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Encrypted Ammunition?
holy_calamity writes "A patent has been filed for bullets with built-in encryption. Pulling the trigger sends a radio signal to the cartridge in the chamber, but the charge only goes off if the right encryption key is sent. The aim is to improve civilian firearm security." Not sure I'm quite ready to trust the average techno-gadget failure rate on something like this just yet.
bult in security for firearms? bullet encryption? sounds like a huge farfetched idea that some capital went to waste on.
The final words of many a young gun owner "Hey, watch this!"
Three Squirrels
Do I have to enter an unique 8-digit pincode on the numpad everytime I want to shot too?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
When will it end? The obvious use will be to somehow keep me from firing my gun. I guess in this situation, civilian safety is the "think of the children" excuse.
I'm tired of it. Just let me shoot my gun.
So, the round is no longer fired via firing pin, but instead the gunpower is ignited by a device in the round after that device receives the correct radio signal.
So, now your ammo will have to be protected from radio waves. And the device will have to be small enough to fit into the round yet smart enough to store the signal and check incoming signals.
Is this a joke?
This is the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
...that this system wouldn't really benefit the average citizen who just keeps one around the house for self-defense, other than knowing that your kid won't accidentally shoot himself or someone else.
Makes me wonder if 64-bit WEP-encription is used...
Just what we need ... a gun that needs an SSL certificate.
How long before someone hacks up a device to wideband broadcast random code/garbage in an attempt to make guns discharge themselves before they should?
Imagine if world armies had this kind of hardware... load of fun I'd imagine. No need to drop 10t bombs on heavily fortified installations... Just drop one that has no explosive payload, just LOTS of EM/RF Gear in an attempt to make everyone shoot each other.
Remember Kids! Friendly Fire, Isn't.
The first thoughts that came to my head were these.
"Can it be jammed so it doesn't fire?"
"What happens if some random radio noise hits and and set it off?"
"What happens if you aim enough random radio noise at say, an ammo supply room, that could potentially be bad."
Which kind of foil would I need to line my ammunition storage box with to keep someone from setting them all off as a joke?
Problem can be them going off when you don't want as much as not when you do!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
That and if this type thing is installed...what would prevent the govt. from programming no weapons to fire at THEM? I'm still holding on to a sliver of hope that a well armed citizenry is a slight barrier to a completely totalitarian govt. in the future...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I can see it now, crypto engineers called out to the battlefield to diagnose problems with weapons not firing...
... for a lawyer after the bullet either A) doesn't work when it is supposed to in a life or death situation or, B) ends up working just fine even in a gun that wasn't authorized for it. Our society just keeps finding more and more interesting ways to keep lawyers employed!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
DIY Linux server on a Saw'd off!
...but hackers who hack bullets do!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'm sure there will be a crack with in days....
I imagine that, with a relatively simple modification, you could have bullets that can only be fired in a particular building eg a gun club.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Ignoring for the moment the endless possibilities of deliberate outside interference with something like this...
Considering the hideous buzzng my PC speakers do just before my mobile phone rings, the jarring interruption of terrestrial radio by the odd trucker with a CB, and the amount of retail anti-shoplifting gates my job's keycard sets off.. thanks but no thanks.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Yep, a neat idea, but really, just Gun Control with Encryption. How do I know the Government do not have the encryption keys and some how they don't disable my bullets when they want? There are much better methods of gun safety that are not this complex.
Here are the only ways I am ever going to use this, if the police and the bad guys do it first. As soon as the police and criminals sign up for Gun Control, I will.
Linux O Muerte!
have to provide a secure key to be hit by the bullet ?
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
"Huh? You cypherpunks got your first amendment in my second amendment!"
"Jura thaf ner bhgynjrq, only outlaws will have crypto!"
"And you gun nuts got your second amendment in my first amendment!"
Two great tastes that taste great together...
Since locking people up for violent crimes isn't solving the problem, I guess that a better approach would be to reclassify things like armed robbery and murder as DMCA violations - then we'd have the full weight of the RIAA on our side for a change...
Does this mean that the NSA will be able to automatically fire my guns? Don't get me wrong, I like that idea, I just want to know ahead of time.
Why would I buy ammunition that's designed to fail to shoot sometimes?
Where the hero decrypts a bullet that is speeding from a bad guy's gun towards his head while being fellated.
It can run Linux. :)
The best way to prevent accidental firing of a gun is to outlaw them completely, like here in the UK. Many Americans cite the first ammendment and their right to defend themselves, and sure people should have a right to defend themselves. If it's hard for just anyone to get a gun though, then you're less likely to be defending yourself against a gun. Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes".
"Stop! Dammit, my pistol crashed!"
Will the pistol's have to run Windows? How long of a pause will you have to wait, while the weapon logs into MSN and checks your email and get authorization from Bill's Boys between every trigger pull.
Put one of these on a table and zap if with your laptop's wifi!
Someone finally made a bullet that costs $5,000.
I'm sure if you ask the bad guy he'll give you a minute to punch in your code so you can protect yourself..
Gizmos aren't the answer, proper education and securing your firearms are. an no I wouldn't rush out to pay a premium for that functionality. When not in use I properly secure my Firearms in a safe, use a trigger lock, locked case or whatever measure is appropriate for the situation.
I'm an avid fan of shooting sports: Skeet, Trap, CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program), Action Pistol, Black Powder, etc.. etc.. Many of us reload our own ammunition to help keep costs down, since we go through so much ammunition in the course of an event. This silly 'invention' would make the ammo cost so much it would be difficult to afford. It would also prevent re-loaders from being able to load their own ammunition.
Oh gee I brought the wrong ammo for this firearm looks like I am stuck, and won't be able to participate today..
A technological crutch is no replacement for education, and owner responsibility
far...out
If a shooter wished to anonymize their weapon, perhaps they could change their barrel signature randomly. In this sense, the ammunition would become encrypted with respect to the gun from which it's fired -- police might not be able to trace it back.
Currently hooked on AMP
Don't they already have in development guns that won't operate without the correct thumb scan? I mean, come on we all knwo that Judge Dredd has prior art on smart guns that work on dna, and encode the amunition with the shooters dna signature.
I would rather have a gun that beeps, or lights, or does something when I hold it...that way when I press the trigger I won'get an erro which you know could mean I don't shoot the guy trying to shoot me...Talk about BSOD.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Also, given the incredible insecurity of RFID technology, it wouldn't take much to "modify" the things.
To top it off, how is a radio signal of sufficient strength going to get past that much lead? And what's to keep a bank robber or other criminal to carry a small EMP generator to effectively disarm any cop whose pistol is so equipped?
Man, someone wasted a lot of money with that patent...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It will not prevent the bad guys to use old firearms in a nasty way. Will they retire all the AK-47 in the world as well to protect us? This gadget has simply no real purpose and does not bring any more security. Upcoming next: encrypted knives, you cannot cut your bread without the explicit code key.
Three years after a "smart gun" is available on the market citizens of New Jersey won't be able to buy regular mechanical handguns anymore.
Police, of course, are exempt from this restriction.
I presume this is to keep unauthorized people from firing your gun, in particular burglars and children. It seems to me they are overcomplicating the matter greatly.
There is already a good system in place that just needs a little improving. I have heard for years about the pistols that won't fire unless they sense the microchip to which they are encoded. This is usually embedded in a ring. Not too long ago I read that someone had developed a pistol grip that sensed palm prints.
I can't read TFA (content filter ate it) but it seems to describe a system by which every bullet must be its own safety. I see no practical uses for this technology when the simple solution is to have the gun do that job. There is a lot more room for components in the firearm itself, why waste time and money trying to secure the bullets?
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
1 - Adding crucial seconds to a reload is not going to increase sales of a firearm. 2 - What's saying the government doesn't demand the keys, or insist on a shutdown key sequence? That'd put an end to the 2nd amendment right there - if the government can just jam the guns of every 'insurgent' 'terrorist' cum future patriot, then who cares what the peasants own? 3 - More children die each year drowning in swimming pools... but you don't see pgp-protected ingrounds, do you?
There's no reason this can't be combined with more traditional safety devices. It's just one more layer. In any case, a safe gun user knows not to fully trust any safety device, and to treat every gun like it's loaded.
As for jamming or remote firing, the signal, as I understad it, is very short range (inches, at most). You should be able to add EMI shielding with little extra weight or cost.
Not a typewriter
sure it does, but it also helps the government to define encryption as a munition!
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Don't you pretty much have to know someone in order to buy a handgun in New Jersey now? Forget about ever being allowed to carry one-- smart gun or not.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If you ask anyone who is an expert on handguns and self-defense, "what is the most important quality in a defensive handgun", they will tell you, "having it with you when you need it is the most important thing. Second is reliability." Most gun experts hate simple things like magazine disconnects because they prevent the gun from firing when the user pulls the trigger. And now they want to introduce all this electronics and encryption? Plenty of gun owners won't put any type of electronis on guns, like sights or lasers, because they are not reliable enough.
And it's not like criminals get their guns through legal sources anyway. They're already moving tons of drugs into the country every year. They already move thousands of guns in every year. Are they suddenly going to start installing all this circuitry into their illegal guns?
http://californiaccw.org/
We give a few million of these guns away.
When the civil war starts, we broadcast the failsafe, and peace breaks out when the guns don't fire. A decade later, every family in Iraq will have a garden fork attached to the end of the rusty barrel, and Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds will join hands in a magnificent circle.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
The idea of traceable ammo and secure guns has been around a while.. the whole "only criminals need guns" thing. OF Course if you ARE exercising your "4th box" rights, being labeled criminal has already happened. I think if these are so great, let's see a law to have all civilan cops [local, state, fbi, cia, nsa, etc] use these first.. and lets throw in a public database of registered keyholders. I'm sure if this is so great, Law enforcement will jump first. after all, what officer wants to be shot with is own gun.. it still happens often you know.. .gotta think of the officer's kids and all. After all, the last school shooting was done by a kid of a cop carrying his granparents weapon.. so law enforcement is a logical place to start.
Surely all that would be needed is a simple dialog box with [Yes] [No] and [Cancel] buttons over the question "Are you sure?", perhaps with a little warning about how dangerous guns are, every time the trigger is pulled.
With a larger screen and maybe a soundcard, it could popup a paperclip asking "I think you're trying to kill someone, would you like some help?"
Can you imagine Chuck Norris diving behind a car, punching in his 8 digit pincode, standing up and firing ... ducking back down, punching the 8 digit pincode, then standing up and firing again?
I'll be sure not to steal these bullets.
Gun control does not work. The concept is fundamentally flawed. Outlawing guns does not make civilians fundamentally safer... It simply means that no law abiding citizen will own a firearm. When only criminals have guns, crime rates go up. Why? Criminals make choices and decisions just like other people (most of the time). If they are afraid doing X may cause them to get shot, the chances of them deciding to do X decrease.
We should learn from Canada's past mistakes and stop trying to control guns. Those who wish to hurt others will always find a mean to do so, so please stop trying to remove an important line of defense from the hands of law-abiding citizens.
First of all, it's the Second Amendment.
Secondly, criminals don't care about laws - that's what makes them criminals.
Finally, I will not live in a country where the only people allowed to have guns are the police and the military. That's a recipie for disaster.
The Second Amendment is what makes the protection of our other rights possible.
One obvious (to me) problem would be the amount of time that passes between pulling the trigger and the round firing. For the purposes of accuracy, you want this time to be as small as possible. For normal mechanical lock mechanisms, shaving a millisecond off the "lock time" is a big deal. This RF authenticator has to be very fast AND have a constant time authentication, otherwise it would significantly reduce the practical accuracy of the firearm. Any decent implementation needs to have a sub-millisecond authentication cycle if they want it to be transparent, and I wonder how difficult it would be to actually achieve those latencies in an inexpensive and reliable system.
The inventor of this crap thinks the accidents are bad enough today. Wait and see what kind of accidents will happen with his invention!
Modern firearm safety is not a technical challange - it's a human challange. It is too easy to get a firearm in the states nowadays and because of that firearms are bought by people that have no use for it. The soultion is to institue a system of training/certification prior to buying a firearm. This will both eliminate casual buyers and improve firearm safety among users.
When I say "safety" I mean safety in all of it's aspects, including storage and rules of engagement.
A radio signal!!! I think the idea is to let the police can jam my gun using a radio dish before the send in SWAT.
DRM for movies, DRM for music. Why not DRM for weapons?
Serious shooters would never buy one.
First of all, that means you need bateries for your gun. While I am assuming that the primary market here are handguns, you have to take into account that batteries don't work in the cold very well, and it is one more point of failure. Heaven help the cop that forgot to put his gun on the charger last night.
Secondly, if you did have one, and someone else got it, chances are it was loaded or stored near ammunition coded for it. (hopefully seperatly locked up, but a safe won't stop anyone who is targetting your collection anyways.)
I suppose that could be combined with an RFID ring to activate/deactivate the gun (ok, now atleast if someone grabs it off you, they can't fire it immediatly -- but the rfid ring already did that.)
Finally, in a real fire fight, sharing ammunition is now impossible or very slow. There is a reason why police forces and militaries issue and do their best to require that everone caries compatible equipment -- parts, service, and supplies (inc. ammo) are all easier and cheaper to provide.
So, it sounds like a neat idea, but really it is completly stupid and useless, and the only way it would be adopted is if governments required that kind of technology... Which could happen with a few careful campaign donations, astro turfing, lobyists, etc. Such laws would then grant the company pushing the technology a license to print money -- which of course could happen.
I mean really, why bother?
More Caffeine. NOW
This sounds sci-fi becoming real sci. John Scalzi's recent books, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, feature weapons that are uniquely tied to their owners such that no body else can fire them. I'm sure many other sci-fi books have similar types of weapons. Now they just need to come up with the shape-changing nanobot ammunition.
Never heard of the Lawgiver Mark III? What's was previously science fiction is now becoming patentable science fact.
Whether to allow citizens access to guns or not is one question. But a gun should be reliable. An this adds one more single point of failure: The battery in the gun. No juice, no RF signal, no firing the gun. And if somebody fires a gun, then it is pretty damn important that it works.
All-around stupid from an engineering POV.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
(Yeah, it doesn't work, but...)
Would this mean Bugs' old "stick the finger in to keep gun from shooting" routine would violate the DMCA?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
We wouldn't need ridiculous things such as this if everyone would abide by the basic rules of gun safety. My grandfather taught me these when I was 4 years old:
1. Handle every gun as though it were loaded, even if you KNOW it's not.
2. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction - down range, at your target, or down into the ground.
3. Always keep the safety "on" until you are ready to shoot.
4. Don't shoot at anything unless you intend it to die.
5. Don't store guns loaded.
6. Teach your children respect for guns and what they can do.
I really think that rule 6 is the most important. I'm not saying following these rules would cure all accidental discharges, but it sure wouldn't increase the number of tragic accidents that occur.
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
And iPods generally are mugger invitations, rather than de-invitations. Maybe the slogan fits better here?
I'd curious about the size of the subset of people who'd like this system to be mandatory in guns and would take days off from work to protest the inclusion of even non-mandatory and easily defeated "ask-permission" code in digital audio devices.*
timothy
*I'm not a fan of either. But I care more about such a system in firearms.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
and weapons relly of all type. My normal carry gun is a Glock 23 C. I like it. Guns are meant to be easy to use. I don't want have to, God forbid, pull my gun and have to enter an 8 digit code or whatever before I shoot back at the bad guy shooting at me. This encrpytion thing is just an excuse for people who have very bad gun lock-up habits. Blehh I had to actually stop here before I go on a rant about morons that dont secure their weapons properly.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Can't make guns illegal... so lets make them useless instead. Soon enough it will really be true, only the criminals will have guns. Problem is we won't know which work for the gangs, and which work for the government.
KISS applies here. Something like this will be false security (and expensive as hell). It is more likely to get you killed when you need it, or make you rely on it instead of proper safe handling. Its as dumb as a gunlock.
Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes".
Putting up your dukes isn't very helpful against knives, or cricket bats, or just someone who is a lot larger or more drunk than you are.
Ever occurred to you that perhaps it's cultural? I suppose someone in your neck of the woods has decided so - I mean, if your folks can't manage to just go watch a sporting event without assaulting one another, then I suppose it makes sense that your medical community thinks that the only cure for violence is to ban objects, rather than holding people truly responsible for their actions. You know, we can't have Brits owning kitchen knives, now, can we? After all, the only way to prevent someone from being stabbed is to ban them entirely, right?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Statistically, the gun most likely to shoot you is the one you own/carry, so there is some value in some sort of authentication mechanism in a firearm.
But putting the mechanism into the ammunition is the wrong way to go about this. The fire/no fire algorithm should be in the weapon itself, such that it is inert unless an authorized user is holding it. I can imagine a simple mechanism that simultaniously blocks the firing pin and locks the slide (can't fire, can't even load) unless the proper user is holding it.
How THAT mechanism works... wow, that's not a simple problem. It has to be automatic and take no operator action to enable. Maybe something like an embedded RFID tag would work.. but those can be spoofed... this is not an easy fix.
What would be a good idea though would be a mechanism whereby some sort of write-once memory device was implanted in the BULLET, and the act of firing the round wrote the user's ID to the bullet for later retrieval (assuming the memory survived the impact). This isn't a universal panacea, and it too can be spoofed, and it is impossible to retrofit to existing guns - but I like the idea that bullets carry the ID of the shooter in them.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
No, it means you have to publish your public key and make it available to the game you shoot.
Just print it out base-64 encoded and nail it to trees in the area so that the deer can be sure that it's you shooting them and not someone else.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Deal! But.... everytime a kid is killed by a drunk driver you have to raise taxes on cars. If a kid meets someone on MySpace and gets assaulted you have to pay more tax on your computer purchases. Then we'll all work together to tighten up control!
Sorry. A gun is a tool. Just like any other tool. If I hit you with a bat it doesn't mean bats need to be taxed more.
I like how the phrase "Techno-Gadget Failure Rate" was used in this post. So full of implication. That said, I would *not* be anxious to use any technology produced by the poster!
Guy pulls his gun out you flood the area with radio interference and viola "gun no worky"
Great way to de activate guns and make them virtually useless.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
First off, I don't own a gun. That's mostly for cost reasons however ( cost of purchasing the gun, cost of ammunition, and more importantly cost of training and cost of time spent training ) . I do know several very responsible gun owners however, and I am quite glad that they do exist. Several live in areas where the extra protection to their family is welcome ( and in a couple of cases, tried and necessary ).
Yes, I agree that gun safety is extremely important ( note the two final reasons I don't own a gun - I don't have time or money to spend on keeping myself and others safe from it ) - but it seems quite foolish to throw away the second amendment. I think I'll take the advice of the authors of the constitution over yours.
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
...is in the hands of a skilled shooter. The second safest is in his holster.
I've cycled thousands of rounds through my guns, and guess what? Not a one of them flew through a school and killed all the children in there. Strangely, none have robbed banks or liquor stores, either. In fact, I am under the suspicion that if I were legaly permitted to carry one of my pistols around, and happened upon a dangerous situation where some bad guy was doing some bad thing, they'd probably save the day.
Funny that. Why then should we make this more difficult, rather than less?
My guns, by the way
No thanks. I bet this is not just for 'safety' but for non-repudiation. It could be used as evidence that the bullet was indeed fired from whomever the signal belongs to. Unless it gets hacked. Measures can be taken to ensure 'unhackability', but we all know about how well that works.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
So I can prevent you from firing your weapon by carrying a high power radio transmitter that puts the legitimate firing signal under the noise floor? Thanks, as a criminal it really helps me when folks can't shoot back.
The government will love this too. Now they can blast out a couple kilowatts of RF at a certain frequency and make civilians' weapons unable to fire. No more pesky 2nd Amendment concerns!
Everyone who actually KNOWS how to handle a gun, knows that the most reliable gun safety is KNOWLEDGE.
But of course, those who do NOT know how to handle a gun love this kind of shit. They just can't wait to make it a felony to own a gun that does NOT prevent you from being able to use it when you need it.
That way, you'll just give up and quit owning guns. Mission accomplished.
I read a story recently of yet another moron shooting a family member while "cleaning a gun." Irrespective of "cleaning," the moron broke the first law of gun safety which is to make sure you NEVER POINT AT ANYTHING YOU DO NOT INTEND TO KILL. That law applies WHETHER OR NOT the gun is loaded, and WHETHER OR NOT the person holding the gun knows if the gun is loaded. Doh!
I seriously believe that accidental killing of another person with a gun should earn an automatic conviction of at least involuntary manslaughter. End of subject. "I didn't know the gun was loaded" means NOTHING to the deceased, and should be null and void as a defense.
I realize that when someone shoots a friend or family member by accident, that person is grief-ridden. But they can be just as grief-ridden behind bars. Their stupidity DEMANDS that they serve time, IMHO.
Gun safety: Know what the hell you're doing, or don't touch the thing.
Unauthorized people...
Won't they just use this to prevent "the enemy" to fire gun and/or bullets?
A fingerprint scanner on the rifle and you can drop weapons in the war zone and prevent the enemy from using it against you.
(This doesn't work if the enemy destroys the weapons...)
Is the bullet marking/protection scheme from Judge Dredd close enough to count as prior art in this case?
> How on Earth is someone going to talk millions of hunters and target shooters into adding a key encryption
> device to their already expensive repertoire of presses, measurement tools, and cleaning equipment?
They aren't going to 'talk' you into anything. They will simply pass a law, which is one of the whole points of this exercise. No sane person would ever buy any of this crap, the point is to turn the screws of gun prohibition one more turn. Raise the price of guns and ammo enough to make it a sport for the upper classes only, eliminate reloaders (who they can't otherwise control) and set the stage for the next round of 'common sense gun control.'
> Also, given the incredible insecurity of RFID technology, it wouldn't take much to "modify" the things.
Also totally not the point, since only criminals would do that since attempting to do so or talking about it would be illegal. qed. They don't care about criminals, they care about the lawful. And they don't care if your gun is reliable, in fact if they bacame totally unreliable they (the Brady Bunch pushing this BS) would be happy as hell.
Join the NRA people, before it is too late. The ballot and soap boxes rest firmly atop the cartridge box, lose (or willingly surrender as your case may be) one fundamental Right and eventually you will lose them all.
Democrat delenda est
This is something they should be using their lobbying power to stop.
"Gun safety" is fine, but how long would it be until the U.S. government started requiring this in all firearms? And, of course, they would have all the encryption keys. And, of course, they would know how to JAM the signals.
A lot of the reason we have a "right to bear arms" is so that we can fight the tyranny of our OWN government, if we need to. This technology would allow us to maintain that right, but make it completely ineffectual.
"Honey! I heard a noise downstairs!"
..." *grabs gun from drawer*
"I'll check it out
*fumbles a bit* "Can you turn on the light? I can't see the keypad.. Ah, that's better"
*more fumbling* "Crap, the battery is dead, I need to replace it"
*further fumbling*
"Now.. what the hell was my pin again.. no, thats for the bank account.. no, thats for the locks on the car... hrm..."
*muffled scream and thud in the distance* "Honey???"
"Nevermind dear, I hit him with a bat!"
or even better :
"Umm.. Mr robber, wait there just a minute while I enter my pin number into this gun..."
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
And how about we raise YOUR taxes every time someone is killed, raped, or maimed because you took away their means of defense.
We've taken your normally reliable simple system meant to be used in a life saving panic and added complicated electronics. I get frustrated when my servers don't work. If my gun's kernel panics instead of shooting I'll just be pissed. Or dead. Either way.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." -Voltaire
What an odd concept, allowing the patent office to grant patents on what is patently (har har, did you see what I did?) science fiction...
Proof of concept. A working demonstration of the thing being patented should be required, otherwise we can all rip off ideas from 2000AD or whichever sci-fi source we like and have them granted by the patent office.
I have to say, the US is going down the toilet at the moment. Which is a bit of a shame, it used to be a great country.
Deleted
Laptop and cell phone batteries. Powers the chip, and produces a nice burn when they pop!
It only seems fair that we should now encrypt ammunition.
The two are already tied together in many people's eyes.
If they are going to do this, I would certainly hope that both the encrypted signal, and some mechanical action (e. g. A striking firing pin) are required to fire the bullet.
This approach would prevent a bullet from accidentally firing just because it received a signal.
Why does something like this need a patent ? Going from mechanical, with mechanical interface safety to electronic, with RF interface is not an invention, let alone innovation, it's a fucking evolution any person with a clue working in a weapons company knows is bound to happen.
I assume you gun owners want 'trusted' certificates not something i openssled last week.
I look forward to reading Versigns terms and conditions.
When was the last time you, or ANYONE you know, had to shoot a firearm in self defence? Do you really live in an area that is more dangerous than Baghdad?
That's the whole point of having a gun. The fact that it exists, as a deterrent, generally reduces the need to actually shoot it. In areas where right-to-carry is present, violent crimes go down. In areas (or whole countries) where guns are banned, violent crimes go way up.
But in cases where the conceptual deterrent isn't really registering with some punk, the far, far more common defense is called "brandishing." Showing someone the gun and a willingness to use it generally defuses the situation. I have personally been in that situation with a completely drug-addled bruiser beating on our back door in the middle of the night. The cops were 15 minutes in arriving, but his willingness to continue to beat down the door ended when he saw the business end of a gun pointed at him.
And, I guess you don't get out past the shopping mall much, huh? Ever dealt with a poisonous snake cornered in a barn? A 160-pound wounded buck crashing around your back yard? A rabid raccoon threatening a domestic pet? A coyote stalking your neighborhood kids and animals? A mountain lion raiding a camp site? People use guns in self defense all the time - thousands and thousands of times a year, against people and critters. I have, more than once. Many people I know have. Your ignorance is showing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How is this at ALL more useful than having the intelligence built into the firearm? I'd say the electronics could be more robust and reliable when you only have one device per gun instead of one per round that is fired.
It sounds like something an ammo company came up with. "We need to find a way to increase our gross margin. I've got it! Make the ammo cost $5 per round by putting a chip in every casing!"
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
A gun is a sealed solid object anyway. Wouldn't it be better to establish an insulated signal path from the trigger to the clip or chamber and then not worry about interference?
FTA - ...This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge.
When they are sold, cartridges could be programmed with a password that matches the purchaser's gun. An owner could set the gun to request the password when it is reloaded, or to perform a biometric check before firing. The gun could also automatically lock itself after a pre-set period of time has passed since the password was entered.
The system would undoubtedly cost more than a conventional gun, but many firearm enthusiasts would surely pay a premium for such added security.
So, I can only use this ammo in one firearm (too bad if I have another with the same calibre), then while dodging my assailaints bullets, I'm entering in a password. If I get the password wrong, or the solid state switch fails (*gasp!*), then I've got to try again, but the pre-set period of time re-locks the gun. For anyone dumb enough to buy this, I hope your assailant has bad aim! btw, firearm enthusiasts will not "surely pay a premium" as there is no "added security".
I've noticed this paradigm with new handguns that were designed in the last 5 years. Trying to make them safer so little Johnny doesn't blow his brains out on accident, but making the firearm near useless as a defense tool. Considering ~300% more children die each year from 5 gallon buckets, I don't think "safe guns" are a needed focus.
...some redneck that simply had to wait a week to get a CHL? Unfortunately, this is a good idea for safety.
And I say "unfortunately" because I believe inherently risky activities are becoming seemingly "too safe," leading them to abuse by numbskulls. Gun control means shooting what you meant to shoot, and ONLY what you meant to shoot. I was taught how to handle firearms, and I'd be an idiot to let someone else get hold of my firearms (if I owned any). This technology would have the unfortunate side effect of providing for these morons the sense that somehow they are now "safe" and can completely ignore any personal responsibility. Just like seatbelts, airbags and vehicle stability features in autos - idiots are now saved from their own stupidity. I move that we put big, pointy spikes in the middle of every steering wheel, and set handguns to go off at random times. This means people will drive better, and they will learn to watch where their muzzle is pointed.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Guns are, essentially, very simple devices. You slam the bullet's back, the powder ignites, the charge is propelled forwards. Simple, proven technology that works like a dream.
Yes, safety is an issue, but 9 out of 10 accidents happen with people who don't know JACK about handling guns or are in no shape or condition to handle one. Does it happen to expert weaponsmiths who handle them on a daily base? To people who spend more time at the shooting range than at home?
It happens to people who do not know how to safety handle a gun.
If you want to "secure" guns, make it a law that you have to store them in a safe place, out of the reach of kids and people unable to handle them properly. But a device like that is ridiculous at best, dangerous at worst.
So the bullet ignites if it gets the right signal. Can we forsee some "pranksters" running around trying to figure out the frequency on cop guns? What are we gonna call it, warblowing? Imagine a firefight where the cop suddenly gets "shot" with high-freqency radio signals from the geek he's fighting, pretty much blowing his gun up in his hand. Would work, the bullets are "hot", after all he planned to use them.
There are a lot of dangerous loopholes that could be easily abused by criminals (and law enforcement) alike. If you want to increase gun security, teach people how to handle them properly instead of trying to keep them out of their hands!
Another example of "why security by obscurity is a failed design".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the police won't trust it... why should I?
A Human Right
This is truly one of the wost ideas I've ever heard and it only highlights prevalent misconceptions with respect to firearms safety.
Modern guns, themselves, are not inherently unsafe. Guns do not spontaneously jump up and shoot people. Guns only discharge when the trigger is pulled; while this can occur unintentionally, e.g., due to a dog stepping on the trigger of a loaded, unsafed gun left laying on the ground (don't laugh, this does happen!), almost 100% of such incidents are due to NEGLIGENCE.
Nearly all incidents of unintended or illegal shootings are due to negligence, lack of training and practice, or intentional criminal activity. Negligence includes such actions as: allowing unauthorized access to a weapon by a minor, pointing a weapon at something other than a target or a safe downrange area, and placing one's finger on the trigger when the weapon is not pointed in a safe direction. Lack of training and practice leads to negligence; there are numerous incidents of police officers, who, in principle, should be some of the best-trained firearms handlers among us, who have shot themselves in the foot or leg while handling their own weapons.
At the end of the day, it is the person, the gun owner, who is responsible for safety. When a gun discharges, it is because of someone's actions; full stop. It's not the gun's fault and it's not the manufacturer's fault.
We also must remember that the purpose of most weapons -- handguns, assault rifles, tactical shotguns, etc. -- is for defensive or offensive use against other humans. Put more simply: they're designed to stop human adversaries, by injury or death. In principle, their use, particularly by civilians, should be very infrequent. I am a relatively highly-trained defensive shooter; I believe that I am capable of defending myself, my family, and my home, should the need arise. But I hope and pray that I never need to do so. I think that most police will tell you that they hope to have to shoot a suspect, but that they are trained and prepared to do so to protect others or themselves.
If and when, however, the time comes that a weapon is needed, one must be supremely confident in the reliability of the weapon. This means that simpler is necessarily better. When you pull the trigger, you want to hear "BANG", not "click" or "beep". You don't want to have to fiddle with magic decoder rings, tiny keys, batteries and secret codes, etc. in the dark, under pressure, with your child screaming in the background. And a cop can't be worrying about passwords and encrypted ammunition in the heat of a pursuit. He must know that his weapon will fire when he pulls the trigger -- he's betting his life on it.
The technology described in this article is just another way to make owning firearms more difficult and more expensive. Criminals, by definition, have no regard for laws. You can make all guns illegal and the bad guys will still find a way to arm themselves. Look at Chicago or Washington, DC for prime examples. Those of you in Austraila and Britian have seen a rise in violent crime, including home invasions and broad-daylight robberies, since you banned guns.
The technological achievement expressed in this article is impressive. I'm happy that people are exploring the uses of modern computer and cryptographic techniques. But be skeptical and wary as well... Your rights are at stake here.
That and the airport scanner will ruin your ammunition.
The JPFO says no.
-Peter
It's a patent filing. People do this all the time because they think someone will invent and implement it eventually and they'll get to steal the money from them.
Pretty stupid idea anyway.
When the Patent Office stopped requiring models in 1880, that's when the system jumped the shark.
Software patents? Hah! Can't built a working 12 x 12 physical model, so you'll have to settle for a copyright. Business methods? It is to laugh.
How about having an RFID (yeah, I know there are issues with this) tag implated in the palm of your trigger hand that is read by an emitter in the grip, rather than entering in an 8-digit code each time? This has the added benefit that you'd just have to show someone your implant scar and say "Back-off, I'm encrypted.", rather than actually having to pull out a gun. =;-)
Of course, most people are to frickin' stupid to be allowed to own a gun. Or drive. Or breed. =8-P
#include "cunning_plan.h"
I'm sure some slaphappy mod will label me a troll, but if your side is valid, so is mine: all too often it is a "death thing", and it is people's inability to control themselves that results in inventions like "cryptograhic bullets". Too many gun owners simply can't control themselves OR their guns.
I'm still holding on to a sliver of hope that a well armed citizenry is a slight barrier to a completely totalitarian govt. in the future...
Did you sleep through history class? In our own country: Women's suffrage movement, civil rights movement, and protests against Vietnam. In Europe, several brutal dictatorships were overthrown by masses of people who simply showed up at their leader's buildings and said "we're not going anywhere until you leave." None of these movements involved guns in the hands of protestors, shooting at the powers-that-be.
Being unarmed is the most effective way to protest- violence against you is viewed as fairly heinous by most of the population, if not a large chunk of the "free" world; the issue becomes less -your- issue and more the fact that the existing government was willing to shoot you. Two famous examples would include the Boston Massacre* and Kent State. Being unarmed, you take a chance that the policeman or soldier on the other side of that barrier is too "human" to shoot a massive crowd of peaceful, unarmed people. If it's not worth that risk- I guess what you're protesting isn't important enough to you, or you are a coward.
*(which is somewhat disputed by historians- some think there were a few guns among colonialists, but the end result was that British soldiers were seen as having mowed down unarmed civilians)
Please help metamoderate.
How long does it take to crack MD5? Diffie-Hellman? What have you?
How long before someone cracks the encryption on your weapon and makes it so you cannot fire your own gun?
Obligatory bad movie scene:
Bond: You don't really expect to be able to fire that do you?
Bad Guy: You underestimate me Mr. Bond. I crack 512bit encryption routines in my head. Don't you think I can get past your little toy crypto gun?
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Let's not get into the political debate of guns and self defense. That's not my purpose. Assuming you're cool with a firearm for home defense read on...
My wife and I feel strongly about having firearms for personal hobby but also home defense. We do not have children yet. We both agree we'll lock up our firearms when we do have children. I've long considered the firearms that will only fire if you're wearing a special encoded ring on your finger. This is another prospect for having a firearm for self defense that can't be used by the wrong person.. like a child in the home.
I hope they can make it work reliably and productize it. Just so long as it isn't required.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
doesn't quite sound quite safe.
this perhaps allows the police to disable the weopons of the bad-guys/revolutionists,
or the other way around.
The military won't use this solution or any of the other so called "smart" gun technologies. Right now guns are reliable, if you add in all the additional crap that is being proposed it will cost lives. The problem of the cop getting shot by his own gun can be in large part solved by having the cops use retention holstsers that make it very difficult to take the gun from his holster. Also, switching to a gun with an external safety (rather than relying on the internal safety on a Glock or other guns that are popular with cops) will decrease the problems since the bad guys are usually not proficient with a hand gun and if it takes more than just pulling a trigger they will probably not be able to shoot the cop before he can draw his backup gun and kill the bad guy.
"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire KeyID 0xABCD005 or 0xABCD006. Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum/RSA - the most powerful hand gun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question--Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk!"
With apologies to Clint Eastwood.
"But I have a simpler, safer solution: lose your gun altogether. I think every time a kid is killed by a stray bullet we raise a tax on guns and gun owners. You can get all of that money back with interest if you get rid of your gun. Eventually gun owners will see that it is in their own best interest to work together to make guns safer and out of the hands of kids and the irresponsible. Everyone who owns a gun is partly responsible for the culture of guns and violence. I'm looking at you, libertarians."
Bull. That is like saying everyone who drives is responsible for drunk drivers killing people, or that the library is responsible for weapons of mass destruction because they have chemistry books. A gun is a TOOL. Like every tool it has valid uses and invalid ones.
As for your comment about a culture of violence, get a grip and check out the REAL world. Violence will not disappear if private citizens lose their guns. The Hutus were very effective using machetes. The Nazis and the Soviets both killed millions. Violence is a fact of life. You can not wish it away. If your response when threatened with violence is cowering, then you are cattle and will be treated as such.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
In areas (or whole countries) where guns are banned, violent crimes go way up.
Yes, like Canada, one of the most violent places to live...
I would prefer not to go through some third-party governing agency for access to my encryption keys...
And you thought Blaster.W32 was bad for PCs...
A rabid raccoon threatening...
QFT.
makers the government just turns off there guns.
Something like this has been tried before, but failed because the guns wouldn't fire a lot of the time. The previous experiment was guns that do not fire when they are more than a few inches from the owner. Great idea, but it failed in practice.
This particular idea is actually worse. How exactly does encryption help? Do I enter a password to unlock my secret key every time I fire the gun? If so, I'd rather take my chances defending myself with a knife. If I don't have to authenticate myself to the gun somehow, then what is the point of the encryption? Maybe to ensure that there won't be any third-party bullet manufacturers... kinda like inkjet cartridges. What's next? Cheap guns with very expensive bullets, because you can only buy the bullets manufactured by the gun manufacturer?
Apple's new iGun provides safe, encrypted personal security. The stylish clip holds 9 cartridges and over 400 songs. Be the first to sit at Starbucks ostentatiously sipping an overpriced cup of burned crud flavored to hide the real taste, while impressing babes with your RFID-marked ammunition. Oooh yeah. I want this bad. (consumerly shiver twitch)
What a load of crap!
When you raise the barrier, the other guy will follow! Thats why the world "leaders" got nukes, when someone ups the ante you fold or follow. Thats why most homocides here in Denmark are done with knifes - we haven't raised the stakes to guns! If people started showing off guns homocides would increase, with knifes you can try to run and defuse the situation, with a gun you got big trouble.
"In areas where right-to-carry is present, violent crimes go down. In areas (or whole countries) where guns are banned, violent crimes go way up."
c ap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
Um. . . no.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_per
This is just another example of a bad patent application. It doesn't matter that the idea makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, the guy is simply patenting the idea on the remote chance that someone else will eventually create it. Then the patent holder can pop up and demand his ransom. Thomas Edison patented the telephone that communicates with the dead. He will be the guy laughing his head off on the other head if it should ever actually happen.
I actually think this application is quite clever. If someone ever does manage to manufacture such a bullet -- not so far out, I believe modern gatling guns (Vulcan) use electronics, not hammers, to ignite the primers in the shells -- you can bet your bottom dollar Congress will pass a law making it mandatory for all gun manufacturers. It won't matter that it makes absolutely no sense, we are talking about Congress here. Then the patent holder will have the last laugh.
I can only hope that the patent would make it more difficult to pass such a law.
Likelihood doesn't matter. All the media needs is one high-profile example to latch onto.
-mkb
Let's make handguns look dangerous first. Then we can say:
Of course, there's no way to determine how many lives were actually saved by the presence of guns in the homes. Either a potential robber is an acquaintance of the home and doesn't want to rob where there are guns, or there's a posted "I have a gun" sign so a stranger is deterred, or there's just the general fact that criminals know that home invasion in the U.S. is like Russian roulette. Sooner or later you invade the wrong home and find a shotgun. That's why I own a 12-gauge. Not just for my own protection, but to be just one more reason for people to not risk attacking my neighbors either (regardless of whether or not they own a gun, I don't know). I looked for the rates of home invasion, which I believe are increasing in Canada and the UK, but could not find them.
In 2003 there were 44,800 unintentional motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. I'm assuming that the number of intentional motor vehicle deaths is negligible. (http://www.nsc.org/library/report_injury_usa.htm
In 2003 there were 30,136 gun deaths in the U.S. The majority - 56% - were from suicide. 40% were from homicide. And then there were 2% unintentional and 2% unknown. (http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm) There are over 200 million guns in the United States. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/feature
If you do the math, this means that cars - which, by the way, aren't intended to kill people, are more dangerous to American citizens than guns - which are designed to kill people. You should also consider that a lot (nobody knows how many) of the suicides and murders from guns would have been accomplished without guns anyway. Guns make it easier to kill, but they don't generally make people want to commit murder/suicide for no reason. And remember, the accidental gun death totals were less than 1,000 for all of 2003. So in terms of accidents there's not even a comparison between guns and cars: cars are more dangerous by orders of magnitude.
Oh yeah, and it's probably the car you own that is most likely to kill you too.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
This gives a whole new meaning to bullet-proof encryption.
So what you're saying is that you think it's okay to kill anything by which you feel threatened, anywhere, anytime. Basically, you're an immoral person employing a doctrine of pre-emption in life.
Do you actually even think about what you're saying, or connect your response in any way to what you're reading? Just because I've cited circumstances in which lethal force, or the reserved option to use it, makes sense doesn't mean that every encounter with anything unpleasant is best dealt with that way.
Pre-emption would mean that if I see someone on the street that I'm pretty sure is going to try to break down my door in the middle of the night, that I do something about him before he acts. But I don't have that luxury, or generally the ability to even draw that conclusion. So, how is it "pre-emptive" to react to someone or something that is actually, literally, right that moment, being a threat? That's the opposite of pre-emption, and being hesitant under those circumstances frequently results in later regret. I've hesitated to deal with a diseased-looking feral cat, thinking that nature would just run its course... only to have it attack and infect a pet (also nature running its course, but if you're going to disrupt nature by doing things like domesticating animals in the first place, you've got a certain obligation to step in).
Basically, you're an immoral person
Really! So, how does putting a rabid animal out of its misery and thus preventing the likely (and horrid) death of other animals qualify as "immoral?" How does stopping a person who is, quite literally, terrifying your family in the middle of the night qualify as immoral? It's moral if I pay someone else to do it (say, the police), but it's immoral if I do it myself, with the urgent threat actually unfolding and about to escalate to actual injuries before the police could possibly arrive to help? Better to explain to your injured family that you were just doing the moral thing? These aren't hypotheticals, this is actual person experience. That you're so anxious to grind your witless anti-American axe in this way - especially given the context - says plenty about how distorted your view is.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
its that puddle of goo between everbodys ears. Some mechanisms are more effective than others. This is a worse idea than mandatory trigger locks and mandating that you cannot store ammo with a gun. What utter bullshit. Nothing wrong with guns the way they are now. I use guns mostly for fun, but if the day ever arrives that it were need for safety then I personally do not what to be hampered by over complicated electronics in my mechanical gun that my prevent me from using it.
Sounds like an overly techno version of this http://www.smartlock.com/test-r.htm that no one who actually needed a gun for self protection would use.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Eric S Raymond is going to hate this...
I would have to say that I agree with most of the comments posted on the actual story page. This is a pretty stupid idea, and for a number of reasons. First, c'mon, "a tiny keypad on the gun"? Really, I don't want to have to type a code into my gun and/or bullets just to get the thing to fire. A firearm is a simple (ok, maybe not so simple) mechanical device for a reason -- reliability. They're just introducing more roadblocks into the path of someone that legally needs to defend themselves.
Another problem that I thought of: Let's take a hypothetical situation where you and a buddy come under fire from multiple assailants for whatever reason. Now what happens when you or your buddy runs low on ammo? You can't just "toss him a mag", because guess what, your rounds won't fire in his gun, even if they were identical firearms.
Better gun safety comes from training and education, not by impeding law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights when they may need them most...
Real. Stupid. Idea.
Place sig here.
a beowulf cluster of these bullets!
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
But my DRM unencrypted Springfield .45 works just fine, I can't seem to find a reason to upgrade. I mean the bullets get to the target much faster than I can ever get there. Ok, ok, I'll upgrade my ammunition storage capacity, and maybe the sights. More is better right?
The gun only responds to its owner. This is a great sci-fi element I had thought about. Of course, the only problem is, criminals can always hack the guns, but who cares? They always have guns anyway.
But little children aren't criminals, and they won't be able to activate the gun by accident. Here i find a good balance between protecting your family from burglars and protecting your family from themselves.
'Did he enter seven digits or eight?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky?
Well, do ya, punk?
carry a small EMP generator
Dear Slashdot posters,
It is not necessary to force an EMP reference into every single post which mentions the operation of electronic devices.
Thank you,
Concerned Citizen
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
now you got this nightmare into my head!
:'(
(begin nightmare)
*Grabs rifle*
Rifle: "Hello, there! Looks like you want to go hunting!"
Just a transmitter in the gun and then another in a watch or ring, so that only the person with the both could actually fire the gun. (The gun won't fire unless the signal from the other device is less than 3 ft away). This way stolen guns won't fire and in theory only the owner could actually fire the weapon. /captcha lockup hrm...
Your hunting pistol needs a permanent internet connection. For free shooting, stay within 100 meters of a participating McDonald or Starbuck coffee.
Can anyone give me (us?) some precise information on this novel ? Sounds interesting.
morcego
why most homocides here in Denmark are done with knifes - we haven't raised the stakes to guns!
... I'd like to visit Denmark some day, since I have had many ancestors from there and elsewhere in Scandinavia (Rasmussens, Kuykendaals, Hendrixes, and more) and I guess I still have some hope that I can see some Danish countryside that still feels a bit like it was when they lived there.
Come on, now, read some actual statistics! In counties like Australia, where the guns were banned and largely confiscated, not only to knife-murders go up, but overall crime and murder went up entirely. Fewer guns in the hands of people willing to defend themselves, and people willing to kill with a knife or their bare hands are less worried about being stopped. This is true in certain states/cities in the US (say, in Florida, where once people were recently allowed once again to carry a gun, knifings went down, as did all violent crime).
Most likely the longer Danish history of less violent crime has to do with having a smaller, less stratified population in a much smaller area. As your population so dramatically shifts (with your huge immigration issues), you may see a situation much more similar to that of the Paris suburbs. I hope not
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Is the bullet silver?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What would be a good idea though would be a mechanism whereby some sort of write-once memory device was implanted in the BULLET, and the act of firing the round wrote the user's ID to the bullet for later retrieval
Ok, you've watched one too many bad Sylvester Stallone movies. Please return your Blockbuster card immediately.
Developers: We can use your help.
Sounds a little judge dread to me ...
...the average techno-gadget failure rate on something like this just yet."
;-)
Yeah, to be safe we'd better stick with the good old-fashioned armour-piercing variety of bullet.
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
This Patent is going to be invalid.
There is Prior Art in the form of a video that goes into great detail how a system like this could work.
It is the Judge Dread Movie staring sylvester stallone.
Int he movie - the guns used by the "Judges" could only be fired by registered judges as they did a DNA check of the skin on the hand of the holder - and would only activate the gun/munitions when a legitimate DNA was presented as the "key".
In addition , different levels of seniority allowed different features of the gun to be unlocked. (single shot, automatic, explosive rounds etc. etc.)
Isn't it cool when an (aweful) scifi movie predicts technology first?
In addition the gun automatically packaged a sample of the Shooters DNA into every round fired so the bullets could be traced back to the person who pulled the trigger, not just the gun.
1) Shoot first.
2) Enter password.
3) (Password not accepted.)
4) Re-enter password (correctly this time).
5) (Password accepted.) "Do you wish to fire bullet at this time? y/N"
6) Press 'Y'.
7) (Bullet fired.)
8) Ask questions later.
If by "no," you mean "yes," then you're correct! Crime per capita has nothing to do with it. It's the change in crime per capita and the nature of that crime before/after gun bans (or liberalization in ownership) that we're talking about.
One year after a sweeping ban/confiscation program in Australia, they had these charming results:
- homicdes up 3.2%
- assaults up 8.6%
- armed robberies up 44% (!!)
- in Victoria, homicides with firearms up 300%
- 25-year downward trends in armed robbery and homicides with firearms reversed
and so on. This program cost Australia about half a billion dollars, and now many lives. Much the same story in Scotland.Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
OK, and why not steal the gun and the ammo....
But forget about that, what gun owner wants another device preventing the gun from going off, most gun owners are more concerned about the gun not going off, especially for personal protection.
Want safety? Get rid of your gun or follow the rules of responsible gun ownership.
Really? I'd like to see those statistics. I live in a country where most private gun ownership was banned ten years ago and I don't believe our crime rate has gone up. And look at the UK, where not even the regular police have guns. So I'm calling bullshit on your unsourced assertion.
Right. Unless they also have a gun, or there's several of them, or you're overpowered and have the gun taken. My problem with guns is that they're just so dangerous. There's almost no room for error or mistake. Take a situation where tempers and/or fears are in a hightened state, with probably a lot of adrenaline (and possibly other substances) flowing. Add a gun or guns and the situation has the potential to end tragically for either party or by-standers. I'm glad you were able to defend youself from a "drug-addled bruiser" with your gun, but you seem to have convinced yourself that the gun was the only thing that saved you. Admitedly I wasn't there, but I'm sure there were alternatives.
As to using a gun "on the land" to protect yourself and property/animals, I have no problem there. My concern is in city and urban environments. My understanding is that a lot of guns perchased for personal protection are often poorly stored (handbag, briefcase, glove box, desk drawer, etc) and end up getting stolen. They then get sold to gangs and can, ironically enough, be used in home invasions. It's this "sloppy" gun ownership that I'm concerned about. I strongly believe that no-one needs a gun in a city or urban environment, and that wide-spread ownership only makes the whole crime situation worse, whether stolen or not. And I live in a country that largely confirms that belief.
So, what you're saying is that mugging police officers is suddenly going to become very profitable ?
Unintended side effects are a fun thing, aren't they ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
there's a much simpler solution than electronic bullets and encoded guns and things like that, just don't let stupid people have guns. Problem solved.
Blazing Spiders
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
The real question is - does the ammuntition run Linux??
"But this one goes to 11!"
you stay really excited.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
im guessing im not the only one who got the image of the Joker with a pistol that spits out a "BANG!" flag rather then shoot anything :)
Your message to the libertarians should be amended to include swimming pools, too. For instance:
... floor wax? Table saws? Kitchen implements? Mallets? Golf balls? And, the big one, would you impose a similar "tax" (which sounds instead like a fine) on automobile owners when their car is involved in a fatal collision? What if the owner was in no sense at fault?
"But I have a simpler, safer solution: lose your SWIMMING POOL altogether. I think every time a kid is killed by DROWNING IN A SWIMMING POOL we raise a tax on POOLS and POOL OWNERS. You can get all of that money back with interest if you get rid of your SWIMMING POOL. Eventually SWIMMING POOL owners will see that it is in their own best interest to work together to make SWIMMING POOLS safer and INACCESSABLE TO kids and the irresponsible. Everyone who owns a SWIMMING POOL is partly responsible for the culture of FUN and FRIVOLITY. I'm looking at you, libertarians."
(ha ha only serious)
Gun safety certainly can and ought to be improved (as it *has* improved, at least in the U.S., where accidental deaths have steeply declined over the past few decades), but guns as objects are not the point - safe use and (especially parental) responsibility are complex; an "object-specific tax" seems like an inevitably intrusive, tyrannical answer, which is why examples like the above make sense to me. How to assess the tax on
And given that no gun (and no swimming pool) sneaks up on someone to shoot or drown them; how to tax the behaviors that lead to injury?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Judge Dredd one too many times as children. Wonder when the city will banish the gun toting hillbillies to the "wasteland"
Damn libertarians! Trying to create a society that values low taxes and personal responsibility.
I accidentally crashed into a bus full of adorable orphans while drinking heavily and firing a home-made mortar out my window (Well, not really, but go with me on this). You know who's at fault? EVIL CARS! AND LIQUOR! We should raise taxes on them so the gov't has enough money to teach school kids not to play with guns.
While i'm not personally a gun enthusiast (don't even own one, nor have I ever fired one), I'll let the government take my right to own a gun when we go to the japanese system: No military, and a police-force using bicycles and bobby-sticks.
I think shortly before Y2K Remington came out with a new rifle system they called "EtroniX." It was inspired by a system developed by Voere in the 80's, and used electrically fired primers just like the system in this article. The idea was that this removed the mechanics behind the trigger, allowing varmint and benchrest shooters to keep the rifle much more stable while firing, thus improving accuracy.
It was a huge flop.
The ammo was easily three times as expensive as traditional ammo and the guns were no more accurate than their traditional counterparts. The system merely added complexity (and a battery that, of course, would fail at the least opportune time) and cost without any significant improvement. In theory the system offers an improvement, but in practice the difference hasn't been noticeable.
Contrary to some of the highly-modded posts above, the system charges the base of the shell that's in the chamber. It takes enough energy that it's impractical to try to set off the ammo remotely. (Think of a weak taser being applied to the base of the shell casing and you get the idea of how much energy is needed to activate the primer.)
The only problem with this idea, aside from its sheer impracticality, is that HCI and its ilk will now start telling the UN and governments that they *must* adopt this system since it'll prevent all sorts of bad behaviors. Hogwash!
I guess they need to roll this out en mass for those that use firearms on a daily basis in order to make sure its safe for civilian use. I'll tell ya what. How about you do all the field testing with the police and military and then come talk to me.
Oh, what's that? Their firearms are already safe? Oh, well then if our existing firearms are already good enough for the police and military then it must be good enough for me!
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
I do not think society would be better without cars, bats, knives, crowbars, croquet mallets, anvils, etc.
But I do think society would be better without guns. A problem of implementation. I acknowledge this silly tax idea is full of holes. Food for thought
must... stay... awake...
AC asked: "When was the last time you, or ANYONE you know, had to shoot a firearm in self defence? Do you really live in an area that is more dangerous than Baghdad?"
In 1993, my landlord in Austin (living in a makeshift "apartment" he'd carved out of the garage of a house he'd divided into generally more conventional apartments) shot a burglar with a shotgun, hitting him in the leg; I was asleep at the time, but this took place while I was perhaps 15 feet away. The burglar was a heroin addict, armed with a knife, and was wounded by not killed by the shot. The burglary was prevented, and no one can say what me might have done with the knife if he'd met an unarmed homeowner instead. So that's once.
In 1994, I witnessed at a gas station in West Memphis, Arkansas (on westbound 40, just over the Mississippi, if you know the area), a middle aged man being brutally kicked by a gang (4 or 5, perhaps more) of attackers in their teens or 20s; I'm not sure what precipitated the beating he was getting (did he insult them? did they try to rob him? I didn't see.), but I do know how it was curtailed: another customer at the station emerged from the station with his handgun and fired it into the air. Rubber was burned, and attackers were gone. The beating victim still had to leave in an ambulance, but at least he survived -- he seemed to be pretty well beaten, though, and getting kicked enough times in the head can certainly ruin one's life expectancy. So, that's twice if you count a very small value of "know." Witnessed, though.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Bet the politicians don't have the b*lls to do that. In every case where they've tried to mandate a "smart" electronic gun (NJ, NY, MA), they let the cops and military do what they want. Guess their families aren't worth anything if these things really work that well. Or...maybe they don't because it adds too much complexity! What a stupid idea :-P
e r.html
When you need to use one, you want it to go bang when you pull the trigger...not "hmm...I wonder if the batteries are still good" or "hmm..I wonder if my cell phone will jam the signal" or "hmm...I wonder if it'll recognize my fingerprint", as the bad guy or rabid dog gets the first chew on you...
As for folks who think self-defense never happens:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogg
The cops can't magically be everywhere. I'd rather make sure good guys can fight the battles that happen and there are more armed good guys than armed bad guys...
Or you could just a muzzleloaded gun...
The idea of "Smart guns" has been around for a while. Recently Andrew Cuomo (leading canidate for NY attorney General) has stated he will push for mandated smart guns if elected. What a douchebag. More info at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Gun
nothing
Surely this idea was put foreward in Judge Dredd years ago. For it to be fooled you need an identical clone and all of the benifits are lost.
There is no equivalences to be found among those things. It's absurd to compare them.
I suggested that gun violence would. It's about the guns. We're talking about guns. Not machetes or icepicks, wood chippers, or religious nationalism. Your invocation of the Hutus, Nazis and Soviets is idiotic FUD in the context of gun violence in America (about which I'm assuming we're talking). Unless of course you know something I don't about the future of Christian Nationalism, socialism, or fascism here.
And of course the mac-10 you keep under your pillow isn't going to protect you from any of those anyway; only education, fighting poverty, transparency in government, and - my god - progressive liberalism will.
must... stay... awake...
Count me in on the "brandishing" scenario. Three times in the last 30 years, but all three could have turned out MUCH worse had I not been armed.
.410/.45 cal Derringer and held it down at my side. He looked, he turned, he ran. We called the Texas Highway Patrol when we hit Paris (Texas) and gave them a description. Sure enough, they had reports of people being accosted and robbed in that area.
One (1977) - watching T.V. late at night when my German Shepard alerts on the back door. I see a small light and the outline of someone working the lock. I got my 12 gauge bolt-action shotgun, pointed it at the door, and cycled a 00 round. The screen door slammed and the would-be burglar bolted for the fence. My dog nearly caught him...so fast, I couldn't get a clear shot at the guy.
Two (1983) - Four (4!) crackheads started banging on the front door at 5:00 a.m. demanding a ride to someone's house. I answered the door with a Colt Python leveled at the closest asshole's head. Looked like the Olympic relay team leaving the yard.
Three (1985) - Driving in a remote part of Texas with the wife and newborn son. A guy at the isolated rest stop, who looks scary, starts moving towards us. His body language and facial expression just screamed BAD NEWS, so I pulled my carry weapon, a
BTW, I live in Oklahoma and we have a "Make My Day" law and citizens are allowed to carry and use a firearm. I don't know the current statistics, so I don't know if the crime rate has changed, up or down, since the law took effect. I suspect it's down, but really have no idea...just an impression. I do know that I almost certainly AVOIDED being a victim by virtue of being armed in the above situations.
Interestingly enough, I don't currently carry a firearm. I do carry an ASP police baton as it's non-lethal and I can drive to Texas or Kansas without getting hassled by the law for having a hand cannon in the truck.
No, I don't belong to the N.R.A. or anything. Just raised on a farm and trained to hunt and use firearms correctly from about age 6 on. I'm also a VietNam vet and did qualify as a Marksman. Basically, a gun is a tool, not a religious experience.
I am my own gestalt.
Unlike you, I had a decent upbringing.
Yeah, all that time with parents who are teachers, or that have doctorates in things like hospital administration and whatnot is pretty much like growing up in a trailer in the Ozarks. I can see how you'd draw that conclusion.
See, while you were busy pulling legs off spiders, I was learning things, vacationing in europe, learning languages- improving myself, and giving myself a better shot in life.
Huh, how about that! Vacationing in Europe! Why, it's a good thing there aren't any long standing traditions of hunting in Germany, or France, or Italy, or Russia! I'm sure you learned more about biology and meteorology hanging out in an effite coffee bar in Prague than I have actually out in the weather or interacting with animals in all sorts of terrains and climates.
Shoot, if I can finish picking my teeth with this here Bowie knife, maybe I can remember where I put my wife, who was born in Germany, and watched parts of the Cold War unfold in front of her as a child living in Vienna. Or maybe I can recall where we put that bottle of wine our dear Romanian friends just dropped off. Or remember where we put the nice pictures we took while we traveled in Greece, or Italy, or Turkey, or Crete. Nah... I'm too stunted by my exposure to a high school full of kids from diplomatic families all around DC, or my neighbors from Cameroon, or the kids from Peru we grew up with. My sheer ignorance and sheltered hillbilly upbringing probably explains that Chinese/Pakistani girlfriend in high school, too.
I wanted something more than camouflage fatigues and drunk, sub-literate "buddies."
Hmmm... I see more drunk, sub-literate idiots wearing fashionable camo stumbling around most liberal arts campuses than I do in any of my social circles.
you should have spent more time at what I like to call the "book range," or the "reading range."
Perhaps we should compare reading lists? You obviously haven't gotten over your infatuation with sophistry and childish, low-brow sarcasm, so I can limit my list to stuff I finished in 8th grade, if that will make you feel better. Not to worry, though, the next Harry Potter isn't too far off, and if the words are too big, there's always the movies, and no-one will see your lips moving that way. Versuchen Sie, sich beim Schreiben nicht zu verletzen, Sie arroganter Esel.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
(forget to load the gun? Too late now, you're dead!)
Good thing the police don't have to be within arms-length when detaining and/or handcuffing suspects.
(This space intentionally left blank)
Police never have their guns withdrawn, so we shouldn't even need to discuss this.
This is not my sig.
Okay, aparently no one lives in a wooded area. I use a pistol for protection against bears. And yes if one charges me I want my weapon discharging!!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
What percentage of card-carrying NRA members voted against this administration that's been actively working on trampling the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 14th Amendments all so long as they promised to protect the 2nd -- The Only Amendment That Matters (tm). How many in fact have howled their support for every single abridgement of freedom offered up in the name of fighting terrorism?
Let's face it. Most modern day gun owners are more likely to think that security is freedom and are the most dedicated supporters of everything that is being done to tear the Constitution in half.
I know a couple of dedicated gun owners who aren't this way, but they're definitely in the minority in my experience.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
> but making the firearm near useless as a defense tool
Sorry, guns have NEVER been a defensive tool. Either you shoot someone with it (offensive) or you get shot holding it (stupid). It's not a shield...
Guns are, and were always intended to be, an offensive weapon. Until you show me one with an included forcefield generator or some crap like that, I'd rather give some mugger my wallet than pull a pistol on him.
--Nick
I love how you (and a number of other people) immediately jump to conclusions based on political motivations - that anyone who puts gun use/ownership in a negative light is automatically a "fearmongering, hippy liberal".
% 20gun%20shoot%20funny even professionalism can't save you from an accident, so we can ignore accidental self-shootings for the sake of discussion of the utility of automatic interlocks.
For your information, I've used firearms since I was 14 (so 22 years) the majority of which occurred during my (ongoing) military service. Atlantic Area Pistol Team, unit shooting coach, range safety officer, and several years where my personal weapon was belt-fed.
So let's not go making assumptions based on stereotypes, OK?
Now then, as can be demonstrated by this video http://youtube.com/watch?v=MeGD7r6s-zU&search=DEA
Same deal with suicides and accidental shootings of family members/bystanders. If you are not sure of your target and you pull the trigger anyway... that's no different from willingly running a red light.
So we are left with the cases where somebody other than you uses *your* gun to shoot somebody - possibly YOU. We can agree, I think, that these are situations that should be avoided, right?
Like car crashes, the easy way to avoid them is to either not own a gun at all, or to keep it safely locked up whenever it is not in your possession. But let's take as a given that, much the same way that not owning a car (or keeping it forever locked away) makes it tough to drive, not owning a gun (or keeping it locked up) makes it tough to shoot.
So there is a good deal of utility in a mechanism that makes it impossible for anybody other than you to fire YOUR gun. We do the same for cars - cars have locks on the doors and have a key to start them. That doesn't defeat the determined thief, but it does make casual use of YOUR car a whole lot more difficult. Shouldn't a gun have the same level of safety precautions on it as a car?
Incidentally, the whole "cars kill more people than guns" analogy is DEEPLY flawed. Cars have a use other than killing people, to the point where car-as-weapon is a pretty rare use. (Car-as-suicide is much more prevelant) Excepting the relatively small portion of recreational target shooters, the purpose of a gun is to kill. If you own a gun for "personal protection", that gun is intended to kill people. That, to mee, suggests a need for a MUCH higher level of training, accountability, and safety than a car - whose primary purpose is to move you from one place to another.
I personally feel that the presence of a gun is a situation escalator; that having a gun handy changes what would be a minor dust-up into a deadly force encounter. But let's assume that there exists a class of people who are bound and determined to invade your home and do you violent harm, and that the threat level is such that there is a legitimate case for having access to a weapon of last resort. Should you not require training before you can use it, a licence to use it, registration that you have it, and some sort of tracking system that allows it to be tracked back to you, if necessary?
We do that with cars - why not guns?
A gun that ONLY YOU can fire (under most circumstances) and whose effects identify you as the shooter is a realy good idea, and actually goes a long way to legitimizing the home defense weapon.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I can't remember the company that marketed it, but a few years ago there was a system that was very close to what you're describing. Instead of a firing pin and mechanically-detonating primer, it was electrically ignited. Basically each cartridge had a little "spark plug" where the primer would be, and this was ignited by an electrical signal from the gun. The gun's trigger was merely a switch, placed where the trigger would normally be.
It wasn't designed for "controlled access", but it was electric. It wouldn't be hard to space the contacts around the base of the cartridge in various ways, specific to each gun -- if you really wanted to. However, you could probably do the same thing with a mechanical firing pin, by making the pin an odd shape and then putting a "keyhole"-shaped cover over the primer: wrong shaped pin, it wouldn't fire. (I'm not advocating this, and in reality I think it would be a stupid idea, but I'm just saying it's possible.)
I think that the idea of electric primer ignition has been kicking around since the 50s, and probably earlier, in various forms. It's yet another solution seeking a problem to solve, in my opinion. Mechanically detonated primers are reliable, cheap, and have been brought to near-perfection over nearly two centuries of development. There's just not any compelling reason to go to an electric system. (OK, maybe one: maybe in very high-speed applications, like Gatling guns, there could be a benefit to reducing the lock time of mechanical firing, or its complexity.) The commercial failure of the gun I saw with this system lay in the fact that nobody really wanted a gun that A) had batteries and B) required special ammunition. (Probably more B.)
About the only reason I could think of for electric primers in most guns was to allow non-standard triggering systems -- you could put the trigger in any place on the gun that you wanted, and maybe make a more ergonomic gun -- but people seem generally happy with the layout of guns today, and gun owners are notoriously resistant to change. (As well they should be, perhaps.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Have you been in New Orleans lately?
Of course, it was just as bad pre-Katrina, but, at least then it was more localized to the drug areas.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is the frightening, oft repeated "escalation" theory of gun violence that posters always come up with. Rather than being a valid concept, it's a frightening look into the psychology of the person who uses it. Fortunately, that's not the way it happens. Unlike these "escalation" posters, real criminals do not "gear up" in response to greater numbers of armed citizens - they either do less crimes, or look for softer targets - unlike the "escalation" poster, they very much want to avoid any gunfire coming their way during their crimes, and work to avoid it, not scale it up.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Well, that's your opinion and that's fine and peachy. It's something to be considered for sure, but it remains an opinion and may be wrong. Bear in mind, I'm not saying you are wrong (I think you are, but there's already 300 other comments arguing both sides and counting). My point is that I don't think you're recognizing that's there more to the argument than the fact that guns are designed specifically to kill, while croquet mallets are designed with other purposes in mind but can kill, because the threat of guns (and these other objects, too) in the hands of those who use them for harm is reduced by the presence of people who use guns for good (self-defence, policing, whatever).
The critical question is whether having guns available to those who use them for good (good not being limited to stopping gun-related crimes) offsets the resulting increase in their availability to those who use them for bad (including governments...an armed citizenry restricts the degree to which its government can get out of control). Bad things will happen, guns or no guns. The answer to this critical question has not been determined, despite many attempts to and claims that is has. It's a tough question.
Just for fun, let's consider more fundamentally the idea that we should not have guns simply based on their purpose. On one hand we have guns, which are designed specifically to kill people and, in fact, can be used to do so. On the other hand we have croquet mallets, which are not designed to kill people, yet can be used to do so. Suppose no one commits crimes with guns, but people commit some number of murders in an average year with croquet mallets. Is a gun still worse than a croquet mallet merely because of purpose? What if a man with a gun can prevent a man with a croquet mallet from murdering someone? More to the point, is society better off banning either guns or croquet mallets? Note that the purpose of the implement has not affected its impact on society, it is only the way it is used.
A gun kept in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.
Just a comment that this statistic almost certainly defines "use" as firing the gun.
In real life, the by far most common use of a gun is to show it, or in the more extreme cases, point it at someone. This almost alwyas achieves the intended effect, but nothing counted as "use" ever occurs, even though lives and property may well have been saved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stma _creates_crime.htm.
http://www.gunblast.com/British_Crime_Soars.htm
http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/607623.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott
Now, I fully expect you to dismiss most of these links out of hand because they come from 'biased' sources. I also fully expect that you will not do even the bare minimum of research nessesary to form a coherant opinion on your own, beyond the kneejerk post above mine. I myself have only posted the most interesting links from the front page of the Google search I conducted, and I know better sources exist. So really, I suppose I can't be disappointed this way, nor have I wasted too much time.
the bullet that's gonna be fired is chambered in the breech... a perfect place for there to be contacts for ordinary electrical signals... durrrr... this system is unbelievably over-complicated... the gun should be smart, the ammo dumb...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I don't know what's your preference, but I still have more trust in my good old Safe Action system.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Growing up in "Rural America" I knew plenty of people that would take "enough" beer with them to go hunting. It may be that at the end of the day is when they did all of their drinking, but I wouldn't call these guys firearm enthusiasts. The people that I have met that are the most interested in firearms would never handle one after having any amount of alcohol. People like like to blow stuff up and make noise, yea they're usually near alcohol poisoning. But the people that like to study various firearms, calibres, etc are usually more concerned with improving their aim (score).
"There is no equivalences to be found among those things. It's absurd to compare them"
Really? You seek to penalize responsible adults for the irresponsible acts of others when it comes to gun ownership. How does your argument differ from my argument penalizing all drivers for the acts of the irresponsible few?
The UK has tried to ban guns. Now so many people are using knives they are trying to ban them including kitchen knives.
Besides, gun violence is NOTHING when compared to causes of death
My examples regarding the Nazis, etc were there to make the point that simply taking away private gun ownership will not stop gun violence, indeed it will lead to more state sanctioned violence. America is not immune to human nature. People in power will tend to abuse it. The one and only check we have against this tendancy is an armed citizenry.
I will agree that education, and poverty programs CAN mitigate violence. What I do not agree with and what I find immoral is your assumption that it is moral and just for you to force me to fund programs which I may not agree with.
To me there is no real difference in methodology between "progressive liberalism" and neoconservatism. Both seek to enhance and use the power of the state to mold people into what they think a perfect citizen is. They merely differ on what they define as the perfect citizen.
I have no interest in creating the perfect citizen. My only interest is in leading my own life and allowing others to lead theirs with as little intrusion as possible.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
What about quantum encryption? As soon as they read your key, they're no longer sure it's you shooting at them...
This reminded me of the "Nanite Defuser" wonder in the Civilization: Call to Power game. Once you built it, it defused all of the nukes in the world, obsoleting nuclear stockpiles - instant equalization, in effect. Wouldn't it be interesting if someone developed some form of technology that could/would disable firearms?
Of course, folks would just think of a new way to kill, but the period of downtime (if any - let's face it, we're a murderous lot) would be an interesting change of pace.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
That's a pretty poor justification.
I happen to think the world would be a better place without Britney Spears albums and polyphonic mobile phone ringtones, but I'm not getting up on my high horse and telling people they can't have them, even though I think the costs (annoyance) greatly outweigh the benefits (???) of polyphonic ringtones.
Besides which, more to the point there are a lot of people around, I'm sure, who think the world would be a better place without some things that you enjoy in it. I personally know quite a few people who have a rabid dislike of automobiles and would like to have a world without them; I'm sure they'd have no problem coming up with a similar tax scheme that punished anyone who owned a car every time a person died somewhere in one, and paid you back if you traded in your car for a bicycle. If you drive a car and haven't killed anyone lately, that probably seems pretty stupid. And yet, the number of people killed every year in cars far outweighs those killed by guns. It's all a matter of opinion whether you think the 'benefit' of cars outweighs their social and economic 'cost.'
In short, thankfully, the fact that you think society would be better or worse off without guns is basically irrelevant, as are my feelings regarding polyphonic ringtones (apparently). There are a lot of people who disagree with you, and they vote.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
When was the last time you, or ANYONE you know, had to shoot a firearm in self defence? Do you really live in an area that is more dangerous than Baghdad?
You don't have to shoot it to use it for self defense. This guy was being car jacked at gunpoint with what turned out to be an airsoft gun with the tip pointed black. Pulling his real gun saved him.
Since encryption would be used it would fall under current copyright law and the DMCA.
I can see it now during a battle:
"Private Smith, sorry but your ammunition license has expired and your gun will no longer fire. Please contact your commanding officer or call 1-800-OUT-AMMO"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
sorry, the link didn't work. That 2 minute timer can be so annyoing sometimes.
All it would take is for someone to just toss a live transmitter into a gun store and take cover....
Most criminals over here DO have guns and use them to commit crimes. If someone is breaking into your house, you assume they are armed.
To ban guns here in the US would only take them away from law abiding citizens...leave them unarmed and helpless. The criminals certainly are not going to give up their weapons. If you argue that over the years they'd run out of guns and ammo...well, that would take probably over a 100 years for that to happen...there are so many. And I don't think we're willing to put up with that long of a time giving the criminals such a huge advantage of good citizens.
The police are NOT there to prevent crime...they only investigate and try to capture and punish someone who has committed a crime. It takes about 20-30+ min for the cops to arrive often with a 911 call. In that time, an intruder could easily break in and kill you and your family...you might not even have the chance to call the cops...so, it is up to YOU to defend your house, family and property.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I can see it comming. A confrontation betwen two armed groups of thugs. The first group is using a version of linux in their revolvers but is having problems setting the extended partitions. (Each bullet can only go into a specific location in the cylinder.) Once everything is set up it works fine though configuration can be tough. The other group is running Windows BE (Bullet Edition) in their Glocks. Very easy to use however they forgot to install the newest patches in their bullets and Windows wants to validate the OS before it will let them fire. There is some problem with the trigger driver but there is a work around in the knowledgebase. The net result is that neither group actually gets any shots off and they end up using knives and clubs.
Add a gun or guns and the situation has the potential to end tragically for either party or by-standers.
.380s (you can conceal a .380 pretty much anywhere. My carry piece when I lived in the states
Because we all know, if there weren't any guns around, they would of have started a bonfire, brought out the smores and sang a acapella version of kumbaya. The fact is that the gun in that situation was there, and the police were not. It also doesn't matter if you're a 105 pound woman or a 350 pound quarterback, a gun is just as effective in your hands if you practice a bit and just as deadly for those on the other end of it. Yes, that cuts both ways, but you have the same thing with knives and bats (athough England is trying to ban knives too...)
And as for this myth of "adrenaline will cause you to shoot people" - that is bullshit and I speak from first hand experience. A drunken frat boy decided it would be a good idea to steal a toner cartridge for a Laserjet IIIp (retard...) while I was moving. He approached me as I was looking for something in the trunk and during our "talk", I slipped a magazine full of hydrashoks hollowpoint ammo into my 9mm and loaded a round. When it became clear that dumbass just wanted to steal something and run off, I just shrugged and pretty much let him do it.
I somehow managed to overcome the irresistable urge to empty my magazine into him and let him go as he and his dumbass friends sped off (and skidded around a corner and tore up the right side of his new suv, lol).
The police never showed up, by the way - in some places the local cops are useless.
A good chunk of UK cops carry concealed
And it was not uncommon in London to see snipers on the rooftops and police officers walking around with mp5's when I went about a month ago.
Oh, finally, it might not be the greatest idea to use the UK as an example, where you have gangs of thugs and idiots running around "happy slapping" people, carrying bats or whatever improvised weapons that are available to them while ordinary citizens are worried about a 5 year sentence for carrying a swiss army knife in their pocket.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Hehe, in Poland, I saw a sign that translated to "My dog can make it to the front gate in 2 seconds, what about you?" My dog likes lasers so much that I'm pretty sure I don't need any ammo, just paint the bad guy with the laser and he pounces ;)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
98% of Texas lawyers polled are for the safeguards
100% of sitting Vice Presidents are against it
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I'm betting that if you put the bullet in a bench vice and whack the back end with a hammer, it'll still discharge the bullet. Not that I'd um, ever do such a silly thing...not since Jr. High anyway. :)
My Crapple ][ was a much better machine then your trash-80.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He's just a troll and a hypocrite.
Yeah, no kidding. But of course I wasn't even responding out of any hope he'd somehow grow up - just offsetting any stray malformed thoughts that someone else might get from his rantings. Thanks, though, for pointing that out, and for being smart enough to stay outside the crossfire.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm not sure what the link is to (I'm at work right now), but I'm willing to bet you a shiny quarter that it's to the video of that DEA agent shooting himself in the foot.
... was an idiot.
If that's the case, then allow me to hold it up as a shining example of idiocy in action. That man
Allow me to step through the fundamental rules of gun safety: Rule 1: Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Well, seeing as how he shot himself in the foot/leg, I think we can probably state that it wasn't pointed in a safe direction. Even when you're holstering a weapon, it shouldn't be pointing at you if you can avoid it, and in most duty holsters you can. (And if can't avoid it, you'd think that you'd be really fucking careful about the other rules, no?)
Rule 2: Keep your finger off the trigger guard until you're ready to shoot. Well, I think we can almost certainly say he messed up here. I suppose perhaps something got wedged inside the trigger guard and depressed the trigger, but I think it's more likely he just had his finger resting on it. That alone puts him in the running for a Darwin Award, in my book. Since he was in a room full of schoolkids, there obviously wasn't any legitimate reason to shoot anything, thus there's NO REASON for his finger to be anywhere near there. That's just inexcusably stupid.
Rule 3: Always keep the gun unloaded until ready for use. Okay, I'll cut him a little slack here, because theoretically he needs to have that gun, because he's a cop (narc, whatever). But, and this is a big BUT, why did he think it a good idea to do anything with (like pull out / demonstrate / wave around) the loaded gun? Hello? Collect call from common sense, do you accept the charges? No? Didn't think so.
That incident shows a number of problems, not least of which is why we're allowing someone who's that clearly stupid to work in law enforcement.
I'll boil it down to one paragraph here: The key thing that people need to understand, is that guns are not hard. They're really not. It is not that difficult to be safe. It's certainly easier than driving a car safely. It only takes one rule (keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction) to ensure that nobody gets shot accidentally, and another rule (keep your finger away from the trigger) to prevent 99.99% of accidental discharges. (I'd say 100%, but no mechanical mechanism is perfect.) Combined with one more rule (keep the gun unloaded), you can prevent all shooting accidents. The average person is quite capable of this. Lots of people who aren't exactly brain surgeons do it every day. So when you hear about an accidental shooting, keep that in mind: either someone was obscenely careless, or they were horrendously stupid, or both. The same behavior would cause problems behind the wheel of a car, or with any significant power tool -- in fact, you can accidentally kill more people with a car than you can with a handgun.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This sounds like the beginning of Chris Rock's idea for "gun control", make bullets cost $3,000 each...
"He must of done something, there's $60,000 worth of bullets in his ass!"
I think it is a good goal. It's all about implementation though, and it would take a very long time to make the transition. That is why I don't advocate gun confiscation. My tax proposal, as full of holes and as absurd as it is, is clearly a pro-liberty, pro-freedom approach - it's just that, as we are fond of saying, freedom isn't free. You want to pursue a hobby that is meant to kill people, and yet, somehow and totally by accident actually does the job quite often? Then IMHO it is the collective responsibility of gun owners to figure out how to reduce the side effects and keep guns out of the hands of the irresponsible. I say it again: gun owners need to be collectively responsible. One way to measure responsibility in our society is in dollars.
must... stay... awake...
This sounds sort of like the metal storm guns I saw on the Discovery Channel a few weeks ago (anybody else see this on "Future Weapons"?). No firing pin needed -- bullets are triggered via RF and lauch from the gun like mini-rockets. Pretty much zero recoil and rediculous firing rates (since you don't need to cycle the firing pin). All transmissions are inside the gun -- no exterior RF triggers. It seems it would be pretty easy to make the bullets coded at that point.
Oh, and it's super reliable because there are no moving parts (except the bullet). I know some of you hate the RF technology, but pure electrics are far more reliable than a mechanical firing pin. Also having bullets that won't fire unless I've "unlocked" my gun with the appropriate password doesn't sound like too bad an idea for consumer use.
The article is a little sketchy on details or even if these systems are related, but it sounds very similar -- like an extension of the technology.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/27/2/214 .pdf
Whatever small value guns may have as a deterrent in some locales (I'm guessing you live in a more rural area?) is far outweighed by their mere availability. The US has the most lax gun control among first world nations, and we have the highest per-capita gun violence.
I know, I know, that rascally National Academy of Scientists is full of liberal commie tree huggers, of course they would say that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I suggested that gun violence would. It's about the guns. We're talking about guns.
Indeed, and after we get rid of all the guns, we will all live on fluffy clouds made of marshmellows and drink free beer. Nobody will ever harm anyone else with anything like a knife, bat, 2x4, tire iron or a fist.
Clearly guns cause all of our problems.
(btw, check out machete crimes and the push for machete registration in Mass.)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
That's right if you don't own a gun and know how to use it you are irresponsibly failing to hold up your part of the citizen/government force ratio.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
One of the aims, maybe. Of course, it could also be used by the goverment to deactivate all such civilian guns at will or cause them to fire or otherwise malfunction by meanings of jamming or otherwise manipulating the trigger signal.
Oh cool - wait till we hack these things like the WRT54G to make wireless routers. Then imagine the Beowolf cluster! We'll be able to play Duke Nukem on a box of actual ammo!
Do as you would be done to.
Wait, the iGun is obsolete. Introducing the iGun Pequeña. We're very excited about this. It's a quarter the size of the original and holds 100 cartidges and can fire 1,000,000 rounds before running out of ammo.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Duh!
If this thing relies on receiving an RF signal, then all it takes to defeat it is someone using a broadcast signal with the proper frequency and sufficient power to overcome the activation signal. The ammo wouldn't be able to discern anything other than the defeat signal.
Then again, incorporating a receiver module into the bullet is guaranteed to make ammo prohibitively expensive.
Not quite, its more of an attempt to circumvent that pesky 2nd amendment by making ammunition too expensive for the common man.
" see, we really didn't take away your right to bare arms "
And remember, criminals wont follow the law. They never do.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't know about you, but personally I don't want a gun that can electronically jammed.....or run out of batteries for that matter....
When things break down.. when you have people invading your homeland.. or if god forbid civil war breaks out (believe me shrub is pushing a lot of people to that point.. i heard someone rationally call for it on national radio for christ sake).. you want to have ammunition which is universal.
You don't want ammunition keyed to your secret code.. you want bullets you can put in a gun so you can pull the trigger and kill your adversary.
They are not copyrighted works, guns are not leisure products, they are necessary in times of great need where you fear for your life or for someone elses.. or where you are forced to fight for your freedom from enemies either foreign or domestic.
This is a recipe for disaster if it is ever implemented.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This could slow down combat considerably, which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
Forgot your encryption key? Click here.
Enter your mother's maiden name.
Check your email in 10 minutes for a new key.
Sorry, too many bad keys have been entered, please submit a tech support ticket...
Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.
The right to keep and bear arms is not designed to *prevent* tyrannical government (violations of our fundamental rights - as you put it), it is itself the prevention. I will explain simply so that you may be able to see through the screen of leftist dogma that is so palpable in your post.
First, everyone agrees that good and legal government derives its power from the consent of the governed. If the governed do not consent to the government, that is the definition of tyranny.
Second, because of this requirement for the consent of the governed, in order for the government to claim legitimacy, its rights have to be conferred upon it by the governed. In short, any rights that a legitimate government has are rights that the people have given it.
Third, because the government cannot possess rights that the people do not, the government cannot strip the people of their rights. If I do not have the right to do something, then I cannot confer that right upon the government. The government cannot take away my arms and keep them for itself. That is tyranny.
The framers of the constitution understood this, and knew about governments that they naturally tend toward totalitarianism, either socialist or theocratic. They also understood that one of the first rights that governments like to take away is the right to keep and bear arms. They do it under the guise of protecting the citizenry, but it never works out that way. Look up statistics on violent crime in Florida when they changed their concealed carry laws to "shall-issue", or in the UK or Australia, when they instituted their gun bans. In every case, the prevalence of legal guns was commensurate with a lower violent crime rate. IN EVERY CASE.
In addition to this, consider some of the other instances in history wherein gun registry and bans were tried...
Hitler did it, Mao did it, Pol Pot did it, Stalin did it. Take away the people's teeth, and then they can't bite you back when you put them into camps or worse.
Try reading before you write.
PunX
1. The software contained herein may NOT be used in life or death situations. ...
FRA: STFU GTFO
Pfft! Says you! I personally, am going to outfit an emp generator into one of my headlights so I won't get any more speeding tickets. Also, now I won't get shot at. BONUS!
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Nowhere in that report does it state that 80% of weapons used in crimes are obtained by illegal means. Hell, the stats aren't even dealing with weapons, they're talking about percentages of inmates.
It has stats that list retail sources and non-retail. One of those non-retail sources is partially classified as illegal.
That's about all we can say about it.
It is about stopping someone from grabbing the cops gun and shooting him. That is how most cops are shot, by their own gun...
Sorry, but do you have proof of this? I've known a lot of cops and I've -rarely- heard of this happening. Sounds like BS to me
Excellent comment - thank you. I don't think most of us who believe in "gun control" think that it should be synonymous with "gun elimination".
My own 2 cents is that the idea that guns somehow protect our freedoms is a little illogical, to begin with. Have all of you making that argument forgotten tanks, planes, helicopters, even nuclear weapons? Surely you don't believe we should put those into civilian control, as well? If the US military, for whatever unlikely reason, decided that it wanted to trample all over our civil rights, even thousands of gun-toting civilians wouldn't be able to stop them.
This will not protect the gun from use. It protects the ammo. If you steel the gun you can always make bullets for it that ignore the encrypted message and simply fire when ANY signal is recieved. But if you steel the ammo it would simply not fire in any gun without the right code. This might be usful if theft of ammo were a big issue. Possably the military might use it so if an an ammo supply were overrun the ammo could not be used. Might be good for say anti-tank rounds or and things like that. I doubt this was intended for hand guns
This looks to be another case of a solution looking for a problem. I predict that under 12 will be sold if it's ever produced.
.02 cents(.22LR) to over $5(.50BMG and such). This system is likely to at least double the cost of the ammunition, and I shoot thousands and thousands of rounds a year.
From the article:
but many firearm enthusiasts would surely pay a premium for such added security.
Nope, nada, not happening. I AM a firearm enthusiast, I talk with other enthusiats and they all disdain such a system. Their number one concern is that the firearm goes bang when the trigger is pulled, every time. This means KISS principles are in effect.
Problems I see:
1. Cost of compatible gun: The gun is more expensive. Actually about the least concern.
2. Performance of 'smart bullets': We have hundreds of calibers so shooters can pick the one they like the best. I doubt that they'll release even the dozen calibers needed to make 90% of defensive handgun owners happy.
3. Cost of ammunition: rounds today range from
4. Availability of ammunition: People tend to select calibers that they can get ahold of easily. If walmart doesnt' carry it, it's not popular.
5. Reliability: Users want a bang, every time. The more complicated the system, the less useful this will be.
6. Safety: Users who have a firearm for self defense want a weapon to be immediatly useful. No fumbling around with a 'tiny keypad' trying to enter a code when the criminal is breaking into your home. Hell, my primary self defense firearm doesn't even have a manual safety. I refer you to the #1 police firearm, the Glock, for this. Requiring complicated code entry actually works out better for the criminal, who through whatever means gets ahold of firearm, ammo, and password. He can enter it in before entering, while the occupants pretty much have to wait for the entry to start to get the weapon and enter the code
7. You'd be spending millions and millions of dollars for basically nothing, because there's already so many firearms out there that they aren't going to run out, and the black market will simply supply the demand, just like with drugs. It's not like guns and ammunition are hard to make.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't buy cheap guns, beater guns, or unsafe weapons. I can think of few things that make a gun more unsafe that FAILING to perform it's intended task in a life or death situation. I'll stick with my old, unsafe, and trustworthy pistols, thanks all the same.
...no thanks. Not interested. I don't think any gun owner would be interested in this. I think they are hoping to get someone like the state of NJ to legislate this as a requirement and force gun owners into buying it.
No way, no how, no thanks.
Guns played an important part of the civil rights movements of the 60's. Why do you think clansmen did not raid the houses of the leaders and just kill everyone? Why did they not just shoot the marchers in the streets? (And it was tried, several times, the marchers shot back).
Check your history, it's true that this use of guns is often down played because it is not politically correct, but footage and case histories of black civil rights activists and marchers using firearms to protect themselves and their familes are well documented.
Thing is, this is a fictional story. Crime tends to INCREASE when guns are banned. My personal theory is that most violent criminals are the ones most capable of physical violence, IE young people, specifically males. They can cause all sorts of damage with knives, bats, and their bare fists and Granny, who could stop them with a gun, can't defend herself as well with the same tools.
I don't read AC A human right
Why don't you guys use real statistics and not something the NRA made up. This stuff is an urban myth. Also realise the situation in Australia is different. In Oz 60% of homicides happen in the home, in the US most happen in the street.
Bitter and proud of it.
It's simple free-market economics. Supply and demand. If there aren't people buying guns to defend themselves, then there isn't enough profit for the gun makers and criminals will have nowhere to buy guns.
</sarcasm>
Actually, that's pretty damn funny. Obviously I was illustrating a point, and that sort of stuff doesn't tend to happen all in one evening, if you know what I mean. At least not the mountain lion and the coyote at the same time, anyway (not unless we're out of town, visiting friends out west). But I can see grenading a racoon and nuking the gang-bangers both on the same day - at least, here in suburban Maryland, anyway.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Carrying a gun is, on the other hand, much more complex. To get a carrying permit, you will have, among other things, to prove you have a real need for it."
This is true in many parts of the U.S. as well (notably, Maryland, New York City, and California*).
The problem is, one of the best ways to prove that you're personally in danger such that a handgun is needed to counter a specific threat is for that threat to manifest itself. Which, if you believe you're in likely mortal danger, would be inconvenient.
timothy
* Typical of anti-gun politicians. Senator Feinstein of California believes in "one law for thee, and one for me" -- she has a concealed carry permit.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Sorry, no.
A firearm, at most, should have two physical safeties (and that's stretching it) which the user can manipulate. Throwing electronics into the mix will attract nobody. When conventional firearms have an expected MTBF of at least 3,000 or so using mechanical means - and htat's with firearm designs which have, on a fundamental level, been tested for almost centuries. And those are very rarely anything more than a "failure to fire" or casing ejection problem. Too much more unreliability than that in
A design principle of firearms is, "make it work consistently with as few parts as possible" - because, invariably, something will break with too many small parts. We're dealing with machines which routinely undergo very abrupt percussional impact. Firearm optics need to be specifically designed to withstand such force. The hardening required for the electronics for such devices would be expensive. And that doesn't even bring up the necessity to then have two sources of ammunition: the ammunition, and the electronic source to power the damn thing. I know I sure as hell wouldn't want to use such a (bulky and failure prone) device for target practice, let alone trust my life to such a device in a defensive role. What if the battery dies while it's sitting on the shelf? (Of course, if you think guns shouldn't be used for self defense, as many intellectual urbanites do, that's not a problem; "the police will be there to help you!" and other such nonsense arguments apply.)
How about they get just one gun with electronic components working, to market, and financially profitable first instead of jumping the gun with this newfangled (and functionally worthless) technology? What incentive is there? There is none. The cost of ammunition alone would be perversely prohibitive.
(Here's a hint: it will never happen unless required by law, and then still very infrequently.)
I believe that this is the eventual goal of people creating this technology: ban all guns by making them too expensive to own. It makes sense, because for in order for this technology ot become viable, it's going to require some sort of law in place to enforce the use of bulltes which match a specific gun. God, I can't evne begin to imagine how much that'd be (normal ammunition is already about a quarter a round, give or take).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Seems to me the packet loss would be unacceptable.
Im not even gonna start but one can kinda see where your comming from with this statement:
Ok so _none_ of those things would ever happen to me as i live in the city. Do people in the cities need guns? Id be happy if guns were rural use only. Thats the only real place you can justify them. I would strongly disagree that they prevent crime. Your example of crazy drug users bashing down your door not withstanding. On a side note, what kind of crazy neighborhood do you live in?? it sounds like the most dangerous place in the world. Id hate to live in a place that required me to own a gun to survive. Yet another reason to be happy im not an american i guess.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I think the issue for most people in other countries is that to most people, crazy drug users beating down your door and threatening your family is not really a concern. In america i assume these types of incidents are commonplace, so i can see the need for domestic assault rifles. I doubt his worldview is distorted - he just doesnt understand how likely it is for an american to be savagely beaten to a pulp in a home invasion. Considering no one i know and no one ive ever known, has been involved in a home invasion, i think that its safe to say that my "view" would be distorted based on the experiences i have had. America is a violent society. I would never argue against gun ownership in somalia and i should probably stop arguing against it in america.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Really? I'd like to see those statistics. I live in a country where most private gun ownership was banned ten years ago and I don't believe our crime rate has gone up. And look at the UK, where not even the regular police have guns. So I'm calling bullshit on your unsourced assertion.
Wow, maybe you should actually back up your own opinions within one sentence of chastizing someone else for not backing up theirs? Talk about dishonest!
Right. Unless they also have a gun, or there's several of them, or you're overpowered and have the gun taken. My problem with guns is that they're just so dangerous.
This is just silly.
A) Most guns hold several bullets and can fire them in rapid succession.
B) Being overpowered and having your gun taken is LESS likely than using it properly... unless you like to coat it with vaseline or something.
C)The danger is easily managed by not being a retard. Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot. Always treat a gun like it's loaded. You've managed not to stick a fork in a wall outlet so far, right?
I strongly believe that no-one needs a gun in a city or urban environment, and that wide-spread ownership only makes the whole crime situation worse, whether stolen or not.
This runs strongly counter to the ACTUAL EVIDENCE.
I used to think like you, in seventh grade. Then I tried to do a research report to support my viewpoint. Everybody on your side had only halfassed opinions and manipulated data to back them up. (Like the famous, "A gun is X times more likely to kill a family member.." which has been thuroughly debunked.) The pro-right to own/carry side is backed by solid statistical evidence.
The only "real" evidence the gun control crowd comes up with is from foreign countries, where there isn't already a massive number of illegal guns availible, there are major cultural differences, and the capacity to make guns on the sly would likely be much harder to come by than it is in the us. I call bullshit on your comparison to foreign countries. Look at the Swiss who whose citizens to keep "assault" weapons in their houses. If you're viewpoint was actually correct, all those holes in Swiss cheese must be coming from stray bullets and the streets would be running red with blood!
Which brings up another point:
Prohibition.
It's important we learn the lessons of the past lest we are doomed to repeat them.
What's the lesson?
If people want something, they will get it. If you make it illegal, the will still get it and you will make a lot of really nasty people rich and powerful in the process.
Eliminating guns is simply not an option. You could eliminate LEGAL gun ownership, but all the criminals are going to throw a big freakin party if that ever happens. And the party's going to be at YOUR house. What, are you going to stop them? Fat chance, they got guns, and all you've got is the off chance that they wait around to let you call the police and then wait some more to get arrested.
Life is too short to proofread.
Sounds like another thing these folks should be worried about.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Adding any kind of smarts, computers or eletronics to the firing path of a gun (including any kind of "authorized user" checking) is bad.
The parts of a gun required to fire are all mechanical and most guns are (or at least should be) built so that the number of parts which can fail and prevent the gun from firing is as few as possible.
Adding things like "encrypted bullets" or judge-dredd like DNA checks for authorized users just makes it less likely that the gun is going to fire when it needs to.
Teach your children respect for guns and what they can do
By FAR the most important thing you can do.
A friend of mine who is a gunsmith made a habit of taking his children to shoot as soon as they were old enough (around 5). Not so they could actually shot all the time, but to demystify the weapons.
He would show them the gun, disassemble it, reassemble it, allow them to handle it, and then have them shoot it. Generally, they were scared to death of the weapon, the recoil, the noise, etc. and they respected the gun - they knew what it did, they knew it was dangerous, and they did not want to mess with it until they were much older when they wanted to take up shooting themselves (although he thought it was a bit funny when his 14 year old daughter - who's not the type you'd expect to like shooting - actually became a better markswoman than him).
Too many parents hide the weapon and never let children handle it - it's forbidden, and once they get a hand on it the first thing they want to do is use it like they do in all the video games and movies, often with dreadful results, especially if the owner has left the weapon loaded.
Great set of rules. You forgot:
ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
This is especially important for guns without a safety switch or lever-- many handguns, for example-- but it's a good overall safety rule. It eliminates the "someone surprised me and the gun went off" scenario. (Guns don't go off by themselves.) One of the biggest tip-offs of someone who doesn't handle firearms often is the finger inside the guard, resting on the trigger. It makes me chuckle a bit when I see it in movies and on TV (hah, that guy isn't an FBI agent, he's obviously never handled a real gun before). But it scares the crap out of me when I see it on the range.
Your example of crazy drug users bashing down your door not withstanding. On a side note, what kind of crazy neighborhood do you live in?? it sounds like the most dangerous place in the world.
I live about 20 minutes from Washington, DC, in the suburbs of Maryland. That wasn't a "crazy example," but was a perfect example of the sort of things that just plain happen - some places more often than others. This isn't my "dream topic," per se, but it's something with which I do have considerable experience. We do have a rash of new street crime problems, most of which is tied to a couple of specific, well-organized Central America gangs (MS-13 is the worst). These groups consist of primarily illegal immigrants who realize they've landed in an expensive semi-urban area where migrant-worker type labor doesn't exactly keep up (hell, those of us in IT can hardly keep up with DC-area costs of living).
The event I mentioned did not include a memeber of that gang - he was a more pedestrian local thug who was quite, quite hosed up on one or more chemicals (so the police later told us), and had gotten himself into a hot pursuit involving people he'd just screwed on a drug deal. He was to the point of being willing to break into a house, and my light was on (no, I wasn't slashdotting in the middle of the night - if I recall correctly, I was writing a proposal due in the morning). He was large (much larger than me, and I'm 6'-2" and 250+), dangerous, and swinging objects at the door. That's just plain scary, and when I wouldn't do what he wanted (which wasn't entirely clear), he said he was going to break down the door and hurt people.
I highly, highly doubt that whatever urban area you live in is without some disturbances like that. But in a suburban area, it takes longer for such things to get police response, and home-invasion crimes (they have a name for it because it happens so often) tend to go from start to finish in about 10 minutes. Usually the person(s) is looking for a wallet, the car keys, some portable loot, and tends to smack around the occupants of the house to intimidate them into not testifying if he/they get caught (this often works, especially as these guys become more and more gang-affiliated). Our county just hired several new gang-only cops, just to deal with this problem, which is getting worse as the local population blooms with paperless, un-employed immigrants, some of which quickly associate with gangs run by their fellow ex-pats.
This (in this regard) is not a dream subject, it's more nightmarish, really. I'd much rather contend with slightly dangerous animals while out in the proper countryside. But work of my sort tends to be closer to the metro areas, so I have exposure to both worlds, and deliberately keep it that way. I'd go crazy in a strictly urban setting - but I do like having DC just a short drive away.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
America is a violent society
That's like saying France is a violent society, just because a few thousand people spent a few months in the suburban Paris streets burning cars every night. Honestly, now: would you call Paris (and France) a violent society? How about the UK? Is that a "violent society," considering how many of its citizens can't seem to attend a simple sporting event without getting into riots and hundreds of arrests? I guess the Germans are a violent society, too, then. No?
Violent elements in a society aren't the same thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If it's a hunk of steel and chemicals crudely fashioned I can't hack it remotely.
If it's electronic I have the capability to disable your guns or have your guns kill you. Though my foo is rusty and I am slower than I was I can run a geek farm just fine.
Outfit your police and military with this first if it's so swell and wonderful.
Wait for the next riot and a 12 year old with a HERF gun set on OFF.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
If you aren concerned with honest then please provide the stats for the change over the whole 10 years since the change was brought in in Australia? That would be more meaningful and enough time has passed for it to be available.
I live in Sydney and we are hadly under siege by gun toting criminals because we aren't all armed to the teeth.
While I think you should back your statement up with recent stats I know for a fact that the number of massacres since port arthur is 0, while prior to the new laws we would have one every couple of years before.
We don't need gun control...
We need BULLET CONTROL!!!
-- Chris Rock
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
As seen in Rambo I and III.
Are you kidding me? None of those situations required the use of a gun.
1)You think a burgular is going to stay and fight when suprised? You could have just shouted out and he would have bolted. Cmon you must be smarter than that.
2)Why would you open the door and intentionally put yourself in a dangerous situation?? That is a dumb thing to do. You should be smarter than that.
3)You're in a car and you're scared of a drunk on the street? Geez, why not just, uhm, I don't know, drive away?
I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, which is not exactly a picnic as far as crime goes and neither my family not I ever had a gun in the house. I dunno how we ever made it, perhaps we are just smart.
However I would suggest you never go live there, because you would not survive.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
* (Unencumbered) guns fire projectiles very fast (cool tech!). Like hitting something with an axe or driving over something in your car. Watch where you are aiming/going.
* (DRM) guns will fire only if you are the "right" person... or something screws up (batteries are dead, etc.)
The Bad Guys (tm) are going to have weapons without DRM, because they don't really care if they make a mistake. If required, only the Good Guys (tm) will have DRM guns, and they may or may not work when needed. On balance, that may or may not "save lives". When I purchase a gun, I want it to send lead sailing. If model X has DRM and model Y just lets fly, every time, no questions asked, I'd want model Y.
BTW. I do have children and own guns. They have been to the firing range, they know the rules. They keep asking when they can go again. The youngest have a natural fear after a demonstration, it is serious, it is loud. They just want to use smaller calibres. The older kidsn soon start asking to fire the "big guns", when they are older and appreciate the difference.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You changed the target by shooting it!
er, wait...
Oh, how I laughed!
:o)
Actually, it's not your fault...I didn't include some important details.
In situations 1 & 2, these were low income, high-crime areas. Most "burglars" were stealing to support drug habits, so a logical reaction of bolting when surprised was unlikely. It was far more likely that I would have been injured or killed; it happened to more than one neighbor in the time I lived there. The cops refused to run solo, day or night, in this area. And while I am a skilled martial artist, and have fought multiple opponents in controlled conditions, facing 4 people high on drugs unarmed would have been idiotic. The nearest police assistance was 6 to 11 miles distant, depending on which station responded. In both cases, the police WERE called, but the miscreants were long gone. Still, a report was filed and hopefully made a difference.
In situation 3, we were ALONE, near dusk, at an isolated rest stop with little traffic on the main highway. We had stopped for the facilities and to stretch our legs. The person who approached us was between us and the car and behaved in a threatening manner. And remember, when he exited stage left and we got in our car and drove to the next town, we reported the incident to the State Troopers, who informed us that someone not unlike the description we gave HAD been preying on motorists in that area.
Now, knowing this may not change your opinion of me or how I chose to handle the situations. But, I could have shot and killed any or all of those people and likely faced no prosecution or even arrest. I chose to bark, but not to bite or end a human life needlessly. That's part of the rationale to carrying a spring-loaded baton instead of a gun now. I'm UNLIKELY to kill anyone with it and should they disarm me, they could certainly hurt me, but likely NOT kill me with my own weapon. The same is not true of a gun or knife. Just because I made a judgement call...3 times in 30 years...doesn't make me stupid. I've been in more than 3 confrontations in my 50 years on Earth, and rarely have had to escalate beyond strong rhetoric and body language.
Oh, I've also been in far worse places on the planet than Johannesburg; the military saw to that. Plus, I've been to New York City on vacation! And hey, this stupid Okie is still breathing.
Thanks for the feedback; I was imprecise in the information initially given, so thank you for pointing that out, albeit in a somewhat insulting manner.
I am my own gestalt.
No, not really. The FOID (Firearms Owner ID) cards are still handed out without having to pull any strings. It's still an abomination of a process -- but it does run without any bias that I'm aware of.
Massachusetts on the other hand... you'd better have a friendly Sheriff. They illegaly delay their firearms license cards with wreckless abandon.
Is this a Springfield XD?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
You sir, a dumb.
What I was trying to prove: ~(A->B). In other words, the argument is that A implies B (always), and I'm negating the implication.
Basic logic says you negate an implication thusly: A and ~B. In other words, I have to show an example of how A can obtain while not B also obtains. If I do this, then I've given a counterexample and thus proved that it is not true that A implies B always.
So that's what I did. I created a hypothetical that shows that A could be true, but B could also be not true. In this case, it may be true that if you own a gun you are more likely to be shot with it than another gun, and yet still be true that if you own a gun you are less likely to be shot period.
This doesn't prove that "if you own a gun you are less likely to be shot, period" but that's OK. That's not what I was trying to prove. I set out to prove that "you are more likely to be shot with a gun if you own one" does not follow from "it is more likely that you will be shot with your own gun than with someone elses if you own a gun".
I have done just that.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
It'd be good if you did join the NRA, to ensure that future generations are able to defend themselves as you did.
You can join even if you no longer own a gun.
OK mate,
The MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) policy is a good one in your books. In human terms MAD works by ensuring that your neighbour is scared of your firearms and you are scared of your neighbour's firearms. IMO, a culture of mutual fear is not a good way to live in a free society (I shouldn't be scared of my neighbour)
Further more, if guns are more difficult to get than fewer criminals will have guns. if black markets are the only option for illegitimate gun ownership (I.E. a Criminal) which will make firearms rather expensive, virtually no petty criminals (the "punks" and thieves you complain about) will be able to afford to buy a firearm thus making a cricket or baseball bat perfect for home defence.
In Australia we have 20% of the number of violent crimes per 100 people compared to the US and 2.5% of gun related crimes (40 times less likely to be shot). Guns here are generally not used for self defence rather for work (farmers) or sporting purposes. We have violent criminals but they are less numerous because of, we're not a very violent culture and more effective policing. The problem you describe of people beating down doors is uncommon at worst down here.
Also, have you ever tried to hit a snake with a pistol or rifle, I had a crack at it when I was out hunting a few years back (ironic stereotype warning, I was roo shooting). A king brown snake (one of our most dangerous snakes) is 1.5 Metres long and 5 to 7 Centimetres wide. I've tried to hit one at about 25 metres was extremely difficult, I got one shot and missed (I am not winning any marksmanship awards but I do OK) it was spooked so I didn't get a second shot. Down under our predators are either small (spiders and snakes) or aquatic (sharks). Bears may be a different story.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I was pondering upon this very misconception of American gun owners today. I've taken to the idea of learning Japanese in the near future and remebered a story I saw online from an American in Japan teaching English as a second language. Somebody asked him how many guns he owns (you know, because ALL Americans own guns) and when he held up a single finger as to say "Hold on one moment" they presume he owned one gun.
He owned none -- he just let the issue drop.
I digress.
Gun ownership with in cities in America is fairly rare, at least compared to what most foreigner's seem to think. I grew up in a rural area and almost every household had -a- gun. My family actually only had one shotgun. Now, my paternal grandfather has probably at least 5 because he hunts. My maternal grandfather? Probably 10.
It's rural America -- crime is nearly nonexistant there. Guns are usually stored in a closet. If you're "fancy" you put them in a locking cabinet -- but they are almost always cases with a glass front to them. You know, so your buddies can see them when they stop by to watch the game and have a couple of beers.
Yet, nobody steals guns out that way. You can leave a rifle in the back of your pickup truck and not worry about it.
After college I moved into the "big city" around here and gun ownership is almost nonexistant. I came from a family where it was fine to have 5-10 guns in your house, stored fairly unsecured, but after meeting "city folk" that idea is unheard of. You might meet the occasional bloke that keeps a handgun in his bedroom in a locking case, but it's rare.
Me? I'm the statistical anomoly that most foreigners think represents American gun owners. I live in a cramped little apartment in the city. I own somewhere between 30 and 35 guns of various types. I admit, I'm actually not sure how many I own right this moment. I also can't tell you how many forks I own, how many pairs of shoes I have, or how many pairs of pants I own. To me they're just tools and collectable items. I have three locking steel cabinets to keep them all in -- NOT something you'd see with a rural gun owner.
You see, I'm the guy that you THINK most American gun owners are like. Let me tell you, there aren't many of us. Regular American gun owners balk when I talk about my collection. City folk? Well they're just downright appaled!
Take a gander at the numbers. It is estimated that there are 280,000,000 guns in America right now. There's also about that many people. When you sample urban populations you'll find that MOST people don't own guns. Now when you sample rural folks you'll find it isn't uncommon to find 5-10 guns per household. See what I'm saying? We don't really have a high saturation of gun ownership in our high-crime cities. I am not going to say that gun ownership reduces crime. I find that to be a sketchy argument. It is untestable. However when you look at our rural communities you find that the introduction, or existence, of high gun ownership doesn't increase crime.
American cities, compared to the rest of America, are pretty much gun free zones. I know it doesn't seem like that on the news, but it is the truth.
"I'm sorry Mr. Serial-killer. It's a Microsoft Gun and has to load 105 megabytes of updates via its 36.6k cellular modem before it will fire..."
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
How hard is to prove that you really need a gun ? Lets see:
- "I'm a truck driver, I drive late at night at low traffic roads"
- "I'm a lawyer, judge etc"
- "I'm a 24h shop owner that stay late at night on my shop"
- "I'm a driver that transport valueable items, prone to be stolen"
It is not that hard to prove. IF you really need a gun.
As a citizen of the United States of America there are only two things to prove that anyone really needs a firearm. First they have not been found gulity of felony. Secondly they wish to exercise our 2nd Amendment right. This is all the proof anyone needs to own a firearm.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Being SHOT in the ass can be a CRYPTIC pain in the ass.
But, if there are licensing fees to the crypto, being shot would mean the bullets would be expensive as hell. Now, along the lines of Chris Rock, for you to be shot would mean you must have ONE IMPORTANT motherfu*ker to be shot, considering the price of bullets. You wouldn't even need to go to the hospital cuz whoever shot you would come and take their bullet back.
(But, I dare say that HOW they take their bullet back would determine whether you go to outpatient care or straight to the coroner/morgue...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
And ends with:
Which is quite different from what you're saying.
Your argument made as much sense as and went something like this:
Lets take an example (percentages made up):
20% of people eating cooked chicked die from food poisoning. (100% of which from deadly bacteria)
10% of people die from eating raw chicken (55% from deadly bacteria, 45% from other toxic substances).
Therefore it might actually be safer to eat raw chicken. I have given an example (percentages made up) where this was the case.
Don't forget about Germany, where street gangs often lay entire cities to waste.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I think it works as follows: Most criminals don't have access to the black market (and in countries where guns are hard to get there will be fewer of them on the black market as well, because the're harder to get). In a country where guns are only available to very few people and the restrictions placed on them is harsh (for example where (ignoring police/military use) only shooting clubs may own guns and they're restricted to .22 cal rifles) it's highly unlikely that a criminal is going to use a gun - after all even a small pistol is hard to get, awfully expensive (because whoever took the risk to hook you up with it will want extra pay for exactly that) and just having it is a serious crime, which means that as soon as you pull out the gun the police will be very interested in you (as a single muggging can suddenly develop into charges of armed assault, possession of firearms etc.).
OTOH, in a country where all you need to buy a 9mm handgun is a permit, it's pretty easy to obtain such a gun even if you don't have the permit.
Strong gun laws don't make pre-existing guns harmless, but if guns weren't allowed in the first place it's unlikely that they'll ever post a significant danger. That might be what the GP was talking about: When guns aren't allowed at all there are few of them in he country and criminals are unlikely to use them. When guns are plenty, so are gun users.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
One future day, I was sitting on a park bench, tossing peanuts to the squirrels, reminiscenting about the good ol' glory days of horseshoing with another fella of like-wise generational gap.
... ...] Read the grip readout once more "Firing an unchambered bullet." Made my day....
[BANG!]
I pull out my trusty state-approved electronically-controlled 44-magum and leaped up into a ready-to-fire stance toward to the general vincity of the what is most definitely a gunshot richochet (not some stoopid backfiring as some clueless street rat would surmise).
Witnessed seeing a runner carrying a bag of overflowing jewelry and dripping expensive stones, looking back and firing at the pursuing young rent-a-cops whose adrenaline is overflowing for some eager actions. My pacemaker speeds up!
But the gun-toting robber is coming toward me... I took a few steps foward and yelled "HALT!"
[bang!] [WHIZ] A bullet passed my ear.. Eeee-ow! Man, that was deafening.
"HALT, or I'll shoot," I said.
50 yards and closing... I pulled the trigger. [click]. Gawd dammit. What was the PIN number? Ummm. Social Security, birth date, damn. So many passwords, and getting old, I am.
40 yards... Squatted and entered in the PIN number... Rose and aim..
30 yards... [click] WRONG NUMBER! Squatted and re-entered in the PIN number.... Rose and aim...
25 yards... [BEEP] Readout says "invalid bullet". Pulled back the chamber again, ejecting the mismatched bullet.
20 yards... [click] [BEEP] Readout says "1 yard inside school boundary" SHeesh! Just two steps, man...
15 yards... [BANG] Dang, missed.... squatted and aim.
10 yards... [click] [BEEP] WHAAAAT? Looked at the grip readout "COPS IN VICINITY" WHAT THE FUCK?
0 yards... [BASH!] Ooommph! Runner ran and knocked me down... turned around and aim...
-10 yards... [BANG] What? My finger isn't in the trigger... (Nearby hacker with wireless chuckled) Again, aim
-20 yards... [click] [BEEP] Readout says "Federal allotment has been used up. Override?" Punched in override (sigh)
-30 yards... [click] [BEEP BEEP BEEP
[BOOM]
MORAL: I'll settle for an unrestrained gun, anyday, thank you very much.
You seem to be umder the mistaken impression that your civil liberties are in any better state than those of the UK...
Dwell time is the time the bullet spends in the barrel after the trigger is pulled. Accuracy demands that dwell time be low enough for the weapon to not drift from the target after the trigger is pulled. If the processing time is very long at all, (a couple of milliseconds?) this feature will produce a very inaccurate, hard to shoot weapon. Since most handguns are used as safety equipment, this encryption feature will make handguns using it more unsafe to own, since the users chance of being harmed is encreased by poor accuracy and possibly unreliable ignition.
This sig kills fascists.
"I wouldn't want to be caught in the "not others" column without any option to escalate things."
Perhaps one aspect of this is how you wish to be perceived after the event if you succeed. I'm guessing Gandhi and similar non violent protestors felt that they would be morally no better than their oppressors if they resorted to violence, and would in term legitimise *their* overthrow at a later date by violent means.
I understand that in some circumstances you might consider an overthrowing of a regime is impossible without violent revolution but I'd suggest that these days there are so many complex global interdependencies that if the cause is perceived as just by enough people then external pressures can bring down a system without needing armed struggle? Is this what happened with the breakup of the Soviet Union? There were huge protests in some of the states and the military decided to go against orders from the Kremlin and not send the tanks in. Similarly armed conflict may happen when the outside world doesn't care...
No civilians got hurt in France during the riots, correct?
Well, sure, as long you don't consider "dying" to be "hurt." Yes, Europe is a peaceful, blissful oasis of wonderfullness, where the sidewalks are lit by rainbows, and all of the people who get knifed on the streets only do it to themselves, or probably deserve it because they can't stop watching Hollywood films and wearing Nike products.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's DRM on GUN. What would RMS say?!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Did the thought that maybe a counter-argument should be tied into the argument it is trying to counter never occur to you? In your example you are trying to prove "it may be better to eat raw chicken". So, analogously, if I was trying to prove "it may be safer to own a gun" I would have failed. Well, actually I would have succeeded it may be safer, but with made-up statistics I've proved nothing.
The issue that's got me pulling my hair out is that that is not the argument I'm trying to make. Here's the statement given:
A) If you own a gun you are more likely to be shot with your own weapon.
I took the statement, standing alone, as meaningless. It's only meaningful if you follow the (rhetorically) implied
B therefore owning a gun makes you more likely to be shot than not owning a gun
So THAT is the argument I'm responding to. Not the first part (A) and not the second part (B) but the implication from A to B. If you can't undersatnd that basic rules of logic, stop debating me on this. If you can, I'll reiterate the rest of why you are totally wrong.
So I'm trying to disprove that A->B in general. In order to do this I simply need to illustrate that it is possible that ~(A->B), which would be ~A & B. Thus the hypothetical. Now I only proved that (~A&B) is possible. That's enough to demonstrate that ~(A->B) always. Q.E.D. That's just basic logic.
You, however, are for some inane reason assuming I'm trying to prove that ~B. That owning a gun is not, in fact, more dangerous than not owning a gun. That's what your cute little chicken example is all about "It might actually be safer to eat raw chicken" corresponds to "it might actually be safer to own a gun". As you point out: so what? With made-up statistics, this is meaningless. I agree. So what? It's not what I'm trying to prove.
It's like I built a little house and you come along and go "yeah, but can it go 0-60 in under 10 seconds?" The only response to this can be WTF? It's a house, not a car.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Your comment no verb.
Screw that, what about Schroedinger's encryption, where both the ammo and the target are sealed in a box, and the encryption produces a 50% chance of firing the gun. Then, as long as the box is not opened, the gun has both fired and not fired at the same time, meaning you should go to jail for both murder and attempted murder.
There's just no winning with that one.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Yep, I agree with you completely, sir.
It's ironic... those who are armed (that is, respectable citizens) are often much more reserved in using force (of any kind) against a perpetrator when asked a hypothetical question, but those who go through their lives unarmed tend to be quick on the uptake of violence. Sad, what hypocricy lives within...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The simple fact of the matter is that by increasing the prices of anything, you're allowing less access to that item to the lower classes. Several people have already said that they don't own any firearms because they can't afford them, and yet you want to make them more expensive. Instead of "when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns," now it's "when guns are expensive, only the rich will have guns." This is class discrimination at its worst. Instead of depriving the poor of education, or jobs, you're depriving them of safety, and of life.
This is the main reason why banning "Saturday Night Specials" is a bad idea. Ok, no, we shouldn't allow firearms that are so cheaply made that the user is at serious risk every time the thing is loaded, fired, or looked at. But that's the realm of the FTC, which already holds companies accountable if their products are not designed safely. But that doesn't mean that well-made, inexpensive firearms shouldn't exist.
Kel-Tec is a very good example of the kind of manufacturer that I want around. They make well-designed firearms that are both reliable and inexpensive, so that the poor can actually afford them (MSRP is $300 new, and usual retail is around $260; compare that to the average pistol, which on average starts at $700). Not only that, middle-class people can afford to buy a backup pistol just in case their primary fails.
Russell, I suggest you look at this site. After you're done with that page, read the rest of the articles there; it should take less than an hour, depending on your reading speed. Really, firearms enable the average person to stand their ground against any adversary, whether it's a mugger, a burgler, or a tyrannical government.
Your main point is that all gun owners should be responsible for the actions of a few. Since many have already brought up the points I wanted to bring up on this, I will just say one more: instead of punishing all of the people who haven't yet been convicted of a crime, how about we start punishing the people who actually were convicted? It seems to me that keeping criminals off of the streets would be far more effective than attempting to keep all firearms off of the streets. It doesn't have to be complicated: if you commit a crime, you go to jail. If you have never committed a crime, you're free. There's no need to enable more crimes to happen by effectively disarming the citizens, and uneffectively disarming the criminals. If they don't follow the "Don't hurt people" laws, is there any reason to believe they'll follow the "Don't own a gun" laws?
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Do not eat iGun Pequeña.
Well done sir, well done!