Slashdot Mirror
Smart Gun with Minicam and Biometric Access
StrawberryFrog writes "Ya well no fine, those crazy South Africans are at it again, this time with a "intelligent firearm". You may have heard of guns with fingerprint recognition before, but this also uses a laser to ignite the propellant, has multiple barrels and incorporates a minicam to record as evidence what you are shooting at. It's a very different gun design, and one that depends on electronics to make it work."
Red LED display of number of rounds left. (Preferably facing the user when held, so no-one else can see it).
graspee
Hopefully much less than 15 seconds to shoot ten rounds. But what are you after? A slashdot-like time delay between shots?
You do understand that guns are still legal in the US, right? Despite the misguided efforts of those who can't read...
If you want to do something illegal, you probably won't use this type of gun in the first place, you'll use the regular old kind. But imagine that you are a cop accused of shooting someone irresponsibly. Having picture evidence of exactly what they were doing when you shot them could be quite useful to you.
If I run out of memory, does the gun lock up?
Why would it lock up? Obviously it wouldn't be able to store any more data without first deleting something else, but it would be up to the manufacturer to decide what it should do. My guess is that they would delete the oldest photo to make room for the new one.
These guns aren't designed to be criminal-proof, they are designed to be accident-proof, theft-proof, and self-documenting. As the article says, they are designed to be used by government officials and the military, not necessarily by Joe Civilian.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It doesn't hamper legitimate uses while making illegitimate ones more difficult to execute and get away with.
This is horrid for legitimate use. You no longer have a cheap detachable magazine, you've got to remove your whole barrel assembly to reload. That's not cost effective. You can't reaload it yourself, and you can't purchase amoo in bulk. When I take a 9mm out to the range for training I'll typically blow through 100 to 150 rounds. I'd need 10 to 15 barrel assemblies to do this. That's not good. Also, remember that whenever you change the tiniest thing about your firearm you will throw off the impact point. In the case of this firearm -every- round goes through a different barrel, meaning each shot will have a slightly different path.
This alone doesn't promote responsible use. If you can't predict where your round will land you shouldn't be taking any shots. If you can't actually use the firearm for training it's entirely useless for a civilian.