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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).
Which one of these two guns should be banned
Both of them?
and why?
Because they're guns?
Any other questions?
Requiring that it be locked away securely accomplishes the same goal (keeping it out of the hands of children) without making it useless for self-defense. I am not interested in living in a country which makes it illegal to defend yourself.
If you take longer inserting the bolt than unlocking the gun cabinet, you're not familiar enough with your weapon that you should be allowed to keep it.
And I'd gladly live in a country where it's illegal to defend myself by lethal means if it also meant the possibility of having to defend oneself with lethal means wasn't something a normal person would have to worry about.
It's little wonder that so many Americans go apeshit with all the insane worries they have which others don't.
I am not interested in living in a country which makes it illegal to defend yourself.
The 2nd amendment was never meant to allow you to defend yourself.
Personal defense was never a right.
The 2nd amendment was only for the purposes of the formation of a militia.
What is it you think banning guns will do?
Prevent guns from being used in criminal acts.
Did banning illegal drugs actually stop them from being used and people over dosing on them?
I didn't know drugs were illegal.