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UCSD Lecturer Releases Geotagging Application For "Dangerous Guns and Owners"
NF6X writes "UCSD Lecturer Brett Stallbaum has released an Android app called Gun Geo Marker to allow people to 'Geolocate Dangerous Guns and Owners.' The app description states:
'The Gun Geo Marker operates very simply, letting parents and community members mark, or geolocate, sites associated with potentially unsafe guns and gun owners. These locations are typically the homes or businesses of suspected unsafe gun owners, but might also be public lands or other locations where guns are not handled safely, or situations where proper rights to own or use any particular type of firearm may not exist.' I question how the motivation behind developing this app differs from, say, developing an app to allow others to publicly geotag homes of people believed to belong to a particular religion or political party."
Americans and their guns
aren't they?
I assume that(at least in theory, I assume that it will swiftly degenerate into some mixture of 'round up all the guns!' and '2nd-amendment-keyboard-warrior-trolls', leading to a rather useless dataset), the mention of 'parents' implies a concern about improperly secured guns, a favorite of dumb children, with some side functions for 'We are pretty sure that this guy has a foundation composed largely of dead hookers' and 'these are the woods were people get wasted and shoot at absolutely anything that moves like a mammal every fall'.
Given the author's bio(he appears to be part GIS-dev, part performance artist) the app seems like a pretty logical outcome; but not something of any use except to get people worked up(which can be useful, and entertaining; but this isn't god's gift to informative maps).
Disclosure: I dont own a gun.
The app seems like its going to anger quite a few people who hold the second amendment dear. I can see instances in which the app is used by police to target dissenters before an organized protest on the guise they plan to start a riot. Or perhaps the map is used by criminals to identify homes without firearms. marking an entire neighborhood is bound to lower property value. However in many cases the recourse for average citizens to do anything about a mentally unstable neighbor that owns a gun or guns is pretty limited. The viet-nam vet who pipes michael savage throughout the porch and parades around the back yard in fatigues with an assault rifle literally was my neighbor for 4 years in suburban ohio. i cringed every time i saw a girl scout or jehovas witness approach the door. The neighborhood association did nothing and the local police, despite the fact the man had been banned from a local public festival and a wal-mart, simply acknowledged him to be an interesting character.
The site asks if I know anyone who does not use a gun lock, and considering as i live in a state that leads the nation in child firearm fatalities im inclined to use the app to report people who dont use them.
Good people go to bed earlier.
False dichotomy: The problem isn't either people or weapons, with one excluding the other.
And false analogy:
There are benign objects that have potentially deadly applications. For example baseball bats. Or just run an SUV into a crowd, you're bound to do a lot of damage.
There are benign objects that are not really dangerous in any conceivable circumstances, but they get banned because people are paranoid like shit about them. Like little magnetic balls.
Then there are objects built for the purpose to kill, and nothing else.
The point is not that the last category is alone in being able to cause death. It's that is it is the category of objects that makes it easy and efficient to cause death, while having no other redeeming legitimate purpose.
That means you get accidental deaths. And that also means that when we fail at the people end of things the damage is that much more catastrophic.