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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."
Lawmakers have been introducing these bills since at least the mid-90s, with Judge Dredd being the first movie I'm aware of directly tied to it.
The tech was not then, and is not now, possible. They're MOVIES. That's not REALITY.
Our elected officials are dumber than you could possibly imagine.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Thousands of dead children and adults are a small price to pay for my freedom from sensible gun control.
Finding God in a Dog
There's no way this boneheaded bill will get past the Republican controlled House.
How about we actually fucking teach kids about guns, how they work, and what they're used for? That would do a hell of a lot more to curtail gun-related deaths, and without the (un)intended side effect of rendering personal protection weapons useless by legislative fiat.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Another idiot wasting everyone's time.
And of course your biometrics would have to be in some database someplace.
This is nothing more than a form of registration, and we will never go along with it. Already people have begun manufacturing their own firearms, and types.
If the aim is to stop children being able to fire the gun, why not require that the gun must be kept in a locked condition when not being held by someone authorized by the registered owner. Trigger locks would do the same as this bill and would be cheap to retrofit, etc.
Of course, neither trigger locks nor personalization features would prevent this "can't be fired by anyone but me" gun from accidental discharge when dropped or struck with things - something much more likely if a parent thinks it's now safe to leave where children can get the gun.
Probably a good idea for DEA/FBI/Swat/Tactical Forces to prevent criminals from using the weapon, but for consumer guns not so sure. Also like any tech it needs to have all the bugs worked out first. Also imagine if someone was fired from any force just being able to lock their gun so it can't be used for self harm or harming other innocents.
Make it mandatory for the cops, too. No exceptions for cops or even retired police. If it's good enough for them, then I'll consider it a reasonable restriction or technology. Most proposed regulations don't pass this seemingly simple test.
I seem to remember this being a facet of the Judges' weapons in the original Judge Dredd movie. Talk about being a little late with the inspiration. They've already rebooted the Judge Dredd series and I have a feeling that it wasn't the oldest movie to use that exact idea.
There, fixed that for ya...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
The Signature Gun from License to Kill totally did it first.
It's a terrific idea, particularly if you have to go to a gun shop to register a new set of prints in order to force you to register the transfer of the weapon on a second-hand sale. After all, if it's easy to change the prints, it's still easy to steal and use the weapon.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Aside from the fact that the technology doesn't exist... What if I want to let a friend shoot my gun, for example when I was teaching someone to shoot? What if I wanted to try a friend's gun so I could see if I liked it? How about collectible guns? The last firearm I bought was a WWII vintage Finnish rifle. What if I wanted to buy a very-collectable WWII 1911? Would that be legal? It's just another blatant attempt to restrict my constitutional rights. If you want to pass gun control, amend the Constitution. Stop wasting our time with this kind of legislative theater.
From the bill: "Just before Brian was about to leave to head home for dinner, his best
friend was playing with his mom’s handgun and accidentally shot Brian in the neck. Brian died
shortly thereafter. "
Where's mom? Why was the friend allowed to "play" with the weapon? Or is this for a movie script?
I built a working prototype of a gun control system, and in the process found so many gotchas and problems that I've realized enforcing smart guns is impossible. There's really no way to solve all the problems introduced with such a system, and the drawbacks of such a system make it dangerous. Yes, it could prevent a lot of accidents and misuse, and for that reason there may be potential, but the legislators introducing this stuff have no idea what they're talking about.
Here's my writeup on the system I built and some of the problems I encountered:
http://bobbaddeley.com/2013/03/my-one-post-on-gun-control/
Police chiefs, who are politicians, will be in favor of this, because they think it's good politics. Police unions, representing working cops on the streets will be unalterably opposed to it, because even 99% isn't good enough when your life is on the line.
To prevent kids of getting harmed by guns? Why the hell are you letting a kid get a hold of a gun, I mean even accidently. Any child who is able to get a hold of a gun, even by accident should have his parents thrown in jail for gross negligence. A child never has to hold a gun for any reason, I don't care what your argument is, a child should never be in a situation where they need to grab a gun and use it. If your going to try the argument, "Well they could be at home alone!", if there is a gun in the house then make sure a parent is home. After all what about the kid that killed his sister from the gun that was loaded which he was given as a present! In the case his parents should be thrown in jail, the gift givers should be thrown in jail, the company selling the gun should have it's executives thrown in jail and the person who left the gun loaded should be thrown in jail. Kids do not, should not and will never need firearms. Anyone who disagrees is just wrong and seriously needs mental help.
Kind of reminds me of the real-world version of the Weapons Shops of Isher, minus the explicit empowerment of the individual.
How about instead of creating more stupid laws we start enforcing and prosecuting existing ones. It is sad when a child finds a loaded gun that isn't locked up and kills someone or themselves with it, so why not fucking prosecute the dumb shit parents for negligent homicide. I really don't believe in accidental shooting but I sure a hell believe in negligent shooting. Granted there probably is the 1 in 1,000,000 truly accidental discharge of a firearm (the gun went off and you weren't touching the trigger) that ends up shooting someone (off of a ricochet as you should be practicing muzzle control and have it point in a safe direction) but those are so rare that it isn't worth mentioning.
Time to offend someone
When the tech is reliable enough that our military and police are all using it, then and only then will I consider it for my firearms.
Or, I don't like guns, I've never seen a gun, I'm clueless about guns - so I think I'm qualified to decide on the laws about guns.
I'll tell you what, I don't watch clueless comedy central comedians doing fake news, and I don't know anything about comedians who do fake news, so I won't try to make the rules about comedians doing fake news. I'll leave that to you, since you probably watch those shows a lot more than I do and you know more about the subject. In turn, you can leave the gun rules to people who actually know something about the subject, okay?
Cops in Minnesota in the dead of a winter snowstorm are just gonna LOVE this tech.
So you want my guns to be "smart" and place a small computer of some sort in there. And in the event that that small computer has been rendered ineffective, my gun will no longer fire. Is this computer going to have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi? Is the government going to force manufacturers to install a backdoor so the government can decide when I can and cannot fire my weapon? What if my gun (and/or me) are electrocuted? What if there is an EMP? What if my house is struck by lightening and the electricity goes into my gun safe, rendering all of my guns useless? What if....
sudo make me a sandwich
No more criminals stealing service revolvers from cops and shooting them with their own weapons.
Still shady dealers selling weapons without "smart" tech, or with overrideable tech.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Don't store the gun loaded.
Don't store the gun with the ammo.
Don't store the gun where your or someone else's brat can find/get a hold of it.
Teach your brat to not touch the gun - and if anyone does (e.g. your knucle-dragging cousin) - tell them to go get an adult.
This coming from someone that is more left-leaning with regards to gun ownership (you need safety courses (including periodic re-training and testing), FOID card, etc.) that right.
In short - while the technology is there - and has been for about 15 years - don't think it's a good idea to make it mandatory.
I would rather see tighter controls on sales (including private), background checks, ammo purchases.
However, the recent post on a 3D printed gun pretty much makes all of our control laws... pretty much moot.
AC
I for one and sick and tired of all these "protecting the children" bullshit scenarios. We have a population of 7 fucking billion, i think the children are doing ok. If a few die from having stupid parents that never taught them gun safety (or any other safety procedures for that matter) then w.e, ill chalk that up to darwinism and nothing of value was lost.
Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)..
One of 3 first place awards in Engineering, Electrical and Mechanical:
EE091 Biometric Electromechanical Firearm Safety, Kai Thorin Kloepfer, Fairview HS, Boulder CO
detects the finger print on the middle finger of the hand holding the pistol.
Developed a low power blocking mechanism for the safety, etc.
In the liberal hotbed of Boulder CO, no less...
Issues of power are a non issue: put a lithium battery in the magazine: 10 yr shelf life.. hopefully you check your weapon more often than that?
Other suggestions, there's a spring in the magazine, use that to provide a jolt of power when the next cartridge is fed into the firing position. Or when the hammer is pushed back. It doesn't take much power to operate the sensor.
Oh? You carry your pistol with a round in the chamber and the hammer back, and the magazine full, and leave it like that for 10 years? You deserve a failure.. but any intelligent design would fail safe: able to be fired with no power using some sort of manual safety override. Just push the blocking pin out of the way, like you do with the thumb operated safety already.
Or, I don't like guns, I've never seen a gun, I'm clueless about guns - so I think I'm qualified to decide on the laws about guns.
Very funny. Often people who hold absolutist positions on gun control also support old men for whom it is biologically impossible to get pregnant and bear a child write draconian anti-abortion laws. Freedom! it is for people with guns, not for people with uterus.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Guns are used in life-or-death situations.
So, false positive, you die.
False negative, you die.
There is literally no margin for error.
Just a terrible, terrible idea.
DRM on movies and music = good, DRM on guns = bad?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
One of the primary specifications for something like this would have to be absolute reliability in all weather or I personally would never own one. I have had weapons misfire, usually it is something simple that can be cleared in a split second and in a hostile situation where every second counts, this is crucial.
Something that cannot be fixed immediately can (literally) be the death of you.
If I am chasing some perp and get muddy, greasy or whatnot and the weapon will not arm because it cannot read my bio-metrics then it is not worth my life.
Yep, this is what happens when people who hate guns, and so have never touched a gun, probably never seen a gun, think they are gun experts and should be writing the rules and regulations about how they should be manufactured, sold, and used.
I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, so I don't have any opinion on proper methods manufacture, store, or otherwise handle various classes of prescription drugs.
I have no idea what regulations make sense. It would be STUPID of me to comment on how a pharmacy must be run since I don't know anything about the subject.
Why is it that people who have no knowledge at all, people who don't know the difference between a machine gun and a pistol, want to decide on gun regulations?
This is a fact - anti-gunners, including congress-critters, REGULARLY confuse an automatic (machine gun) with a semi-automatic (pistol). They claim to be
trying to "ban automatic weapons" (machine guns), but their bill bans pistols and varmint guns, which are semi-automatic.
Assuming the technology was there and that it worked flawless, it still has a key flaw, namely that a bad guy isn't always going to be the other person to pick up the weapon. What if your home gets broken into when you're not at home? Wouldn't you want your spouse or your child to be able to defend themselves? What if you were in some sort of hostage situation where the hostage-takers killed a security guard, wouldn't you want to be able to use that guard's gun?
Furthermore, it would encourage people to break the law to get fully functioning firearms. The same things that happen with electronic "piracy" would happen to guns, whenever the "system" is working to a degree that it doesn't make the product defective, a good chunk of the people will follow "the system", when an illegitimate product becomes superior is when more and more people start to break the system.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm very much against guns but I find myself agreeing with the guy from the NRA on this issue.
Also, it's pretty obvious that the gun in Skyfall only had this "feature" so it could be exploited in a (way too predictable and pretty lame) plot twist.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Millions are spent every year in studies and consulting services, and the idea comes from a James Bond movie??!!! What's wrong with you people!!!!
Why do they just get to ignore the Constitution? Because nobody holds them accountable!
You sir, deserve far more than just 5 karma points for your post.
Obviously you've never heard of the "My First Rifle" which is a company that makes real guns for kids. A 5 year old accidentally shot his 2yr old sister in Kentucky just recently, go look it up. It's a real .22 rifle, was loaded with bullets and everything. They even make 'em in pink for girls.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I see so many opportunities for this going wrong, like if your hands are dirty. A large percentage of gun deaths are suicides and this would do nothing to stop that.
How about we have the military filed test this first and then see about make it mandatory?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I've seen time machines and flying cars in the movies, why doesn't congress pass a bill requiring all car companies to add these features?
I built a working prototype of a gun control system, and in the process found so many gotchas and problems that I've realized enforcing smart guns is impossible. There's really no way to solve all the problems introduced with such a system, and the drawbacks of such a system make it dangerous. Yes, it could prevent a lot of accidents and misuse, and for that reason there may be potential, but the legislators introducing this stuff have no idea what they're talking about.
Here's my writeup on the system I built and some of the problems I encountered:
http://bobbaddeley.com/2013/03/my-one-post-on-gun-control/
Your idea is pretty novel, but only in the sense that it is definitely the *most* infeasible of all smart-gun systems. A standard, easy to procure, easy to replicate token to disable a gun? You can skip to the end and just outlaw guns at that point. Shit, if you weren't going to take the task seriously, why not just say "we need to outlaw guns, or just put up with them" and be done with it? You wasted a lot of time to come to that conclusion, pal.
Isn't putting a safety feature on a handgun totally missing the point of handguns?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Need to have a gun, the very mentality that everyone should have a gun, is the first mistake. But if you really want to have one, either for kill or to avoid being killed, why have one that could decide to not fire because misidentified you somewhat? holding it wrong was already pretty bad for iphones, but at least your life wouldn't depended on that, and a blue screen will be of death with those guns too.
And maybe more important, adding intelligence to refuse to fire because one input is opening the door to refusing to fire because other kind of inputs. Would be bad that criminals owning guns fire at police or soldiers, after all, so maybe would be nice to add a provision to avoid all people shooting at them. But for a lot, one of the reasons of having guns is to protect themselves from the tyranny of the government, and that excuse would be nullified by this. And maybe more important, if police/soldiers can identify themselves somewhat to avoid this happens (i.e. with a radio signal or whatever simple but powerful enough approach) it could be used by criminals too.
So, after you got your gun, that you won't be able to use it against a tyrannic government, nor against criminals, against who you will use it?
band aid? anything else that would obstruct the operability of the fingerprint reader?
yeah, no thanks.
I can imagine quite a bit....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
gun makers have been trying to make it work as hard as they can for the past 25 years. all the big gun manufacturers (colt etc) have had trials going for almost as long as I've been alive. they do it because if they would get it working, there would be a sizeable market for it. some of the tries( a recent one for example) have used finger/palm recognition, which obviously has it's drawbacks, some have tried some other systems like having to wear a tag on your wrist for the gun to work.
why this guy thinks they can deliver if he just gets a law to force them is a mystery.
it pretty much wipes every fucking gun design on the market out as well. he could just as well call it "kill all but two gun companies act".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Has no one ever played MSG4 in Congress?
wrong answer! I don't want any more possibility that my gun isn't going to fire than there already is by shear uncertainty. I clean my gun after every trip to the range, I oil it regularly, and do everything I am supposed to do. Even with that much care there is still the possibility that it won't fire at some point, and throwing a battery into the mix is not doing to do anything but make that possibility increase.
Deja Vu.
Anyway... It's hard to accept your attempt as a viable solution because of *design*, not because the problem is impossible. What you're proposing is akin to the "Guns of the Patriots" storyline, where you need permission from "the system" be able to use your gun. Something that isn't going to happen unless (pretty much) the bullets themselves refuse to fire without authentication.
Specifically for your system, disables should happen automatically on the device after a timeout. *Enables* should be deliberate (combination, or BLE wireless device present to give permission. Remote disables should at least contain the serial (see keeloq or even basic garage door opener technology.)
Don't bother trying a generic lockout for schools. A criminal, by definition, wouldn't use a legally locked weapon. This is meant to keep little johnny from accidentally shooting little suzy, but still be obtainable in an emergency.
Honestly. A safe with a really fast palmprint reader would do. No gun modification necessary. A weapon can have a battery in it that lasts for years. Paired with an on switch when held is quite enough. If you're really bothering with bluetooth, your gun can tell you when it's battery is low anyway.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I reject the frame that telling people "No, you may not contract a doctor to kill your child, even if it hasn't been born yet" is in any way draconian.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Very funny. Often people who hold absolutist positions on gun control also support old men for whom it is biologically impossible to get pregnant and bear a child write draconian anti-abortion laws. Freedom! it is for people with guns, not for people with uterus.
It is likewise biologically impossible for young men to get pregnant and bear a child.
Who wants to buy this new machine which used to be simple and reliable but now has complex electronic hobbles installed that add no performance increase?
Wouldn't an even better idea be the "Westworld" gun? The one that only shoots bad guys? What could possibly go wrong?
I am not a crackpot.
You can't mandate a technology that doesn't exist or isn't practical. So invent it before you make it law.
I think such a requirement if made into law should be found to violate the 2nd amendment. But I do want the option of such technology so what you could do is mandate the availably of the tech for all new firearm models. Kind of like requiring automobiles be made with seat belts but not requiring people to use them.
Huh? An "absolutist" position on gun control would either be to have absolutely no gun control at all, or to completely outlaw all guns. Just about the only people in the first category are revolutionary nuts in Idaho or Montana who really don't care what the government does anyway, because they don't want to be a part of it. So that leaves the second category, which while just as nuts, actually seem to get some positive time in the press. Are you suggesting those who want to outlaw all guns are the same who want to outlaw abortion?
After all, biometric technology works so well with computers and for DHS, right? RIGHT?
And all those other things in James Bond movies, like an SD-card sized Radio that brings in MI-6 from anywhere in the world - that's real too, right? RIGHT?
Oh, one little thing.... one failure of any new "smart gun" in either actual defensive use (or at any shooting range where the user would be killed in a defense situation,) and the law is instantly sunsetted and Congressman Tierney gets to personally visit the family and explain why his stupid idea cost a citizen's life, to be followed by his expiation of a shitheaded idea with him committing seppuku.
As a gun owner I will gladly go along with any gun control legislation, as long if the legislators and the executive branch are willing abide by the same rule. If their security details are willing to carrying the guns with magazine disconnect, 10 round capacity, and an electronic trigger then I am perfectly willing to do so. Our VP Biden calls for the use of a double barrel shotgun over "assault" weapons for self defense during a riot. Sure, when I see his security details all carrying double barrel shotguns then I will do likewise.
I don't think I'll ever use my gun in a self defense situation because I live in a fairly safe neighborhood with two large dogs from the local shelter. However, every friendly neighborhood cop I see carrying a hi capacity semi automatic hand gun with 2 extra hi capacity magazine, plus a shotgun and an semi-automatic "assault" carbine in their patrol car.
I don't need a fully automatic "assault" rifle to protect myself because I do not have the time, money nor interest to stay proficient with an automatic weapon. However, I do want whatever the local LEOs carry. If they are unarmed, then I'm okay being unarmed. If they are armed to the teeth, then I'll either move away or at the very least, I want the option to be armed to be the teeth as well.
Too bad the Democrat Tierney didn't get his idea from the Matt Helm movie, I think it was The Silencers. Much better and lower tech solution for when the bad guy gets your gun.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Then you get someone in there with specific knowledge of the subject and they're an insider putting in deals for their friends.
You're quoting the kind of person who doesn't think that way.
Evidence: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3771435&cid=43785973
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.
Does the USA prepare for civil war?
How prepared are people who are opposed to this prepared to die over it, and lose in the end anyways?
After the police and military have been using this gun technology for at least a decade exclusively with no non-smart weapons, then we can make it a mandate. Until they embrace it, neither will I. Actually, even if they did I probably wouldn't. I would be jailbreaking that thing in a second.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Same scenario, She pulls her biometric gun, but the man was standing too close and manages to wrestle it from her hands. He aims, the gun doesn't recognize the prints and beeps an error. He tries again, frustrated it wont fire. He throws the gun down in anger and runs off before others see. She collects her gun and purse. Shaken but alive.
There's a million other ways this can happen, but take the whole dead horse "for the children's safety" crap. I'm tired of kids being used to pass laws. Children are not that stupid. My father taught me and my siblings, all while younger than 8, how to respect and shoot guns and could leave them on the kitchen table, no one would ever bother it. Kids not taught, they show their friends, they play with them, they don't know it's loaded and shoot each other. Most accidents are out of ignorance...
This is a decent safety measure. Sure it can be hacked just like any other electronics, but that takes removal from the site, and time. It can't be instant hack. Biometrics are getting faster. We'd need something that can recognize it is being held, scan and ready to fire in less than a second. Make it possible i'd buy. Just dont force it on every gun made. Give us the choice as the consumer to buy it or not. Freedom is in choices not in laws.
You know how watches work right? Self-winding ones use kinetic energy.
Something like this could be designed easily. I'm pretty damn sure most weapons aren't stationary and fixed in place.
The real problem is that Global Climate Change hysterics are ultimately completely irrelevant from a public policy perspective. This is especially true for Republicans that like to wrap themselves in the flag and declare that they are defenders of the Boy Scouts.
Dogma can be a tricky thing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What safe guards are there to prevent MY firearm from being "mistakenly" deactivated?
Who would have access to deactivate my firearm?
Would the system be EMP rugged?
Typical legislation, lets require it then figure out the details, cost, and implementation later.
So you're saying you ARE an expert on politics and legislation, and that's why you can give an opinion on it?
This is a fact - anti-gunners, including congress-critters, REGULARLY confuse an automatic (machine gun) with a semi-automatic (pistol). They claim to be trying to "ban automatic weapons" (machine guns), but their bill bans pistols and varmint guns, which are semi-automatic.
Your post almost made sense until this part. First, "semi automatic" != pistol. There are fully automatic pistols and semi-automatic rifles. None of the serious bills have been trying to ban "automatic weapons" (they are *already* highly regulated), they are trying to ban "assault weapons", which in the context of the bills are basically defined as semi-automatic rifles based on military models.
No more criminals stealing service revolvers from cops and shooting them with their own weapons.
Still shady dealers selling weapons without "smart" tech, or with overrideable tech.
Interestingly, up here in NH there was an incident where a cop was shot at a traffic stop.
A passerby stopped to help the cop, the assailant pointed his gun at the passerby's son, so the passerby pulled the cop's own gun and shot the assailant. (link)
Speaking as a student of statistics, I wonder how many times a cop has been shot with their own gun, as opposed to (this one) incident where the assailant was shot using the cop's gun.
And a related observation: the congresscritters are hot to allow a system to disable guns, which has no statistical imperative, yet won't force phone manufacturers to allow owners to disable stolen cellphones, which is itself the root cause of much crime.
it gets cold in the winter... how would that work while wearing gloves????
I think you're quite wrong on this. At least generally speaking. Almost no-one knows nothing about guns. They may not know as much as you'd like, but most people know something. Just as you know something about the production of pharmaceuticals. Like, you could probably guess that manufacturing them in a dirty environment or shipping/storing them exposed to the elements would be bad.
This particular guy is blowing smoke, but at least he's attempting to address a problem. That is already better than the hordes of people who apparently wish the rest of us would forget that every now and then someone goes bonkers and shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids.
I have owned a gun. I am comfortable around them in circumstances where any reasonable person would be comfortable. I think in the right hands guns are somewhere between a non-issue and a "good thing." However, there are a lot of guns in the wrong hands in this country (and around the world) and pretending that isn't a problem that reasonable minds should tackle is irresponsible.
I was trying to make a viable solution, and in the process recognized many of the problems that will be present in any solution. Some of those problems are sociopolitical and are completely independent of the solution I proposed (gun smuggling, military vs. civilian needs, etc.). Others are problems that I tried to avoid (finger/palm readers are never going to work reliably because of conditions like gloves, dirt, and false positives/negatives, which is why I went with an enclosed wireless system that can be waterproof). Still other are problems that I didn't address but will be an issue, like fitting existing guns with these systems, and designing the mechanics for every gun that keep it reliable and stay clean.
Disables happen automatically if the enable token stops transmitting, and the enable token automatically stops after a set amount of time. The serial is transmitted in all BLE packets, so the specific rules and edge cases can be hashed out in firmware easily.
The generic lockout may prevent some guns from being fired. A sufficiently motivated person would have a gun without this system and would circumvent any laws on the book anyway. The intent of the generic lockout is to increase that barrier and prevent situations like Sandy Hook, where legitimately owned guns were stolen by an unauthorized user.
I completely agree about the quick open gun safe, and those already exist.
Like I said in my writeup, smart guns don't prevent motivated criminals, and they introduce failure modes which could endanger the owner, but they may prevent other kinds of accidents, and to that end may have merit. Sweeping legislation that mandates the use of a system ignores many of the inherent drawbacks of any system, and will be challenging on many levels to accomplish.
You would only need to watch the gripping, tour de force film, "Drugstore Cowboy", and you would know all of these things, intimately, and relatively instantly. To Netflix my good scholar, to Netflix!
I reject the frame that telling a women "No, you may not control your own body, even though you have a clump of cells growing inside yourself" is in any way not draconian.
I don't know if you realize this, but the subject line is where you enter a brief summary of the topic. It's not where you start typing the message.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Take a reliable, simple, reliable, mechanical tool and turn it into a expensive, unreliable pieces of crap.
But it will price weapons out of the reach of the average citizen, which supports their goal. Oh, and if owners get killed due to malfunctions, even the better.
I'm having trouble understanding what you write above, when you've also written comments about climate change. Are you a climate scientist? If not, doesn't your advice above suggest you shouldn't comment, or even have an opinion, about satellites and temperatures?
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3452745&cid=42868677
I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, so I don't have any opinion on proper methods manufacture, store, or otherwise handle various classes of prescription drugs.
I have no idea what regulations make sense. It would be STUPID of me to comment on how a pharmacy must be run since I don't know anything about the subject.
Yeah, well that's not going to stop me! I think that the government should require pharmaceutical companies to make pills that can only be swallowed by the people they're prescribed for. If a person it's not prescribed for tried to swallow it, it just stays in his mouth. I'm sure it can be done because I can imagine seeing it in a movie. And if it saves just one life it's worth it!!!!!
!!!!
Cops in Minnesota in the dead of a winter snowstorm are just gonna LOVE this tech.
Yea.. i thought the same. Where I grew up, hunters use gloves when waiting for the game, it's simply too cold not to.
But maybe if you fill in a form of some sort, you can get an exemption from the requirement. That would solve the problem...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
So you're saying you ARE an expert on politics and legislation
I am (I have a graduate degree in political science), and he is right.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You start with their skateboards!
Think of all the children with wrist, elbow, knee, neck, and spinal injuries caused by accidents resulting from riding a skateboard!
Congresscritters take note! Skateboards must be outlawed at all levels for the sake of the children!!!!!!
Also while you're at it, consider mandatory contraception for all males and females under the age of 18 so as to ensure unplanned pregnancys do not lead to a child left behind!
Let's see how well these two ideas go over with the general populace.
Why is it that people who have no knowledge at all, people who don't know the difference between a machine gun and a pistol, want to decide on gun regulations?
This is a fact - anti-gunners, including congress-critters, REGULARLY confuse an automatic (machine gun) with a semi-automatic (pistol).
Why is it that in the past whenever I've confused a machine gun with a gun that's merely an automatic I've always been corrected and told that a machine gun is an automatic, but automatic doesn't mean machine gun? I've long come to the conclusion that guns are one of those subjects where, unless you're part of the club, you're always wrong because the actual facts and definitions dance in some mysterious pattern. It's like using some group's slang if you're not part of the group. Even if you get the meaning just right, you're still wrong.
You're right. Best to give 'em bigger fish to fry - say, retrofit a Sprint 3-cyl engine in their giant gas guzzler Fords and delete aircon/heater bits to save on weight. Then those defunct personalized guns won't seem such a problem. Save the environment while protecting people from guns. win++
$
That's a camera, not a gun.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Only a disassembled gun is not dangerous.
The most dangerous gun is always the proverbial "unloaded gun"... because it probably isn't actually unloaded and some gun-unsafe idiot thinks it is.
My guns are *ALWAYS* loaded and always treated as such.
As to this "smart gun tech" it's pure bullshit.
Like many so called gun "safety" legislation attempts, this legislation has nothing to do with gun safety and everything to do with gun control. This type of legislation will severally harm gun makers financially (potentially putting them out of business). Furthermore, new smart guns technology could easily double the cost of any firearm, making it hard for law abiding individuals to own and purchase firearms. Failure points are a given, and it won't be long before follow up legislation will mandate back doors for law enforcement built in to the firearm "safety" mechanisms. The backdoors will almost for sure be easily exploitable and buggy. This legislation is bad from start to end, but luckily/hopefully people aren't stupid enough to buy the hype, and it will fail like all the attempts before it.
"Lets take untested bullshit tech that causes a myriad of failures, and MANDATE IT ON ALL WEAPONS!!!"
Also this will make guns super expensive.
And nonfunctional.
And EMP vulnerable.
No, this idea is horrible. I'm sure there's some people who would like this on their guns, but for right now not even all police departments are on board (and they are the one group of people who would actually benefit, as police are sometimes attacked with their own weapons).
This is such a ludicrous power grab. They are taking a virgin tech and trying to make it MANDATORY. Obviously, no one will allow this to go live, so then they'll go cry about how the "NRA is a bunch of villains who only care about the gun industry".
Dirty, dirty politics at work. Bastards.
EMP goes off...Hmm why doesn't my smart gun work anymore?
The cops would probably get an exemption from the requirement. But that only makes it MORE worthwhile for bad guys to ambush them and steal their guns.
And if you DON'T give them an exemption from the requirement, they'll still be wearing gloves in winter. Bye bye biometrics.
Gloves, of course, aren't the ONLY way biometrics can go weird. Dirt, dust, mud, oil, almost any contaminant on the surface of the hand would probably mess up the sensors, for the good guys and the bad guys.
Guns are like tennis rackets. They have to work when they're needed. The only difference in the reliability requirement between a tennis racket and a firearm is that nobody dies when a racket breaks a string just as it's desperately needed to win.
I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, so I don't have any opinion on proper methods manufacture, store, or otherwise handle various classes of prescription drugs.
I have no idea what regulations make sense. It would be STUPID of me to comment on how a pharmacy must be run since I don't know anything about the subject.
Speaking of medicine, I'd like to bring up some of the metrics that are used to evaluate the cost/benefit of a drug. Think of an ID lock as being equivalent to the drug benefit; the number of deaths or injuries avoided with this technology (for guns, we would probably consider it more like a vaccine than a drug, since "deaths avoided" benefit includes both the owner and surrounding people). Likewise, side effects would be the number of deaths or injuries that would not occur in absense of this technology (because it failed to fire when needed, or malfunctioned in a lethal way).
Of course there are details that are must be thought through; for instance, if you consider reduction in suicides (suicide by a non-owner who obtains the weapon), do you credit the full "value" of a suicide avoided, or only the proportional reduction in suicide completion vs non-firearm attempts? Or, how do we evaluate the death of an intended target in terms of deaths caused/avoided; the situation can be rather complex when we consider the details of domestic violence murders.
The we ask, what is the Relative Risk of this technology? Is the number greater or less than 1? Then, some additional parameters we should need to consider include Number to Treat, from which we can start to consider the Pharmacoeconomics of the technology.
This particular guy is blowing smoke, but at least he's attempting to address a problem. That is already better than the hordes of people who apparently wish the rest of us would forget that every now and then someone goes bonkers and shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids.
You have more faith in the DNC than I do. All I've seen them do is use tragedies to push their long-term political goal of ensuring that Americans do not have access to firearms. (They're not subtle about this goal, except when they're pushing gun laws. Then they pretend to have never said it.) None of the measures they have proposed would have done anything to prevent those tragedies, but they would have the effect of advancing the DNC's distinctly statist agenda of making people increasingly reliant on the State for everything from basic necessities to personal safety.
(And please, no rants about how Republicans are evil and corrupt too. Yes, they are. But on this issue they happen to be coincidentally right.)
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The reason for the second amendment is a psuedo-military one; that ordinary citizens could be a militia to fight enemies of the constitution. If weapons are non-transferable, it makes them much less useful in a military scenario. Thus, a requirement that guns have this tech violates the second amendment.
I live in Canada and out of all my friends and family, 0% of them have a gun.
I live in Canada too, and out of the group of all my adult friends and family members, 100% of us own at least one gun each. Many of us even own... *gasp* handguns!!!
In fact the latest surveys show that per-capita firearms ownership rates here in Canada is at least 23 out of every 100, and as high as possibly 30 out of 100 Canadians are firearms owners.
I notice you're not calling it Global Warming anymore.
There is indeed a scam going on, and we all know it. You included. This is not the same as saying global warming isn't happening.
There's no way the security electronics/software could be hacked.
There's no way that an underground economy in gun hacking could arise.
There's no way the scanner, computer, electronics, or batteries could fail.
There's no way someone could create a localized EMP sufficient to fry the electronics in all the guns in the immediate vicinity.
There's no way that grafting untested devices of unknown efficacy onto lethal weapons could result in unexpected or tragic outcomes.
Or when some nutter goes on about the flaws in "evil"ution. Or the baffled gasps of the anti-vaccers. Or the lunatic shrieks of <insert right wing conspiracy here>.
Aside from the fact that the technology doesn't exist... What if I want to let a friend shoot my gun, for example when I was teaching someone to shoot? What if I wanted to try a friend's gun so I could see if I liked it? How about collectible guns? The last firearm I bought was a WWII vintage Finnish rifle. What if I wanted to buy a very-collectable WWII 1911? Would that be legal? It's just another blatant attempt to restrict my constitutional rights. If you want to pass gun control, amend the Constitution. Stop wasting our time with this kind of legislative theater.
All guns should be retrofitted with the biometric checks. That black powder musket must how have a $200 electronic device bolted to it or else you're a mass-murderer. Trying to let a friend use a gun? Nuh uh, you must transfer the gun at an FFL so your friend gets background checked, mental health history checked, political affiliations checked, and a credit check. When he returns it, you must transfer it back to yourself to make sure you didn't become a criminal within that 30 minute period or develop a nervous tick or become an alcoholic.
Anything short of that and you want to murder children.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Not only does this like other posters say, link a firearm to another piece of hardware that can fail or have an error rate, which in life or death situations you do NOT want any errors or delay in recognition, because the other guys won't have those problems.
It also introduces problems where you can render normal security innefective and DEAD by jamming these devices through EMP/HERF, or worse, a simple bunch of spray cans tied down to spray out a mist of spray paint to get all over hands and worse, the reader surface.
What happens when you have dirty hands? if dust or debris gets on the reader surface? error rate goes way up. If you get splashed by ink, mud, or dirt in general? Big problems.
This technology is stacking too much up that can be easily circumvented.
I reject the frames that we're talking about the woman's body and that it's a clump of cells.
The child growing inside of her is a separate and distinct organism. She can do whatever she wants with her body, just leave the baby out of it.
By the time a woman misses her first period, the child inside of her already has a beating heart. Clumps of cells do not have organs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The fact that the "every now and then someone goes bonkers and shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids" is such a big huge news item that goes on for weeks shows just how rare this event actually is and in the context of gun crime statistics is... well, insignificant. Sure it has a huge emotional impact because children, but as far as some huge epidemic, it is not. Legislation that affects an entire nation probably should not be made due to emotional knee-jerking. More often than not it does nothing to solve the actual problem but has related negative consequences also.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I can tell by phrases from you like, "number who understand gun safety, have significant actual hours....and understand GUN PHYSICS [YEAH, RIGHT]," and "...people who think semi-automatic rifle is military grade weaponry.." shows that you don't really know what you're talking about. Most gun owners that I've met know very little about GUN PHYSICS (or anything else requiring above a 6th grade education). Also, the whole "military grade" thing is pointless. It doesn't mean anything either way. What people object to is the ease with which someone who is disturbed or is a criminal can get their hands on guns (handguns, rifles, or shotguns) that have a large magazine capacity without any reasonable licensing or mandatory training.
The fact that I can go to a local Gun Show, buy a 9mm with a 17 round clip for about $400.00 (Brand New) from a dealer, pass the background check (which takes about 30 seconds so can't be that thorough), and walk away with the gun. Then, I can walk across the room, without even opening the case, and sell the same gun to another "enthusiast", without background check and registration, for double the money. No questions asked. Haven't broken any laws. If my gun turns up as used in a crime, all I have to do is say, "I sold it at a Gun Show".
Why do you think an "enthusiast" would want to pay me double for a gun that he could buy 20ft from me for half the price? I know, I know, he just likes his privacy and doesn't want to be "Tracked"! Bullshit. He is going to sell the gun on the black-market as an effectively untraceable weapon and probably triple his take.
This is the kind of crap that just shouldn't be permitted under any sane interpretation of, "A WELL REGULATED militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
I own guns. I like to own guns. I served in the military. I keep my guns locked with trigger locks and the ammunition locked as well, hidden in my closet.
I don't drink an "f" with guns like so many "Responsible Gun Owners" do. I don't see my gun as a replacement for my inadequate penis.
Or better yet; require all Capital Hill police and security use only these guns starting in 9 months. They may not have any weapon without that tech in 9 months. That should give them time to buy them and train on them. Then the law should mandate that all federal protective detains(including Secret Service) only use them ass well. Maybe 3 years for that. If everything works fine then we can talk about mandating them for everyone else, starting with police agencies. And the pilot programs; we should punish any officer and his whole chain of command that has any non smart weapon with twice the penalties he's proposing for the common man.
But then he thinks it fine to give a title of nobility to the employees of the government exempting them from this law; its only for the proles. After all those protecting him need better armaments. What a masshole.
I want guns to be dumb. I want gun OWNERS to be smart.
"People who hate guns, and so have never touched a gun, probably never seen a gun" are not likely to shoot themselves or anyone else by accident, but are in danger of that happening to them because of idiots that believe they're experts.
One other thing. Guns are staying, unless the USA switches from democracy to dictatorship or something just as opressing, simply because the gun industry is making loads of money.
This article for instance, you're completely misunderstanding it. It's not about banning guns of any kind, it's about the gun makers getting ready to launch new must-have-products. Just think about it, people who like guns, can get one of those and say it's "safe". People who don't like guns, can get one and say, yes, it's a gun, but it's "safe", a neat compromise that will completely satisfy a good portion of the market.
Personally, I think revolvers are the best. For personal defense, if you need to shoot more than six bullets, then you're already screwed.
I'm suprised no one has considered what might happen in an emergency situation:
Person A (hands blown off in an attack): Here use my gun, its over there. ...
Person B: I can't its a smart gun
Personally, I'm a fan of the properly installed gun safe, or at least a gun locker. They aren't hard, and work well at preventing accidental shootings. The rules should be that if the gun isn't ON the parent, then it's in the safe. Thieves might be able to get into a gun safe, but they'll generally leave a bolted down one alone; it takes power tools to get into a good one quickly.
Quick-open safes and locks also exist which can allow you access to your weapons in seconds.
Anyone who disagrees is just wrong and seriously needs mental help.
You're making an ad hominem attack here. I don't object to tossing the parents or whoever gave the child unmonitored access to the firearm, much less while loaded, but I've known many children with firearms, where said firearm lived in the parent's safe when not on the range.
In one case I remember a Short Barreled Rifle(SBR) that required NFA approval being used by a pre-teen - it was a perfectly proportioned single-shot rifle in .22lr. The child never had it out of his parent's site, and it was provided to him at the range, and removed at the range(into the case to go back in the safe back home).
The other question is how you define child - I remember some anti-gun propaganda that defined 'child' as 'under 25'. Are you still a child at 13? That's about when I earned my shooting merit badge in Scouts.
I don't read AC A human right
Maybe it isn't fingerprint related but is a giant needle that stabs into your hand to perform a blood test. Shudder.
I think there was an earlier movie where the plot twist was the biometrics failing for one of the bad guys, resulting in him getting shot.
I don't read AC A human right
No, it shows how much we hate kids getting shot. and by 'We' I mean everyone but the NRA who seems to think more bullets flying around a school is a good thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Same scenario, She pulls her biometric gun, but the man was standing too close and manages to wrestle it from her hands. He aims, the gun doesn't recognize the prints and beeps an error.
You know, my first thought on this was rather than throwing the gun down was that he pistol whips her, before proceeding to do whatever he was wanting to do before? He assaulted her without a weapon of his own, he has hers, so now she's weaponless, might as well get down with business.
Another option is that he keeps hold of the gun(don't want her shooting him in the back), takes it home to jailbreak it, now he has a working gun next time he goes to mug/rape somebody. Of course, most criminals aren't as logical as me.
We'd need something that can recognize it is being held, scan and ready to fire in less than a second.
The tricky part is making it work 99.999% of the time, even through gloves and such.
I don't read AC A human right
And if it has to stab you each time you pull the trigger? I can see it now.
*ouch* Bang! *ouch* Bang! *ouch* Bang!
why this guy thinks they can deliver if he just gets a law to force them is a mystery.
If they can't deliver, they can't sell guns. It doesn't make them deliver what they can't. It's a sneaky gun ban.
Then they need to make guns that identify the target, and won't shoot at police. Think of the fun of all the high tech stuff you could do...
Learn to love Alaska
Also, this says absolutely nothing about the ridiculous number of inner cities kids that are killed with guns in their own neighborhoods every day, mostly young black kids killing other young black kids which sparks little-to-no outrage or knee-jerk legislation. So, do we really hate kids getting shot, or only certain groups of kids in certain locations?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
It would be STUPID of me to comment on how a pharmacy must be run since I don't know anything about the subject.
So regulations about security to prevent theft of prescription drugs shouldn't exist because they weren't written by pharmacists? I know plenty about running a pharmacy. I've been in hundreds, and I've run a number of retail establishments. You don't have to be an electrical engineer to understand that electricity can cause an ouchy, and may need some manner of regulation for safety.
Learn to love Alaska
"No, you may not remove a tumor"
Learn to love Alaska
We tell men (and women) all the time that they can't control their own bodies. Look at laws outlawing meth and heroin for example. Or, look at laws requiring motorcycle helmets and seatbelts. Or, consider various laws that prevent one from selling themselves into slavery.
Such rules may not be right, but it's worth noting that they are common.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Sure, but only if all law enforcement officers are required to use the same tech on their firearms. Afterall, they're one of the groups most likely to be shot with their own firearm, so if this safety tech is so importatn, they should be the first to get it.
What's that? They're not ready to stake their lives on it working right in an emergency? Then neither am I.
I don't have a particular lot of faith in anyone in our government or we'd already have tackled this problem. I believe that the occasional tragedy is unavoidable. I also believe that telling ourselves it's rare isn't going to make it better.
The best solutions to the problem are difficult. They don't make good campaign talking points, they don't make easy poster slogans. They certainly don't appease the crazy radicals on either side of the issue. It is not realistic to think that guns will disappear en masse or that no restrictions on gun ownership will be allowed.
Things that should be done? IMHO: Every gun shop should be responsible for their inventory. We need more ATF agents. Every gun that is involved in a crime should be destroyed. Mental illness and treatment needs to come out of the shadows. Guns should not be idolized, romanticized etc. Poverty should be addressed. Social inequality plays a huge role in crime in general.
Guns are only an easy way to kill. They are not the motivation or the opportunity to do so. Making it a bit harder to kill someone means you've already failed to stop them from having a reason to do so - but it should be a part of the solution.
This, of course, forgetting that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. People are happy to call the police when the shit hits the fan, but actually putting security with loaded guns in schools in the first place? That's just crazy/paranoid/expensive/dangerous!
Yeah, I'm that's the opinion of the family of the college student shot in the head this week by a "good guy with a gun" (cop) who decided he was better off firing 8 rounds at a burglar holding her in a headlock than just letting him go.
And a clip and a magazine are completely different, even if you'll find magazines labeled as "clips" in gun stores, and the meanings are identical (a means of holding multiple cartridges together for use in a semi-auto). So yes, they will use pointless distinctions (assault rifle, assault weapon) in an attempt to discredit anyone they see as not having the same opinion as themselves.
Learn to love Alaska
No, it shows how much we hate kids getting shot. and by 'We' I mean everyone but the NRA who seems to think more bullets flying around a school is a good thing.
And by kids you mean WHITE SUBURBAN kids, because black kids killed by gunfire never causes ANYWHERE NEAR this sort of reaction, enough though there are ten sandy hooks a year in the American ghettos.
More kids die per year from a television falling on them than being accidentally shot.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57558985/tipping-televisions-kill-record-number-of-u.s-kids-govt-warns/
This bill makes NO SENSE and is being played out by the media shock and awe that so many people have fallen victim to. In the perfect world, elected officials would be smarter than this but I guess not. I wonder if he really is this dumb or he is just trying to get votes. I'm waiting for the Running Man game show to become reality.
So obviously, in this case, the D in D-Mass means "Dumbass".
You see, the funny thing is, some of them try to get experts to inform them of decisions.
But, how does one find experts, especially with sound opinions? The law makers, who know nothing about the fields they are responsible for, turn to their aides and other informants to find out who they should ask.
And there's a whole industry, sitting right there, willing and ready to supply these people with the 'information' they need to make 'sound' decisions.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, so I don't have any opinion on proper methods manufacture, store, or otherwise handle various classes of prescription drugs.
I have no idea what regulations make sense. It would be STUPID of me to comment on how a pharmacy must be run since I don't know anything about the subject.
I hate that argument. In this case in particular, did you know that doctors and pharmacists routinely put medications on shelf's right next to each other that are indistinguishable except for the text on the label. There are something like half a dozen types of insulin that are all labeled "insulin...xxxxx". Getting the wrong one can kill you. Do you need to be a doctor or pharmacist to know that maybe making the bottles obviously different would be a good idea?
Likewise, you don't need to be an expert in firearms manufacture or use to know that installing a electronic device in a gun, which need batteries and will be subjected to severe shock, will severely reduce it's reliability in the best of circumstances.
How to take over a country that has 3 guns per person in the future? EMP! Then they can't unlock their weapons! Muahaha.
As long as all police and military get the same unique gun access too.
No, security regulations should be written by people who know something about security.
Security regulations that are specific to pharmacies should be written with input from people who know about operating a pharmacy. If I knew nothing about either subject, my "opinion" about the subject would be worthless and a waste of time when I could instead be commenting on something where I have an INFORMED opinion.
I might reasonably I say "people should be responsible, including pharmacists, so they should follow whatever procedures are considered essential by experts in the field." My knowledge, and therefore my opinion, ends there.
By chance, I've spent my whole career in security, so on the topic of security for a pharmacy, my state license is evidence of the fact that I could make informed comments a little beyond the above. I'd still leave the specifics up to people who are more specialized in appropriate security disciplines. (My main expertise is CYBER security, though I learned locksmithing 25 years ago and I do own a bulletproof vest.)
You are correct in that we do not need to be experts in a certain field in order to comment on basic facts. Im betting he's not a fecal scientist, but is able to safely suggest to others that they shouldn't eat fecal matter.
I think he believes that, like guns, pharmaceuticals shouldn't be restricted. We should be able to buy any pharmaceutical from 7-11. Just because some people are irresponsible with them doesn't mean we should restrict access to pharmaceuticals.
The distinction is simple: one is semi-automatic, meaning that you have to pull the trigger each time to fire. The gun loads itself automatically each time. The other is *fully* automatic, it will keep firing as long as you hold the trigger. This is a "machine gun", which very few people actually own.
C|N>K
"No you may not punish this child for your own lack of foresight."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
that sure stopped those pirates. i'm sure this smart gun tech is going to out-smart all those stupid criminals too!
I have enough knowledge of the subject to say "no, you may not kill my son". If you don't want to raise your child, you can let me, his father raise him, but you may not kill him.
You do realize you're advocating FORCED abortions, right? You're saying that you should have no say in whether or not your children are murdered, if you happen to be male.
We tell people that they can't use their bodies to beat others to death with their fists.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They very much do conflate "military style weapons" with "semi-automatic" weapons, including pistols.
The Clinton magazine ban applied to pistols as well as long guns, for example.
I said:
pistols and varmint guns which are semi-automatic
Not only did I not say that all semi-automatics are pistols, I specifically said that "varmint guns" may be semi-autos, and varmint guns are most often small rifles (aka not pistols).
Can't tell if serious. In the post you linked to, I said only that I'm pretty sure a 0.001 degree increase in temperature wouldn't attract asteroids from millions of miles away.
I've directly experienced gravity, and I've directly experienced warmth, which is all the knowledge required to make that plainly obvious statement.
I have said one other thing about global warming, recently renamed "climate change" when you guys decided to blame the unusually cold winter on "warming".
What I said is that their are wacky extermists on both sides of that debate AS EVIDENCED BY THE FACT that the extremists said in 1985 that "by the year 2000, most of California will be underwater". It's 2013 and California is still here. I have enough expertise is geography to know that California is still there, because I was IN California several months ago. Ergo, the wackies were wrong.
I don't say there's no such thing as global warming, nor do I say that the sky is falling. I simply say it's hard to get real, objective facts because most of the studies are funded by and run by extremists on one side or the other. Hell, some of the most credible evidence I've seen lately measured the "atmospheric" CO2 level AT A VOLCANO THAT WAS VENTING CO2. The whole global warming thing sucks for that reason. I'd like to leave it experts, or at least listen to experts,but it's obvious that every "expert" I've seen on either side is lying through their teeth, so who friggin knows what the true story is.
Babies don't grow from tumors.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They are in the most danger of having their weapons taken from them and their children having access.
"Lack of foresight? I'm 16, I tried to get on the pill, but I was required by law to have my parent's permission, and they wanted to enforce abstinence through fear of pregnancy. So I guess you are right, it is all about punishing the children."
Learn to love Alaska
Magazines have springs in them, clips don't. What's hard about that?
I think you're quite wrong on this. At least generally speaking. Almost no-one knows nothing about guns. They may not know as much as you'd like, but most people know something.
It's not how much they know. It's how much they know that just ain't so. I have six years combat arms experience from the Army, and the level of misinformation is stunning, especially when you get into the messy details of close quarter tactics. And the nuts and bolts of how firearms work and how firefights work can at least be explained pretty clearly and reasonably definitively. Much of the debate hinges on epidemiological studies of gun violence, and the only consistent answer I've seen from those is that there's little evidence of a causal link between gun control legislation and rates of any kind of violence. There is a ton of statistical data and every department collects it differently and counts different things. And that's not even getting into the socioeconomic issues.
Just as you know something about the production of pharmaceuticals. Like, you could probably guess that manufacturing them in a dirty environment or shipping/storing them exposed to the elements would be bad.
And I have no idea how clean pharmaceuticals need to be to be safe or have any basis to understand how much exposure to the elements they can withstand before losing potency. Nor do I have any idea how pharmaceuticals are manufactured, or how they are shipped, beyond what I know about UPS or Fedex.
A tumor is an unwanted growth of cells. (though I guess you could substitute "normal" for unwanted, and declare it normal, thus not a tumor)
Learn to love Alaska
There are gravity-fed magazines (mainly for air rifles), so that doesn't help.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm not a doctor or pharmacist...
But you've seen at least one episode of ER, right? So if you go into politics, then you're already qualified as a medical expert.
I'll protect my family with a de-personalized gun, thanks.
-- Jimtown Kelly
As if I have to have to touch, see or own a gun to determine what to do about guns. I can very well think about what a gun represents and what it is capable of. Thus I am very able of deciding on laws about guns. I am going to ask you, do you know about everything when you give a comment? Or are you just winging it and pulling feathers out of your arse? For if you are, then you STFU! At least that is what you are writing in your comment.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
You're right; your one little anecdote shows that cops can't be trusted with guns, and that we should confiscate all guns from all cops immediately. Seriously?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
There are no age checks on condoms, which have the added benefit of protecting against STDs.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Or, I don't like guns, I've never seen a gun, I'm clueless about guns - so I think I'm qualified to decide on the laws about guns.
Very funny. Often people who hold absolutist positions on gun control also support old men for whom it is biologically impossible to get pregnant and bear a child write draconian anti-abortion laws. Freedom! it is for people with guns, not for people with uterus.
The old men, of course, were born and generally raised children. The notion that the man should have no say in reproduction is fundamentally sexist and a badge of shame for the feminist movement.
He knows of no gun manufacturers who would want smart gun technology on their weapons. I know thats not what he said, but it is what he meant. The NRA isn't looking after the wellbeing of gun owners, it looks after the wellbeing of gun manufacturers.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
To defend our country in the absence of a standing army, we must allow the civilians to arm themselves to serve in the army when it is assembled".
This is one of the scarier statements I've read, "...we must allow the civilians to arm themselves...". The statement itself shows the low level of understanding of the U.S. Constitution in this country.
The Bill of Rights gives zero, none, no rights to the people. There are no rights in the Bill of Rights that "allow civilians" to do something. It is just the opposite that is true. Read the preamble to the Bill of Rights and you may get a better understanding that the Bill of Rights is not a grant from the government to the people but, rather, further restrictions on the national government placed there by the people.
Too many people believe the 1st amendment gives them the right to free speech. It does not. The language of the 1st amendment is prohibitory on the national government, "Congress shall make no law..."
The 2nd amendment is also a prohibition on the national government, "...shall not be infringed."
The people gave permission to the government to have guns, not the other way around. The type of argument posited here scares me because it sounds like:
"Well, the government gave us this right early on because of some specific issues we had related to having a standing army and since we no longer have those issues then the government can just take away the right. Let's just get rid of the 2nd amendment and we can all live in peace."
To me, it's as if people believe the government was always there and decided to give us stuff: rights, schools, highways, fire departments, health care, police departments, etc., etc. The fact is that we decided to create a government in order to better manage those things we created. As this concept of government-as-benefactor grows people are losing sight of the liberty they have as individuals and turning to the government in a mother-may-I mode hoping upon hope the government grants them what they want.
There was a company in Australia (Metalstorm) that had working prototypes of such things and I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Thank you for your kind compliment.
You may very well be a smart person, and be able to reason quite well. If I told you all about waggles, you could probably come to some reasonable conclusions about waggles. However:
"As if I have to have to touch, see or own a gun to determine what to do about guns. I can very well think about what a gun represents and what it is capable of."
"What a gun represents" is, without any actual knowledge, whatever a political comedian on comedy central, or a movie, represented TO you.
The basis of your thinking is some fiction presented to you on an entertainment program. It therefore completely undermines your otherwise logical thought process. It is precisely as though I gave you a book about waggles and you came to some conclusions, but half the the statements in the book were false.
Your conclusions would be completely without merit not because you were wrong in your thinking, but because you're reasoning based on a false
representation. That's reason #1 that it's silly to advocate a position on a topic you have little knowledge of.
Further, suppose I know a little bit about cats. I know 5% of all there is to know about cats. You, on the other hand, are a cat expert, knowing 90% of everything there is to know about cats. When it comes time to make a decision about cats, should we vote? Would that result in the best decisions? No, I would let you to make the cat decisions. If you argue on a subject about which you have 5% knowledge, you are (attempting to?) offset someone else who knows ten times as much. That's guaranteed to result in bad decisions, and that's reason #2.
Lastly, suppose you are the cat expert, and I'm the cybersecurity expert. The cat and the computer both have a virus. Should I spend my time trying to figure out the cat's symptoms? It would be much smarter for me to fix to the computer, while you tend to the cat. That way both jobs are done well. If we instead split our time, with both of us working on the cat and both on the computer, we'll probably just screw both up. So if you've never fired a gun, but you do know a lot about economics, you are wasting your talents and knowledge spending time arguing about guns. It would be far better for you to spend that time helping our society figure out this huge economic problem we have. All of these 50-something year old people will be 60-something in ten years, we know that for a fact. We also know for a fact that we're fucked when that happens, because we can't pay their social security. Please, please, if you know anything about budgeting, economics, etc., please go advocate a good solution to that problem rather than spending time spouting bullshit about someting you know nothing about. There are other topics where your knowledge could be very helpful. That's reason #3.
Back in the real world, as opposed to movie fantasies, the most effective to stop a bad guy with a gun is to keep him from getting the gun (or ammo). There are plenty of cases where bad guys with guns were surrounded by good guys with guns, and that didn't stop them. It turns out that in real life, as opposed to movies, guns are actually only good at shooting people, not in keeping people from getting shot. That's why the actual number of criminals stopped with guns, based on real statistics rather than surveys of what people imagine, is vanishingly small.
I'll also point out that 2/3rds of the people that die from guns are suicides. Flooding the country with more guns won't reduce suicides.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Saw that one on a cold, rainy December night in Ft Bragg, CA while shacked up with a hot chick up in the redwoods for a month.
Great mammaries....er, 'memories'.
So you don't disagree with my statement, but the implications of it.
Learn to love Alaska
More bullets flying around a school?
Who do you think gets called when there's a school shooting? The police.
What do you think the police bring to the school where there's an active shooter? Guns.
What do you think the police do when they encounter an active shooter? They shoot back.
Every single one of you who criticized the NRA's suggestion of armed guards/police at schools is a complete idiot. The only thing their suggestion would change from what we have today is the response time. Bad guy starts shooting, police respond (currently 3 - 5 minutes in good cases), police shoot bad guy, shooting stops. The NRA suggested having them already there to shoot the bad guy right away and it was met with furious anger from idiots who think that a cop driving to the school is somehow more capable of stopping the bad guy and less likely to hurt an innocent bystander than a cop who was already at the school when the shooting began.
Stupid. Just .. so stupid.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
How many mass shootings have there been in the history of gun shows in America?
Ever been to a gun show? There's thousands of guns all over tables, in display cases, being carried by people, and the entire place is filled with what most people would describe (either half-jokingly or not) as gun nuts.
Hundreds of gun nuts, thousands of guns. How many mass shootings?
As to your point about suicides, less guns won't help that either. A person truly intent on taking their own life will do so. We're fragile creatures and we have many known weaknesses. This is why the suicide rate in the US is no different from any other place in the world.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Wow I always wanted to learn more about guns.
Now I know that an "automatic" is a machine gun and a "semi-automatic" is a pistol.
I feel a bit smarter now, and a bit less scared.
Human reproduction is not in any meaningful way like cancer, and it is a temporary condition that "solves itself" after a period of time anyway. I don't recall that cancers or random growths of cells consistently developed their own heart and brain, or consistently exit the body of the mother to eventually walk around, talk, go to school, and perhaps take up bowling. You may also recall that the many varied methods for preventing those "unwanted growths of cells" to begin with are well known.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
...is that the people of Mass. have elected a man who cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.
"I saw it in Goldeneye and thought it would be a great idea!"
Have we really come to this? Really? Television and movies are more "real" than life itself?
How sad.
Didn't remotely say anything of the sort. Defensive, much?
But "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" - just like many other examples of overreaction like high speed police chases, etc - is a gross oversimplification. It's not a single anecdote if you pay the least bit of attention - often premature and unnecessary escalation of dangerous action or deadly force just leads to innocent casualties. And it gets progressively worse when you hastily put "security" in place with guns but poor situational training ala Mr. Zimmerman (unless you think an additional 150,000 competent police officers can be quickly hired, trained, and adequately paid to guard all of the public schools). But in your black and white world you are clearly not interested in discussion of the issue... oh well...
Most tumors are benign. Your "pregnancy is not cancer" is a non sequitur.
Learn to love Alaska
And how about those citizens and their vehicles shot up while the police were hunting for Christopher Dorner -- even though none of those people, nor their vehicles, resembled the target's description? How about some other dubious cases: Chavis Carter, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima? How about the pepper-spraying of peacefully seated protesters during Occupy UC Davis, Scott Campbell and Kayvan Sabeghi's critical injuries sustained during Occupy Oakland..
Oh heck, just visit Wikipedia's page on Police brutality in the United States for many more examples. Too many people are seriously injured or killed by super trooper cops who want to show how bad-ass they are when engaging in manhunts, monitoring peaceful demonstrations, or dealing with minorities, foreigners, and/or the mentally ill. Yet the number of times that the police perpetrators of such violence being imprisoned, fired, or even receiving any formal reprimand at all seem exceedingly rare.
The cops will be exempt. And don't worry, congress will take care of the obvious loophole: they'll make it illegal for people to use stolen cop guns, thus completely preventing that from ever being a problem.
Referring to a growing baby as a tumor is nonsense, both biologically and ethically.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You are either too stupid to know the definition of "tumor", or a liar for pretending not to. Let me know which so that know why I'm ignoring the internet idiot.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm not arguing in favour of gun control, but you're wrong about your first point. In the actual situation where there is a "bad" guy with a gun, then I'm sure a "good" guy with a gun is relatively effective, but that does not mean it's a good preventative measure, and it doesn't mean it's a good idea. The best prevention is to stop the "bad" guy before he picks up the gun. The best prevention is social change. Better mental health care to catch crazy people before they go on a shooting spree. Reduce income disparity and better integration to prevent crime. It's pretty obvious from the outside, but a lot of people seem to only be able to think in action movie cliches.
Honestly, your culture is a mess, and it's this violent kind of thinking making it so. Your country is sick with a passion for violence. Everyone thinks that they are the good guy. Everyone confuses violence with empowerment. (Yet situations where violence is useful are very rare and easily avoided if you have the true source of empowerment - money). The world isn't divided into good guys and bad guys. There are just huge numbers of scared, stupid people, and a culture that sees violence as the answer to any difficult problem.
Think outside of the narrow circumstance of a gunfight. What would putting armed guards in schools do to your society? What would it do to the generation of kids that grew up with it? What do you think happens when kids grow up in an oppressive, authoritarian, paranoid environment? To look at it another way, what do you think makes some kids go nuts and want to kill everyone around them? Do you think that a constant atmosphere of paranoia and imminent violence would help or exacerbate those problems? Do you think it would make troubled kids more or less likely to act on their violent impulses?
"Young black kids"
Exactly....unfortunately.
What do you think the CC means in IPCC?
Given that you're THAT clueless about the situation, your entire screed on it is nulled.
Why don't give them an abstinence based teaching as you are at it. That work well /sarcasm.
Assault weapon is a BS made up definition by your US congress. Assault rifle OTOH has a precise definition. most people think assault rifle when you speak to them about assault weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle#Assault_rifles_vs._Assault_weapons
Most people know what an assault rifle is. Many don't understand that it is not what is legislated, but rather a more nebulous "assault weapon" definition which heck vary from jurisdiction to the next.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Does this mean I will have to buy special gloves that have my fingerprints on them?
And does this mean that if my wife wants (or, more importantly, needs) to grab and use "my" gun that she'll also need gloves with my fingerprints on them, and I'll need a way to emulate her fingerprints?
This is all entirely nonsense. The bill is a stealth approach to making guns cost more, akin to those feckless plans to tax ammo at 1000% in order to attempt to change human behavior among psychopaths and dedicated criminals.
I am entirely for gun manufacturers making and offering such guns to those who want them if they think there's a market and they want to serve that market. Requiring such is complete BS.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"I saw it in a movie and therefore...."
My God... how do these people get elected?
Oh that's right. We let retards vote.
Okay. We don't want criminals to get guns - I think we can all agree on that. So let's pass laws against criminals getting guns, because clearly criminals care about breaking the law?
Criminals, by definition, don't give two solid fucks about breaking laws. More laws and mandatory sentencing is not the deterrent people like to think it is. Criminals especially don't give a crap about gun laws if they are part of a criminal enterprise, like selling drugs in poor inner-cities, where assault and murder are tools to be used for maintaining territory and product; because if they get caught, the penalty for assault and murder are far higher than that felony-C weapons charge. Maryland and Illinois have some of the most strict gun control laws on the books, yet Chicago and Baltimore rule the roost in drug-related violence.
Oh, and not doing the assault or murder carries the same or worse penalty for these criminals, and organized crime syndicates (whether talking about the "mob" or drug traffickers) are a lot less dainty about their capital punishment than government is.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why is it that people who have no knowledge at all, people who don't know the difference between a machine gun and a pistol, want to decide on gun regulations?
This is a fact - anti-gunners, including congress-critters, REGULARLY confuse an automatic (machine gun) with a semi-automatic (pistol).
Why is it that in the past whenever I've confused a machine gun with a gun that's merely an automatic I've always been corrected and told that a machine gun is an automatic, but automatic doesn't mean machine gun? I've long come to the conclusion that guns are one of those subjects where, unless you're part of the club, you're always wrong because the actual facts and definitions dance in some mysterious pattern. It's like using some group's slang if you're not part of the group. Even if you get the meaning just right, you're still wrong.
There's a handful of confusion going on, between "automatically reload" and "automatically refire".
The first kind of "automatic" reloads the firing chamber automatically every time the trigger is pulled. The user has to release the trigger and pull it again to fire again. Some people prefer "semi-automatic" to describe this. While most pistols are semi-automatic, there are also rifles and shotguns that fit this description. (Among them, the AR-15 rifle and its clones.)
The second kind of "automatic" reloads the firing chamber and fires again, as long as the trigger is held down. Some people prefer "fully-automatic" to describe this. The M-16 has this behavior.
(Despite the fact that the M-16 and the AR-15 are nearly-identical externally, the internals of the mechanism are different enough to make it impossible to drop the M-16 fire control mechanism into an AR-15 frame to create a fully-automatic rifle.)
For extra fun, research the history of laws and regulations concerning fully-automatic firearms in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
Then ask yourself...in all the news reporting about Assault Weapons and bans on them, why does no news agency spend five minutes discussing the difference between firearms covered under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and items listed in a proposed Assault Weapons Ban?
So, do we really hate kids getting shot, or only certain groups of kids in certain locations?
I think the honest answer is "we hate when anyone gets shot (on a personal level), but we're not moved to action by every occurance of this, because we've become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incidents ... so, it takes a somewhat unique incident to rise above the background noise and stir people to any sort of action at all".
And that's not to mention the exhaustion of dealing with political grandstanding by everyone on both sides of the issue over every little minor detail.
Somebody once thought it was a good idea to put governors on cars, which would overide your control of the accelerator, and reduce your speed if you went too fast. The problem is, there are situations where you need to go fast in order to save your life, or somebody elses. Being chased by a tornado for example.
This is equally as bad. It may reduce the chance of the wrong person using it, but it will require your data to be in some database under the control of potential enemies, or it may not function at the time you need it.
My point is that if I had said that automatic=machine gun, someone would have been all over me telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and that the term "machine gun" only applies to certain guns which are a subset of automatics.
My point wasn't about automatic vs semi-automatic. It was automatic vs machine gun.
Yep. The other option was 'just letting him go' ahead and *shoot the cop*. The bad guy in the scenario you're glossing over was pointing his gun at the police officer.
Yes, it sucks *hard* that the hostage died. The alternative is that the cop would have died. And having killed a cop, what *exactly* is the motivation to leave a *witness* to that crime alive?
So, in all likelihood, the other alternative was, "cop and hostage killed by bad guy with gun".
That's *so* much better than "hostage and bad guy with gun killed by cop", right?
And those of use who understand *both* guns and the proposed technological "solution" will *not* buy them, because while they are 'guns', they aren't 'safe'.
A pistol, bought for self-defense purposes, is a critical piece of emergency safety equipment. Adding failure-prone technology (and biometrics *are* failure-prone, even in calm, low-stress, controlled environments) to a critical piece of emergency safety equipment is, incontrovertibly a *BAD* idea.
Would you buy a car that required 'palm recognition', or 'finger print scanning' in order for the brake pedal to have it's designed (and desired) functionality work? I sure as hell wouldn't.
I believe that current US law says that any fully automatic weapon (or component that will cause an otherwise non-fully-automatic weapon to become fully-automatic) is a "machine gun".
You can't just walk into a gun store and buy one. Only machine guns (or sears, etc) manufactured before 1986 can be transferred between citizens, and they are, predictably, very valuable.
Right, and those work 100% of the time, right? Get a clue you moron.
What you just said applies more to your post than to his.
Hypothetical situation: A law with a perfect enforcement rate was written. The law punishes firing of a weapon by anyone other than the owner with a $1 million dollar fine and 20 years in prison. It is intentionally draconian for the purpose of this thought experiment.
Now, consider someone who must posess a firearm (the reason they must is irrelevant, so assume that they must own one). Also assume that they are allowed to implement ONE method of control which exists or is possible today while still keeping the firearm available/useable to the owner. (viable options: Smart-tech, Safe, Triggerlocks, etc. Non-options: encase in concrete and sink in ocean, etc)
Given the hypothetical situation: Draconian punishment for non-owner discharge, requirement to posess/operate a firearm, only allowed one method of control.
What would you pick as your method of control to limit your exposure to the draconian punishment? Would you pick the smart-gun fingerprint reader, a safe, a recurring 'talk' with the members of your household, etc.
Personally, I'd pick the option for a gun-safe with an X09 style lock. I'd not trust a trigger lock (vulnerable to theft and drilling), nor smart tech which could be circumvented, especially if the gun was stolen.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Almost no-one knows nothing about guns. They may not know as much as you'd like, but most people know something.
Sadly it seems most of this firearm 'knowledge' is obtained from watching movies, not from taking a safety course and heading down to the range. Most of what they 'know' is more like what they think they know to be true.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
and last i checked between the 1986 ban and the 1936 NFA, automatic weapons, SBRs, and SBSs are pretty much a non-issue. Not surprising that it didnt do anything to reduce the murder rate much like banning claw hammers wont do much to stop the roofing business. A new hammer will take its place. Ban all hammers and they will still find a way to drive a nail.
no they are basically defined as a semi-automatic weapon that looks menacing to the hatchet-wound that wrote the legislation. Exactly how does a shroud around the barrel do ANYTHING to its functionality and suddenly make it an assault weapon? Or a pistol grip etc. Aside from magazine capacity its simply an issue of cosmetic appearance. Maybe we should judge her ability to function in society purely on her appearance too. The ugly ass bitch would be locked in her house if we held her ability to exist by the same standard.
so why do you need more gun laws then? you already declared it a gun-free zone.. surely the criminals will stop once they read the sign posted on the door. My point is laws dont do shit to stop someone from committing a crime. They only serve to outline the punishment for breaking that law. When I was a kid we had armed security guards in the high schools and there were NEVER school shootings. IT wasn't until the dumb-ass liberal politicians thought that making schools a gun-free zone that this shit started happening. Ever heard the phrase 'like shooting fish in a barrel'? If i wanted to kill the most people with the least chance that someone could stop me I sure as hell would start down the list of places were law abiding people cant defend themselves.
I have a feeling you're 100% serious and have no idea why he wrote "old" there even though it's perfectly obvious to the rest of us.
we had armed cops in my high schools back in the 80s and we didnt think twice about it. They spent half their time busting kids dealing drugs at the school. Having armed cops at the school wont have the sort of impact you think it will. I would rather see an armed cop at the school as his post than seing the armed cop at every goddamn movie theater, not because of a shooting, but because we have to protect the greedy ass MPAA from the highly dangerous video camera in the audience. We give more of a shit about pirating movies that having cops back at the schools like they were for decades before.
And you, of course, are willing to forget that some random middle-aged school teacher who fancies himself a hot-shot gunslinger is probably just as likely to miss and hit a student as he is to kill a shooter. And what about all of the days that there are no school shootings? I guarantee you that there will be cases where some parent starts knocking on the window trying to give his/her kid his bagged lunch only to be shot to death by some jittery, untrained teacher or security guard.
Police are trained to use guns. The vast majority of civilians who have guns are not.
Nope, it is not --> "it's a reality". I disagree with the correct assumption as well, it's reality.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
Given no requirement that the firearm be in any way useful, one would want to get as close as possible to "encase in concrete".
If you add the fact that you want some benefit, you want to be able to protect your family and those about you, one must balance availability to the owner or other authorized users vs. availability to unauthorized persons. That's very much situation dependent. A family with a three year old and five year running around the house is very different from a retired couple with no grandchildren, for example. For the retired couple, it matters whether you live in the hood or you live in a gated community in a very safe part of town. (This is one reason that the more specific laws are, the worse they are - they require specific behavior that's not appropriate to the situation.)
One method that's too often overlooked is keeping the weapon secured in your holster, on your person, with a safety mechanism that ensures it won't fire from being dropped or similar. That makes it very available to the owner, while unauthorized people aren't going to get to it without a fight.
It would be STUPID of you not to comment about pharmacies. The great thing about free speech is I can say what I want. That being said, let me say that even though I don't like guns, you making a comment about me probably never seeing or using a gun is wrong. Clearly you, just like policy makers, believe what you want to believe because it fits your ideology and/or personality. I don't handle nuclear waste but I'll be damned if I let somebody like you tell me I can't have an opinion about it that helps shape the future of our country in the right direction. Same with oil, abortion, contraception, etc. Do you feel like politicians are extensively qualified to make judgements on any of these topics? If you feel that way, but not the same about gun legislation, I call bullshit. You just want to get angry because I don't want you to have a toy that ends peoples lives.
Because the chain of bad decisions start with the cop getting himself in that situation to begin with. When he was told "there is an armed man holding a hostage inside" maybe his first instinct shouldn't have been barging through the door with his gun drawn, but calling for backup and trying to diffuse the situation. I'm pretty sure the victim and her family would have preferred everything in their house be stolen and their ATM account drained over being shot in the head by a cop.
only when Police Officers are required to have them first.
You have clearly missed the point you cretin.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The cities with the strongest gun control laws - have the most gun crime.
The public believes gun violence is on the rise. Actually, the exact opposite is true.
The argument against an armed citizenry goes like this "When more people have guns, there are more gun accidents, its a fact". Actually, that statement is a lie at worst, selective statistics at best -- that treat being brutally murdered the same as accidentally burning myself.
What else about guns do I really need to know? Not much.
Murphy was an optimist
So, are beer bellies tumors?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The men who employ liposuction treat them as such.
Learn to love Alaska
"So, you are correct that 99% isn't good enough, but 99.8% is."
There are many problems with your post, but I'll just address this one, because it's straightforward.
A skilled practitioner can clear a mechanical gun malfunction in seconds and get back in the fight. Malfunction clearance drills are part of self defense training.
I bet the same won't be true of electronic malfunctions. "tap-rack-bang" is probably not going to correct a chip or sensor failure.
Not all malfunctions are created equal.
How does the technology work if the gun owner wears gloves?
Police are trained to use guns.
..and still kill an awful lot of people by accident, or when lesser force would have been sufficient.
This does of course add weight to your argument.
I sit here looking at the inop fingerprint scanner in my high end laptop and just shake my head...
The ONLY technology I need in a defensive firearm... is a well designed mechanism that DOESN'T go bang unless you pull the trigger... and GOES BANG every single time you do...
No I did not you imbecile.
Fully automatic = machine gun = hold down the trigger and it will fire until out of bullets.
Semi-automatic = not a machine gun = one bullet per pull of the trigger.
Automatic: Usually, when speaking of pistols, Automatic = Semi-auto, as opposed to a revolver, and in rifles, automatic usually = machine gun.
Usually. Yes, it's confusing.
invalid argument as you're you're changing the situation. the statement was "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun".
he already has a gun. that is the situation.
"well if you stop him from getting a gun" ... no, that's not the situation. the situation is he already has it. and he will. because none of these laws have EVER stopped bad guys from getting guns. none of them EVER will.
the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and it always will be.
and there are thousands of cases every year where guns save someones life, even without shots being fired. guns are used for protection without being fired more often than they are used to kill. you know nothing, your stats are BS.
and the suicide stat is also both BS and fundamentally illogical. there are a million things int he home that can be used for suicide; removing the guns wont change that. again, you are blaming the tool, not the internal mental problem that causes someone to committ suicide. the gun didnt make them do it, and if they didnt have a gun they could just take a bottle of pills, jump off the roof, or open a vien with a steak knife.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
invalid argument as you're you're changing the situation.
Why? There is no magical law or regulation that says he can't change the situation. There's also no magical way to force him to obey.
In fact, that's your argument why gun laws don't work: because bad guys will ignore that magical rule and change the situation.
Furthermore, if bad guys can circumvent gun laws, what's stopping them from circumventing guns? Sure, if they stay as "bad guys with guns", you'll be fine, but bad guys can simply change the situation so they are not just bad guys with guns. They'll be something more, and your guns wouldn't be able to stop the new breeds of bad guys.
So in the end, nothing stops bad guys. This leads to the funny but true statement: evil wins because good is dumb.
the word "automatic" means that it performs all 4 steps of the firing sequence on its own, with the user just pressing the trigger. IE, no other actions required, like cocking the hammer, working a lever/pump, etc etc.
the steps are: Firing, extracting, feeding, Cocking, and are performed in that order.
a weapon that performs all 4 of those actions on its own with simply a trigger press is an "automatic".
Fully automatic means it will recycle and continue firing without having to release and resqueeze the trigger.
Semi-automatic means it only cycles once for each trigger pull.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You must be a lot of fun at parties. So certain of things you are completely wrong about, yet willing to speak for the entire group.
In reality, nobody should just be calling anything just an "automatic" any more. The terminology's too loaded with meanings and sentiments to have constructive conversation with that word. We should be using the terms "fully automatic" (read as "machine gun") and "semi-automatic" (read as self-reloading; essentially all modern handguns - even revolvers - do this).
You can't know I am wrong because you're unable to comprehend the post you're criticizing. Note that you're still the only one who is confused.
I'm a lot more fun at parties than some chucklefuck who nitpicks sentences he doesn't comprehend, that's for sure.