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.
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/
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
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.'"
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.
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
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.
...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.'"
The loudest sound in the world:
``Hearing `click', when you expected to hear `bang'.''
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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!!!
I prefer t have my guns remain analog...
I don't want to have some kind of freakin' gun ID malfunction if someone has broken into my house, and I need to shoot them.
You know...guns actually are pretty safe. You rarely hear of one jumping off the shelf on its own and shooting someone.
Maybe more gun safety is to be taught? Why not have that as an elective class in schools? Gun education?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........