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High School Student Builds Gun That Unlocks With Your Fingerprint
An anonymous reader writes: Kai Kloepfer is a 17-year-old high school student from Colorado who just won the Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge. Kloepfer designed and built a smart gun that will only unlock and fire for users who supply the proper fingerprints. "The gun works by creating a user ID and locking in the fingerprint of each user allowed to use the gun. The gun will only unlock with the unique fingerprint of those who have already permission to access the gun. ... According to him, all user data is kept right on the gun and nothing is uploaded anywhere else so it would be pretty hard to hack." The gun can have up to 999 authorized users, and its accuracy at detecting fingerprints is 99.99%. For winning the challenge, he won $50,000 in funding to continue developing the smart gun. Some of the fund have already gone toward 3-D printing portions of the prototype.
All what accidental deaths? The number is tiny - less than 100 a year. That number is also dropping monotonically every year, and has done so since the 1930s.
If you want to end kids' accidental deaths, get rid of bathtubs and swimming pools. They kill far more.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
The appropriate product is called the "GunVault". It can be opened in a second or so, in the dark, entirely by touch.
They make them in different shapes and sizes for different mounting/storage situations.
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One? Are you joking? According to CDC’s WISQARS, there are about 14,000-19,000 nonfatal injuries stemming from accidental shootings per year in the U.S. That's in addition to ~500-600 unintentional deaths per year. Gun "enthusiasts" like to cite statistics on gun deaths since the rise of conceal/carry (which truly have a lot more to do with better trauma medicine), but they never want to talk about the number of shootings. If you really want to understand the extent of the damage of America's gun fetish, count the number of people who get hit by bullets.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/...
Of these about 20% are under the age of 25 and 10% under the age of 12.
Where do you get "an average of one such accident per year" unless you are focused strictly on injuries to your penis? Although I guess there is some evidence that gun owners have issues in that regard.
But yours is a common mistake people make when talking about guns, because they just don't know (or care) about the actual numbers. Much of the misdirected focus comes from the faulty research of the only "gun expert" that ever seems to appear in the media, the dishonest gun industry lobbyist and "researcher", John Lott whose book, "More Guns Less Crime" has been completely debunked.
[Full disclosure: I have been a gun owner for more than 4 decades. I've qualified 3 times as an expert marksman and twice as a sharpshooter, which is the second highest marksmanship designation (not counting the pro-marksman, etc. I support legal gun ownership and very strict gun control laws.]
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, that's John Lott's number, which has been proven to be pulled straight out of his ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The real number is closer to 12,000, with only about 200 cases of "justifiable homicide" with a gun. That's fewer than the number of accidental shootings.
The "2.5m" number includes anecdotal reports of someone who believes they were not the victim of a crime because supposedly the perpetrator "thought" he "might" have a gun. It is a number which you will only find on Second Amendment "advocacy" sites.
About three times that number of crimes were prevented by household pets, and ten times that number were prevented by dead-bolt locks and mean looks.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And according to that same source, for 2012, there were 8,974,762 non-fatal accidental injuries from falls. Floors are dangerous. 2,145,927 from cutting or piercing objects, 972,923 from poisoning, 423,138 from fire, 357,629 from dog bites...
Heck, there were 58,363 from "nature/environment", which includes "exposure to adverse natural and environmental conditions (such as severe heat, severe cold, lightning, sunstroke, large storms, and natural disasters) as well as lack of food or water." Nature will hurt you with more probability than guns will.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Numbers are meaningless without context for comparison. By any rational comparison with other things that can hurt you, firearms accidents are rare.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There are an average of ~4,400 construction workers were killed per year on the job in the US and there are about 3 million construction workers in the US. There are an average of 500-600 accidental deaths per year caused by firearms, and about 100 million gun owners in the US. It seems like guns are actually safer than most other tools ;)