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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."
They can't figure out why? The guns are obviously smarter than their inventors.
No sig today...
Any technology that prevents the accidental death of irresponsible gun owners' children is simply interfering with natural selection.
The idea of having your kids not be able to blow their brains out with your gun seems like quite a good one...
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1: Don't need another point of failure introduced, if the reader doesn't recognize it's owner at the worst possible moment when he needs to fire a gun.
2: Price hike. I expect there would be a hefty price jump with these newfangled electronic gizmos.
3: Remote killswitch? The police can kill your car's engine and disable your gun with a simple command. So can hackers.
Also, are batteries included? I don't think people want to charge up their guns, unless they're shooting plasma bolts.
Why would anyone buy this? Its a horrible product idea. Take a reliable device and fuck with it. All I want is to know that when I point and click it goes off. Not, my hand isn't held right, the battery is dead, i'm in a fight and its covered in mud, or its just dusty and it malfunctions. Or even worse and a delay, which could cause you to be off target or allow someone else to enter the sight picture. It is a self defeating idea. If you are worried about child protection, buy a safe, teach your kid gun safety. Carry it with you. I could go on for ever.
They are a stupid fucking idea that are the answer to a question nobody asked. Well nobody other than those who ultimately wish to take all guns from people not employed by the government.
For those who think I'm wrong and that these should be mandatory, why don't you go lobby the government (at any level from local to federal) and have some of these technologies mandated for LEO fire arms use. Report back with your results.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
For those who aren't in the gun culture it may come as a surprise that gun owners tend to be a somewhat conservative lot when it comes to new technologies. They prefer things that are reliable and proven to gimmicks, especially for their go-to guns, because at the end of the day they want to be absolutely sure that their guns will fire reliably and immediately whenever the safety is off and they pull the trigger. Anything that might possibly interfere with that, like smart guns or RFID bracelets and rings or crap like that, is most unwelcome indeed. Oh sure, you'll find the occasional gadget fetishist at the gun shows, but they're the exception rather than the rule in my experience.
Of course, what we actually need is not a gun that responds only to its original owner, but on that can determine whether said owner is mentally sound enough to own said gun or not. In fact, what we need is for there to be a system in place that does exactly that. Changing the way the tool works is irrelevant. If someone is unhinged enough, they'll go and pick up another gun for $20 behind a dumpster somewhere.
a gun is a large responsibility. smart guns are an attempt to remove that responsibility. if you are irresponsible then you should not have a gun. if you dont know if you are responsible enough to own a gun then you are not.
before someone tries to compare it to owning a car, i would like to point out that a gun is specifically for killing. it has no other function, it's literally a killing machine.
i have yet to hear an argument for making crossbows safer yet it serves the same purpose as a gun. if it is somehow intrinsically safer then why aren't people advocating crossbows over guns?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Well, we're talking types who think they absolutely need a loaded gun everywhere they might be in the house, including racks by the bed and whatnot. And that their life WILL depend on it any day now, when squads of evil government black muslim communist ninjas will burst into their home to confiscate their bible and replace their medicare with an evil socialized one. And their kids who think that playing cops and robbers with daddy's gun, presumbaly in between eating paint chips and being homeschooled in how many dinosaurs fit on Noah's arc, is a good idea.
I dunno, it certainly is tragic, but their noble sacrifice to improve the species' gene pool will be remembered.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...what happens when the Zombie Apocalypse occurs, and a zombie is chewing on the brainzzz of your buddy, so you pick his gun up, train it on the red eyed fiend and pull the trigger. As nothing happens, the zombie breaks from his meal and stares at you hungrily....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
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Don't worry. It fires a warning shot every hour to let you know it's time to change the battery.
If the police, who would benefit greatly from this technology, don't trust it why should anyone else?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
hearing ``click'' when you expect to hear ``bang''.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Nukes have never been raised from their silos in self defense. Guns are drawn in self defense daily. One of the safest places in the world is a gun range, because you don't start a fight knowing that everyone is armed.
* bonus fact - 80% of the time they are presented in self defense, they are not fired.
As someone else mentioned exact figures are hard to come by. Studies vary. What is clear is it guns are drawn but not fired in self defense daily.
It us also clear from studies in Texas after they introduced concealed carry and advertised the fact the civilians maybe armed, criminals reported they reduced criminal activity. Those studies suggest that letting criminals know "citizens may be armed" was almost as important as the licensing law itself - fear of armed "victims" matters as much as actual armed citizens.
Wasn't a gun range the scene of a killing of a veteran recently..
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed
Yea, even the gun ranges are not safe. But then again, no where is really 100% safe.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
If these things were so amazing, you'd think the police would use them. After all, they aren't in a situation like the military, where you might need to use somebody else's weapon, and it IS an occasional problem where the police have their own weapons taken and used against them. Plus it sets a good example.
So they should be all over them, right?
Ya well, not so much for the reasons the original poster detailed. Reliability is a big one. You'd have to prove the reliability of the system, in a bunch of trials and demos before people would be convinced. It would need to be real reliable too, around the same reliability as the mechanical systems (guns do jam sometimes). If a given weapon has a reliability of 1 problem in 5000 rounds and your smart system causes problems at a rate of about 1 in 50, there's going to be little interest.
Remote issues would be another one. The system would need to be demonstrated to be hardened against remote interference. The last thing the police would want is some electrical system that could disable guns remotely, and even worse, silently. You can harden against that, but it would need to be done and demonstrated effective.
Price is another real concern. How much is something like this going to add to the cost of a gun? I could easily see it being a few hundred dollars. For example have a look at something like an EOTech weapon sight. That's an electronic sight, runs on batteries, that is designed to survive the rigors of battle (the US military uses them). They are $400-700 roughly, depending on options. So, not hard to believe an electronic safety gadget might cost the same. That can double, or more, the cost of many firearms. That is going to be a rather hard sell to people.
If someone can demonstrate a cheap, reliable, solution, well then I can see there being interest in it, at least in some cases. However I've yet to hear of one. As such, no surprise nobody is buying.
I reside in Georgia, and I have in fact carried my sidearm in plain view on MARTA and in the public areas of Hartsfield-Jackson.
I'm somewhat dubious that you carried openly in an airport unless you were wearing a uniform at the time or this was a LONG time ago. However even if you did I have to ask, WHY? Nobody is going to attack you in an airport that you are going to be able to defend against and it's about as secure a location as you are likely to be in. Your sidearm at best is NO help at all and at worst could cause a huge problem. I don't have any problem at all with people transporting their unloaded firearms though airports but if you brought a loaded firearm into an airport in the current security environment we should have heard your arrest report on the evening news. I say this even if what you did was perfectly legal. Actions like that are what gives thugs like the TSA the excuse they need to behave badly.
A disarmed populace is just a crop of victims waiting to be harvested.
Really? India seemed to do pretty well with passive resistance against the UK. The Soviet Union collapsed and it wasn't because of personal firearms. Your little personal firearms don't stand a chance against the military or even the police really. The notion that your personal firearms are what preserves your liberty is a cute little sound bite that doesn't really stand up to serious scrutiny. I have no illusions whatsoever that my own guns (yes I have some) are what is keeping our government at bay. What keeps them at bay is our collective behavior and our willingness to speak up courageously in the face of power. The government can overwhelm some of us for a time but it can't handle all of us forever. As the saying goes, "vox populi, vox Dei".
Contrary to popular belief, most folks who legally carry a firearm are not cowboys out looking for a reason to go shoot somebody up.
I think you are mistaken on what constitutes popular belief. I very much agree that most firearms owners are quite responsible and most Americans understand this. That's never really been the issue. The problem is how do you identify the people who are crazy? How do you identify the irresponsible ones? How do you identify the criminals? It only takes a small number of people with guns to cause a big problem.
In all likelihood you are not the one I'm really worried about. (Although if you actually brought a loaded gun to the airport maybe you are...) I'm a supporter of gun rights but the the gun lobby (aka the NRA) has really gotten out of hand. There ARE crazy people out there looking to shoot up schools and movie theaters and public gatherings. They exist but as a society we seem unwilling to have an adult conversation about what to do about them. I'm not for a moment proposing that we take away everyone's guns but I don't think it is unreasonable to register firearms, *require* safety and competency training, and to conduct background checks. I don't think it is unreasonable to require precautions when handing someone a weapon whose primary purpose is to kill.
Shooting someone doesn't always mean you kill. You could shoot them in the foot for example. If it stops that person knifing an innocent in the heart, then that's a life saved.
If you draw a gun on someone you had best be prepared to kill them. You might wound them as per your example but that should not be your expectation. If you draw a lethal weapon on someone, your expectation should be that you are going to kill them and you should be prepared to possibly go to jail for your actions. You are NOT going to shoot the gun out of the guys hand. The real world isn't like a 1950s western. There is nothing wrong with drawing a weapon in self defense but be realistic about the consequences and likely outcomes of doing so.
I know people will try to make this an issue about gun regulation, but ultimately this just boils downs to market economics.
People who are in favour of gun regulation, and who would be for this type of device, by and large simply don't buy guns.
People who do buy guns - sportsmen, hunters, and other gun enthusiasts - tend to be against greater regulation, especially if it will additional costs in the purchase of their firearm.
The type of person who would buy these "smart guns" - a gun enthusiast who's willing to pay more to have more control on their firearms - is going to be very small at best. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that these guns weren't going to sell...
Cops are trained to handle their weapon properly, including responsible use (hopefully) and storage of that weapon. A cop that loses their gun, or lets their gun fall into the wrong hands does not last very long as a cop. If there was a huge issue where cops were losing or allowing their gust to be used by the wrong people, this speaks to a need to revamp the entire law enforcement industry, NOT adopt a safe weapon.
There is ABSOLUTELY no market for this "safe gun" for law enforcement. Any technology that might cause a gun to fail in a situation that requires split second decision making is not going to be a product tolerated by law enforcement.
Anyone saying that law enforcement is already adopting this technology OR that the market for this technology is law agencies are lying and/or woefully out of touch with reality.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Sometimes people do because they're angry, stupid and/or crazy. The problem when everyone is waving a gun around, how do you know which one to shoot?
There .. fixed that for you. You can change it back to often when more than a fourth of gun owners have done so.
Who do you know who to shoot?? Probably the guy that is doing the shooting and killing would be my guess. During the Tucson shooting, several people in the crowd had guns, but didn't shoot because they couldn't identify the shooter (this is Arizona, many people carry guns. I've even carried a gun on my hip into Chase bank without any incident.) The shooter was disarmed later by unarmed people, and a guy who had a gun mistakenly thought the person who took the gun was the shooter. However, he didn't shoot because the person with the gun WASN'T SHOOTING AT ANYONE.
Just because a few people are ignorant (mostly people who don't shoot guns) in how guns work doesn't mean everyone is.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
They use technology to enable a device to work under certain circumstances. This wording is more accurate and helps to make the issue more clear. It's more evident that if the technology should fail, it won't enable the device to work when needed. This could be anything from a misread fingerprint to a dead battery.
I'm surprised slashdot doesn't regularly make the analogy to DRM which upon failure (or server shutdown) prevents people from using their own media.
Police officers are constantly in environments where their pistol could be taken by a criminal. Why are the proponents of this technology not requiring cops to use it? And why are cops refusing to even consider these kinds of mechanisms?
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
...so? His murderer used a gun, did he not?
If you intended to say "That happens surprisingly rarely", you should have put "That happens surprisingly rarely".
(How common it actually is, I don't know.)
My point was, that guy was obviously mentally unhinged, and what happened at that range could have (would have?) happened anywhere. Obviously, a rational person would consider that a range is more likely than elsewhere to have a high concentration of people prepared, able, and willing to defend themselves and others.
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