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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.
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.
Trigger locks and safes will do the same thing, and not mess up and get you killed when you need it to work.
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.
The idea of having your kids not be able to blow their brains out with your gun seems like quite a good one...
obviously you aren't able to field strip a gun..... anybody who keeps an handgun whole, with a colocated loaded clip in a house with kids has it coming. and you can reassemble an handgun very quickly if the need arises, or not at all if the threat is so sudden that it would not have helped in any case.
when my adolescent son took to softair, I took the opportunity to teach him what he really needed to know. gun safety procedures, even if it is a toy: proper handling. unless you are live, keep the finger out of the trigger guard, and the rifle pointing down. Keep the weapons on safe all the time, until the game begins, and put them on safe immediately after. NEVER, NEVER point a gun at something you are not shooting.
It's like safety belts in cars: train until you cannot behave differently from the proper way, and you'll have an head start.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
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.
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.
Unless you have a cunning solution to the fact Americans are disproportionately more likely to kill each other that you can implemented PDQ then maybe taking away the easiest way for them to do it makes sense until then? Highlighting that other countries can own guns, and be responsible at the same time, just highlights the fact the problem is 'Americans with guns' not inherently guns.
Don't worry. It fires a warning shot every hour to let you know it's time to change the battery.
"Even as you read this, you are wishing that you could jam a gun in my face and make me back down." That's a whole new level of projection, right there.
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.
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.
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.
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.