument because “the modern problems that California identifies as justification for its one-gun-a-month law are perhaps different in degree from past problems, but they are not different in kind. Therefore, a nuanced approach is not warranted.” Nguyen v. Bonta, No. 24-2036, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 15220, at *18 (9th Cir. June 20, 2025).

The NFA was justified for similar reasons; slowing the trafficking of arms the government considered dangerous. And just like California’s gun rationing law, its tax can only survive if there are “distinctly similar” laws like it in the Founding Era. See also United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 737-38 (2024) (Barrett, J., concurring) (“the history that matters most is the history surrounding the ratification of the text; that backdrop illuminates the meaning of the enacted law. History (or tradition) that long postdates ratification does not serve that function.”).

3. The History of Taxing Arms pre-1900

Now that we know what we are looking for (laws that taxed firearms on a per-gun basis) we can look to see whether any distinctly similar historical laws before 1900 existed in sufficient numerosity to justify modern taxes on firearms, such as the NFA. If any are “distinctly similar” to the modern NFA’s taxation provision, then that provision can be upheld. If not, it is unconstitutional.

The earliest examples were not taxes at all, but rather fines for various violations. For example, a 1762 New York colonial law barred storing more than 28 pounds of gunpowder for those who lived in New York City, and if violated, a fine of Ten Pounds was assessed. To be sure, if someone chose to have more than 28 pounds of gunpowder, they had to store it at a designated “Powder-House,” which required a fee of three shillings per barrel of powder. But that was less of a “tax” and more of a fee for using the powder-house, and in any case, would only apply to those who wanted to have more than 28 pounds of gunpowder. Powder-storage laws in general were not motivated by a desire for taxation or even gun control, but rather fire-prevention; black powder was extremely combustible, and thus a giant safety hazard to the densely packed and mostly wooden cities of the time. See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 632 (2008) (characterizing colonial powder storage laws as pertaining to fire-safety and not gun control).

Other early examples demonstrate the limits of relying on colonial history. A 1759 New Hampshire law required foreign ships coming into port to pay a tax of two shillings per pound of gun powder, in order to financially support “his Majesty’s fort and fortifications within this province.”

While superficially similar in that this was a tax on a necessary component to firearms – gunpowder – it is not the same as the NFA’s far higher tax on each firearm or suppressor sold, and it only applied to foreign ships. Moreover, with similar laws being sparse or nonexistent, this seems to be an outlier, and “in using pre-ratification history, courts must exercise care to rely only on the history that the Constitution actually incorporated and not on the history that the Constitution left behind.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 723 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

In the Nineteenth Century, some laws started to appear that were slightly more similar to the NFA’s taxes. For example, an 1844 Mississippi law taxed Bowie knives at one dollar, and dueling or pocket pistols at two dollars. In modern dollars, that’s about a $43 tax on Bowie knives, and about $86 on pocket or dueling pistols.

But to understand the difference here, it is important to note what was not taxed: the prevailing combat weapons of the time. Bowie knives and pocket pistols were seen as a criminal threat when carried concealed in this era, when those who carried lawfully did so openly. See Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846) (contrasting constitutionally-protected open carry from concealed carry). Some scholars even distinguished the “arms” protected by the Second Amendment from “weapons” which had no such protection. “Arms. . .is used for whatever is intentionally made as an instrument of offence. . .[w]e say firearms, but not fire-weapons; and weapons offensive or defensive, but not arms offensive or defensive.” Joseph Bartlett Burleigh, The American Manual: Containing a Brief Outline of the Origin and Progress of Political Power and the Laws of Nations 31 (1852).

Other similar taxes existed around this late-antebellum time period, like an 1838 law from territorial Florida which taxed dealers (but not buyers) of dirks, pocket pistols, and bowie knives $200 per year. That law also taxed those who publicly carried those specific weapons ten dollars per year. But again, these were not the “weapons of war” of their time, but rather concealable weapons that were used in petty crimes and personal disputes. Moreover, these taxes existed almost exclusively in Southern states and territories, and we have to be careful about relying too heavily on laws from the South given that Bruen looks for a national tradition.

Still, even if these laws were representative of the nation as a whole, there remains the problem that the taxes they enacted did not apply to military arms. A North Carolina law from 1856 makes this especially clear, specifically exempting pistols used for mustering from a $1.25 tax that otherwise applied on all pistols and bowie knives (though the tax only applied if the weapons in question were carried publicly, mere possession was untaxed).

Given these laws were careful not to tax guns like large revolvers, muskets, repeating rifles, and so forth that were used in warfare, how could they be “distinctly similar” to the NFA, which now applies to many arms that are useful in combat roles? For example, the M4 carbine is our military’s most common service rifle, and it has a barrel length of 14.5 inches. In the civilian context (and ignoring that it is also non-transferrable due to being a machine gun) that makes the most common military rifle a short-barreled rifle (“SBR”) subject to the NFA’s tax, which applies to rifles that have barrels under 16 inches in length. (Sig Sauer’s M7 rifle that is set to replace the M4 will be no different, as it has a 13-inch barrel.)

Following the Civil War, many southern territories under reconstruction adopted “Black Codes,” which aimed to keep newly freed former slaves repressed, often with the assistance of the Ku Klux Klan. Strategic disarmament of Black Americans was part of this nefarious project, as even President Grant complained to Congress. See H. Journal, 42nd Cong., 2d Sess. 716 (1872). It’s no surprise that the Jim Crow era also saw a much more rapid adoption of taxes on certain weapons in the South.

Some of these were barely veiled at all. An 1867 Mississippi law assessed a tax of between five dollars and fifteen dollars on “every gun and pistol,” and if the tax was not paid, the Sheriff was obligated to seize that gun. This seems to be a very close NFA analogue, given it applied to all guns, and the tax was considerable, ranging from $108 to $325 per gun in today’s dollars. The trouble is, the law only applied in Washington County, Mississippi, and not the whole state. According to the 1860 census, Washington County was made up of 92% enslaved people, and even to this day is still over 70% African American. So this law was not some general tax on guns, it was a racist effort to price freedmen out of firearms ownership.

The last large category of taxes related to weapons and arms in the latter parts of the Nineteenth Century are occupational taxes on dealers. These were not assessed on a per-gun basis and are not similar to the NFA’s scheme. For example, an 1885 Kentucky law imposed a tax of fifty dollars on dealers of pistols and bowie knives.

To be sure, some historical taxes existed which arguably may lend support to the practice of including firearms in universally applicable taxes. An 1874 Virginia law included all firearms and other weapons in its listing of taxable personal property, but this was part of a broader tax that encompassed all sorts of personal property including horses, cattle, carriages, books, tools, watches, kitchen furniture, and much more. The tax was 50 cents per every hundred dollars in total value of all this personal property. This is somewhat similar to modern sales taxes, which apply to all goods sold and do not single out firearms for special taxation.

4. Conclusion: Taxes on Common Firearms have no Historical Support and are thus Unconstitutional

While the above was certainly not a comprehensive listing of every historical tax on weapons and arms, it did provide a representative sample of the sorts of pre-1900 laws that existed imposing such taxes. Given Rahimi asks us to look for the “principles that underpin the Nation’s regulatory tradition,” 602 U.S. at 692, there is not much that can be concluded from these laws given the numerous deficiencies they suffer from. They are not a national tradition, but rather a regional one existing primarily in Southern states. They did not usually apply to the prevailing combat arms of the time, but rather to concealable weapons like bowie knives and pocket pistols. And most reprehensibly, they sometimes existed as part of Jim Crow efforts to suppress newly-free Black Americans.

In sum then, while the NFA’s registration provisions are illegal and unconstitutional, we should not ignore that its taxation provisions are historically baseless and violative of the Second Amendment in their own right. The same applies to modern-day federal and state excise taxes, which can likewise point to no distinctly similar historical laws to support their continued existence.

Note: This work is made possible by the Second Amendment Foundation. If you enjoy this article consider becoming a member or donating! Follow us at @2afdn.

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About Kostas Moros

Kostas Moros is the Director of Legal Research and Education at the Second Amendment Foundation(SAF). You can find him on X @MorosKostas.

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