Gunpundit notes that there are a lot of options for those intent to cause harm on a large scale, many of which are far more deadly than guns. Joe Huffman has had issues recently with this, and one from today is right around the corner from me here.
Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but I have no plans to contact authorities, because I don’t trust them to deal with the matter with any discretion. Could be, and likely is, a curious kid. I could see myself googling similarly with no ill intent when I was in high school. But in our zero tolerance world, I don’t trust the authorities and school officials to rationally investigate the matter. I do not wish to be responsible for some family’s broken door, and ransacked house, and, quite likely an expulsion from school.
It’s a double edged sword. I fully recognize your concerns. There is also the not wanting to know you could have done something to prevent “The next Columbine” and didn’t.
I used to go through my logs very frequently and had a criteria for notification of authorities that would partially filter out the “just curious” from the specific threat to people or property. I got tired of it because there almost never was even an acknowledgment from the authorities. I finally decided that, for the most part, if they don’t care then neither do I.
I look stuff up like that a lot. It’s not that I want to ever make anything, but I get curious when I see news reports that say so-and-so was making something in their garage. Just recently they busted some college student with a DMT (some kind of psychedelic) drug lab and said it was really dangerous.
Well, I’ll probably spend some time tomorrow evening or maybe this weekend trying to figure out what goes into a DMT lab because I’d like to know just how much of a danger they really present to the neighborhood.
The single best source for any thing like that you may seek is generally the US Patent’s Office Online Database.
Bombs, grenades, suppressors, MGs, no problem, it’s all there.
Unless you’ve got a specific reason to think that the searcher in question is really a threat or plans to do a dastardly deed with the info, I don’t think there’s much you really can or should do about it.
Some random guy looking for ‘molotov cocktail’ or ‘full auto conversion kits’ MIGHT be a threat, but odds are a million to one against it being anything serious and ten million to one against actually being able to track him down and prove anything.
My other site gets all sorts of searches for all sorts of stuff. Sure, I hope no one uses any info on bomb vests or sniper scopes or nuclear reactors to hurt any innocent people, but the info I post isn’t particularly informative, anyway. It’s all available elsewhere.
Of course, if some commenter is leaving all sorts of nasty, hate-filled, threatening comments and you see that he is gathering info for bad stuff, that’s a bit different and might warrant some attention.