Slashdot Mirror
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).
Are kind of missing the point. If you actually need to use a gun, you don't want a ton of hardware that will prevent it from firing when you pull the trigger.
Ask the Army if they really want their guns locked to only work when they pull the trigger, so when they pick up a fallen soldier's gun in the middle of a battle after running out of ammo it won't fire.
The author mostly had me with the first half of the article, then went overboard praising the Product Safety Commission and even worse, safety-related lawsuits. I'm glad guns are exempt -- many if not most product safety lawsuits are shining examples of why we need tort reform.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
is one of those obvious legalities that you would think you shouldnt have to have.
It's like the family that sued Cessna after their father, with insufficient training, crashed and died. (I guess its not his fault he didnt know how to fly)
Or the people who sue the bar for the drunk who rams their car. (i guess its not his fault he was too drunk to drive)
Or the guy who cut off his finger on a table saw, and sued Sears for not including the tech that automagically stops the saw. (I guess its not his fault he put hs finger on a frigging saw blade)
The MFR simply makes the product.
The owner still carries full weight and responsibility for proper use and misuse.
Shouldnt have to have a law to state that.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We're basically talking about adding technology to made guns NOT WORK, which means you are just adding another potential layer of failure to prevent the weapon from working. You want to know what solves most of those problems?, gun safes, which won't add a single potential failure layer to the overall picture.
Note: magazine safeties prevent you from clearing the firearm, which means you can't guarantee it's not loaded.
With a gun, like with climbing gear, the responsibility for saftey lies solely between the ears of the operator. The safest gun, like the safest climbing gear, is the one with the simplest possible operation that functions exactly the same way every time. Anything that creates the illusion that some component of the system can be relied upon to be responsible for the safety of the system ultimately lowers the safety of the system because it:
1) Increases the mechanical complexity of the system. More parts to fail, jam, or otherwise not operate as expected
2) Changes the behavior of the system based on the configuration. You shouldn't create a system that develops a sense of complacency in users because it's safe to do something in one configuration but not in another. In a situation that isn't intentionally firing the gun, a user shouldn't pull the trigger on a weapon without checking the chamber because he or she is relying on a magazine safety to prevent it from firing. At some ponit, encouraging this fundamentally dangerous behavior will come back and bite some user in the ass because they'll do the fundamentally unsafe thing when the system isn't in the "safe" configuration of having the magazine removed.
People get complacent, and complacency results in people doing unsafe things.
Many gun owners seem to be particular about the amount and type of safety mechanisms they will accept on a gun. One good example is the key lock system that you see on Taurus and S&W Revolvers. It's just a small mechanism w/ special key that renders the gun inoperable if locked, and it is completely optional, however it's not difficult to see cases of individuals refusing to buy one for that reason alone, or looking to get a "pre-lock" version of the weapon.
Bork Bork Bork!!
These guns aren't for the army, their for the typical idiot consumer.
I remember this old story on the news that a 3 year old picked up a gun, not knowing what it was, and shot his(?) mother when she tried to take it back.
This would prevent stories like that.
Not allowing people who let others get at guns raise children would also prevent stories like that.
In some other countries, the firing mechanism must be stored seperately from the gun at all times, except when the weapon is being used.
And definitely not loaded.
And also, the barrier to losing custody of your children is way lower. The way A.Z. was brought up would have been impossible in places with strong child protection laws.
http://imgur.com/Jinky
Which one of these two guns should be banned and why?
I remember this old story on the news that a 3 year old picked up a gun, not knowing what it was, and shot his(?) mother when she tried to take it back. This would prevent stories like that.
So would locking guns in a gun cabinet when not in use, as you're obligated to do.
I know NOTHING about guns, being a Brit, but just from watching FPSRussia on YouTube I can tell you that you don't point a loaded gun at people EVER, you keep the safety catch on at all times except just before you fire, and after firing you check the chamber (receiver?) for a round before you do anything else, just in case you miscounted how many shots you fired. I'm sure there are plenty of other guidelines that morons don't follow, but these are obvious from watching a redneck shoot cans in his back yard.
Unless you have a seizure, or someone else does something moronic (running in front of you, trying to wrestle the gun from you) I can't see any other reason for accidental deaths / injuries involving guns than user error. Please, do give me other examples if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Since firearms accidents are quite rare (you're more than five times more likely to die in a fire than a gun accident, with just 600 out of 128,200 unintentional injury deaths in 2009 being from firearms), and "smart gun" technologies mostly would interfere with the ability to quickly deploy guns for defensive purposes, the call for these technologies ranges from well-intentioned ignorance to a back-door attempt to drive up the price of guns and make self-defense tools unavailable to poor people.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The article and especially the summary is completely wrong about their central claim "gunmakers have no incentive...". Of course that's typical - anti-gunners would never shoot, never handle a firearm, so they normally have no idea what they are talking about. The supreme requirement in a firearm is RELIABILITY. If you are in a situation where you actually have to fire your sidearm, you die if it doesn't work right that time. A defensive weapon has to work every single time. That's why the 1911 design is still the second most popular model over a hundred years later - because it's been proven reliable. That's why you keep firearms simple - complex things break. That's also why you definitely don't add a bunch of complexity designed to make the gun NOT WORK if something isn't perfect - it has to fire, or an innocent person dies. It's only people who don't know about firearms, or about dealing with bad guys in general, who think something like "fingerprinting" one persons particular grip sounds like a good idea. It does sound good, until you think about the fact that the user is UNDER ATTACK. They may very well have to fire with their other hand, after the BG smashes their right arms with a baseball bat, car, stabs them with a knife ....
These "smart guns" look cool in movies, but anyone with any tactical experience or training knows they are only movie props. In real life, these ideas would get good guys killed every day. If you've never even been trained in USING a firearm, please don't pontificate about how they be be designed.
I know NOTHING about guns, being a Brit
Congratulations, you know more about guns than most of the anti-gun crowd, as well as a disappointing number of gun owners. What you go on to describe is basically the first 3 pages of the NRA basic pistol safety manual - always treat a gun like it's loaded, always point it in a safe direction, and always keep it unloaded until you're actually using it. You're absolutely right - "accidental" shootings are virtually always negligent.
Two reasons:
1) How can you make something "safe" that has the explicit purpose of being fatal
2) therefore a gun NOT firing when needed is seen as a DECLINE in safety.
bickerdyke
Better to limit all non-professional firearms to 3 rounds (shotgun, iirc, already are).
That's only for waterfowl hunting. Shotguns with higher capacities are perfectly legal and easy to obtain. In fact, many come with higher-capacity tubes and an insert that prevents it being fully loaded. It is then perfectly legal to remove the insert, but illegal to go duck/goose hunting with it removed.
It's fairly well understood that the sound of racking (that's the proper term, I believe) a shotgun actually will not scare away an intruder. I wish it did--I'd much rather have the bad guy run away than have to shoot him.
Secondly, if you want a larger spread, you don't get a larger barrel--it's 12gauge (or 40, or whatever) all the way down. You can get barrels with different chokes, which constrict the opening at the end of the barrel to various degrees.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
"you don't point a gun at people EVER"
Fixed that for you. Always assume a gun is loaded - even if you have absolute, undeniable proof that it isn't. It's the kind of crap they teach before kindergarten in rural areas.
So would locking guns in a gun cabinet when not in use, as you're obligated to do.
But that relies on owner action.
These technologies are designed to remove owner action from the safety equation. It doesn't matter if the owner is responsible or not, since the technology doesn't care.
Any system that relies on personal-responsibility is unsafe, since individuals aren't reliable.
Any well designed system doesn't allow for individual actions to break the system.
The editor, timothy, corrected the egregious errors in the submission while letting the parts worthy of commentary and debate stand. He did what an editor is supposed to do! Maybe 12/22 will be the end of the world after all, and this is one of the first signs of the imminent apocalypse!
In some other countries, the firing mechanism must be stored seperately from the gun at all times, except when the weapon is being used.
And definitely not loaded.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I remember this old story on the news that a 3 year old picked up a gun, not knowing what it was, and shot his(?) mother when she tried to take it back.
If she left a loaded gun where a three year old could pick it up, and died as a result, then she should have been nominated for a Darwin Award.
This would prevent stories like that.
Why would we want to prevent the removal of fatally stupid people from the human gene pool? Too bad she had already procreated at least once.
There are more, but those are the most basic and most important. Guns aren't responsible for violence anymore than cakes are responsible for fat people.
I actually do have one of these installed on a .40 caliber S&W. Works pretty well...until you try to switch hands. In hindsight not such a great idea for us ambidextrous guys.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Norway, at least.
A provision for servicemen keeping weapons at home is that they store the bolt away from the weapon itself. Similar for handguns with removable firing pins.
First off, the limit you reference about shotguns I think only applies to bird hunting or something. At least, I used a pump-action Mossberg that held 5 in the tube.
But on to my real question... this is a technology-oriented community... yet we seem very quick to crap all over the role that technology could play here.
Would an RFID-based system, in which you identify yourself to the gun using public key cryptography, be such a terrible thing? Assuming the mechanism can be made reliable (and with enough work, why can't it be made reliable enough?), to me it seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea to limit the number of people who can fire the weapon. E.g., you and your spouse both have key fobs that allow you to fire the gun, but without the fob, no one else can fire it.
If the fob is the problem - hear me out - why not have the RFID chip implanted in your wrist? Imagine it - you pick up your gun, and you can fire it, but if someone else picks it up, they can't. To me, that actually sounds pretty cool and futuristic. It would eliminate the need for a lot of fight scenes in sci-fi movies, though.
I know, not everyone wants something implanted in their wrist (although in this community I'd expect more than the average number to be willing). Well, maybe this is something only required for semi-automatic pistols, etc.... if you want a revolver, no RFID interlock required.
There are all sorts of interesting solutions we could come up with. Police departments could use a department key, so that any officer could fire any other officer's weapon, but a criminal in a struggle wouldn't be able to fire the officer's weapon.
Of course, we all know there are flaws with RFID. Could someone, with enough time and effort, clone a key fob? Probably. With enough time and effort, any sort of system we could devise will be defeated. Maybe someone will set off an EMP and render all our smart guns useless. The better question is, what is the increase in effectiveness we gain by doing this?
We seem very willing to invent scenarios in which safety mechanisms would cause problems... e.g., "me and my friend were working in the garage when someone came up and shot me! I told my friend to get my gun and shoot back, but he couldn't because of the RFID interlock!" and use this as a justification to ignore the potential of technology in this area. But are these really realistic scenarios? Or are we trying to justify what we already want to believe based on anecdotes...
Obviously this is not a total solution by any means. It does nothing to address the large number of firearms already in circulation. Some people suggest buy-back programs (although I'm a bit skeptical of those, since it seems like the people who are least likely to use a gun are going to be the most likely to trade it in for cash, and good luck trying to get the government to spend any money on a new program right now)... maybe gun manufacturers could offer a trade-in program, where people can upgrade to smart guns.
To sum up, I think there are viable things that can be done, but for some reason, a lot of us like to invent reasons, no matter how far-fetched, for us to conclude that nothing can be done.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Accidental deaths occur in the US because people are morons. We have teenagers who find their dad's gun and wave it around trying to look cool, with their finger on the trigger. Never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot; keep your finger off the trigger until you intend to fire (resting it next to the trigger, not contacting, allows you to fire nearly as fast but prevents a twitch or bump from tugging your finger on the trigger). Waving your gun around at people with your finger on the trigger puts a lot of momentum in a heavy chunk of metal, which eventually leads to that heavy chunk slipping slightly, possibly toward your finger as your hand changes direction (see: waving the gun around), causing the trigger to pull, putting a bullet in your mate's head.
There's the "Hey watch this" crowd who don't know how shit works. Load a magazine, pull the slide to cock the gun, so totally cool I got my dad's gun huh? Drop the clip out so it's now unloaded, put the gun in your mouth, pull the trigger, die. See, when you cock the gun, a bolt or a door moves out of the way and a spring in the magazine pushes the stack of bullets upwards. This leaves a vacated cavity in which a bullet moves into, which is then closed. Now you drop the clip, the bullet remains in the chamber, and you shoot yourself.
Find a gun, assume it's not loaded, point it at your friend and pull the trigger. Because you didn't load it, so it must not be loaded. Guns aren't supposed to be kept unloaded because they can accidentally fire (that's impossible with i.e. a Glock, which has the hammer half-cocked so it can't detonate a bullet's primer, plus a bar in the way of the hammer, plus a retracted firing pin, plus a door between the hammer and the cartridge, all of which shifts out of the way and into place when you pull the trigger); they're supposed to be kept unloaded because morons find your gun and assume it's not loaded.
People load a gun, cock it, and then stick it in their pocket or in their belt or something instead of an appropriate holster. Juggling it around that way eventually sets it off.
People fail to realize that almost every firearm they're likely to find in the US is both automatic and repeating. They pull the trigger. It fires. They don't remember cocking it. Somebody gets shot.
Americans are bigger pussies than Brits, and will get a gun just before some event--say the husband is going away for a two day trip, or they just moved to a black neighborhood and they're white. Yes this is how Americans think--black people mean crime, I get that lecture from my dumb parents every time I move to a black neighborhood. Someone comes home late at night, people freak out, grab the gun, go investigating, and shoot their kid who came home at 1 in the morning because he didn't turn the lights on and had a baseball cap so they couldn't see his face. Seriously, just 'cause someone's in your house and you can't identify them, that's terrifying to an American, so we shoot them. And you thought the British would stop their tough-guy talk and wet themselves the second they sense danger, huh? Americans fire off every round in the gun while screaming and crying, then continue to scream and cry and talk about how scared they are.
Guns don't kill people. Murderers and idiots kill people. A gun does not pick itself up, make a dorky face, shout "hey watch this!", and then point itself at the nearest person's head and pull its own trigger. Everyone wants an SUV because they know they'll hit about 50 cars, bicycles, and telephone poles a year and they want some kind of tank to protect them. Naturally, we kill each other here quite regularly by driving vehicles at 80mph past elementary schools while kids are trying to cross the streets. That's when we're not trying to impress our friends by drinking Purell Hand Sanitizer, eating broken glass, swallowing marbles, trying to ingest more drugs in one sitting than the next guy (I TOLD U I WUZ HARDCORE), burning our arms with car cigarette lighters,setting our pants on fire trying to ignite our farts, and whatever the hell else we can come up with.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Guns don't need safety features, we just need to stop grooming human beings to become incompetent idiots. We dumb everything down, make people expect everything to be safe, treat grown adults like children... then they do stupid stuff and hurt themselves... like children. Uh oh, we better dumb everything down even more. Also, if you believe you should relinquish your gun rights to the US government, you don't deserve to be a US citizen. This is a country built on personal freedoms. The original idea was for the populace to be as well armed as the military so we could never be subjugated by our government. Asking the government to disarm us goes against everything this country stands for.
Have you ever been target shooting? Having to reload a handgun after every three rounds would be a significant inconvenience, for no actual benefit. That's not to say that some sort of limit on high-capacity magazines may not have some effect, but 3 is probably going a bit far.
Also, shotguns are only limited to three rounds when used for hunting or trap/skeet competitions. You can easily find models that hold 7 rounds, e.g.
The NRA puts out a safety manual? Why, I was just told the NRA=KKK! Are you sure it's not a manual on how to kill black or brown people?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Exactly! This was one of the primary reasons I purchased and carried a Glock when I worked as an armed guard. That firearm actually did have 3 safeties, but they were all designed to prevent accidental discharge of the weapon if you dropped it or the trigger snagged on something. If there was a round in the chamber and your finger was all the way on the trigger the gun would fire.
In fact, if you do even one day of actual defense training, one of the exercises you do is shooting with a two-handed grip in the "A" stance, then shooting left handed "side stance" and then right handed "side stance".
This simple exercise would be impossible with some kind of electronic garbage that prevents firing based on grip signature. Also, I'd rather not have to worry about if the batteries are dead if I need the gun.
Here's what we need: a 1911-style grip safety, and a Walther PPK-style indicator pin that pops out close to the rear sight if a round is in the chamber. Those two things are remarkably effective, and cost practically nothing. Oh, and they've been around for decades.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
That's why you keep firearms simple - complex things break.
I find this to be an interesting sentiment coming from a technology oriented community like Slashdot.
Of course complexity can increase error-proneness. But if this logic is always true, why aren't we still driving Model Ts? Maybe it really is up for debate, but it seems to me that cars have became vastly more complex over the decades, but reliability is on the rise, and cost of maintenance has gone down.
Planes - planes are vastly more complex than in the past, but very reliable. And peoples' lives literally hang in the balance.
My point is, we can in fact make complex AND reliable things when we want to, and when we spend the time and resources required. Why are guns exempt from this?
FWIW, I know how to use (some) guns, and I agree with you... "grip recognition" sounds like something that at best, will work 99% of the time, which isn't enough. But surely we can do better than that.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Better to limit all non-professional firearms to 3 rounds (shotgun, iirc, already are).
Shotguns are limited to three rounds in the field, but not in your house. You can insert a wooden plug to temporarily restrict them to three rounds if they aren't constructed to take that few. Some weapons offer an ammo restrictor so that you don't need a plug. For self-defense, though, I would rather have a whole lot of rounds. If I'm confronted by an armed attacker, I'm going to treat rounds like potato chips, and they're can't have just one. And frankly, what unarmed attacker will charge me when armed with my firearm unless they're hopped up on something that merits more rounds anyway?
California already places ammo restrictions. Most of the decent pistols not too small for me to meaningfully hold (I have big paws) carry 13 rounds or more, and they're illegal in California. So I got something that takes .45 ACP, because if you're not allowed to carry as many rounds, you want them to be big. California also will ream you up down and sideways if there's a competing story, so not only do they encourage maximally lethal ammunition with their ammo limits, but they also encourage lethal shot placement with their habits in prosecution. This is what you get with "gun control" and "equipment limits".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Three rounds of .22 are not the same as three rounds of .45 or 9mm +P load.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"you don't point a gun at people EVER"
Fixed that for you. Always assume a gun is loaded - even if you have absolute, undeniable proof that it isn't. It's the kind of crap they teach before kindergarten in rural areas.
Well, I personally wouldn't call firearm safety education "crap," but you're right that it is taught to children at a very young age in rural America (where I happen to hail from).
I remember being taught the 4 Cardinal Laws of firearm safety as young as six:
- treat every gun as if it's loaded
- never point a gun at something you don't intend to destroy
- always identify your target and what's behind it before firing
- keep your finger off the trigger until your target is fully sighted
Unbeknownst to me at the time, these are actually the same rules developed and taught by shooting legend Jeff Cooper. Since reading his Wikipedia page, I've come to believe intimate knowledge of the methods and ideas developed by Cooper should be mandatory prior to allowing a firearm to be purchased.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Which is why we went into Afghanistan and Iraq and cleared out all the terrorists overnight.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
NRA basic pistol, rifle, every single hunter's education course in the nation (and many other nations) as well as thousands of safety websites, videos, and general use books. Jeff Cooper put it this way, and this is the way it's taught in safety courses world wide.
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
Rule III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
And yes, the shouting is on purpose.
and like an idiot, I forgot the fourth rule.
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET and what's beyond.
They will often say that someone accidentally discharged a weapon while cleaning it in order to keep the family thinking that their loved one is damned to hell for all eternity, or that they were responsible for the mental anguish that caused his suicidal thoughts.
So would locking guns in a gun cabinet when not in use, as you're obligated to do.
But that relies on owner action.
These technologies are designed to remove owner action from the safety equation. It doesn't matter if the owner is responsible or not, since the technology doesn't care.
Any system that relies on personal-responsibility is unsafe, since individuals aren't reliable.
Any well designed system doesn't allow for individual actions to break the system.
Like how cars won't start if they detect alcohol on the driver's breath, right?
Or how plastic bags automatically shred themselves if they detect a child's head within them.
There's this concept, called "personal responsibility," that used to be the norm amongst humans; in general, the idea is that the onus of survival is on the individual, and if said individual is dumb enough to not follow proven safety guidelines, they take their lives into their own hands.
Remember a time when you could drive without a seatbelt on, or ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and all you had to worry about was getting your own dumb ass killed in a gruesome manner?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Guns are plenty safe just as they are.
It takes a human to make them unsafe.
In a crisis I want my gun to fire every time I pull the trigger.
My sidearm has a de-cocker and can be dropped or even thrown with a round in the chamber safely.
Say we are in a crisis situation, both pinned down behind cover, I don't have a shot, but you do.
You have been shot in your dominant arm (or handicapped one armed) so you are unable to fiddle with a weapon.
I can safely throw you my weapon with a round in the chamber ready to shoot, you can pick it up and shoot with no delay.
Try that with some electronic gizmo......
Rick B.
...that should come out of the Connecticut school shooting tragedy should be this:
If anyone is planning to begin legal proceedings to have a family member involuntarily committed for mental health issues, then they must remove all weapons out of their home first.
That sounds even more than average stupid. If this was passed, the result would be that fewer would try to get their family members committed, and the white elephant hidden even more than it is now.
Make it easier for people to get help (and I mean help), not harder. And work for conditions less conducive to people developing mental health problems in the first place. Undo Reagan's damage. It's late, but not too late.
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.
Which part of the 1911 should I remove that I will be able to reinstall quicker than unlocking the box it's in? Inquiring minds want to know.
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.
Me too, but banning firearms won't solve that problem.
It's little wonder that so many Americans go apeshit with all the insane worries they have which others don't.
I agree.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
actually, no, the sound of a cycling shotgun will not chase most home invaders away. Most of those types of criminals are either high enough or stupid enough not to recognize the sound for what it is - especially since they're not expecting to hear the sound at all... (and not all shotguns sound like the stock Foley SFX from the movies). But, if you start off with a very loud "I have a shotgun aimed at your head, asshole" followed by racking a round, *then* they'll know what's happening. But you've probably just ejected a perfectly good cartridge just for dramatic effect when all you really had to do was turn on the lights so he could see you coming. This gives him an opportunity to flee, which is by most accounts the best outcome, if only so you don't have to call for someone to come replace your carpet and drapes in the morning.
Of course, the most effective way to let a home intruder know that you have a shotgun, if that is the primary goal, is to cause it to make a brief flash of light followed in quick succession with a very loud bang. If you have it pointed in the proper direction, he'll even *feel* it.
Some examples in fiction of weapons-user-identification systems:
- 1976 --- _Logan's Run_, William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson
- 1983 --- _Single Combat_, Dean Ing
- 1990 --- Judge Dredd: The Megazine, Steve McManus
It'd be interesting to see a compleat list.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
There are 2 simple reasons why this isn't being done.
1. Cost for the indentification unit is prohibitive. It would double the cost of the weapon.
2. It has been proven over the years that you can not make something idiot proof. I don't care if it's a weapon or a power tool, some moron will always come along and try something nobody else ever imagined and injure themselves or someone else. Look at all the safety warnings in any instruction manual and realize that someone actually did that.
Teaching people to have a respect for human life would do more to stop these mass killings than anything else. When I was in High School (class of 74) half the vehicles in the student parking lot were pickup trucks with a gun rack in the back window. There was always a rifle and/or a shotgun in the rack. We never had anyone shot at school because we knew the difference between right and wrong.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
The loudest sound in the world:
``Hearing `click', when you expected to hear `bang'.''
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Which part of the 1911 should I remove that I will be able to reinstall quicker than unlocking the box it's in [firearmsdesigner.com]? Inquiring minds want to know.
At least when I was in the military, we had to drill on disassembling the gun completely and then reassembling it both as fast as possible, and then again the same drill in total darkness. Just inserting the bolt and loading it would take three seconds at most.
Until we knew the gun, we were considered a danger, not an asset.
If a gun is constructed in a way that it's not possible to render it harmless or bring it back to operational quickly, it is a flaw with the gun, and it would be better removed from the market and replaced with better options. This is 2012, not 1911.
It's probably safe to say that the vast majority of Slashdotters are programmers of some kind or are very familiar with computers and software.
Which is why I am astounded that anyone with such a background would think putting a computer (microchip, etc) in a firearm is a good idea.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That sounds like a problem with a 1911 not the idea.
I can think of a couple redesigns that would allow the exposed hammer to be removed and quickly reinserted.
Keeping the bolt or other part crucial to firing the weapon separate is in general a sound idea. It even allows weapons to be made safe around children, while only requiring a much smaller locking box to store the gun parts in. For most bolt action rifles this is incredibly practical, for instance. Since they would require a full length gun safe otherwise.
I hope you realize there is no such thing as non lethal weapons. The technical term is "Less than Lethal" because they can still kill or seriously injure. The military uses basically a hard core paintball gun in detention camps. It does serious damage if you shoot it in the wrong area. Ever get a frozen paintball in your eye? Tazers kill too, especially if the person has some sort of electrical implant. just google around. The argument you didn't mean to kill the person with a tazer wouldn't hold, just try explaining it to the family. It's the same as if you stabbed or shot or made someone beed somehow and they bled to death. "Well, I didn't mean to kill them I only sliced him up with my kitchen knife."
I can tell you that you don't point a loaded gun at people EVER,
Whether the gun is loaded or not doesn't matter at all. Just pointing a gun - loaded or not - at someone is considered "assault with a deadly weapon". It's a felony that can put the gun wielder in jail for a year or two (or more, depending on the circumstances), if convicted.
Supporting anecdote: An old friend of mine caught his wife cheating with someone at his house, freaked out, went to get his gun, and pulled a gun on him - ordering him to get out of their house. He left (quickly), and the police showed up in short order. The net result: the friend did 2 years in jail - and the cheating wife and lover walked away.
Moral(s) of the story:
No, a semi-automatic weapon is an automatic weapon. There is also fully-automatic. Depending on who you ask (different regulatory boards, manufacturers, the military, in different countries), the definition floats around a bit--in America the standard term for "automatic" specifically requires that gas from firing the rifle eject the bullet, and largely that it also reload the chamber and fire again. Of course in America we legally term these "Machine Guns" as well, as a separate term--"machine gun" means "Fully Automatic". Weird.
Some countries in Europe term semi-autos as "automatic". A bolt-action shotgun is not automatic, but repeating. A double-action revolver is both repeating and (semi)-automatic. An Uzi is fully-automatic. Depending on who you ask, in what agency, and in what country, someone will tell you a revolver is automatic. Depending on who you ask, someone will tell you a fully-auto pistol would be vastly inferior to a semi-auto.
And those aren't uninformed stereotypes, those are real events. This is how teenagers get shot with guns. They shoot each other or their parents are morons. Brother Brittypants was unclear as to how anyone manages to "accidentally" get shot--the answer is by being morons. People who handle guns properly do not accidentally shoot themselves unless someone's dog bites them in the ass while they're reloading; that only leaves the stupid, of which America is full.
Plenty of the stupid buy guns "for defense" and don't bother to learn to use them. It happens. I don't know why. My parents got guns without going through any kind of training course to use them--dad was military, mom has never handled a gun in her life but now owns two Rugers registered in her name with zero training. She wanted them so she can defend herself against home intruders. I have watched both these morons point them around the house with their fingers right on the triggers, not realizing bullets will go through interior walls and egress windows, claiming they're not loaded so it's okay to wave them around like that. Developing terrible habits.
The last time I picked up a gun, I got yelled at because it was loaded and it was a real pistol... I was trying to elevate it from its position on the end of a table, about 3 feet away from direct reach of an 11 year old who thought guns were awesome and liked to point empty (real, by the way--his parents gave him real, unloaded firearms as toys) guns at people and pull the trigger and make pew-pew sounds while they went click click click.
These are the people that you find around "accidental shootings." This is how they happen.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Keeping guns around mentally unhealthy folks is negligence. No different than storing a loaded gun in the baby's crib.
I agree we need to undo the damage that was done to this nations mental health system, but allowing incompetents or those a danger to themselves or others access to weapons is negligence.
The 2nd amendment was only for the purposes of the formation of a militia.
Actually, it's purpose, like the rest of the "Bill of Rights," was to get the Constitution ratified. The public wanted assurances that a new, stronger federal government wouldn't be able to reinstate the abuses of the British (who would do things like quarter troops in private residences and confiscate guns). There is also the implied, though not explicitly stated, implication that citizens would maintain the means to revolt again, should the government abuse its new power. Of course, that didn't help out the Whiskey Rebellion revolutionaries, but what do you expect from Pennsylvanians?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Good try on the car analogy though, somebody had to do it.
Thanks :-)
You can't add electronics to a simple mechanical device and make it more reliable. Electronics are less reliable than simple mechanical things, so any such change is a step backward.
Okay, even if it is a step backward in theory, in practice, are we really not able to engineer something to an acceptable level of reliability? Guns already do not work 100% of the time. They occasionally jam and misfire. We tolerate this unreliability because it is infrequent.
Let's say you have a gun that is 99.99% reliable... so one out of every 10,000 rounds it jams or misfires. And now, we add electronic safety components to it, and with testing and good engineering, we produce a gun that is 99.97% reliable. So it jams, misfires, or fails to fire 3 out of every 10,000 rounds.
The question is, I think, whether that decrease in reliability is an acceptable tradeoff for the increase in safety gained due to only the owner being able to fire it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
RULE 1 is not violated when you clean a firearm. If you understand it means operational firearms. Aways disassemble before cleaning. Rule 2 is the same. Until the weapon is in pieces that pose no more danger than bits of metal, do not point the end that goes bang at anything you don't want destroyed.
Besides, shot "cleaning a gun" often means no one wanted to admit to it being suicide.
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/policy-report/2004/3/cpr-26n2-1.pdf
A lot of people play games with statistics. Statistics in the US are pretty much meaningless, when it comes to an armed population. Anyone who manipulates numbers seems to have an agenda, so they manage to make the numbers say whatever their agenda demands.
The fact is, most of our most dangerous cities are the very cities with the strictest gun control laws.
Go ahead, read the report. Tell me how safe it is to live in a country with very strict gun control laws.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The Bill of Rights of 1689 said otherwise. To quote Wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
It reestablished the liberty of Protestants to have arms for their defence within the rule of law, and condemned James II of England for "causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There's a corollary to rule I:
Even if you just watched your friend unload and clear the chamber, the ammo fairies will have reloaded the gun before he handed it to you. It is STILL LOADED.
I believe that disarming the general population causes criminals to feel safer while committing crimes. Did you read the PDF?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
What about all of the other legitimate uses of firearms? If someone has a bunch of pistols or rifles because they are a target shooter wouldn't all those complexities be a great way to mitigate accidental discharges? While you're target shooting (and maybe even hunting) you have plenty of time to move your finger to the right position or switch to left hand mode. Police can still use the "simple gun" since they are more likely to use it in a life/death situation than someone that hangs out at a gun range. Hell, keep one simple gun under your pillow in the extremely unlikely case of a break in. But if you have 20 guns for fun it seems to me there is less chance of an accident if 19 of them have some attempt at idiot proofing. Am I wrong?
Target shooting is one of the safest sports a school-age kid can participate in. There are millions of injuries in school sports every year, hundreds of thousands requiring doctors, tens of thousands requiring hospital care, permenent disabling injuries and even deaths. Sports are a major cause of traumatic brain injury in kids. Shoulders and knees are being permanently damaged daily. Among the major sports players, something like 15-30% of kids will be injured at some point.
But serious injuries involving shooting sports are extremely rare. When there are injuries, it's generally of the type a Band-Aid will fix.
Plus, it's not likely a malicious shooter will get very far in his rampage on the range.
So learn to field strip the 1911. It can be rendered useless to useful and back again inside 1 minute.
Yes, I can remove the slide very quickly, and reinstall it fairly quickly, but then that wouldn't be removing the bolt or pin, would it? So in his country, I have to detail strip the weapon when I store it? This is the kind of insanity I want to avoid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Similarly, there are many documented cases of air bags killing people. We still use them though, because they save way more people than they kill.
I was taught gun safety from my father at around age 10 and I remember these as the rules.
1. Consider a gun loaded at all times.
2. Never point it at anything you're not willing to shoot.
3. When lining up the target, don't just think about the target, think about what's behind the target. Paper targets don't stop bb's or bullets.
4. Put your finger on the trigger when you know the consequences of pulling the trigger.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I worked for a place that had tried to develop electronics which were supposed to improve gun safety in such manners (for the record, whilst I wouldn't want them on any gun I own, I fully support anyone who wants the option on weapons they purchase). Turns out that actually shooting the gun is *very* hard on the electronics physically and led to many early failures (meaning the gun does not go bang when you need it to).
Possibly it might be possibly to harden the electronics against such shocks but that's even more expense and complexity. Let's have some real R&D instead of pie-in-the-sky BSing.
You're everything that is wrong with designers of any stripe. Holy arrogance, Batman!
Seriously, were you intentionally being obtuse? I'm claiming that, in aggregate, yes users will end up knowing your system better than you do, at least if it's used often enough. They will find bugs, they will find exploits, you are not omniscient nor perfect. Your system will have flaws and new and interesting idiots will cause it to fail in new and spectacular ways. The best you can do is minimize the potential for catastrophic failures.
In any event, do you have a link to your design portfolio? I'd like to know precisely which designs, engineering projects, computer OSes, software products or consumer goods to avoid.
Thanks.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
"We don't even have a national way to find out if you have ever been committed."
BINGO!!
I'm a veteran. Anyone with an interest, and my SSN can easily verify that. I don't know how much more info such an interested party can get, but he can easily verify that I am an honorably discharged veteran.
Convicts? Ditto. In fact, all you need is to be arrested these days, and that arrest record follows you forever, unless you can convince a judge to have it expunged.
Most especially, sex offenders. Get run in for pissing on some shrubbery, you're automatically a sex offender, and you've got to register with whatever county you live in, forevermore.
Mentally incompetent people? Spend a weekend at the local looney bin, get turned loose because you don't have insurance to pay for treatment, and there is no record. You can walk straight from the nuthouse to the gun shop, and fill out the paperwork to get a gun.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
At that time, citizenry had about the same percentage of more-than-three-shot weapons, as the government did. I think both sides had somewhere around zero.
I believe the situation has changed since then, though. Perhaps I am mistaken. If you can assure me the 2012 government doesn't have any weapons with more than three shots, and doesn't have the capacity to quickly obtain more-than-three-shot weapons, I'll give the citizens-should-only-have-three-shots idea a second look.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Which part of the 1911 should I remove that I will be able to reinstall quicker than unlocking the box it's in"
While you're fumbling with keys I've already emptied my magazine into you.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If the device was a pacemaker then that's 3x the deaths due to failure. Why would people buy that product if it was 3x more likely to fail?
Because they gained some other benefit not quantified in the failure rate? E.g., maybe the less-failure prone pacemaker needs to be removed for battery replacement every three years, whereas the (slightly) more-failure prone one has a battery that lasts ten years?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The term "assault weapon" is a nebulous term based upon the presence of features that do not affect actual firearm function. Most "assault weapons" are in fact civilian sporting rifles featuring a pistol grip and at least one other defining feature that are most commonly seen at target ranges and occasionally in the hands of hunters.
The term is applied for the specific purpose of confusing those unfamiliar with firearms into believing that common civilian sporting firearms are actually military weapons.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
As I said, it's not absolute - there are things unspoken involved. Firearms are not always disassembled when cleaning. For instance, the US Army Field Manual for the M1 Garand, does not advise disassembly prior to chamber and bore cleaning.
Of course, the same applies when transporting a firearm - they are frequently pointed at things you won't want to shoot. The unwritten part is that if it's unloaded, on safe, and encased, you're OK.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
How about a handgun like the sword in the movie blade, that if you grip it and don't disable the booby-trap mechanism blades will swing out, disabling the person attempting to sue the weapon.
In all seriousness, though, making guns safe is not all that difficult. I have a TT pistol made in Yugoslavia sometime in the early 1960's; in order to be sold in the US, a safety switch blocking the trigger had to be added. The safety switch was not necessary, though. First of all, the gun is single-action; you have to cock the hammer in order to fire the gun. The hammer has a half-cock, which does two things: it blocks the trigger (basically your safe-mode--you can't fire the gun), and it keeps the hammer off of the firing pin, so that if you dropped the gun it would not fire accidentally. On top of that, it has a magazine safety--if you remove the magazine from the gun, the trigger is blocked. This is particularly useful because many people assume that a gun without a magazine is unloaded, but there may still be a round in the chamber. In the case of this pistol, no magazine = no firing. If the hammer is pulled back and there is a round in the chamber, you can drop the magazine and prevent the gun from firing; then you can pull back the slide and eject the round. The hammer can also be manually decocked, which is very dangerous if the gun is loaded, but doable if for some reason you had to disarm it without ejecting all the ammo.
My point here is that this gun, which is at least 50 years old, is actually very safe to handle and operate. I don't really think we need fancy technology and shooter-identification systems. Hell, the M1911 features a safety-grip so that you cannot pull the trigger unless you're firmly gripping the gun. To make guns safe, you just have to not do anything that is extremely stupid and you're fine. Don't keep a gun loaded when you don't have to. Adding safety features and technology won't prevent violent crimes--the shooter in the recent mass shooting was using a rifle that he purchased himself and was firing it intentionally, so no safety feature would have made a difference. People make a big deal about how the shooter used an AR-15, an "assault weapon," but in reality it was just a generic semi-automatic rifle. Any hunting or sport rifle could do the same, so in order to prevent shootings you'd basically have to ban all firearms of all kinds, and even with the ban shooters would still get and use them. I doubt a suicidal or insane shooter would care too much about breaking a firearm ban if he already had intentions of committing mass murder. Even with a bolt action rifle, he could have done the same or greater damage (bolt action = increased accuracy, better aiming).
Sounds like you should worry about using a bit more parental authority.
I never sneaked out of the house...never ever, ever, because we had guns in the house. For that very reason I would never sneak out of the house.
From a very young age, my parents let me know where the gun was, I wash taken and shown how to use it properly. I also had the fear of God put into me if I ever even thought of touching it when not appropriate. I also knew not to sneak out to risk being shot as an intruder.
One time I was home alone...it was raining, and some bum started ringing the doorbell, wanted some water, etc.
I went to their bedroom, got the gun, cocked and loaded the chamber and safety off....and held that as I yelled through the door for him to leave immediately.
When he finally left, I took the clip out, took the round out of the chamber and back into the clip, clip back into gun with safety on...put it back in place and immediately called my Mom at work to tell what had happened.
Can you not trust your kids to be as responsible?
If not, then I posit the problem is not guns...but a little more parental guidance is needed by the offspring.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
While a lower rate (football alone) isn't American Football responsible for approximately 25 deaths or catastrophic injuries per year?
(4+ direct deaths such as severed spines, 9+ indirect deaths like heart attacks, and an average of 13 injuries such as total paralysis)
I'm not saying this as a plea to ban football in HS. (However, I think we do put our HS players in too much danger), but to illustrate that I believe people are wildly overreacting to the actual threat. Mass shootings average 100 deaths per year. That is an astonishingly small number when you factor in the population size, and when you also consider the risk due to things that are completely avoidable like HS football.
The hysteria just bugs the hell out of me.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"NEVER, EVER just brandish or wave a gun at someone. If you pull a gun out, you absolutely, positively must pull the trigger."
This is oversimplified to the point of being harmful. You shouldn't pull a gun out unless you intend to use it- but if the threat ends, e.g., criminal turns tail and flees, do NOT shoot the target in the back.
"The supreme requirement in a firearm is RELIABILITY. "
Absolutely. And the system described, according to their paper, in it's own words,
"The average success rate is 89.44%."
That's with a huge box of electronics attached to the gun via wires, in ideal, controlled conditions.
The ONLY way I would even begin to want to own such a thing is if there were NO external encumbrances, and it worked at least 99.9999% of the time, under varied and chaotic conditions, and doesn't rely on flaky batteries.
The irony of this post, along with your signature about DRM, is absolutely staggering.
As you state, we can't come with a technology that effectively prevents unlawful use of a frigging MP3 while not overburdening the lawful licensor thereof, and yet you turn right around and think you can do the EXACT SAME THING with a firearm?
No thanks. I'll keep my 110 year old design.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
As I said, it's not absolute - there are things unspoken involved. Firearms are not always disassembled when cleaning. For instance, the US Army Field Manual for the M1 Garand, does not advise disassembly prior to chamber and bore cleaning. Of course, the same applies when transporting a firearm - they are frequently pointed at things you won't want to shoot. The unwritten part is that if it's unloaded, on safe, and encased, you're OK.
With good reason. If you've ever disassembled an M1 you know that its a pain in the butt to put the spring back in. If my life depended on using that weapon, I'd not want to take the spring out very often at all. You could spend 20 minutes just trying to get the spring in if you're not very well practiced.
You point a loaded gun at people when you intend to shoot them, otherwise you do not.
Any questions?
Regards,
Marlin .22 LR semiautomatic rifle + 10 round magazine = Assault Weapon under the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
Ruger .22 LR semiautomatic rifle + 10 round magazine = NOT an Assault Weapon under the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
The difference? The Marlin has a vertical magazine, rather than a rotary magazine that fits flush into the receiver. Legally, an "assault weapon" is a largely a cosmetic definition.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, when Ralph Nader gets up in front of Congress and lies with the goal of killing babies, people accept it as the truth, after all, how much of a nutjob would you have to be to lie, knowing you lie would kill hundreds of babies?
Airbags were declared "safe" by Congress. The statistics showed Congress was wrong. But it was a case where pi was legislated to be 3, and everyone went along with it. Every objective measure indicates airbags are a failure. But the government can *never* be wrong, so airbags are mandated when they don't help. So we alter reality to fit our opinion. Statistics forged, lies in congressional testimony, and "airbags save lives" is out there. But that doesn't make it true.
If you use your seat belt, you are more likely to be harmed by airbags than helped. Though in the large number of cases where it neither helps nor harms, the numbers are written down in the "helped" category. As they "depowered" airbags, the number of deaths went down, and that was used as proof that they were then more helpful, when it was statistically more like removing them from a percentage of cars.
Airbags were a huge mistake and should never have happened. Same with daytime running lights and the center brake light (both proxies for solving something else, and they did a poor job, DRLs are useful only when the sun is low, so they should be on at those times, and not be low-powered high-beams, as some were, and CHMSL was an issue of reaction time/expectations, and the real "fix" was shown to be body-colored stop lamps, but the designers didn't like that, so we put the looks of cars above our safety, or at least Congress did).
Learn to love Alaska
An indicator is not needed. The first rule of handling firearms is to treat each one as it's loaded. If I'm handed a weapon that I see the clip removed and the slide is open when the weapon is handed to me, I still look into the chamber to verify for myself the weapon is indeed not loaded and safe for me to handle.
Basic safety is all that's needed.
I grew up in a house where there were firearms everywhere and easily accessed by me if I had wanted to. My father took the route of taking me to the range and teaching me how to use them safely and that when a firearm went off whatever was hit would be dead. He stressed never point it even unloaded at anything you did not intend to shoot and taught me how to clean and maintain them. The result was when playing around the house if I came across a firearm, I left it alone. There was nothing in it I hadn't had dealings with. I never tried to take it outside and play with it, it wasn't after all a toy and I knew that.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I think you mean someone watched License to Kill and liked the idea
Q also issues OO7 a signature gun in Skyfall.
And you talk as if you could wave a magic wand and cause every gun in the world to disappear at once. Guns are a reality, and have been for 400 years. Criminals don't give two fucks about so-called gun control laws, because THEY ARE CRIMINALS. If they get guns, I want a gun too so I can make it a fair fight.
And if I get a gun, you bet your ass that I'm going to learn to store and use it properly, and safely.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
As sad as children being killed with a gun is, it was just over 1% of accidental deaths in 2009. It would be a much better idea to work to lower the main causes of accidental death, just as: automobiles (41%), suffocation (21%), and drowning (15%). Lessen one of those and you will save many more lives. Nobody will ever notice however, because those types of deaths don't mean big news ratings and newspaper sales.
28 Deaths is a tragedy, 28,000 is a statistic.
When humans get all emotional, all reason goes out the window. That's why with the past shootings there hasn't been much action to restrict guns. Quite the opposite. It has been proven that as more people are trained in, and carry weapons, violent crime goes down. Murders may stay the same, because you can't stop someone who is determined to die, but many muggings, robberies, and rapes get stopped and are never reported to the police.
You use a pullthrough, or clean with a rod from the muzzle (it's the bore you're cleaning). Both types of cleaning kits were standard issue at various times. Because of the design, you would have to remove the barrel from the receiver (an armory job) to use a rod through the breech.
Another, more significant, example of where the stated rules don't apply is carrying a pistol in a holster. Fully loaded, ready to fire (especially a Glock or 1911 in "condition 1"), commonly pointing at your leg/foot.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
When humans get all emotional, all reason goes out the window.
This. I wish we had it built into the Constitution that Congress was banned from passing (or even debating) any legislation for 60 days after any national tragedy.
And that is why you are considered a barbarian.
Doesn't matter really what I'm considered...as long as I'm the one left still standing, breathing and able to reproduce (optional).
That is exactly what a barbarian would say.
If it is between my life and ANY other human life on this planet, MY life is always the most important to me.
You assume the 'home invader' was going to kill you, which according to statistics (and even more so according to your story) is really unlikely (in the US): http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/vdhb.pdf
About 24,000 burglaries yearly lead to serious injury, which is 8.5% of all violent burglaries and 0.6% of all burglaries. And I'm pretty sure things like a broken arm or serious concussion are counted as serious injuries, but this is speculation, of course.
By the way, I do agree on choosing ones' own life over that of another (barring relatives), but I also strongly believe in a civilized society and a civilized judicial and enforcement system. I.e. no vigilantism.
Self defense isn't about vigilantism, there's a 45.5% chance if you are confronted by a stranger in your home he will be armed
No there's not. That percentage is for what turned out to be violent burglaries. Only in ~35,000 of ~1,000,000 burglaries (~3,5%) committed by a stranger, a weapon was present.
Yes 3/4ths of the time he's just going to run away and not mess with you when he realizes you're home. In that instance no you're absolutely right shooting him would be wrong. If he doesn't run away there's a very high likely hood that he will be armed himself.
No there's not. That is to say: according to which numbers?
Why don't you dilute your numbers even further since that seems to be your goal. with 114,761,359 households in America that means only 3% were burglarized, door locks must be useless then right?
No, in fact, most of that percentage (~2 percent points) were burglaries into houses with unlocked doors or windows. Locking doors and windows could very well prevent a lot of burglaries. But then again, who locks their doors during the day?
There were 266,560 thousand people in that study who were assaulted, or raped in their homes.
Yes, most of them by relatives, ex-lovers and other people known to them. Also note that the number includes everybody who was punched firmly in the arm or kicked in the balls during the burglary.
That is absolutely barbaric and those people absolutely have the right to protect themselves. You are presumably not one of those people so I doubt you know what it's like to be victimized like that. I've met a great number of the people doing the murdering raping and robbing and I absolutely will use a firearm, or whatever means available to protect myself from them. Now I will use appropriate levels of force. I wouldn't shoot someone in the face for knocking on my car window begging for money when I stop at a red light. But if someone smashed in my window or opened my car door at an intersection they are quite likely to get a face full of pepper spray, and if they persist beyond that I will most likely end them.
I completely agree with this behaviour. Well, up until the "if pepperspray doesn't work, I'll kill him."
Why not just shoot him in the knee? Or the shoulder or the lungs or the gut. I mean.. Does it have escalate that quickly?