NYPD Developing Portable Body Scanner For Detecting Guns

Zothecula writes "You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives — after all, if someone who doesn't want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That's why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person's body. The NYPD announced the project this week."

Comments

Re:This device empowers criminals.

[ColdWetDog]

Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated that that. I live in fairly rural Alaska, people have guns all of the time. It's not all that uncommon to see a couple of guys walking down the main road, rifles in hand, going off deer hunting. If we go out into the backwoods, I typically carry a 12 gauge for bear defense (first rounds are the shotgun equivalent of an M-80, designed to scare the bear off). I don't carry a pistol around because there is really no need to - the human animals are fairly tame compared to the batshit insanity found in a bigger city.

But in the batshit insanity of a big city, feral humans are a big problem. Especially if you are law enforcement. It's useful to know that the hophead idiot wired up on six different drugs has a pistol (although those people tend to remind me of the scene in '5th Element' where Bruce Willis disarms the guy). It's useful to know that the stoner is unarmed.

If you are carrying a gun and a policeman stops you, you'd best put your hands where they can see them and tell them slowly and carefully that you're armed. Be professional. It saves lives.