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Hardly Anyone Is Buying 'Smart Guns'
Daniel_Stuckey writes "The technology is here. So-called 'smart guns' are being programmed to recognize a gun owner's identity and lock up if the weapon ends up in the wrong hands. Entrepreneurs and engineers have been developing technology to make safer guns since the early '90s, and by now we've got working prototypes of guns that read fingerprints, hand grips or even sensors embedded under the skin. But after 15 years of innovation, personalized guns still haven't penetrated the marketplace."
Everyone take a deep breath. The manufacturers do know they aren't going to be big sellers. Some people are interested in the technology developed. Like Android with the face-recognition for unlocking your phone, it's kind of an advertising gimmick that no one actually uses. Or you could put a physical Yale lock on a phone, make it very secure, right? But it's not really that useful. No need to get angry over it, just not working right now.
You seem to have left Europe out of it. Little fact, Switzerland and Finland have close or higher rates of gun ownership than the USA.
Trigger locks are a joke by the way...
Instead of a nice 15 second clip of someone defeating a trigger lock (you could have found hundreds of them - Hell, your link had three linked from it), you posted 40 minutes of anti-gun FUD propagandist bullshit? Classy.
And as for locks - some trigger locks count as a joke. That amounts to a straw-man, however; some balcony rails count as a joke, but we don't scream bloody murder that we need to ban balconies - We buy functional rather than purely decorative rails instead.
You want an effective cheap gun lock? If you can Fire this with the lock in place, I'll buy you a beer (or a wine spritzer with some foofoo garnish, if you prefer). Five seconds on and off, and you can't even seat the magazine, much less rack it.
The answer is: pretty often.
Numbers are argued over constantly, so I won't bother quoting any, but this subreddit is relevant: http://www.reddit.com/r/dgu
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You seem to have left Europe out of it. Little fact, Switzerland and Finland have close or higher rates of gun ownership than the USA.
I could be wrong about Switzerland but AFAIK access to ammunition instead of guns is very regulated. However, as a Finn I know more about how it works here. First of all, you simply cannot get away with using a gun in self-defence and not be convicted of "excessive self-defence" (that is highly likely simply if you practice martial arts and a drunken idiot with no skills attacks you and you beat him up too much). Apart from the police, only security guards at high security installations (nuclear power plants is the only case I know of) can carry guns for self-defence purposes but both they and the police are trained to use them in non-fatal manners, if at all possible (i.e. to shoot legs). Before you can get a permit to buy a gun, you will be interviewed by two police officers (after a school shooting it was deemed that one officer wasn't enough) and they will ask for proof that you have an approved reason for buying a gun - i.e. you need to have a proven record of practicing at a shooting range or hunting club membership. If you wish to buy any slightly larger caliber gun, you will also need to have a past history of responsible gun ownership. When it comes to storing the gun, most people have theirs in safes at shooting ranges. If you wish to store it at home, you need to have the police inspect that you have an approved gun safe for it. Because of our history we still have a number of old guns that are completely unregistered since they were either illegal war loot or bought in the early 20th century before any regulating laws were passed. I myself know that my late grandfather's gun is still in usable condition and completely unknown to anyone except close family members and kept well hidden until we decide what to do with it - either to have it deactivated by the police or sell it to some criminals at a high price ;)
Now, I'm not interested in getting into the gun control debate on that side of the pond since I don't consider it any of my business and your starting point is entirely different but I can say that the result of our system is that guns are rarely used in crime. Why would a burglar carry a gun if it's highly unlikely that the home owner has one let alone is willing to use it if he/she does? Personally I think the consequent slightly lower ability to personally stop burglars is an acceptable trade-off since insurance covers property loss whilst nothing covers loss of life and burglars are likely to run anyway as soon as you call the police. Violent crime here is usually drunken fights in shitty bars in the worst neighbourhoods or domestic violence but if anything other than fists are used, it's usually a knife, axe or otherwise improvised weapon.
The main point of my reply is just to highlight that it is an oversimplification to compare gun-related violence in different societies just based on the number of guns per capita - especially when a high number of guns per capita in a country like mine misleadingly implies that a large part of the population owns guns when the fact of the matter is that people who own guns usually own several and constitute a small minority.
Both Switzerland and Finland also have mandatory national service. They train people to responsibly own and use guns.
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Your link is to a reddit run by gun nuts that links to various right-wing news agencies. How did it get modded "insightful"?
Well, let's take a look at these right-wing news agencies from the current front page of dgu.
myfox8.com, 9news.com, wbir.com, abc57.com, wsbt.com, abclocal.go.com, live5news.com, salisburypost.com, newyork.cbslocal.com, wsoctv.com.
Those look an awful lot like a bunch of links to local news station stories to me. The point of that subreddit is to bring those local news stories in one place because defensive gun use never makes national media.
But there was ONE link to freep.com, is that the only one you looked at then decided you had done enough research?
Asking why someone wouldn't want to buy a gun based on unreliable, unproven technology is like asking someone on a boat if they would rather have a cutting-edge life vest that hasn't been tested and may or may not work in the water or a proven, simple vest that been in use for decades.
If you need a gun, you want one that you KNOW is going to work when you need it. And if you don't need a gun--well you're not going to be buying ANY kind of gun. So there is simply no market for a smart gun.
The only way these things will ever sell is if some well-meaning legislature steps in and makes non-smart guns illegal. And that legislation will be overturned the first time some cop gets shot because his "smart" gun misread his fingerprint.
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Good site is the FBI. They keep stats on homicides and their means. Guns are not number one. So wait, it *does* prove they're dangerous even without guns.
So, we went from a point of having 0 people, to having 1000 people, with no intermediate stage? Please explain the science of that.
You're presuming that humans came into their current form all at once. Could not possibly have happened that way. There were a series of incremental mutations within the breeding population that over time became what we presently think of as homo sapiens. Think of it this way. If you took 4 people and dropped them on an island, they would die out from inbreeding even if nothing else killed them. Adam and Eve is a cute story but from a biology standpoint it is quite impossible.
Would it surprise you to know that, well, you're wrong?
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20
I'll save you time: while you would be correct to say that firearms are responsible for more murders than any other cause, the number of non-firearms murders is very nearly half that of firearms... roughly 8k to roughly 4k.
The point being: yes, granted, guns are used more often in murders... but it seems like those without guns are managing just fine without them too. Besides, I'm pretty sure those getting killed with fists and feet don't feel any better about it than those shot with a gun.
Now, a little thought experiment: if there were no guns, what do you think would happen? Would the TOTAL number of murders go down by roughly 8k? Or, would the number of murders not using guns GO UP? I hope you wouldn't try and say the former because if so, sir, you're retarded. Would non-firearms murders go up 8k? No, I very much doubt it... but the number WOULD go up.
And why is that? Simple: violent people are violent people. Yes, guns might make it easier for them to kill... but a good percentage of them are going to murder WITHOUT a gun just the same... and hey, to use the anti-gun argument against them: isn't ONE murder with a boxcutter too much? Better ban them! If we can save just ONE LIFE by banning baseball bats, shouldn't we?
I'm not saying that if we removed guns from the equation that we wouldn't save a few lives. I think we would. There's no doubt some murders that wouldn't occur at all if there were no guns. The problem is that guns UNDENIABLY save lives, nearly every day. Are those lives saved somehow less important than those saved if there were no guns? I'm not even claiming the number of lives saved by guns is greater than those taken by murder with guns (although I believe that's the case, but I don't have a reference so I won't claim it)... I'm just saying if it's all about saving lives (hint: IT'S NOT) then a life saved with a gun is just as valuable as one taken with a gun.
People who want to kill will, by and large, find a way. That's the bottom line and that's the fundamental problem in our society, the fact that people WANT to kill (putting self-defense aside of course). The fact that guns might make it easier is tangential to the root cause and while banning guns might save a few lives, the impact won't be nearly as large as you want to think it might be and we'll be talking about banning the NEXT inanimate object quickly. Stop trying to attack something that's a proximal cause AT BEST and get to the root of the problem. That's the way we might actually make a difference in this country. We don't have a "gun violence" problem, we have a VIOLENCE problem. Any time you see "gun violence", that just shows there's an agenda at play and that person actually cares very little for saving lives and is more interesting in exerting and extending control (Oh, did our president say that? Hmm, point proven!)
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