House Bill Would Mandate Smart Gun Tech By U.S. Manufacturers

Lucas123 writes "U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass) is pushing a bill that would require all U.S. handgun manufacturers to include 'personalization technology' in their weapons. Tierney said he got the idea for The Personalized Handgun Safety Act of 2013 from the latest James Bond film, Skyfall. In it Bond escapes death when his handgun, which is equipped with technology that recognizes his fingerprints, becomes inoperable when a bad guy picks it up. 'This technology, however, isn't just for the movies — it's a reality,' Tierney said. Tierney pointed to a myriad of cases where the smart gun tech could prevent children from being harmed or killed in firearms accidents. Jim Wallace, executive director of the Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League, the official state association of the NRA, said he knows of no gun owners who would want smart gun technology on their weapons. Wallace said any technology that may impede the proper function of a weapon is a problem. He pointed to the fact that any integrated processor technology would also require a battery of some kind, which could pose a system failure if it lost power."

Comments

Re:Movies are real!

[Joce640k]

Judge Dredd's gun 'executes' anybody else who tries to fire it. Are they going to implement that feature, too?

Common Laws and Common Sense

[cervesaebraciator]

I have never owned, held or fired a gun, that also included my family and friends and NONE of us have seen a reason to do otherwise.

That's part of the problem with this debate, indeed with our current system. That is, not that you personally are unfamiliar with guns and do not have a use for them. You have a life of your own and come from a different culture than I do, and I do not blame or begrudge you that. The problem with the debate is the demand that you and I should be able to come up with a uniform legal system which both of us find agreeable and neither of us find oppressive. You say, " A child never has to hold a gun for any reason". I grew up in a culture where not having guns around is unthinkable, where the chief means of ensuring gun safety is teaching children to respect them, where we never touched them without permission partly because we knew what they could do and partly because we knew with supervision we would be allowed. I was considered old enough to shoot a gun for the first time while I was still young enough that my grandfather stood behind me lest the kick should knock me down.

Your experience is as alien to me as mine is to you. Put simply, lacking common experience we do not share and cannot share any notion of common sense. In practical terms, a country the size of ours is many different cultures, foreign to one another to a greater or lesser extent, all under one polity. I would have subsidiarity be a guiding principle in this debate. Common laws ought only to be made on a level where there is a shared common sense.

Re:Movies are real!

[Kielistic]

I know I'm tempting the flame gods here but you never explained what was a lie. Per capita are the suicide rates not very similar? Are you claiming that suicide attempts are similar and with easier access to guns they are more often successful? Because the GP seemed to be claiming that suicides (I would interpret that as successful (bad wording?) ) occur at similar rates regardless of easy access to guns. Which is in direct opposition to your claim and your statistics don't actually have anything to do with that.

Going off like a lose cannon does not help your argument.