Using Technology To Make Guns Safer

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Farhad Manjoo writes that there are a number of technologies that gunmakers could add to their products that might prevent hundreds or thousands of deaths per year. One area of active research is known as the 'smart gun' — a trigger-identification system that prevents a gun from being fired by anyone other than its authorized user. Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology created a working prototype of a gun that determines whether or not to fire based on a user's 'grip pattern.' Gunmakers have been slow to add other safety technologies as well, including indicators that show whether a gun is loaded, and 'magazine safeties' that prevent weapons from being fired when their ammunition magazine is removed (PDF). That could save 400 lives a year. So why aren't gunmakers making safer guns? Because guns are exempt from most of the consumer safety laws that have improved the rest of American life. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, charged with looking over thousands of different kinds of products, is explicitly prohibited from regulating firearms. In 2005, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunizes gun makers against lawsuits resulting from 'misuse' of the products. If they can't be sued and can't be regulated, gunmakers have no incentive to make smarter guns." Note that gun safety features (not universally loved) like loaded-chamber indicators, grip safeties, and magazine disconnects are constantly evolving and have been available in some form and in various combinations for many decades, so gun makers seem to have some incentive to produce and improve them, and that the PLCAA does not prevent consumer safety lawsuits, but does shield gun makers from suits based on criminal conduct by gun buyers (though imperfectly).

Comments

There are few things as amusing....

[jotaeleemeese]

.... as watching USians debate gun safety.

The assumptions made, the supposed rights implied and what appears reasonable are completely alien to most other people, this reasonings avoid the patently obvious: in other places people don't need guns to defend themselves or to feel safe, and certainly don't harbour the ridiculous notion that you need them just in case you have to fight by violent means your own government (in a civilb war situation guns will be readily available, you don't need to stockpile weapons during peace time) or a foreign invader (wouldn't your armed forces fight in home soil ? Or what is the deal?)

Re:Missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's little wonder that so many Americans go apeshit with all the insane worries they have which others don't.

Not Americans, Ignorant, paranoid, American Conservatives. About half of us are modern, civilized people, and shake our heads at what the ignorant conservatives get up to..

Re:Guns

[CanHasDIY]

Here is a crazy idea, GET RID OF THEM. If people want to go hunting let them use bows and there is no reason to have automatic weapons and handguns.

Cops and criminals (which are all too often one and the same) have them.

Reason enough.

Re:Computers in Guns?

[Samalie]

You want a better way to protect yourself, where nobody will likely die?

Buy a fucking alarm for your house.

Everything else...you're fucking stupid. Your gun doesn't make you safer...if anything, it makes your and anyone in your household's lives more at risk. If you've got your guns properly locked in a safe, then they're worthless "in an emergency"...you'll never get to them in time. If they're not properly stored, than you're opening your family up to one of the thousands of accidential deaths and suicides that happen every year.