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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
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.
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.
I would want it implemented like my laptop's fingerprint reader. Only stored locally or on a machine I control (IE: gun owner's PC) and can be overridden with a password (may require a Bluetooth link to a PC)
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.
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
Trigger locks would do the same as this bill and would be cheap to retrofit, etc.
This again?
Are you aware of the significant safety hazards that retrofitted trigger locks present?
To illustrate - take an ordinary revolver. Unload it, and install a trigger lock (the lock goes though the trigger guard, in front of the trigger). Yay, safety, right?
Consider that there is NOTHING which prevents someone from loading such a weapon, and cocking the hammer. Oh, and by the way, you can't decock it without being able to access the trigger. You now have a weapon that is in an unsafe condition, that cannot be made safe, safely.
Hope the guy who has to make it safe has cast-iron balls and stain-resistant underwear.
Trigger locks are stupid and unsafe - a solution in search of a problem.
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.
My guns are reliable because they are simple mechanical devices. I think this is a horrible idea, no matter how it's implemented.
Like a previous poster said, if law enforcement adopts the technology and it turns out to be extremely reliable I'll reconsider.
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.
Early training in the safe use and handling of firearms prevents "Accidents" later on in life!
DRM on movies and music = good, DRM on guns = bad?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Couldn't you just unload it? Put your thumb between the hammer and the frame, hit the release on the cylinder and empty the shells? I don't see how that would require an underwear change.
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!!!!
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.
What age are you talking about when you say kid? Are you talking 2 -3 years of age or are you talking 17? What if your are teaching the child about the dangers of firearms and how to safely handle one if they find it. Would that be a time when it was okay for a child to have a firearm? How about in the country where there are wild animals around would it be okay for a 12 year old to go outside and shoot the badger that is gnawing on his little brothers arm? Or the ten year old that shot home invaders? I knew a girl that when she was 8 years old was hunting to help put food on the table for her family. Even though she never had and accident with it should she never have touched that firearm? Not everyone lives in the city. Not everyone is in the same environment that you are in. And if your saying children are not mature enough to handle a firearm then we have a bigger problem because there are a ton of adults I would not trust with a firearm where I would trust that 8 year old with one.
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?
Haven't owned a modern revolver for a few years, but last one I owned wouldn't allow the cylinder to be opened while the hammer was cocked.
Course that one was older than I am, so things may have changed.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I can imagine quite a bit....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
There are laws to prosecute people who are responsible for minors encountering guns and getting hurt, and the parents of the little girl who was killed a few weeks ago should be prosecuted under them.
While it's clear that you mean the best for your children, your plan to ensure their safety would only lead them to harm the first time they encounter a gun without you around to stop them. Consider that somewhere between 33% - 45% of US households have a gun in them. Your children WILL be going into those houses in the normal course of growing up and having friends. Your choices are to ignore the possibility and blindly assume that none of your neighbors own guns, or accept that some do and educate your children on what to do: http://eddieeagle.nra.org/
As much as you love your children and want to protect them, keeping them in the dark about guns does not help you do it.
Would you say the parents of these children need mental help? http://www.khou.com/news/crime/Burglary-suspect-shot-by-15-year-old-son-of-deputy-97430719.html
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.
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.
Then a drunk stoned hobo comes and kills you with a knife, tortures your wife then rapes your daughter. And gets a monetary reward of all your valuables. Congrats.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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?
I live in Canada and out of all my friends and family, 0% of them have a gun.
Or I drop him to the ground with martial arts and deal with him. :O OMG that would work!
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.
For any modern gun, that is pretty much a thing of the past. Modern handguns are designed with a "drop-safety" or firing pin block. Older ones still have this problem.
Children "get guns" because they are mysterious, and forbidden, or they think they are toys. All three of those are symptoms of lack of training. If the children were taken to the range (one child at a time) and shown how a real gun works and how it differs from a toy gun they would never touch a gun even if it was left in plain sight.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What if I just want to let my neighbor shoot it in my backyard? Now I can't.
What if my random friend or family member comes to visit for a few days and needs to use it for self defense? Too bad!
Actions have consequences. Some are mere annoying inconveniences, and others are deadly.
I disagree. I have been shooting from the time I was about 6. Moving from BB guns to 22 rifles to large bore rifles and handguns.
It was a fun, educational, and enjoyable experience and provided me a means to connect with my parents/grandparents and kept me outdoors and engaged.
Kids should be shooting, but in controlled and well supervised environments. I was taught to respect firearms and to understand their danger and their utility. That is what should be done.
However, I do agree that parents who do not secure their firearms or let kids play with them like toys should be charged. I didn't have access to my guns as a kid unless my father got them out and I would have lost my privileges if I ever did anything more than pick it up, point it down range, fire, then put it back on the designated area.
Until your child who has never been taught about firearms goes on a sleep over to one of those irresponsible parents mentioned above who don't teach their children and secure their firearms. Then they play cowboys and Indians and your kid is the Indian.
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.
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.
I would want it implemented like my laptop's fingerprint reader.
Useless, broken, and easily circumvented?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
I'm sure designing a trigger lock that would also prevent the hammer being cocked is beyond all our engineering prowess.
No. The cylinder is locked (by design) while the hammer is cocked to prevent firing while out of battery.
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.
How can you protect your children from ever coming into contact with a gun at a friend's house? The homes of gun owners don't have giant neon signs out front declaring it for you. Unless you keep your child on a leash until they're 18, they WILL go into homes with guns.
You're basically advocating the firearms version of abstinence-only education: keep your children as ignorant as possible and just hope they never get into a situation where they would have benefited from actually having been educated.
Not all revolvers have flip-out cylinders; Ruger Blackhawks and many Uberti models, for example. The only way to de-cock a Ruger Blackhawk is to pull the trigger - kind of hard to do safely while trying to insert a key in the trigger lock and turn it, while somehow blocking the pin from the hammer. Then, consider trying to do so at 2 AM, in the dark, as you hear an intruder bearing down towards your bedroom door.
That's not even mentioning semi-automatics...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's not tough to protect electronics from external radio interference, especially interference from something expected to be portable.
For the sake of my blood pressure, I'm going to assume this is sarcasm...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We're talking about locks to be retrofitted to existing guns without them. I agree that new manufacture is not a daunting engineering task.
Please, feel free to submit your design ideas. The person who can solve that problem stands to make a decent sum of money.
Incidentally, that post only illustrated a single problem with trigger locks. The issues are numerous, most of them involving the fact that the (of the retro variety) locks themselves violate a fundamental safety rule: (paraphrased) don't put anything though the trigger guard until you're ready to fire.
There ARE safe storage solutions, however, they don't involve trigger locks or one-size-fits-all solutions.
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.
After all, if it's easy to change the prints, it's still easy to steal and use the weapon.
Its easy to defeat bike locks too. But locking your bike stops casual impulse / opportunity thefts from everyone not wandering the streets with a bolt cutter.
In this case, the gun will not fire when your kids have the neighbors kids over and they pick it up and do something stupid like pull the trigger while pointing it at your kid, or their own leg, or whatever.
The difficulty of changing the prints, even if its pretty easy, will be a high enough threshold to ensure that accident never happens.
There are plenty of perfectly legitimate complaints about smart guns without resorting to nonsensical arguments. The fact that someone dedicated enough will be able to change the prints is pretty much irrelevant. It would clearly be useful to stop plenty of other scenarios.
Probably a good idea for DEA/FBI/Swat/Tactical Forces
Look at every picture you can find, every video of any kind of tactical unit. Notice something? They all wear gloves. Biometric locks would be completely useless.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Well none of the people I know even have a gun so I'm pretty safe there.
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 one I know has a gun for any reason, no one needs a gun for any reason and no one would think of buying a gun for any reason.
There was a similar scene in one of the Timothy Dalton Bond movies back in the late 80s, except his gun was a sniper rifle packaged to look like a camera.
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.
You are some kind of clueless.
17yo male defending his mother: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/27/florida-teen-fatally-shoots-father-in-desperate-attempt-to-protect-mother/?intcmp=trending
17yo alone defending himself: http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2012/06/08/mansfield-17-year-old-shoots-man-who-broke-into-home.html
A 14yo and 17yo defending themselves: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10544178/
12yo girl alone defends herself with her mother's Glock: http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/Twelve-year-old-Bryan-Co-girl-shoots-home-intruder--174678431.html
15yo girl defending herself: http://gunssavelives.net/self-defense/15-yr-old-texas-girl-scares-off-two-burglars-with-her-dads-gun/
11yo girl defending herself with her own rifle: http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/Girl-loads-rifle-to-spook-burglars
Boy defending himself in a home invasion / murder event: http://www.khou.com/news/neighborhood-news/Webster--2-charged-in-home-invasion--196306051.html
This was 5 minutes of looking. The list goes on and on. There are PLENTY of reasons for mature children and teenagers to know how to use firearms. One of the biggest reasons is the simple fact that it educates them in what freedom actually is.
Just for fun, here is a 13yo girl using a pistol, shotgun, and fully automatic rifle in competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yd4B77PkeaU and here she is talking about the specific firearms she used, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TXYdzPiF4xc
LF
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.
Well, that is foolish as fuck. People like you are why so many children die in gun accidents. Congratulations, you are part of the problem.
Here is why: A majority of US households have guns. While many guns are stored safely, many are not. By failing to educate your children about gun safety, you make them susceptible to accidental death or injury when they play with real guns someone finds in a neighbor's house.
The NRA puts out gun safety material for children which is quite appropriate. "Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult!" Even if you can't stand guns, hate guns, and would never touch one or want one or use one, you owe it to your children to teach them this much.
LF
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!
To trump all of that, school shootings and dead children from gun accidents.
FTFY.
... And how a well fit trigger lock ...
That's part of the problem. A great many of them are anything but well-fit. Most people will likely buy the cheapest option available to them, when forced to buy something that they don't need - and the cheap trigger locks are junk, and IMHO a safety hazard.
And yeah, I'm fully aware of the padlock-over-the-backstrap method of securing a revolver. That's one of those non-one-size-fits all security methods that actually works. Likewise a cable lock through the magazine well and action of a semi-automatic.
The point of the post wasn't to demonstrate the prowess of my revolver knowledge, but rather to point out that as with many other things, for every problem, there exists a solution which is simple, inexpensive, and dangerous when misapplied.
Hi. Have you examined the Texas Department of Public Safety stats on Texas Concealed Handgun licensees? It includes total count of licensees from 1996-2011, which you can cross-reference with the overall state population. It also includes conviction totals and rates of CHL holders vs. the rest of the state across that same time period, so you get a clear picture of what proportion CHL holders make up in crime rate relative to their population.
If you haven't already examined those stats, I invite you to do so, and then cross-reference the crime rate and murder rate of Texas CHL holders per 100,000 population vs. Texas as a whole, with the US and other states, and any other population you wish for that matter. Then answer this: does the data support or contradict your assertion?
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 live in Canada and out of all my friends and family, 0% of them have a gun.
THAT YOU KNOW OF! That's the problem. You're only assuming no one has them as you can never know for sure. And given Canada's recent failed attempts at gun registration you shouldn't be surprised if people respond to your queries by saying, "Of course I don't own a gun," whether they do or not.
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 if I want to fire it "illegally" I just take out the battery and manually operate it?
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
I already walk to work and walk at work, I'm not some crazy anti oil spokes person but I rarely drive as it is.
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
If I searched all of there homes I would put money on the fact that I would not find a gun. All of them feel along the same lines I do.
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
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.
To trump that, a pressure cooker bomb made from fireworks and ballbearings. Imagine the carnage of something like that in a closed room instead of a large, outdoor area. The tool is irrelevant to a madman bent on killing.
To law-abiding innocents protecting themselves, firearms are a powerful equalizer. Nothing has come close to firearms in enabling the weak and defenseless to protect themselves and those around them against violence.
A handful of extremely well-publicized incidents do not outweigh the truth of guns, crime, and gun ownership. Specifically: gun ownership is at record highs, while crime is at a 40-year low. While there may not be a causitive link, it is certain that legally-owned guns do NOT result in higher rates of violence whatsoever.
Also, I only picked instances of 18yo boys and girls using firearms. The number of mothers and fathers who use firearms to protect their children is far higher, and vastly surpasses the number of children who die from gun accidents or mass shootings.
Banning guns leaves children vulnerable. How dare you.
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.
Haven't owned a modern revolver for a few years
Would a S&W 686 count? I'll have to double check when I get home, but I think that one locks up the cylinder as well when cocked. After all, last thing you want when the hammer is dropping is the cylinders moving.
As for making it safe, well, I'd hope I was at the range and/or armory. Procedure:
1. MAKE SURE THE WEAPON IS POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION. Preferably stuck in a clearing barrel or pointed at a berm.
2. insert key into lock, place finger between hammer and gun, keep pointing in a safe direction.
3. Turn key, keeping gun pointed in safe direction and finger interfering with hammer
4. work the trigger lock off with one hand, keeping it pointed in safe direction. If barrel so much as twitches, pause and think about actions before starting again
5. Once off, make safe as per normal procedures. While pointing it in a safe direction.
Did I mention keeping it pointed in a safe direction the entire time?
I remember Consumer Reports looking into trigger locks and failing 99% of them, specially noting one particularly unsafe one that tripped the trigger on a 10/22 with a slight jar when installed per directions.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
I consider myself to be pretty liberal, and while I'm not an advocate of gun control (aside from the fact that it's a guaranteed right, gun control wouldn't work), I would welcome education. According to the numbers, most people are far more likely to hurt themselves by having the gun in their beside table than they are be able to prevent personal harm from an intruder. The intruders are far more likely to wait until you're gone, and if you're a total idiot that does not properly secure your weapons, they'll steal your gun from your bedside table and use it for crimes or gang violence.
Do you interview all of the parents of your children's friends to make sure they don't have a gun in their home?
Great. I have always enjoyed when I've been able to do so. Life is more pleasant that way. But my point is that you cannot simply dismiss the value of new tools simply because old tools can do a similar job. You personally may not derive much advantage from the newer tool, but it would be a bit solipsistic to conclude that they have no use therefore.
This is the central problem. For safety, you should keep your guns in a locked gun safe without ammo in them with trigger locks on them. They are completely useless as a self defense item. For them to be useful you need it loaded under your pillow with no trigger lock, but unfortunately this gets you killed by your wife or your mistake. What we need is a compromise between the two.
There are quick-release gun safes available that open quickly with a combination of keypresses. Inside you can store a loaded self defense weapon. Just like the responsibility of handling a weapon, one needs to practice practice practice entering the combination, so it can be done during duress, and to consistently verify the safe functions properly.
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.
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
No it doesn't. The US leads the 1st world in gun violence by a massive majority. So I guess all other first world country's are a joke.
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
Well none of the people I know even have a gun so I'm pretty safe there.
I bet you're wrong. I was surprised to find out who owns guns in the place I work. The topic never came up, but when it did, I found out a lot of them do.
A better question is, are you willing to bet your child's life that they don't?
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.
And yet, violence is at a 40-year low, while levels of firearms ownership is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, many of those other "1st world countries" are experiencing continuing increases in crime rates (UK, most of Western Europe, Australia...).
The facts speak for themselves. We can both spit numbers at each other all day long, but at the end of the day, nearly every major genocide in the last hundred years has been perpetrated on an unarmed population. Would that happen here? I don't know, talk to the Indians, I'm sure they would have an opinion on the matter.
I want guns to be dumb. I want gun OWNERS to be smart.
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
"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.""
Well regulated in the context and time referred to well trained not regulated by the state. The right to bear arms and the right to maintain a well regulated militia are two separate clauses in that amendment as well.
"Most gun owners that I've met know very little about GUN PHYSICS (or anything else requiring above a 6th grade education)."
I don't recall saying they did. I said the people I've met who do were gun owners. Actually, if you isolate it to just gun physics that may not be true. But if you include some or all of the other things I said, yes they own guns.
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
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!
You teach your kids about vehicle safety, right? Buckle up, look both ways, don't speed or drink and drive or ride with anyone who does? Right?
Those are important lessons regardless of whether or not you own a car yourself. Even if none of your friends own cars. Those are important lessons because teaching children isn't about teaching them what you want the world to be like, it's about TEACHING THEM ABOUT THE WORLD THEY LIVE IN.
As a parent you've got a lot of leeway with what you do and do not teach your kids, but basic firearm safety should be touched on at some point. Because reality, that's why. Because maybe you don't own a car, and maybe you can't teach your kid how to drive -- but you better fucking teach them how to cross a road safely, and to respect vehicles for the harm they could cause, because at some point they might need to drive or cross a road. They'd be much better off having learned long ago what things are not to be trifled with, and how to act safely around things that are dangerous.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
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
Make it a requirement for police handguns and maybe the new technology could be used to make laptop fingerprint reader technology work well at last. Everybody wins!
"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.
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.
It's still going to be easy to steal and use the weapon. Why? Because the system will, by definition, be easy to defeat. Why? Because the firearm must, by nature, by easy to break down and clean or repair. Nobody will buy a gun they can't strip down and repair unless perhaps they're literally not allowed to do that, and I don't see anyone proposing that yet. Safeties or mechanisms always boil down to something very simple and that means they will be very simple to defeat. Short form, you should assume that even if every firearm has a different system, there will be a defeat procedure in the wild for every firearm's safety, and probably available on whatever passes for the internet by the time a law like this actually passes. More likely you'll see an outright ban before you see a law like this.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Any trigger lock which doesn't put something behind/through the trigger itself is definitely garbage. Luckily, there's a number of them on the market with configurable pin holes that let you configure them for a variety of weapons. They're better than nothing! But sure, a crappy lock is the worst. In any case, a revolver can reasonably be locked with a cheap cable lock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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
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!"
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
A well regulated militia was designed for a time when there was no standing army. That's another reason why there is so much confusion over the wording, we live in a very different time, and having a well armed civilian militia ready to be conscripted into a military force (using their own weapons) was a necessity for national defense, not just individual liberty. As I've pointed out many times before, if China were to start an invasion of the US tomorrow, they would be repelled by the civilians in L.A. There are more guns in private hands in the LA area than in the hands of the Chinese military.
That was the reason behind the 2nd Amendment, and why it was worded that way. "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". Yes, it was also discussed that the armed people could rise up, but it was never considered in a time when standing armies were the norm.
Learn to love Alaska
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
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
Guns cause violence, more guns cause more violence and NOT the other way around.
Gun ownership in the US is at an all time high, and yet:
Good News on Gun Violence Could Shape Gun Control Debate - May 07, 2013
... Firearm homicides have declined 39 percent since 1993, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report released on May 7. A separate study by the Pew Research Center put the decline at an even more impressive 49 percent. Nonfatal gun crime also dropped over two decades—by an eye-opening 69 percent, according to the government...
Florida Crime Rate Tumbles to 42-Year Low
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
There are gravity-fed magazines (mainly for air rifles), so that doesn't help.
Learn to love Alaska
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
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
It's not always possible. See the 1911 with the flush trigger. Still, on my 686 a proper rod behind the trigger could even prevent it from being cocked. But I'd be extremely careful when mounting the trigger lock on - place it too far forward initially and you could end up tripping the trigger.
Oh, and I checked with my S&W 686 - with the hammer cocked it does indeed lock the cylinder in place.
I don't read AC A human right
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!
Pretty close. But standing armies weren't the norm until long after the formation of the United States, and the founding fathers were vehemently opposed to the country having a standing army because they thought that it would lead to an overly militarized society because the government would keep finding uses for the army, while a government that had to recruit civilians to fight would have a strong pressure not to do so unless was a real, compelling threat.
Of course, back then wars were much slower and longer, so there was time to raise an army and train and arm them. :-(
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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."
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
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
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
Statistically guns do not cause violence, poverty does. Look at every city with a high gun violence rate and you will see all the poverty areas filled with your gun violence. But not the higher income areas. Restricting guns will not stop the violence, as seen in England, Australia and Mexico. All had increases of general violence after gun restrictions. But changing the general level of income will remove the largest amount of violence from those areas. If you want to lower murder, rape, arson, and drug use all you have to do is raise the level of income in an area. P.S. you also lower the average birthrate for the area as well.
but we're not talking about general violence, we're talking about gun violence and right now Australia has almost none, at least when compared to other countries.
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.
It's not always possible. See the 1911 with the flush trigger. Still
Seems to me like most modern 1911 triggers have holes in them. You could lock them with nothing more than a padlock. That's how mine is, anyway. I used to use a cable lock, now I use a lock box. California requires that I own a lock and/or safe which was purchased at the same time as the weapon, but a $2 cable lock qualifies. Or you can get them free from the PD. They give you a receipt that says they just gave it to you, so it qualifies as the lock requirement. Crazy, huh?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"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"."
that's not legal. In fact your background questionnaire clearly states that you are buying this weapon for yourself not with the intent to buy it for someone else. If you buy a gun with the intent to immediately re-sell it then you are a straw buyer and that is, in fact, illegal. I really dislike the term "gun show loophole" because there is technically nothing going on at a gun show that couldn't happen outside the laundromat or anywhere else.
people can object to the ease of someone who is disturbed having easy access to guns, removing their easy access isn't going to make the disturbed person any less dangerous. Its just one of many methods they can use to carry out their plot. The guy in Aurora that shot up the theater also made a lot of explosives and chemical gas weapons to use. I have no doubt that having been denied access to the rifle and pistols, his plot would have still succeeded because he would have simply used more explosives instead. Perhaps, and this is pure hindsight, fewer people died that day simply due to the fact that he chose to use the rifle over 20 or 30 well placed improvised claymore devices.
I certainly feel that those that own guns, myself being one, should have access and be required to have the best training available. However that training only serves to promote safety and prevention of ACCIDENTAL death. There is no amount of gun laws you could ever hope to pass that will do one bit of difference to someone determined to kill someone else. Murder has been illegal and yet still occurring long before the invention of the first black powder musket. Its futile to think that anything beyond addressing accidents can be fixed with rules and regulations.
what standing army? hell our goddamn national guard even gets deployed in foreign wars now.if it werent for the armed population we'd be ripe for conquer. Our forces are scattered all over the globe, we couldn't hope to rely entirely on the military to defend the country. Switzerland understands that. Thats why their veterans are all allowed (encouraged) to keep their service rifles and side arms. Its a well-trained militia that doesnt cost them tax dollars to maintain. Our government (DHS) should stop making statements like "our military veterans are the greatest terrorist risk this country faces" and start working with them to defend the country instead of trying to make enemies of them with statements that they are a far greater threat than islamic fundamentalists.
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.
The problem is there is no difference. Just because a gun is not available does not mean that violence is going to stop. Gun violence is just a symptom of overall violence. Removing the item that can level the difference between an 80 year old woman and a 300 lbs attacker is not going to reduce violence. It just makes the victims better targets. Raising the general income level for an area does reduce ALL violence.
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.
Well, bully for you.
Must be nice living in a secure, well protected and patrolled, gated community with no crime whatsoever and all perfectly normal nieghbors with no chance or fear of them EVER crossing the line and threatening your person. tell me, what job do you work within that safe haven that you and your neighbors also never need to leave it and enter the real world with the rest of us heathens? i mean, i can only assume you have no physical contact with outsides if you're all so perfectly safe. must also grow all your own food, and build all your own consumer goods.
or, more likely, you're ignorant as hell, and half the people around you own guns and simply dont make a big deal or show about it, and you simply dont know it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
You're basically advocating the firearms version of abstinence-only education: keep your children as ignorant as possible and just hope they never get into a situation where they would have benefited from actually having been educated.
You: Win.
Murdoch: epic fail and ignorance
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
These arguments as to why there is a second ammendment will never end. Youll believe what you want to believe and so will I. In reality it was designed to be a check against tyrany from taking hold in the US.
40. Out of 350 million.
But hey, that 40 is good enough. Also, youre taxes are just fine for you, and should be for everyone else too. and your car. And your income. In fact everyone should be little murdoch clones.
who needs opposing viewpoints? cause hey, your 0.0000114% sample size is good enough for you, therefore theres no reason for anyone to ever be any different than you.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Where are you living that your worried about the door being kicked in and men with guns coming in? Where are you going to a store where you have to be worried about guns being pulled out. I'm not ignorant, I just don't live in an area that has such high crime that everyone needs a gun.
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.
whooosh.
No one ever thinks it'll happen to them.
Until it does. And then it's already too late if you're unprepared.
You live in ignorance of the world you live in and dont even know it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
oh goody. you're canadian. so now you're argument just went from being whatever is good enough for me should be good enough for everyone is now crossing international borders and adding a further level of cultural seperation.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
troll.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
troll
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
then they are equaly ignorant. and that's a sucker bet i'd take in a heartbeat I'd be garutneed to win.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
Here's an internal safety lock (designed to keep the kids safe, not to prevent someone else from using the gun) with versions for autos, revolvers, and long guns: http://www.omegagunlock.com/?page/105201/home. (Full disclosure: my brother assisted in the design).
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
Looks like a reasonable design.
The men who employ liposuction treat them as such.
Learn to love Alaska
California requires that I own a lock and/or safe which was purchased at the same time as the weapon
Yeah, it's crazy, I mean, I haven't filled my 30 gun safe yet. Most handgun safes hold at least 2-3 weapons. Why force me to buy a lock I'm not going to use because I have a perfectly functional safe at home?
Some of the dealerships I'm at have 'free' cable/trigger locks in a basket. It's up to you whether you take one or not. BTW, I know one guy who uses the cable lock that came with his gun on his gym locker...
Seems to me like most modern 1911 triggers have holes in them.
Mine's a milspec, no holes. A google search of 37 images for "1911" that is actually of a 1911 with the trigger exposed gave me 20 with holes, 17 without. Almost even. Even then, I wouldn't rate all of the holes as suitable for either putting a padlock through, or even if you can get a padlock into the hole, that it would restrain the trigger enough to prevent discharge.
For example, this image has the holes rather far forward...
The lock is for pure child safety. I prefer a safe.
I don't read AC A human right
No it doesn't. Raw numbers, perhaps...but when you figure the percentage of the population (i.e. per capita), then it's much much less.
Stop being lead by your nose for a change. Piers Morgan is just a puppet of the ignorant leftist agenda.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Well just looking at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate, the number of deaths per 100,000 in Canada is 0.4 and in the US is 3.60. How does the us have 6.5 times more gun homicides over Canada, that list is equalized for population so that doesn't account for it. Lets look at the stats:
Homicides: Can: 0.5, US: 3.60
Suicides: Can: 11, US: 6.30
Unintent: Can: 0.08, US: 0.30
So well Canada leads the the US in Suicides, it destroys the US in all other categories.
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.
You cannot focus on the tool used to commit the crime, you have to focus on the crime itself.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Your argument is invalid.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
No, guns really do kill people, take the gun away from a weak, feeble person and changes are they won't kill. Give them a gun and turn them into a murder. Guns really do kill people, because people get to much power from a gun, so simply stop open gun control.
Plane in the side of building.... ...OKC Bombing.... ..yeah, guns were responsible for that.
Again, it's a case of the person committing the crime, not the tool.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
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...
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.
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.
I believe on Ruger Blackhawks and other single actions there is a pin that holds the entire cylinder in the frame. Open the gate, push the button on the side of the frame and pull the pin forward, it will release the entire cylinder from the frame.
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).
Yes, the cylinder can be removed, but mainly for cleaning.
The gun is typically loaded by opening a metal flap on the side and loading each chamber one at a time.
Source: I own a couple of them
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Cocking the hammer on most revolvers locks the cylinder in place, in order to ensure the impending explosion doesn't cause the slug to zip into the corner of the barrel. Revolvers with problems relating to lockup (adequately locking the cylinder in place) or timing (locking the cylinder in the right place) are unsafe, and prone to "catastrophic failure". If the slug simply stops, or encounters too much resistance, the pressure increases beyond safe levels. Under pressure, gunpowder burns faster. If powder burns faster, pressure rises. If a revolver doesn't lock up reliably, this can lead a well characterized, somewhat-controlled deflagration to turn into a completely unpredictable detonation that will remove fingers and embed parts of the weapon in the face of its user.
.38 or .357, both around the middle of the pack. Even those are sometimes known to burn through the top strap of the revolver, eventually weakening the frame there enough that continuing to use the weapon risks catastrophic failure.
Cocked revolvers tend to have very light triggers, and the process of unlocking a gun and removing the trigger lock can set it off. Revolvers in particular aren't just dangerous in the direction the bullet flies. The gap between the cylinder and the barrel is the site of a second, small explosion; even without a projectile coming out, the white-hot gas moving at above the speed of sound will take your thumb clean off. No, strike that - it'll take it off messily. Warning - this link includes an image of the aftermath of a traumatic amputation. This one includes a picture of how to hold a revolver so as to not be injured like that. This one (probably a long exposure) better captures the peak intensity of this explosion. And this gun in question is only of moderate power - that appears to be either a
Making that revolver safe might not require an underwear change - it might require a trip to the emergency room and being fitted for a prosthetic. If your palm is caught by it, you may still have a hand afterwords - but it could sever the nerves and tendons allowing you to feel or move your fingers. Your suggestion of putting your thumb between hammer and frame is a good one, actually, but a hammer strike could injure your thumb, too - there could be permanent damage, ranging from scarring to loss of the thumbnail to nerve damage (though there's not much finger downstream, so you'd be pretty functional after you healed). Nail bed injuries are slow to heal; last time I messed one up (gym accident) took about two years before I could expect to do anything more strenuous than walk without sudden spikes of pain now and then. I'd strongly recommend a pencil eraser instead of a thumb.
You asked a good question, honestly and politely - I wish more people would do that when they didn't know the answer.