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Hardware That Recognizes You
Amit Upadhyay writes "Gizmodo is reporting about extra funding for smart guns at NJIT. Few have qualms about it, mostly on the line of: would optical sensor for finger prints work when the hand is soaked with blood? Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency? But if we remove speculative emergency situations, the technology seems to be interesting. While checking out Fingkey Hamster what struck me was, this is one passkey I will not mind publishing on my webpage, and it can't be cracked, unless hardware tampering takes place. Kind of thing that you can put in all the car ignitions and lockers where password entry using keyboard can become too obtrusive."
Given that nothing is unbreakable/unhackable/unspoofable, the real danger is putting into widespread use something that people believe to be unbreakable/unhackable/unspoofable. When you go to court because your gun was used in a shooting, everyone will "know" that you did it, since "no one else can fire the gun." Except we all know that no system is perfect, and someone else could have.
Just as bad is the case of identity theft; the more that biometrics become used to verify identity, the more vulnerable you are to having your identity easily stolen. After all, it's perfectly reliable, so there don't need to be any other checks. The fingerprint/retina scan/brainwave pattern says the person is you, therefore s/he is. Even worse, once your identity has been suborned in this fashion, you can't get it back, since you can't change it.
You can potentially address this by adding something like a PIN or password into the system, but that loses both the supposed benefits of the biometric identification and simply shifts the burden of security back where it's always been: remembering a unique piece of information that no one else has.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Where's the soviet russia joke? I know some troll wants to post one!
hardware reocgnizes YO--oh, crap
On another note, Trollaxor has returned to Slashdot and has posted sdem's interview with him.
Prisonner in a car, he's taken to Dr Evil's secret base.
He escapes by entering the secret ******** passphrase.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"But if we remove speculative emergency situations, the technology seems to be interesting."
And as we all know, guns are never used in emergencies...
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
This desire is only coming from those that believe American violence is caused by inherently evil objects: namely guns. This will do NOTHING to stop gun violence, but will make it less likely that a person could use these objects to defend themselves.
...nah, I can't bring myself to do it!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You don't get thrown out into the cold night. At least not all of you.
So lets say that the police force is equipped with this.
Now, what if you and your partner is fighting a bad guy. Your partner gets gunned down and you are out of bullets and reach for his gun to return fire.
You don't want to spend time having to get his magazine out and put it in your gun. You want to reach down and use it.
So, ideally, all police guns should be able to recognize all officers in the same precinct or something like that.
Is that feasible with todays technology?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
...in Soviet Russia hardware recognizes you. Oh wait, nevermind.
Modders better put their flame retardant suit on for this thread beca... FOR THE MOTHER LAND!
In Soviet Russia, this joke will be WAY too overused for this article.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
The specs on this things say it support "various OS"...what is various by only M$ OS'? That's pretty lame...
So, you wouldn't mind putting an image of your fingerprint on a webpage, where it can be downloaded and printed in gelatin, and then used to unlock all of your devices forever, thus excluding you from ever using fingerprint based security?
Which, as another poster suggested, raises the great problem with a lot of biometric security - as soon as it's defeated - someone taking a gelatin mold of your fingerprint, someone making a nice glass replica of your eye (for example), you're doomed - EVERYTHING you access then becomes invalid. Sure, you can just use your remaining eye, or fingers, but those are a finite resource .. it's like putting all your eyes in one squishy basket
I have always thought that a large-scale fingerprinting implementation would be helpful for a lot of things -- just think about never having to carry a wallet again -- rather, you would simply scan your fingerprint for whatever business you were involved in (making a purchase, showing proof of ID, etc.). A system like that would be convenient, but it's also really centralized, so there would definately be a "big brother" out there watching us.
As far as security goes, I would risk saying that is is much harder to dabble in fingerprinting than other forms of identity theft. If credit cards could be swiped and then authenticated with a fingerprint scan, I think we would have much less trouble with theft in that area as the technology to duplicate fingerprints doesn't seem to be widely available (how many people do you know who can do it?).
Anyhow, that's just my two pennies. Just hope that someone doesn't cut off your fingertips at night!
Two freaks, no foes. It takes absolutely nothing to make some people angry.
Another interesting option for firearms is a ring lock. It uses a magnetic ring to unlock the firearm, which keeps the weapon from being taken during a struggle and used against the owner. Since the decline in popularity in magnetic media, unpleasant side effects of wearing a magnetic ring seem to be less of an issue.
Sounds like a great idea for cops, though.
Well, we need fuckable hooker robots, too, but, hey, they're just around the corner.
Or they would be if the techno-wizzes of the world would stop mucking about with tablet computers and first-person shooter game engines, and deliver to the world what it really wants.
--- Ban humanity.
A few years ago, a prototype of a smart holster was shown -- it wouldn't let you draw the gun from it unless it recognized your fingerprints. Although this wasn't perfect, it seemed very promising, and it seems like an idea that many people would find more acceptable than smart guns.
s _151_25/ai_70380673
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/i
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Smart holsters could provide practically all of the same benefits without all the associated fear.
What if this is combined with RFID tags under a persons skin so that only 'authorized' people may use guns? If the people wish to revolt, a government could just send out a signal to take away any non-military personell's authorization to use guns and stop them in their tracks.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
My (patented) self-cloning kit (instructions below) will break this security system in no time. In fact, I suspect MS are already flagging it on their all-new security alert system.
-----------
Self-cloning Instructions (Pat. pending)
Go fuck yourself.
Did he inhale?
In muslim iraq, redneck invades YOU
And you fell victim to your own calling... But so did I. Seriously though, why do the editors even tempt with a headline like that?
This assumes that you will never need to use your weapon while wearing gloves...
Thanks, but no thanks...
The temptation is big: current technology will soon allow us to do any ID recognition by biometrics data with very cheap methods. This special application is just one of many examples where applying this technology would make sense.
The thing I dislike about any biometrics solutions is that in order for them to work, they need a method of identifying you as a person, Being that fingerprint, iris recognition or facial properties.
Thus every access to biometrically controlled systems allow a unique connection between your ID data and your person. This may be wanted in many situations, but with biometrics there just is no alternative to anonymity anymore.
The widespread use of biometrics will inevitably lead to the "transparent citizen" as the option of anonymity will just fade away with the disappearance of alternative identification methods.
Judge Dred, the movie. Where the guns strapped each bullet that was fired with the owners DNA and nobody except the owner could use the gun. Fiction becoming a reality.
Given that this is for smart guns, I'm a little concerned with what appears to be the suggestion that emergency situations are rare and not worth much consideration. With the exception of practice on the firing range, all situations a handgun is being used are emergency situations. As such, something like the technology not working if the users hand has blood (or grease or dirt...) on it is a show-stopper.
Looking at the Fingkey Hamster website, I see that it supports "Various OS and USB interfaces." Interesting! Must work on lots of different platforms, then... Where's the list? Oh... I see. They meant lots of Windows operating systems; Win 95, 98, NT4.0, 2000, ME, and XP. And it supports USB 1.0 and 1.1. Well, that's a wide variety....
Now then, what is this good for? Oh... "PC-infra security applications." PC-infra? What the heck is that? I would assume, based on the word-roots, that they mean security on one PC, but where did they come up with the word?
Between those, and the name ("Fingkey Hamster"?! Are you serious?), I have to wonder if these people are legit. They CERTAINLY don't have a native English (or even American English -- yes, they are different) speaker writing their text, but did they have to get someone who didn't know the language?
I will _never_ buy one of these weapons. Also I will not support the company that makes these weapons.
Just as I fight as hard as one person can for my electronic freedoms and my freedom to own a general purpose non-DRM'ed computer. I will fight extra hard to make sure I can still defend myself without having to prove to some device I am who I say I am.
Just as DRM is a cancer on computing rights, these kinds of measures are a cancer on our guns rights.
Remember, DRM and gun laws (read "safer gun") is about their control and their profit. Neither of which benefit you and me.
Cheers!
--habit
It's a little extreme but it could happen. I think I'll stick to passwords. That way, If i don't want to talk, I don't have to.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Such as yourself?
:-)
Why does the name "Brian" come to my mind?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Electronics just aren't reliable enough to trust, particularly fancy finger-print-reading or AI-grip-recognizing electronics.
Technological fixes to social problems are usually bad ideas, and I think that this is a great example of that.
See what I've been reading.
Repeat after me: Gun violence is not a technology problem, it is a social problem.
Besides, its not like someone won't come up with an "override glove" or something...
Is it not enough that LEO's put their life on the line every day? Now they want to chip them like the family dog?
I think the best way to go about the gun security idea is a combination of biometrics and RFID chips. Why not insert a small RFID chip into an officers hand for the gun to read? could be used in combination with biometrics, where any positive reading activates the gun...
just a thought
No way! SCO had the patent on tinfoil hats way before 1991.
For years I've heard stories about how New Jersey is trying to clean up its image as a mob run, violent state and here's the New Jersey Institute of Technology working at improving hand gun technology?
My first thought on seeing this news item is that I didn't even know there was a New Jersey Institute of Technology, but if anybody would be doing research into hand guns, this would be the outfit. It just seems like an easy topic for a Leno/Letterman monolog ("Why did they choose the New Jersey Institute of Technology for designing the gun? Because of the opportunities for real world testing! Because shipping costs would be so low!").
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
No serious gun owner would want this. No police officer would ever use this. When you need your gun to fire, it has to work. There's no room for error.
A lot of serious gun owners won't even use handguns with a safety. Because if the safety is on in the fraction of a second you it to work, you're dead.
Hey, for all of us who have seen the "6th day", you know that this type of security can be easily breached.
:)
Route 1. Blow off the fingers of the person you wish to impersonate, and take their fingers with you.
Route 2. Create a clone of the person you wish to impersonate, and take that person with you.
http://www.opine-it.com Do you Opine?
The following wizard will assist you:
:-}
1) Enter BPA (Bullet Product Activatin) code.
2) Verify that this person is really an intruder.
3) Aim weapon.
4) Pull trigger.
Did gun fire? Yes/No
No.
5) Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete while depressing trigger.
6) Did gun fire? Yes/No
No.
7) Are you still alive? Yes/No
This is probably why Smith & Wesson and Microsoft shouldn't merge.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
If you wanted to use smeone's gun, you'd have to now in advance both that you would need to use their gun, and what their fingerprint looked like.
for most cases where you'd have access and desire to use a firearm that was not yours, you most likely would nothave had the chance to prepare a jello mold of the owner's fingerprint in advance.
paintball
As fingerprinting becomes more widespread, the incentives for duplicating fingerprints grows.
At the moment there's very little demand for fingerprint duplication, but when demand rises, supply will follow very, very quickly, especially as the technology to do this is already known.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
depends. Is the shooter sitting on the victim's chest with the muzzle screwed into the poor bastard's ear?
bit of slippery gel on the fingers while the victim struggles and begs might mean the difference between hitting the brain stem or just blowing the entire motor cortex out of his head.
same difference.
what is various by only M$ OS'?
Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 95b, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, Microsoft Windows CE, Microsoft Windows NT 4, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Embedded...
Because they know that there are people out there who still find that kind of thing funny.
My other processor is big-endian.
...that the article title sounds suspiciously like an "in Soviet Russia" joke? ;P
I mean, come on... this article is a natural for the whole "in Soviet Russia" line of humor.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
But emergency situations are the whole reason for owning a firearm. Any sort of glitch preventing you from firing your gun under those circumstances is not an annoyance -- it's a death sentence.
Otherwise
Case A: You're adding a known broken authentication method to a system that already has good authentication. What are you gaining?
Case B: You're adding a known broken authentication method to a system that depends upon a different known broken authentication system. What do you get from having two broken systems instead of one? Why not focus on fixing one or the other?
I worked on with the Smart Gun guys the first year the project started when I was a student at NJIT. They don't have their shit together. We just bought some computers and setup IKEA furniture. After a year of doing nothing but wasting money. They got some pressure from the funding parties so they hired some coders from Russia. They had all these failed attempts with these flimsy sensor and some sort metric they were trying to get with different user grabbing a gun wearing a data glove. It's just not feasable to have a computer do owner identification that quickly and still fit on the gun. This is huge waste of tax money. Instead of properly researching it, they just threw a bunch of money at the problem.
It's as bad as television.
/. story submission comes with a complimentary advert in the last paragraph.
Coming soon: Every
I saw 'smart guns' and 'NJIT' and all I could think of was this.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
First off (for the rare individuals that didn't read the article) this approach DOES involve planting an RFID chip in the shooter. I somehow think this won't fly with most gun owners! (It also doesn't address shooting with the "off" hand.)
Secondly, the above quote incorrectly implies that the "smart gun" won't need a battery. It will need one, both to detect the RFID tag and to mechanically inhibit firing the gun.
It's bad technology. Guns should be as simple as possible, for reliability. Laser sights are bad enough - and not widely used for many reasons, dead batteries among them.
They do look cool in movies though... ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
"...if anybody would be doing research into hand guns, this would be the outfit."
You don't know the half of it. NJIT is located in Newark, NJ. (It used to be called Newark College of Engineering.)
I read Slashdot for the
This is truly one of the stupidest applications of technology. Are you going to trust your life, which in a threat situation is about two seconds, to bleeding edge technology with firmware quite possibly written by Microsoft? And what do you do when you discover in an emergency that the firmware has bugs? Example: I have a Nokia cellphone. The unit CLEARLY has bugs. Several times I've answered the phone and the vibrator keeps vibrating. Several times I've answered the phone and the caller's voice comes out the microphone instead of the earpiece. A LOT of times the damn keyguard activates right in the middle of a call and hangs up the phone. But the truly twisted thing about this technology is that in the People's Republic of New Jersey, as soon as one of these guns is released as a commercial product, ALL other guns are declared illegal. But only for the law-abiding citizen. Criminals don't give a damn and will happily 'acquire' all the old-school weapons.
Hey, if some day biometrics were everything, without your hands, you would not be able to get money, to eat, or even to have sex (think of biometrics-supported relation-ship "your today's fingerprint is not like yesterday John, I don't recognize you...").
"Your gun has a general fault error. Please scan the disk for errors, and reinstall win-DOH!"
*BANG* the policeman is dead.
It gives a new meaning to the "blue screen of death".
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
No police officer would ever use this.
Several years ago I read that in in 30% of the cases when cops are shot they are shot with their own guns. I don't remember the exact source (some newspaper, may be New York Times) and the data was probably for the New York City only.
The point is that being shot with your own weapon is a real danger for a cop. So it may as well be that police, after initial mistrust and resistance, will consider adopting this (or a competing) technology.
I notice in the Wired link that Metal Storm is involved. What have these guys ever done besides get some kinds of IP rights to a fancy, electronically controlled version of the roman candle and then parlay that into lots and lots of publicity? Has Metal Storm ever gotten anything new or revolutionary into production and then into reasonably widespread deployment?
I always get an involuntary whiff of snake oil when these guys are mentioned. I'd like to be proven wrong. I'm open to it. Anybody?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
These things are actually dimly sentient, and cantankerous to boot. I swear they know when you're under pressure from an immoveable deadline. That's when they chose to break down/clog heads/eat your last sheets of glossy presentation material at 5am / have the driver b0rk...
It's the reason we call them plotters
Guns don't kill people, people *with* guns kill people
...
Maybe so but they make people pretty damned effective at it. As for the other choices, well, they are pretty poor
* People with knives kill people
Only at a very close distance
* People with bows kill people
Unlikely since you'd need some skill and practice and if you miss the first time, it's going to take a while to reload.
* People with fists kill people
Again, only at very close range (unless you happen to be a zombie and can throw your hand quite a distance)
* People with baseball bats kill people
Hmmm... bit hard to conceal... But maybe you have a sawn-off baseball bat?
* People with plastic bags kill people
Jeez! I'll be careful when packing my groceries then.
* People with rocks and pointy sticks kill people
You forgot to mention people attacking you armed with a pineapple!
This is perhaps redundant... but... No one who carries a gun for self defense is going to be interested in this. Put it on your fast-access gun safe, sure, with some kind of battery-less backup system, but no one would want this on a gun. First, it makes things more expensive. If you're going to make a gun more expensive, it damn sure better be doing some amazing stuff for me. Second, electronics break. Slashdot made a huge stink about electronic voting and how uneasy it made them because electronics do weird things. I don't want my concealed carry piece to blue-screen when I need it. Reliability is of such extreme importance... Glocks have an unsupported chamber, which makes it more reliable at feeding ammo, but hand-loads have the potential of causing the entire gun to destroy itself due to that chamber design. People are willing to make the sacrifice of not using handloads (Or being REALLY damn careful with them.) just for reliability. When you buy anything new for your gun, magazines, get it refinished, switch ammo... you're supposed to put AT LEAST 100 rounds through it to make sure the thing is still reliable. Self defense ammo costs like $20 for 20. We take reliability seriously. Very seriously. The third thing... Batteries! People are leery of wireless headphones and having to change the batteries, but not of a firearm (Which your life may very well depend on) that requires batteries? Maybe I'll just leave it plugged in on AC backup. Fourth... Ruggedness. Firearms are mechanically simple devices. You can completely disassemble them down to their bare parts without being a gun smith or electrical engineer, and you can clean them by throwing them into a big 5 gallon bucket of solvent (Dunkit) which probably wouldn't treat a "biometric" device very well at all. Fifth. Versatility. You may be required to use your right hand or your left hand to fire your gun. The device would have to handle that. In my family of 7, I would want anyone in my family to be able to use it, as well as my friends that I live with. Can the device handle all of that and STILL not be a clunky, unreliable, sensitive, battery-hog addon?
Biometrics are great for gun safes. People LOVE the fingerprint access safes. They plug into the wall and run on a rechargeable lead-acid battery. In case the thumbprint doesn't work, there's the good old fashioned quick-access combo keypad. Apply it to those things, sure, but keep it the heck off my XD.
Also, with this technology you can wear this wonderful healing magnetic bracelet and everyone will just think that you're a normal gun nut rather than a TV-promo bying weirdo!
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Bah! It's not like the invention of airbags led to them being required on all... new vehicles... Well, shit. *wry grin* I'm one of those people who's going to be buying his cars only before a certain year of manufacture. I've seen few cases where airbags helped and too many where people have to spend $800+ to replace an airbag after getting rear-ended so gently that there's not even a crease on the fender. Similarly, I think these "smart guns" will just cause more problems than they solve.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If you have a gun at home and don't want your kids to ever use it, that tech might be good.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
In Russia, you recognize hardware!
Oh wait, that's not funny at all.
-Styopa
Few have qualms about it
This is SO , SO WRONG. Cops do not look kindly at this technology. They want brain->finger->trigger->boom. Any attempts to mess that up or add things to it are met with great distaste.
When a cop pulls a gun to shoot a bad guy, it's to save their or a victim's life. They don't want any chance of that getting fucked up.
Here are some scenarios:
You chip a cop's shooting hand/arm. That arm is disabled in a gun fight. He has to shoot with his weak hand. Oh whoops, can't authenticate to my gun!
Ok, so we'll increase the range of the chip/gun transmissions to 2 feet or so. Now the gun is virtually authenticated all the time. The bad guy can even use the gun to kill the officer, as long as he's within range.
Ok, so we'll chip both arms/hands of the officer. Same deal as the above paragraph. The bad guy has disarmed the cop and has the gun pointed at the cop's head. The cop can't reach out and try to grab the guy's hand, or he'll authenticate the gun and boom!
Fingerprint scanners? You try firing a gun under stress and see how well that works.
It's just a bad idea to muck with such a time sensitive process. You're talking milliseconds, and human thinking isn't good when dealing with milliseconds. We rely on reflex and instinct.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
How about working towards fixing American society so less people feel the need to carry weapons for self defence in the first place?
No wonder the US has so many issues, when they solve all their problems through violence, both domestically and internationally.
Hello, United States, it's the rest of the 1st world here. Grow up please! We did 100 years ago.
The last thing I wanted to be is tagged like cattle.
The ironic thing about finger print verification systems is that you can simply breathe on them and they will recognize the last used fingerprint. As long as the last person who placed their hand there was verified, you're in! Yes, it's been proven to work, or rather, proven to make these systems not work. The last verified print is not smudged with previos ones because otherwise there wasn't verification. So on that technology, forget it.
[Please sign here]
a smart gun like this is probably the only way i could convince my wife to keep one in the house. no chip, no dead children.
....and everything will be peaceful. People will have nothing to steal from you. You will not need to protect anything. Denounce money, sex, wants, needs, happy hour, speeding, fast cars, drugs, rock and roll, flan....etc..etc....
Your life will be simpler. No more lugging that laptop bag around after work, or hanging the multitude of gadgets on your belt. Simple, Simple, Simple....er simplicity.
There will be no need for guns, no need for biometric technology.
Be like water, and go with the flow...if someone invades your peaceful existance...move out of the way....just like water.
Yes! We can then eventually use this technology for rocognizing everyone, particularly for financial transactions (buying and selling). Just think how hard it would be to give bribes or conduct illicit trade.
I, for one, welcome our new antichrist overlord(s).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Only at a very close distance
Hmm. Your house must be a LOT bigger than mine.
* People with bows kill people
Unlikely since you'd need some skill and practice and if you miss the first time, it's going to take a while to reload.
Yes, bows take some skill and practice. But, I can fire my bow almost as fast as my pistol. And, when firing more than 7 shots, the bow averages at least as fast.
* People with fists kill people
Again, only at very close range (unless you happen to be a zombie and can throw your hand quite a distance)
Once more, your house must be a whole lot bigger than mine.
* People with baseball bats kill people
Hmmm... bit hard to conceal... But maybe you have a sawn-off baseball bat?
You do realize that the vast majority of violent crimes are commited with melee weapons, don't you? Most violent crimes are acts of rage. Rage tends to be up-close and personal. And, gun-grabbers usually cite home-intrusion and domestic violence as the cases where a gun puts you at greater risk. Seems to me that both of these occur in relatively tight spaces.
But then, the fairly small spaces involved is why I usually reach for a sword, not a firearm when I hear a noise in the night. I know I am as deadly with the blade, and if I run-through an intruder, my attorney can play up my self-restraint in not using the readily available firearms.
Guns don't kill people, people *with* guns kill people
Maybe so but they make people pretty damned effective at it. As for the other choices, well, they are pretty poor
Take a look at the statistics for assault in great britain. Guns simply shift power. Instead of the biggest, strongest, most aggressive, longest armed person, survival goes to the fastest, most accurate, most cool-headed person.
As to your other points, knives are often the choice of a professional killer because they are quiet, concealable, and frightening. Bows can be fired bloody fast and guns require just as much skill to hit anything. Fists and bricks and chairs and everything else can be used to kill people, and often are. Why don't you look to why people are killing each other rather than what they are using?
California recently banned .50 caliber breech loading rifles. These rifles are very high power, long range, and effective. This will stop exactly zero crimes. Why? Because this type of gun has never been used in a violent crime in the U.S. The only crime it has been used in was vandalism (shooting signs). The reason for this is simple, people who own guns costing more than a thousand dollars, don't generally commit violent crimes. That is because violent crime is usually committed out of desperation by poor, angry, young people (usually men). I'm not stereotyping, those are the recorded statistics. Passing more laws that say people can't use things/have things/do things that enable them to break other laws don't work. If they are already desperate enough to break the law, they won't care if they are breaking two or three or four laws. That is just paperwork on how long the police can lock them up. These laws do, however, take rights away from non-criminals, important rights, like the ability to defend oneself.
I wonder if pressing escape when prompted for a fingerprint...
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Yeah, the statistics you're quoting are true.
Of course, you're Ballmer-esquely neglecting to mention that in areas where legal gun ownership is common, overall crime rates are vastly reduced. Gun crime rates fall proportionately.
Basically, there is some small percent of all crime where the perpetrator intends it to be violent no matter what. These cases are rare compared to most crimes, but when you lower the crime rate the noise comes out.
It's like saying, "Waving a blunt metal pole about make it far more likely for you to be struck by lightning." Sure, I guess it's true, but if you live in a place with infrequent thunderstorms it doesn't mean much.
Context, please.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Somewhat fascitiously, I can't help but think of the movie: why do we have to learn how to use knives? Because the enemy cannot shoot you if you remove his finger.
I disagree. Survival in a gunfight will not depend on cool headedness any more than survival in a fist-fight will. Clear thinking will always help you, but in both cases, survival depends upon your willingness to do damage to another human being. You may not be as willing as you think. Guns or no, most of the time the victory will go to the person more willing to kill or injure, assuming neither side runs away. Will that be you walking home from the pub, or the mugger who jumps you?
I
IIRC, a few years ago New Jersey passed a law saying that as soon as there was a viable technology that would prevent unauthorized users from shooting guns ALL guns sold from that point on in NJ must be so equiped. I'd guess that's why they're working on this tech in New Jersey.
I think the whole idea is dumb. My guns are in one of three places:
On my person
In my safes
On the nightstand (at night)
That's it. Very little chance of one of my guns ever getting into some unauthorized person's hands.
"But,but,but...you have a greater chance of getting killed with your own gun."
Yes, because you're around your own guns more. Just like you have a greater risk of getting cut with a knife that you own, or being hurt around your house, or getting into a car accident in your own car. Because you're around all that stuff more you're more likely to be injured with/around them.
"Thinking makes my head hurt! But what about officer's! They need this to be safe!"
What happens when Officer A needs to use Officer B's gun, maybe because his is jammed, inopperative, or lost?
"Well, each department could just use one sensor for all their guns"
Ok, but what about when State Trooper A needs to use Local Deputy A's gun? Or when Local Cop B needs to use FBI Agent C's pistol?
Or, what happens if Concerned Citizen A needs to use dead Officer B's gun to save her life? Farfetched? Perhaps, but situations like those do happen, and must be planned for.
-gandalf23@work
It's also usually easier to track ownership records for fairly rare weapons.
Actually, the best application for something like this that I can think of would be in case of where you would like to keep a handgun in your house for protection, but are weary that your child might be able to crack the case, or find the key or something else like that. I think of my brother in this case. He lives in a horrible neighborhood and has had intruders come in his front door at night while the family was sleeping, but he's afraid that keeping a handgun in the house is just not worth the risk with his 9 year old son around. Sure you can lock it away in a combobox safe, but that might make it inaccessible enough that it wont be ready for use in the case of an emergency.
;-)
However, it might be kinda difficult to strike fear into the hearts of the wiked with all those little pink dots on the handle.
Consider your options in such a situation.
1. Defend yourself (or attempt to)
2. Flee (or attempt to)
3. Do nothing
In the first scenareo, hopefully if you are brave/stupid enough to go after someone that has broken into your home, you will have several things under your belt. Training, a moderate amount of skill with your chosen weapon. One thing you will have an advantage of is foreknowledge of the battleground (your house). The drawback is the person in your house may not be a burgler (mistakenly entered the wrong house, family member not expected home) and that you place yourself in danger. If you are incapable of moving silently through your house, or are inept enough to present more of a target than a burgler does, then this option is not for you. In order to truely defend yourself, possession of a gun alone will not do it. Possession of a gun, training, and an intent to defend yourself usually is.
The second option still relies on your ability to move silently through the house. If the intruder in your home hears you, or your children, in order to gain the time necessary to make their escape safely, they will need to subdue you in some fashion. Generally, this does not involve killing, but there is no guarontee. It also depends on a valid escape plan, potentially similar to your fire escape routes (second floor units or ranch style homes would seek direct window access out rather than through the fire in the main portion of the house, where the burgler would be). Note here: YOU ARE STILL AT RISK. Detection can be fatal, and instead of seeking out the burgler, now he would seek you out.
The third option is a valid one. However, it assumes that the burgler is not aware of your presence (expects noone home) or is not aware that he has been detected (expects you to be asleep). It assumes also that the burgler will not seek out bedroom locations for jewelry (valuable and easy to sell items for large cash sums), where they are typically housed. Depending on what you think your odds are of remaining undetected and the mindset of the burgler, this may be a valid option, though presents as much risk overall as any other.
The risk of death and other dangers is already present when you have an intruder in your home. Only an assessment and assumptions about that intruder at that time can tell you which of the options poses the least risk. If you are unwilling to kill to defend yourself, that is when the first option (defense) is a far more lethal route for yourself and your family.
The Three Strikes laws have made this worse. If you, the criminal, know that the next time you get caught you're getting life in prison NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO then you're more inclined to not leave witnesses behind, since it can't add much to a life sentence.
The technology is not quite mature enough to be practical or reliable for many uses. Even worse, the novelty of the idea means the technology is applied inappropriately.
The article sumary makes this comment:
Kind of thing that you can put in all the car ignitions and lockers where password entry using keyboard can become too obtrusive.
These are exactly two places where present technololgy does NOT work well (or the stuff that works well is too expensive). The West Edmonton Mall is the worlds biggest, so as a convenience they have lockers for patrons to use as they shop. Additionally, there are lockers at the water park. The mall has recently started implementing biometrics for locker access, starting at the water park.
Let me tell, you that was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE and waste of money they could've done. I'd rather have kept the keypad and used the cost savings to lower rates (a small locker costs $6 for a day). In the water park, you get wet. The fingerprint readers to not work on wet fingers. You also get cold, and the surface of your fingers gets wrinkly and shrink slightly. This also makes the reader inoperative. Half the time, you have to dry off and warm your hands thoroughly under the air dryer before you can open your damn locker. It took me 10 minutes of trying.
Furthermore, the software is too primitive to allow multiple fingerprints to open a locker so if you share a locker to save money the person who opened the locker has to get everyone elses posessions. There is also the accessibility issue. I have a friend that has no hands due to birth defects. He could not use fingerprint biometrics and the reader is not designed to practically accommodate toe prints.
The idea of using fingerprints on car ignitions at this point is also ill-advised at this point. The technology is either too picky to reliably read the scan, or too forgiving that it allows false reads. I forsee being locked out of my car during inclement weather. In April my fingers will be too wet during rainstorms to work, and in the winter they will be too cold. I get -30 degree temperatures in January where I live. I do NOT want to have to take off my mitts and fiddle with a thumbprint lock until I get frostbite, so I'm gonna need a key to get in the car. I might as well use that key to start the car too.
It's the same thing with firearms and such. Even in non-emergency situations like hunting I'm sure the user doesn't want to futz around with some biometric safety lock scheme, and I'm even more sure they don't want to pay significantly more for the gun because of the added feature when a mechanical safety has sufficed until now. Also, the same problems apply--it could malfunction if our fingers are cold, wet or dirty which could likely happen.
Technology for technology's sake is just silly. If it doesn't make something work better or cost less without affectig usability then it shouldn't be used. I do NOT need electronics in my toaster, my coat keeps me warm just fine without being "smart" and I'm not so brain dead I cannot remember the combination to my locker. Just leave it all be please.
Huzzah! Naturally, this technology will be used to create a trapper keeper that recognizes my fingerprints. If anyone else tries to take it, their hands will be jabbed by metal spikes!
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
If you look at murders - and not at violent crimes in general - this is demonstrably not true at all. Here's the FBI uniform crime report for 2003. Of the 14,408 murders reported to the FBI for 2003, 9638 were committed by firearm. That's over two-thirds (66.89%). If as you say the vast majority of violent crimes occur with non-firearm weapons, then this clearly shows that guns make violent crimes much more deadly than they would be otherwise.
When you break it up by category, you notice some more things, and those may help to explain the divide between people who can't see banning guns and those who can't understand why they're legal. Almost all (97%) juvenille gang killings happen with guns - moreover, although I suppose people could kill someone with a stray shot if bows were being used, I've never heard of a complete bystander being killed by a stray punch. It's the deadly consequences to people not directly involved in a conflict - as well as the increase in lethality when guns are involved - that leads to the call to ban guns.
Look at the most popular types of weapon bans: "assault" weapons, usually defined in law by some sort of criteria that boils down to how easy it is to fire X bullets in Y seconds. In other words, no one* is trying to ban weapons that will stop Tony Soprano from taking out someone with a loose tongue. They're trying to stop the public health threat from large numbers of flying metal particles.
By and large, the public doesn't care about the gangbanger who was killed in a shootout with a rival gang - they care about the three-year-old who was killed in front of her sister when a stray bullet from that shootout flew into their kitchen. Saying "guns don't kill people; people kill people" ignores this issue - if people with guns only killed their intended targets, there'd be little political will for any kind of gun ban.
The "you can't ban my gun" folks need to realize that the driving force behind gun bans is not that people are afraid of direct attacks by armed criminals (if they were, you'd see people buying their own guns for self defense, not urging a gun ban), but that guns present a public health danger above and beyond any criminal intentions of the gun weilder.
* I mean that practically no elected politician is trying to implement such a ban, as it would be political suicide. I don't deny that there are probably ban-all-firearms activist groups somewhere.
I still prefer combination mechanical locks better, the Kryptonite U-lock problem aside.
Removing speculative emergency situations from consideration in setting up a system to control access to a tool most desperately needed in an emergency situation does not sound like a sound choice.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Life is more valuable than property. By a factor of infinity. There are no exceptions."
Your lawfully-gained property is one of the products of your life. For example, let's say a burglar is stealing your wife's $6,000 engagement ring. How much of your life did you spend earning the money for that ring? Maybe 300 hours? If someone came up to you on the sidewalk and tried to forceably inject you with a drug that you know would instantly shorten your lifespan by 300 hours, would you use a potentially lethal defense (like a gun) to stop that attack?Money is your irreplaceable life energy in a convenient, portable form. When someone steals your money, or something you bought with your money, they are stealing part of your life. I applaude your respect for human life, but don't you think that since people's property is bought with their lives, their right to defend their property should be given the same recognition as their right to defend their lives?
User Training for Busy Programmers
I love it!
"Money is your irreplaceable life energy in a convenient, portable form."
I will start using that.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I'd like to see a source for a statistic that crime rates are inversely proportional to gun ownership. I think you'll be hard pressed to find one.
Murder rates are almost directly proportional to gun ownership.
My argument stands. Gun safety is the critical element. Criminals can always get their hands on guns. But many, many accidents, spur of the moment homicides / suicides could be prevented with increased safety, care, and accountability.
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Can't be hacked?
Haven't you ever seen demolition man? Now instead of stealing your password or smartcard, they just need to cut off your thumb.
I think you may be confusing willful killing with responsive aggression. The article you linked to mostly discussed the former, but it is the latter that is prevalent in a mugging type situation. When attacked or threatened people usually respond with a fight/flight response. Adrenaline and a variety of other chemicals hit you hard along with the emotions of fear, excitement, and sometimes anger. Police officers train to fire after running a few miles and doing some very quick pushups, to simulate this shaky, high energy, adrenaline filled condition. Often it is all too easy for a person to react with violence in this situation, but without experience people react quickly, but crudely. It is not uncommon for persons to engage in a gunfight at distances less than ten yards, but for both parties to miss with every shot. This even applies to experienced marksmen. Remaining calm, obtaining cover when possible, and aiming are key factors in surviving such a situation.
Will that be you walking home from the pub, or the mugger who jumps you?
I've been in a few fights, and I know how I react. I've never had an qualms about going for the gusto and reacting quickly and with as much force as possible. Partly this is a matter of training and practice. On the other hand, I have great difficulty imagining myself in an army and shooting enemy soldiers across a field. I would balk at shooting people I did not know, because someone else told me to. If forced into such a situation, I might kill to defend myself, but I would most likely just desert. Wars are the ultimate stupidity. Despite what seems to be the popular sentiment in the U.S. today, I do not believe any war is justified. I imagine sixty years ago, when ethics and morality were fundamentals many soldiers would have felt the same way.
...no elected politician is trying to implement such a ban...
Since gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right, it would take a LOT of polititians to change that. Why was this gun owner protection enshrined in the constitution in the first place? Was it so ordinary people could feel secure against ordinary criminals, be able to go hunting or was it seen as a defense against a criminal government, like the British crown at the time?
If gun ownership is no longer needed or desireable then if the vast majority of the nation would agree to this, the constitution could be changed. Barring that, those who want to get rid of guns should just live with the fact that people have guns.
All theory is gray
So, you wouldn't mind putting an image of your fingerprint on a webpage, where it can be downloaded and printed in gelatin, and then used to unlock all of your devices forever, thus excluding you from ever using fingerprint based security?
In 1997 at least one one vendor's (I forget the name - sorry) thumbprint readers had the capability to detect/monitor/measure the following data points:
temperature
elasticity [of the skin]
blood pressure
pulse
humidity/dampness of the skin
gases like CO2 that pass out through the skin
The story about the guy with the gelatin has been blown very much out of proportion to its actual significance. Show me how you can defeat all - or even a few - of the aforementioned characteristics with gelatin.
I was at the National Information Systems Security Coonference (NISSC - now defunct) in Baltimore that year, and was looking a thumbprint reader for laptops; it was connected to a serial port. The item at the show worked only on the physical pattern of the traditional fingerprint. Playing devil's advocate with the surprisingly knowledgeable booth guy, I asked if their device would be defeated if someone were to appropriate my thumb and try to use it. After a lot of questions and answers, the end result was the list above. Enough checks were available even back then to prevent the use of anything other than the correct, live, functional thumb.
Just because various organizations choose to test/review or deploy the cheapest biometric devices does not mean that all biometric devices are useless.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
There's been one purely mechanical system that worked, where you wore a magnetized ring on your trigger finger to enable the gun. This became unpopular when floppy disks came in. All it was really good for was keeping kids from accidentally firing a gun, anyway.
Ahh, the difference between living in a city and not living in a city.... What is good for our urban areas is not necessarily good for all of us. Gangs are just not a serious problem where I come from, not at all. Furthermore, I know many a farmer who shoots prairie dogs so that they don't damage the irrigation systems. These people almost always have a .22 in their vehicles for just such problems. And by the way there is a bounty on the little critters in this particular county. So not only are the farmer's actions legal they are encouraged!
It seems to me that people who have lived in a city, especially a big city, all of their lives do not understand what rural America is like in the least. Don't be upset though, it's not you, it's your upbringing.
Go hug some trees.
Guns don't kill people, people *with* guns kill people ...
As long as there are people who are willing to kill you to take your possessions or to satisfy their sexual urges on you against your will, you need some effective means of defending yourself against them.
Please forgive me this off-topic post.
Two remarks
1) Probably your attacker is a criminal who can handle a gun better than you can. It he notices you are armed, he will shoot before you can.
2) The real trouble is that a gun makes it too easy to kill someone. Strangling people, or kicking them to death takes quite some effort. One good shot on the other hand can kill a person. That's one good shot at a murderer, but also one good shot of highschool kids gone crazy, one good shot of a guy in a fight with his neighbours...
And to answer you question: 'what would I do if I had to defend my children?'
Most of all: not have any firearms at home. Also: try to cooperate with any attackers. If I have to bow for someone else who is stronger and meaner, I will, if this saves my kids. Anyway I will not raise them in the spirit of 'the strongest is the smartest'.
Z
I think that this will help with the trafficking of stolen guns.
Can the gun be disabled by an em pulse or microwave interference?
If your life is more valuable than my property the solution is simple DON'T break into my house.
You come in here without knocking and you will die. People who wish me no harm knock at my door and are warmly greeted and INVITED in. Those who enter with a crow bar are warmly greeted with a .45 and will never here the shot that killed them.
If you want someone to care about your life then so some respect, and respect is earned not given.
You can add all the data poins you want... Chemical Analysis, DNA check, etc, but it doesn't mater.
It still makes a digital representation of that data and sends it down the wire.
Fake the digital signal, no need for you or your thumb.
my brother-in-law has a congenital disability - nothing resembling standard fingerprints.
...and retinal scans are even worse - there're a million different ways that human variation can exclude people from use of retinal scans (or make retinal scans painful/damaging/unpleasant).
... but the next step is implantation of RFID chips with cryptographic identity and security management...
there is a substantial portion of the population that have lost fingers/hands through misadventure.
I have, as a hobby, craftwork that often leaves my thumbs sliced and cracked and useless for biometrics - the security office in my (biometrics-access-controlled) building looked at me really strangely when I told them I wanted to use my ring finger (which I don't abuse nearly as thoroughly).
I don't have an underlying issue with biometrics as an identifier, but we need to have flexible, multi-modal systems that can readily accomodate the breadth of human variation.
2 - Never use a weapon unless you are prepared to kill.
This applies equally to a gun, a knife, or a club.
For your enlightenment, you do not draw a weapon at all unless someone is ALREADY in mortal jeopardy. If the situation IS serious enough for you to consider the use of deadly force, it is probable that it is serious enough that you will have to take action within a second or two. "Stop or I'll shoot" is for cops and TV shows; a private citizen in a legitimate deadly-force situation does not have to issue a warning -- you're not trying to arrest the agressor, you're trying to protect a life WHICH IS *ALREADY* IN EMINANT DANGER. If drawing and aiming isn't enough of a warning for them to get a clue and IMMEDIATELY back down, then you shoot to kill.
It should be noted that a weapon is never your first line of defense -- it's always an option of last resort. Your first line of defense is situational awareness: you pay attention to what's going on around you and identify potential threats, allowing you to avoid them if possible, and to give yourself that critical extra second or two of reaction time if you can't. If you've allowed yourself to be put in a situation where your only option is to use deadly force, you've already lost half the battle. To quote my old sensei, the only fight you truly win is the one you avoid. Unfortunatly you can't avoid every fight, so a wise man is prepared for that eventuality.
Owning a gun (or any weapon, for that matter) is a serious responsibility. If you don't want to (or can't handle) that responsibility, by all means do the world a favor and remain unarmed and rely on someone else to protect you. If you REALLY feel so strongly that guns are bad, I suggest putting a big sign on your front lawn that proudly proclaims "This is a Gun-Free Home".
As to your half-remembered statistics, look into the (flawed) methodology of the anti-gun "research". Every such study I know of has been discredited due to faulty methodology or fabricated data.
The simple fact is that most gun homicides are one criminal killing another criminal over some crime-related disagreement. The real statictic is that if you are an inner-city male involved in the drug trade (either as a customer or dealer), you are a lot more likely to get shot than someone who isn't.
Drug dealers tend to carry guns. Drug dealers also tend to shoot each other. Connect the dots. Who's at a greater risk of getting shot: an armed soccer mom or an unarmed drug dealer?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Ever heard of the Tueller Drill? Police training teaches that violent attacker armed with a knife and closer than 21 feet away can consitently reach, attack, and greivously injure a victim armed with a holstered gun before the victim will be able to draw their gun and fire.
Not only that, conflicts with knives are consistently more lethal than shootings.
Guns are not death-rays and it takes far more training, skill, and practice to use them effectively than you may realize.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
... you guessed it, in Soviet Russia!
:-)
Come on! That's funny right?
Trumped up.
Tell me, how many of these crimes were both:
1) Purposeful and with intent
2) Commited with a registered firearm being wielded by its rightful owner.
Are these crimes rising in direct proportion to the rate of increased gun sales?
And we have counter examples. Australia, for example, did not experience a significant drop in crime rates after they enacted their new civilian firearms policies.
For instance, people like to talk about how many "children" are killed by guns per (insert unit of time here) in America. Of course, they count "children" as anyone 18 and under. A great way to increase the count, since certain intersections of economic and age demographics are wayyyyy more likely to be involved in violent crime anyways.
If you're going to fight with statistics, please don't play around. Provide the full story instead of a tiny out-of-context slice. Anything less is deliberate deception on your part.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Remember the movie "Judge Dredd?" He was accused of murdering these people and convited because his gun said it was him even though his clone/bro or who ever it was did it. In the future this is exactly what could happen to us gun owners.
Also Biometrics/PIN#'s/Cods are a poor poor poor way to handle gun control. The way to go should be strict tests to confirm sanity, A look at a persons criminal record (ie: criminals who have commited a felony in the past can't own a gun until they go through lots of therapy and have a shrink sign a paper saying that they can handle a gun.), and they should have a one strike and your out rule. ie, if you commit a crime with a gun then you lose your right to own, carry and operate a gun.
Probably I would be able to deal. I've been fighting for over seven years. I know what it's like to hit someone, hard, and to be hit back hard as well. Being up close and personal is not a problem for me. Still, taking a life is nothing something I want to do, though I believe I am prepared to do so should I ever truly need to. I do not represent the majority of people though.
All of that said, I can attest to the truth in what you are saying as I have previously been an assistant martial arts instructor. This is what I've noticed when people begin training:
They are not calm under fire. They are not comfortable having someone in their face. They generally don't want to hit you back, or if they do, they don't want to hit you very hard. They almost always have a problem with close bodily contact.
Still these things can be trained so that people are comfortable with them, but it takes time, and even with training some people just don't have the "killer instinct" that others do. Mine is certainly not as strong as that of others.
Frankly the CA .50 ban was Terrorism fearmongering combined with the "lets ban things that look cool" factor (see also butterfly knives and automatic knives and the "Assault Weapons" Ban)
In some states you are right. In some states you are wrong because even if you can prove in court that person intended to kill you, you don't have the right to kill him. In others your home is considered your place of retreat, so you can "blow someones head off" for being in your house. In most states things are someplace in between.
Forget all that though. Few people can kill someone else. Psychologically people are not built to do it.
This could be a good way for parents who needs/wants to own gun to make sure that their child don't kill themselves.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
1) Who gives a crap.
2) Irrelevent.
Either greater gun safety can save lives or it can't. At least 1,500 people a year are killed in gun accidents. They're age, ethnicity, and location are entirely irrelevent. More gun safety is absolutely necessary. Less guns is not.
If you're going to fight with semantics, please don't play around. Provide some perspective instead of a tiny out-of-context slice. Anything less is deliberate ignorance on your part.
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Woot, the worst college in the US (and sadly the one I goto) gets a mention on slashdot. Atleast I could say that I got my degree from a college that was slashdotted ;)!!!
2 weeks ago a police officer got shot in the face a block behind my house, which is a block away from NJIT. Also, last week was hell week, which is gang initiation week. NJIT needs more guns!
- my userid is lower than yours
California (aka Peoples Democratic Republic of
California) is in the habit of banning tools
(eg. certain types of guns) based upon fantasy
(their violent movie industry) rather than either
reality, or more specifially statistics. If they
used statistics instead of getting so wrapped up
in their own (movie) propaganda, they would have
banned knives, baseball bats, and autos.
Not so very long ago, major rioting errupted
in the LA area. Law abiding citizens who had
not previously purchased any weapons immediately
saw some benefit in making the leap -- but CA
had already instituted a 2 week waiting period
on all firearms purchases. SOL. Instead, the
TV news crews showed LA county law officers
going out of their way to avoid any showdown
with the rioters. National Guard troops were
put on the streets, but they were not issued
any ammunition.
Lawsuits from across the country by victims of
violent crimes against their local governments
(or law enforcement agencies) for failure to
come to their aid have all been rejected by
the courts -- it turns out that law abiding
citizens have no right to expect the protection
of their law officers. That "thin blue line"
that keeps getting used in the press is pure BS.
Citizens can expect only to do their best to
protect themselves and their property, because
the law is not there for them. My best advice:
If you must, arm yourself. But make certain
that you become proficient with the weapon,
and make certain that you understand the legal
ramifications of the use of deadly force.
Personally, I would rather be tried by 12 (jury)
than be carried by 6 (pall bearers). Oh, and
because of our sue-happy civilization, don't
let the perpetrator live -- headshots count.
I would rather teach my children how to obey
the law, and have a healthy respect for guns
(including proficiency with the same), instead
of the BS of trigger locks (which leaves the
kids defenseless at home if alone), or worse
yet, these electronic "locks" that NJ is working
on.
"The story about the guy with the gelatin has been blown very much out of proportion to its actual significance. Show me how you can defeat all - or even a few - of the aforementioned characteristics with gelatin."
Why? Apparently most of the popular, commercially available, off the shelf hardware doesn't check for those as they WERE defeated. Remember this is now, not 1997.
Just because some vendor who was trying to sell you something spoon fed you exactly what you needed to hear doesn't mean it's true...neither do bullet points!
Before hacking:
User identified: x.
Action: [insert action here]
After hacking:
User identified: Bill Gates.
Action: DESTROY! DESTROY!
Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency?
Seeing as the most common gun related emergency most gun owners face is from their own weapon (shooting a family member, being shot by a family member, an intruder getting their weapon, accidentally shooting themselves, etc.) It strikes me as a small price to pay...
As a straigh cost vs. benefit analysis:
If over 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by any weapon come from your own weapon.
If less than 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by someone else's weapon and thus needed your weapon to defend yourself.
Even if your weapon doubles the less than 50% risk, if you remove the greater than 50% risk, you're safer.
Then again, if logic were the only consideration, the NRA wouldn't fight so hard against things like gun safes and trigger locks. The reason they do has far less to do with the intelligence of the argument and far more to do with refusing to set foot on a slippery slope.
Logically, if guns could only be fired by the biometrics of a licensed user, the average teenage gang member would be far less likely to be armed (yes, sophisticated criminals will always get around it) and the average home would remove its single greatest threat from weapons (its own).
But, if they agree to that limitation, what's to stop the next limitation being something like "a gun will not fire unless it registers it's been locked in a gunsafe for at least 12 of the last 24 hours"? Then the next one becomes limitations on who can buy gun safes, making it harder for people to own guns. Then there's a limitation on the types of weapons commercial gunsafes acknowledge. Then a limitation to guns that can fire non-lethal rounds. And so on and so on until they end up without their nice reassuring method of [statistically] killing their own family members.
that most Justified uses of handguns don't require that the gun be fired.
has anybody gotten a chance to try acco's biometric offering? i saw it at comp usa for $50 US the other day... i was quite tempted to pick it up.
Never say you shot to kill because it sets you up for a murder trial. Instead, you say you shot to stop the threat. This does not mean shoot to wound, which may cause all kinds of complications including your death. Basically, you are taking whatever action is necessary to stop the threat. The result may be death or incapacitation but the threat has been stopped. Many states support the castle doctrine which allows the homeowner to defend the interior of the house and not be forced to retreat.
... is the software to recognise the hardware that recognises you.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/05/1 425255
For those confused about what greivously injure means, it means DEAD.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I was taking money out of an ATM at wawa the other day and some guy from Diebold appeared to be installing new ATMs. They have a camera right in your face and it looks very capable of taking biometrics of your eyes and face without your knowledge, except for the obvious, very intrusive dark plastic window in your face, I wasn't even asked for permission.
Well, except that you're talking out of your ass.
The most common emergency (American) gun owners face is a car accident/wreck, even more so than the typical American because they are more likely to own a car.
Crazy, isn't it?
And I know what you meant, but it's a blatant lie even before the yearly million plus defensive brandishments are taken into account.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Ah, in my zeal to respond I overlooked the "gun-related" part of the emergency.
However, the typical gun is fired less than 10 times, so I believe my points remain valid.
Remember, guns don't kill people.
But everyone dies.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The whole second admendment (and several of the others) was due to actions of the Britsh, prior to the U.S Revolutionary War. The citizens of Boston, (and possibly others) were ordered to turn over their arms, to prevent them from joining to growing milita.
As for the second issue, a stolen gun has been stolen. Someone has already committed one crime to get the gun, probably with the intent to use it in another. Again, it's a separate problem, but people love to say, "NN% of registered guns end up being used in violent crime." This gives a false impression. People with an agenda love the low-hanging-fruit of false impressions.
I agree there. Physician, heal thyself!Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
-1 for Troll?!?! -1 for Off-topic?!?! You're all idjetz.
Look at the stats again:
. ....18,940e rmined..........563
Type..................Number
Suicide..........
Firearm homicide......18,571
Handgun homicide......13,980
Justifiable homicide..251
Accidental............1,521
Undet
Total.................39,595
There are no "crimes by accident". It's either a crime, or it's an accident. It's never both.
And if it were my kid or wife that got killed, I wouldn't care what label you stuck on it, they're still dead.
As far as stolen guns not counting somehow or being different, that's just plain stupid. Again, if it's my loved one that's dead, I don't care if the gun has been stolen 500 times, they're still dead. Part of gun ownership is responsibility, and that means keeping your guns locked up. You leave a gun and bullets in the closet and your kid kills the neighbor kid, you are responsible and should be held accountable.
I don't know what you think my argument is, but it is simply that we need more gun safety awareness and accountability. Personal accountability, not gun companies.
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Have you ever been in a fist fight? The person who is bigger and more aggressive will win. You learn things by being at a school where the first thing that comes to mind when you mention the name to primary school students is drugs.
Of course, being 6 foot tall and a brown belt in karate helps a bit....although not always enough, since there are a lot of people who can hurt you.
They say that somehow every time someone protected himself with a gun, someone died. Criminals are not that dedicated to always require you to kill them to stop them from killing them. Typically, they will run, and a citizen is less likely to shoot them in the back than a drug dealer or 7-11 stickup who clearly would not permit a victim to run.