Slashdot Mirror
Smart Guns To Stop Mass Killings
New submitter Bugs42 writes "CNN.com has an opinion piece on the possibility of cramming guns full of computers and sensors to disable them in certain buildings or around children. The author, in true mainstream media fashion, completely fails to see any possible technical problems with this. Quoting: 'How might this work? Start with locational "self-awareness." Guns should know where they are and if another gun is nearby. Global positioning systems can meet most of the need, refining a gun's location to the building level, even within buildings. Control of the gun would remain in the hand of the person carrying it, but the ability to fire multiple shots in crowded areas or when no other guns are present would be limited by software that understands where the gun is being used. Guns should also be designed to sense where they are being aimed. Artificial vision and optical sensing technology can be adapted from military and medical communities. Sensory data can be used by built-in software to disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child or someone holding a child."
If we're really going to solve this problem, guns should have captcha-like technology, determining that the wielder retains the capacity for empathy before he can fire it.
As soon as he removes the safety, the gun should pose a simple question, such as "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
None would also be a very wrong guesstimate. This happened just last month: http://www.examiner.com/article/media-blackout-oregon-mall-shooter-was-stopped-by-an-armed-citizen Apologies for the very political news source... it was the first match on Google.