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New Smart Gun Company Hopes To Begin Production This Summer
Lucas123 writes Safe Gun Technology (SGTi) is hoping it can begin production on its version of a smart gun within the next two months. The Columbus, Ga.-based company uses relatively simple fingerprint recognition through a flat, infrared reader positioned on the weapon's grip. The biometrics reader enables three other physical mechanisms that control the trigger, the firing pin and the gun hammer. The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible. A single gun owner could also temporarily program a friend or family member's print into the gun to go target shooting and then remove it upon returning home."
Precisely. If there is any chance at all that my gun will simply refuse to fire when I pull the trigger, I don't want anything to do with it.
Do you remove the safety from your gun as well? After all, a defective safety can mean that your gun will refuse to fire when you pull the trigger.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
a spring and a lever have a MTBF measured in millions of cycles
You fire "millions" of rounds from a single weapon?
[ Picturing you in a firing range, standing shoulder deep in spent shell casings... ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You bet.
And as a bonus, I accidentally blew my wife's head off. Since I live in a "right to kill" state, I was give a $25 fine and coupons for the Waffle House.
Hell, man, safeties are for fags and democrats. Real men have artificial limbs and cirrhosis. And disability checks.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, statistics work in these guys' favor. It's the old defense vs. offense saying: sure, you want it to fire at that one particular second every 5 years, but the other 157679999 seconds you're sure as hell don't want it going off. It makes sense to put more effort into stopping false positives than false negatives. You might then ask, "Why have a gun if its only purpose is to be NOT fired", and then I ask, "Why indeed"? But that is a different conversation.
Guns kept in the home for "self protection" are alarmingly likely to be used against their owners, either by burglars who find them first, children by accident, or the owner himself for suicide (not that this tech would prevent that). Even the latest James Bond movie made this point, where the first time anyone pulled the trigger on his smart gun it was the (very disappointed) bad guy pointing it at Bond's head. Yes, not firing when you want it to is bad, but it is just as bad if not worse to have it fired against your will, especially in situations where it is the only firearm in the fight.
Their example of using the tech in a war zone is both good and bad, since it prevents you from being ambushed and shot with your own weapons, or stolen supplies arming the enemy. But you couldn't use them with gloves on, burned fingers or a number of other situations. A way to temporarily disable the fingerprint recognition would be a step toward your "false positive rather than false negative" idea.
That said, don't compare the reliability of this electronic gun with the reliability of a PC or cell phone. They had better be using military grade components and have a battery that lasts for years of use. And the user had better stick to whatever maintenance schedule required by the manufacturer, in which the battery would need replacing every few years. If they can't be bothered to do that then they have no business owning any kind of gun, smart or otherwise.