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The US Gov't Could Become the Biggest Customer for Smart Guns (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Smart gun developers have faced pushback from opponents who fear adoption will lead to mandates. But this week, President Obama embraced the technology, creating the biggest customer of them all for smart guns: the federal government. He instructed several departments to "review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety." Joel Moshbacher, national co-chair of a gun safety advocacy group, said the move this week is "a game changer." Smart gun developers he's spoken with need only a few million to move their prototypes to market, so $20 million would be a windfall for several developers. Donald Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), said federal dollars are the only way to advance the technology because of pushback by opposition groups. For example, when Armatix, a German startup, tried to introduce a smart handgun in the U.S. two years ago, it was met with vehement protests, including threats to burn down a Maryland store that was going to sell it. A second store in California that was carrying it also pulled it from its shelves citing pressure from those opposed to the tech.
Low sales in a sector of the firearms industry? Here comes Obama to save the day by pushing up sales and ratcheting up stock prices!
The goal is to shove this down the throats of all gun owners
The only way to develop the technology is to steal it from Americans.
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...they'll be sunk. By a Confederate submarine. BOOM! Glug, glug, glug.
Instead of jumping the gun with policy, how about a gun that stores a photo of what it shoots. Then classify all those images and make a decision about smart guns?
Expect to see pushback from the agencies saddled with these. It's a solution in search of a problem -- there are already myriad ways to secure guns. We don't need a bunch of extra points of failure built into the guns themselves.
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The police routinely ensure that they are excluded from smart gun mandates. First because they require maximum reliability from their weapons and so-called smart technology adds another failure path. Second, the technology results in significant increase in cost. Why would the civilian population want these same problems?
I could care less if the federal government wants to use them, but will they try to mandate them like NJ?
Teach yourself and your children proper gun handling and safety and every gun you use will now be a smart gun.
I know some of the state governments have laws on the books to the effect of once smart guns go on sale, only smart guns can be sold after 3 years.
If they'd just let them hit the market and let buyers decide if they want them I think I'd be okay with that. Even if I owned one, I wouldn't leave it unsecured. If the government wants to be the guinea pig and try them out in bulk I'm okay with that so long as this isn't an opportunity for lobbyists to milk massive tax dollars for something that is barely an advantage if at all. (Think rapescan machines)
Because he's not a serf like us.
My phone unlocks with a fingerprint using the best fingerprint tech available. I don't know how many times it takes 2, 3, or 4 times to unlock it. "Unrecognized - Enter backup password" or "Place finger over entire sensor" is all too common.
If, God forbid, I ever have to draw my weapon to defend myself or someone else, I don't want to make sure I have a perfectly lined up grip to trigger the smart technology. Someone attacking you doesn't lend for minor finger positioning nuances very much. I expect finger on trigger + pull = bang, not a little chime telling me I need to adjust my grip.
I agree with the other commenter with regards to "expect pushback from the agencies saddled with it."
Absolutely.
But the only chance gun-owners are going to even come close to accepting this is if the kinks are so worked out of them that the people most at risk of going mano a mano with a perp who wants to take their gun are trusting their lives to a given tech. And that means agencies working those kinks out in the field and proving the validity of the tech under real world conditions.
Exactly.
I understand the practical reasons why peoppe object, as smart guns nowadays still have a long way to go before being as reliable as what we have now. But why do people object to the principle behind it? Does anyone here really intend on shooting at the police or the military, and do they think they would even stand a chance against a trained marine or FBI agent? They don't care about a criminal who is invading their house shooting them with their own gun, or their children blowing off their heads with it? Shooting ranges and collectables aren't even affected by them, so that's the three most popular uses of them gone right there. I don't even understand the objection to the principle of a gun with a smart lock, much less the extremely violent protests (ripping down displays, burning stores, and issuing death threats) that have come as a response to it.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
mark "and you need HUUUUGE magazines for what reason?"
That is just in case the target is still twitching.
Does this take away the "he was reaching for my gun" excuse when cops gun down unarmed people?
There's a reason why your phone can dial 911 without being unlocked....
A firearm is, at it's heart, a mechanical device; there is no way around that, so no electronic means of preventing a gun from firing can be devised that someone else isn't going to find a way to defeat. A firearm has to be reliable, and the best way to accomplish that is to keep it as simple as possible. Adding a bunch of electronics to it that get in the way of the firearms' primary function is the antithesis of all that, and in the end will just make them less useful and less reliable for the law-abiding and law-enforcing people who need to use them. Also, do they really think that all this high-concept crap is going to prevent anyone outside the U.S. from producing 'traditional' firearms? Also, 3D printing technology is ramping up quickly, now with the capability of printing in metals; how long do you think it'll be before a 3D-printed handgun is equivalent to and virtually indistinguishable from a traditionally manufactured handgun?
I'm not even a gun owner, and even I say that all this that Obama and others are trying to do to further limit firearm ownership and to create more roadblocks to firearm ownership will do nothing but make life more difficult (and dangerous) for peaceful, law-abiding people. Enforce the current set of laws better, and do a better job identifying people with mental illnesses and criminal intent before they get their hands on weapons and go around shooting people.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It looks like you want to shoot a person of colour. Would you like help with that?
an ex-seal now merc recommends it as his own personal weapon.
How about the first time a criminal steals an officers gun, tries to fire it and can't, does the smart gun still get credit?
People don't oppose the technology in theory, they oppose the fact that New Jersey had a law mandating the sale of only smart guns after one goes on sale anywhere in the country. This is basically a huge gun ban in disguise, which is why it was opposed.
You are attempting to say a banana is the same as a grazing buffalo. How are you possibly able to equate someone making sure that a carpenter is on the job site and working with a mandate that he use a particular power tool where power may not be available? It's not rational, but you just tried it.
I'll give a courtesy agreement that many of the gun advocates arguments are slippery slopes. What you just answered was not one of them.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If they'd just let them hit the market and let buyers decide if they want them I think I'd be okay with that.
Smart guns are already available from a variety of vendors. Can't name any offhand? There's a reason for that.
In his defense, look at average 911 response times. 4 minutes to 60 minutes. Maybe he can ask the burglar to wait, lol. (I do think we need smart guns, arguments against them are stupid.)
Can you explain the apparent discord between your first comment and your second?
Your first accepts that emergency assistance cannot be relied upon: i.e., the state's emergency apparatus is imperfect.
The second assumes that self-help will be possible with "smart guns", i.e., the gun computer will be perfect.
. Why would the civilian population want these same problems?
Problems? Having a gun locked up in a safe is a real pain in the ass when it is needed. With smart gun tech, only I can use my gun. If I wanted to, I could leave the thing on my nightstand loaded and ready with no fear of a kid picking it up and shooting himself or someone sneaking in at night when I'm sound asleep and taking the gun - of course, he could just bash my head in with a baseball bat when I'm asleep - but never the less, he'd have to get whatever electronic doohickey off of me to activate the gun.
I want biometric implementations myself - nothing but my DNA or fingerprint. AND if someone else uses my gun, I would hope that there would be a 100,000volt charge that kills them - like Judge Dredd (the Stalone version).
The problem is your constitution's second amendment.
Instead of working an end run around what is meant to be a fundamental right to bear arms, what you should actually be discussing is how you amend the constitution. The framers of that document put in place specific mechanisms recognizing the need may arise to do so in the future.
This has been done in the past, even the recent past. (e.g. prohibition).
Why can't it be done now?
If the amendment is not possible, then you will have a discussion about weapons, and as a nation, accept the consequences of those actions - it may will be that the defense of liberty is such that the collateral damage is acceptable to many. This seems fundamentally more honest than the approaches being put forth by the executive branch.
I haven't heard this in the discussion, and it's puzzling.
$0.02 cdn.
..don't panic
Average gun owners sure as hell won't be buying them.
It's telling that governments want both encryption and firearms backdoored.
Donald Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), said federal dollars are the only way to advance the technology because of pushback by opposition groups.
So the people who don't want it (us) will stay have to pay for it with our tax dollars. What a fuckin rip
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Just how large of a problem is this scenario, to mandate introduction of extra points of failure into guns? Do you really think it's going to outweigh the situation parent is talking about?
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Adding all this "smart gun" tech makes an already dependable firearm:
A: Less dependable.
B: More expensive.
C: Higher maintenance.
As such, gun owners (and prospective gun owners) have voted with their dollars NOT to invest in said technologies.
As such, it's a solution in search of a problem.
Now we have a problem. The government handing out taxpayer money to keep these smartgun companies in business.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The government is putting itself in the position of selecting and promoting one technology over another, instead of letting the market decide. And here, by 'market' I mean mandate the adoption of 'smart gun' technology by federal law enforcement (and local, where they receive federal funds). The market will be guaranteed and investors will be more than happy to kick in the R&D funds to multiple developers. Where the best tech will win and the failures will get sorted out by the market.
Have gnu, will travel.
Consider the new federal mandate that new cars have backup cameras (that's in place, coming soon to all cars, and their price tags). Imagine that new mandate meant that with the new feature of a backup camera, the government decided that for your own safety, you were no longer allowed to roll down your windows or more your head out of some restraint that would take your eyes off of the forward view. Whatever. Point being: imagine a mandate for a new layer of technology that makes the previous simpler methods no longer viable. Some people wouldn't want a car that they can no longer put in reverse if a damaged sensor on the rear bumper tells the car's computer that it shouldn't be allowed to back up. Yes, it's an analogy. Relax about the details.
Imagine a car you can't start without it properly reading your fingerprints or you having your magic coded ring on you. Losing consciousness with severe chest pain and need a casual acquaintance to hop in the driver's seat of your smart-ignition car and hustle you to the hospital? Too bad. Want your friend to run to your desk drawer to grab and possibly use your smart-safety firearm in an emergency? Or use it yourself with a burned or wet fingertip, your gloves on, etc? Too bad.
None of that would matter except for laws in some places that say that as soon as one of these "smart" guns is made available for sale, no other type of gun can ever be sold again.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Because locking you out of being able to access a critical function of your device (calling 911, or maybe being able to fire your pistol at a threat) is unacceptable for a communications device but somehow OK for a self defense tool?
Build into sex toys, so they don't get into the wrong hands (or other orifices). Added bonus - My captcha for this posting was "crotch."
Guns are so bad, but Obama keeps is armed Secret Service agents?
Or, to put it another way, the Secret Service is armed to protect the President from the US's gun-crazed citizens, which is perfectly consistent with his message.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If Obama really thinks this tech will make things safer, and is reasonably reliable, he should first instruct the secret service members that guard him and his family to adopt these smart guns. Then we'll talk.
Aside from the possibility of auto-banning non-smart guns, pricing the plebes out of the gun market, starting a de facto gun registry, and other items mentioned above, the 'reasons' why this regulation is being pushed is unadulterated propaganda.
If you look at Obama's press releases the first thing mentioned is a list of mass shootings. Most of which weren't stopped because current law was poorly executed - mainly the fact that mentally ill people gained access to guns because NICS didn't know they were mentally ill. The rest weren't stopped because there was no record of them being mentally ill OR we would have to define people who have extremist views as being mentally ill.
He knows this yet promulgates this 'save the children' shit anyway. Even worse, while he uses all these big scary numbers he misrepresents them. 30,000 gun deaths a year![1] More people die of gun violence that cars![2] 1,800 children gunned down in 2014![3]
[1] 2/3 of these are suicides. Firearm homicides were 0.43% of all deaths in the US last year. About 10% of those were (justified or not) police killing citizens.
[2] Since the late 60's there has been a steady and dramatic decline in not just rates of automobile deaths, but ACTUAL numbers of deaths all the while miles driven has steadily increased in the same time. Gun violence has also been declining in the last couple of decades, just AT A SLOWER RATE.
[3] THINK OF THE child... Fuck you and your appeal to emotion. And thanks for not mentioning how many are gang related (with illegally obtained guns), suicides, or accidents. Because that would give us the whole picture, right? Fortunately for Obama, the CDC hasn't released 2014 death stats yet so I couldn't look this one up.
If they are actually reliable, I'd see any technology that would remove the cop's standard excuse of "I thought he was trying to grab my gun and shoot me with it, so I shot him!" as a big win. Probably something that should be mandated for law enforcement, but again, only if it really works.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
RFIDs work on radio waves right? What if the criminals had a jammer that prevented the RFID signal for say 100 meters?
Naaah. That's crazy talk.
I can easily see a future ten years hence in which gun stores are only allowed to sell smart weapons...
But then at the same time I can see that driving a huge surge in home gun manufacturing totally outside the control of law.
If you really love the idea of most people making guns totally outside the law, and police weapons working less reliably than criminal weapons, by all means continue to press forward with smart weapons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If "smart" guns offered increased performance over tradition guns we would have seen them in shooting competitions where seconds count and 100% reliability is a must have. I doubt anyone who shoots pistol competition will be giving up their $2k+ race guns for smart guns any time soon. The free market offers civilians better, cheaper and more reliable options so it's up to the government to make a market for the "smart guns".
Give the police training and a budget for more than a couple boxes of ammo a year and most of the issues will go away. For some reason the "swat" teams get the really nice equipment but the guys walking the streets only get paid to practice a couple times a year with gun chosen by accountants and lawyers complete with crappy sights, 12 lb triggers and level 100 retention devices.
... disabling smart gun technology. It would be darned hard to add an electronic device to a simple mechanical gun in a way that couldn't be defeated (or be even remotely reliable). Other than inconvenience and rising prices, this is probably among the least onerous bits of security theater they could come up with.
I (and I suspect 99% of law enforcement) would never, ever carry one of these things where it might be needed. I can't wait to see the hidden hacks policemen come up with.
How about the millions of pre-smart guns? Is this going to be an excuse to try confiscation again? Is it time to buy up lots of unregistered guns against a price spike?
The problem is your constitution's second amendment.
Instead of working an end run around what is meant to be a fundamental right to bear arms, what you should actually be discussing is how you amend the constitution. The framers of that document put in place specific mechanisms recognizing the need may arise to do so in the future.
It's that pesky democracy thing: "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch".
A sizeable portion of Americans actually want to own guns, so it's impossible for the rest of the population to take their guns away.
That "rest of the population" is quite loud and vocal, and uses every psychological trick in the book to ratchet back this right, but in the final analysis there are simply too many people who want them.
I think "the rest of the population" should just shut up and sit down. Unless they can come up with non-misleading statistics that show that banning guns would make life better, they should just go with the scientific evidence.
So make them smart. IoT your pistol today!
(Click) Loading, Please Wait.............
Law enforcement personnel wear gloves, in order to avoid stuff like disease transmission and simply due to weather. Thats the reason some pistols and rifles are popular with LEs due to having more space around the trigger for gloved hands. Having to take your gloves off in order to use a service weapon makes that weapon pretty much useless in a crisis. The usual way police protect their weapon is through the use of special locking holsters. If there was a magical way to make sure the weapon couldn't be used by an assailant, I'm sure police would go for that, but fingerprint scanners are a dumb idea.
I've posted this before on other threads, but basically a gun is a perfectly machined mechanical device that has worked flawlessly (in varying configurations) for a hundred years. All that is required is physics. To introduce an electronic component to it would be like adding a smart switch to a toilet. Who would want a toilet that didn't work if you forgot your decoder ring, or ID band, wearing gloves, forgot to change the battery, or the electricity went out? (Can you picture adding a UPS to a commode?)
The same argument can be made for anything from sneakers to kitchen knives to bicycles.
I want to sit on your face while you tongue-punch my asshole, just so I can sing, "I'm living on Tulsa Time."
I'm not even gay and I want to do that.
Who would have thunk that opposition to technology would occur here on a website about technology. Gun fetishism indeed,
"Smart" gun means two things:
(1) it will fire when it is supposed to fire
(2) it will not fire when it is not supposed to fire.
These are the classic types of errors, type-1 error and type-2 error. The lock on your door, for example, has two failure modes: not opening when it is supposed to, or opening when it's not supposed to.
As is always true, you can make the rate of one type of error arbitrarily close to zero by making the other type of error higher. You can lower the failure rate of your door not opening when you want it to, for example, by removing the lock entirely. That increases the failure mode "will open when it's not supposed to," since it now opens to anybody who wants to enter, whether you want them to or not.
The question for "smart" guns is, can you improve the option "won't fire when it's not supposed to" without seriously increasing the probability of it failing to fire when it is supposed to?
The failure mode "gun fires when it isn't supposed to" covers cases such cases as, your 4-year old finds it and shoots somebody, or somebody grabs your gun and shoots you, or even you drop the gun and it fires.
Right now, the recommended solution to the failure mode "make sure the gun doesn't fire when it's not supposed to" is "keep the gun in a locked gun safe", and, if you want to make it even safer against that failure, "store the ammunition somewhere else." This does have the problem that when you do want to make the gun fire, you have to unlock the gun safe, take out the gun, and then go to the separate location to load the gun. This solution is so cumbersome that--surprise--a lot of people don't implement it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
just like they 86'd every other technology that came along and failed at one point or another.
that's why my local PD sticks that old reliable: cap and ball muskets.
oh dang, the powder got wet.
well, time to switch the force back to swords.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I'm seeing two main arguments put forward from those who are against smart tech: weapon reliability and the 2nd amendment. To the first, it is insufficient to argue that a weapon is not worth having if there is some (additional) probability of the weapon failing due to the tech. One major safety concern is children getting their hands on guns. Some argue that safes are a sufficient solution but if one truly wants a gun as a means of defense, I doubt keeping it locked away will allow it to provide much protection and reflecting that children do get their hands on them. Now, suppose the probability a child gets their hands on a loaded weapon resulting in death is 10% and the probability of the tech causes the gun to fail when needed for defense is 1%, then the benefits of the tech outweigh the cost. These numbers are arbitrary to make the point that an increased chance of failure is only part of the equation. It's like saying sometimes an airbag deploys in such a way as to cause extreme harm to the driver that otherwise wouldn't happen so we should remove all airbags from cars. Relatedly I would guess that there are many different kinds of smart tech incorporating very different levels of functionality and control of the weapon meaning that the rate of failure will also vary. Product variety is good and there will be those who want more tech, those that want some, but less, and those that do not want any. The second concern is about the 2nd amendment but that's why we have the courts. If smart tech were to be mandated and it is indeed unconstitutional, as many argue, then guess what, the mandate will not be allowed and there is nothing to be worried about. I'm guessing NJ's law has not been tested because nobody has standing yet as there is no smart tech to mandate. Unfortunately, the law in NJ is still in place because it allows for this kind of divisiveness against developing the tech in the first place.
You might think differently depending where you live.. I'd want BOTH my cars to start AND my weapons to fire, EVERY time.
But you have a key to start your car, and the car won't start without the key.
Do you have a key to start your gun, and the gun won't fire without the key?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
some DRM and remote monitoring/disabling capability. Some firmware that can't be easily reverse-engineered or otherwise examined.
Typical response from a site like Slashdot.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
mark "and you need HUUUUGE magazines for what reason?"
Ask the police, they are after all exempt from all those magazine laws.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yes. Yes it is. That would be why I said it. Hopefully it made you chuckle. If not then, are you free tonight?
That defect wasn't due to a computer. It was a problem with the ignition switch itself.
And the corresponding defect in a "smart gun" would be in the switch that provides battery power to the computer when you're about to fire.
No such switch? What happens when the battery runs down?
- Gun won't fire? Die.
- Gun will fire? Pull the battery to defeat the "smart gun" system.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think some of the thinking can be fixed if you don't compare a gun to a car, but a gun to a plane. For example, the standard car engine has one spark plug per cylinder. Your typical plane uses TWO spark plugs and a spark generation system that's not dependent upon the battery to work. Dynamos.
Another thing is that a car has a lot of mass and volume to play with. I'm sure it's electronics wouldn't work as well if you restricted the system to being the size of a deck of cards and mandate that it be mounted directly to the hot engine.
I don't read AC A human right
I wonder how they would make my Mosin Nagant "smart"? Or the millions of other antique, collectable, and still perfectly functioning 19-20th century military weapons?
They'll do what they did to machine guns: ...
- Ban sales of new production to civilians. That limits the supply to what's currently out there (and registered), minus any that wear out, are lost, stolen, confiscated, rust out through poor storage, are damaged by fire,
- Put draconian rules (disguised as tax paperwork) in the way of transferring existing instances to new owners (including inheritance). That binds them to their current owners, who won't live forever.
Sure you're OK with your current gun - until they find some way to hang a felony on you, or file a restraining order against you (either of which bars you from continuing to own or control that gun). But those who don't have one of their own when the rules go into effect, and future generations, are S.O.L. How do THEY exercise their rights?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You know, one has to retain the reasonable doubt on who was firing the weapon during the trial over the murder of the spouse. The right to kill your spouse is a fundamental right of all guns.
States like NJ who already have laws on the books mandating all guns sold in the state must use smart tech once it becomes widely available
NJ's law isn't even "widely available". It's "30 months after ONE model is available for sale". Police are completely exempted, of course. So let's say that I create a system that works, sort of. It's $2k for a .22lr pistol, and the pistol can't be anything stronger because the shock from firing calibers .380 and up is enough to destroy the electronics.
30 months after that, even if NOBODY else has released such a pistol, legally speaking, my firearm would be the only one legal to sell in NJ. Restricting everybody to a $2k .22.
I don't read AC A human right
The reason that anti-gun activists (including the author, apparently) love to demonize people who are "against smartguns" is quite simple - there is legislation on the books in Maryland and California that states that ALL guns must be converted to smartguns within 5(?) years as soon as a commercially available smartgun goes on the market for sale in that state.
So, the "anti" smartgun people are not actually "against smartguns" they are "against laws making smartguns mandatory and confiscating all non-smartguns". Not quite as catchy as a phrase, but INFINETLY more accurate.
Folks who try to tell you that the NRA and other gun enthusiasts are "anti-smartgun" are lying to you. President Obama included. Smartguns are not inherently bad, more a matter of choice - but when you make them MANDITORY... yeah, not so much a good thing.
One amusing thing tho - some anti-gun activists oppose smartguns because they might make gun ownership LESS risky - and raise the number of people who will purchase and carry them. Unintended consequences, anyone?
"The US Gov't Could Become the Biggest Customer for Smart Guns "
A shame that they still are the biggest customers for dumb as a rock politicians.
Let's assume that they somehow made the electronics shock proof for a gun that fires something over .22lr.
Let's also assume they manage to perfect fingerprint scanning (Laughing yet?).
This might prevent Joe from taking Mr. X's gun out of his hands and using it against him, but I can't see this being effective against stolen guns.
Guns are pretty simple technology and a requirement is that you have to be able to disassemble them to replace/inspect parts, oil and clean them.
Some 'smart guns' could be easy to defeat, as simple as removing a part after disassembly or grinding off a latch.
Just how large of a problem is this scenario, to mandate introduction of extra points of failure into guns? Do you really think it's going to outweigh the situation parent is talking about?
Magna-trigger, an absolutely ancient implementation of 'smart gun' technology which uses a magnetic ring to make the gun ready to fire, has around a dozen 'saves' credited to it. Sadly, in half a dozen of them the 'save' was other officers, as the criminal killed the officer carrying the protected gun to get it, then tried to kill other officers, but was stopped by the system.
Magna-trigger, not needing fancy electronics, is a much more reliable system, and works through gloves. Since it's not RFID on a watch, it even works if the criminal takes the gun and remains close to you - if your hand isn't in the proper position, it won't fire. It's also substantially cheaper - $400 to modify the gun, rather than a ~$1k price penalty, and $60 for a ring, vs $400 for a watch.
Downsides are that there's only a couple models of firearms they can install it in - primarily revolvers(though I've heard a 1911 solution exists), and the magnetic rings are universal - which isn't actually that bad for a police department because it means that one officer can use the other's if necessary. Downside is that if you tried to spread the technology too widely through civilian arms, the 'protection' would most likely be lost because the criminals would start wearing the rings as well.
I don't read AC A human right
The problem is that many people are vehemently against researching the technology or offering current technology for sale. Due to that the reliability/availability issue will never be solved.
Because of the law. I'm ineligible for getting rid of New Jersey's law because I'm not a citizen of New Jersey. But I don't want them to succeed, because I don't want the laws to spread.
I don't read AC A human right
Because of the law.
Because of people's unreasonable reaction to a law in one state that may or may not ever come into effect.
The person who introduced the law offeret to get it repealed if the NRA would drop it's opposition to the development of smart runs. The NRA refused.
Judge Dredd.. I mean they were able to frame Stallone even though his smart gun fires DNA encoded rounds. It'll never work! lol
If you're going to troll, at least you're funny about it.
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Currently it is illegal for new machineguns to be sold to the public. This has been the case since 1986.
Furthermore since 1934 machine guns have been heavily regulated, registered and taxed: Hello National Firearms Act.
Now I'm sure you'll be saying "what does that have to do with smart guns?" So let me tell you. Any gun that uses electronics for the ignition system and is semi-automatic is considered a machinegun because it is "readily converted to full automatic" by changing the firmware. What this means is that your smart gun has to be a mechanical trigger mechanism that is interrupted by the smarts of the gun. This is a problem because why would you want more to go wrong with your gun?
If the trigger was an electrical switch and the ignition were electronic and not mechanical, then you could make a gun with a more pleasant and accurate trigger pull with a faster lock time(that is time from trigger pull till bullet fires) This would be something that the gun buying public might like. It would be useful for competitions. This type system then also lends itself to smart gun technology since you already have the electronics there; you would simply be adding a safety layer.
HOWEVER as mentioned above, that is illegal to sell to the public because easy to modify into a machine gun.
So what have we learned? We've learned that laws passed by those wanting gun control are preventing the smart gun technology they want in several ways. If only the gun grabbers would remove current laws and regulations we could have safer, more advanced guns.
The problem with smart guns is that you get the same failure from each path: Somebody gets shot that wasn't supposed to.
Well, of course that's also the problem with non-smart guns. The difference is that with non-smart guns, the failures are mostly Type I (gun fires when it's not supposed to), while with smart guns, Type I failures are decreased at the expense of an increase in Type II failures (gun doesn't fire when it's supposed to.)
This is what we call an engineering trade-off.
Either someone gets shot by your gun when they weren't supposed to, or you get shot by somebody else's because you couldn't shoot them first.
No, of course not. By far the vast majority of gun use is people shooting at targets, at a range or shooting bottles behind their house or whatever. The effect of a type II error would be the shooter cursing at the gun and then cleaning the contacts or adjusting the hand position or cleaning their hand on a towel or whatever the usual fix is.
Since a Type I failure can very often mean somebody in your family gets shot (often by a toddler), whereas a Type II failure is very rarely fatal (since most shooting is at targets), suppressing type I errors in favor of increasing type II failures is likely to be a good trade-off.
I've never, not once in my life, been shot by somebody because I didn't shoot first. Have you? Really?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The US Gov't Could Become the" ONLY "Customer for Smart Guns"
My prediction is the "Biggest Customer" will not be the "Biggest User." Smartguns will purchased by the bucket-load by the government, making "smartguns" readily available - and triggering the "submarine" clauses in a lot of gun control legislation ( I am looking at you, New Jersey).
Nobody is going to buy smart guns, except for Obama-mandated experimentation and "evaluation". No policeman or soldier will accept carrying a weapon that is so inherently unreliable. And for the same reasosn, the public won't want them, either.
Maybe in 50 or 100 years the technology will be good enough for a dependable smart gun. Of course, criminals in 100 years will still have regular dumb guns that can't be deactivated accidentally or by third parties...
My phone unlocks with a fingerprint using the best fingerprint tech available. I don't know how many times it takes 2, 3, or 4 times to unlock it.
You do know that the problem could be your fingerprints, not the tech, right? I've installed, maintained and used biometric fingerprint systems for years and can say from first hand experience that some people would do well in a life of crime as their fingerprints are not very well defined. Also note, if you wash your hands a lot that can also affect the accuracy of the reader. This happened often when people would leave my lab and go to the bathroom and come back. If there is no oil on the fingerprint then the reader will have trouble.
Having said that, I would not trust a gun to operate reliably with a fingerprint reader on it. There really isn't a current biometric technology that's 100% reliable and 100% foolproof. They are getting better, but we're a long way away from any practical goal.
Good.
The man is ba'al of the woman (master of the woman).
Feminist cunts should die.
Hans Reiser did the correct thing.
The Identilock system shown in the article is simply ridiculous. It is almost as big as the weapon it is attached to, probably weighs quite a lot too. And it is just a glorified trigger lock. Once it "falls off", your gun can still be taken away and used against you or others, which invalidates its whole reason for existence (preventing unauthorized use). Just use a regular manual trigger lock, it is a fifth the size, probably a tenth of the weight and is just a mechanical device not subject to low batteries. This is great for a drawer at home, but I would never use an kind of trigger lock on my daily carry.
First, police already use level 2 or level 3 retention holsters. They should also have retention training. Yes, sometimes their guns still are grabbed, but it is it enough of a problem to mandate so-called smart guns for all? That's the end-game here as New Jersey's law has shown.
Not quite. The real endgame is government controlled remote disabling. Eventually default off, enabled only on approved shooting ranges. Look at California and where and when registered "assault weapons" may be used.
If there's any way to have the GOP disagree with something, all it takes is for Obama to support it and they'll find a reason to hate and reject it.
Right, because there is no opportunity for the idea to be inherently bad. A smart gun is not needed. All one needs is a damn cable padlock to run through an open breach. Gun is now securely stored.
... it will probably reappear some day and the CA legislature may very well pass it.
The problem with smart guns, apart from their failure when needed, is that democrats are never satisfied with gun control. No I am not a republican, but I am a citizen of California. No matter how many laws they have already passed the CA legislature always wants more. In the 1990s they banned "assault weapons", basically banned rifles based on cosmetic appearance, there was no shortage of functionally equivalent ordinary hunting and target shooting rifles, a total placebo of a move. Yet one they view as a great success. Existing owners were allowed to register their rifles. A minority did. There is no evidence of this minority being part of any widespread problem. Yet a couple of years ago in another banning hysteria the legislature proposed revoking those old registrations and forcing owners to hand the rifles in. Yeah, registration became a vehicle for confiscations. Fortunately this bill was defeated, died in committee
So what will such unbridled democrats probably do with smart guns? Probably require the ability for government officials to remotely disable a gun, once one is misused. Jihadist kills someone in San Bernardino, disable all guns in the county. When it happens again, make disabled the default state of civilian smart guns. Only allow them to be enabled on licensed ranges. If you think the preceding is far fetched you don't know the California legislature, an example of where modern democrats will go when there is no restraint, no chance of losing at the polls.
Spouse gets into confrontation with her, she pulls gun out, abusive spouse takes gun from her grip and shoots her with it. Smart guns would ABSOLUTELY have prevented her from getting shot there.
But not preventing her from being killed. He would simply have beat her to death with the gun. But that is OK, its a victory to liberals when a death moves from the gun column to another column. Like Australia where guns related suicides are replaced by hangings, overdoses, etc.
It won't end at remote disabling. What will follow will be default disabled, enabled only on licensed shooting ranges. I'm not paranoid, I live in California and I am subject to its legislature. That is a path the CA legislature would go down.
Didn't Judge Dredd have something like this?
Smart guns do not usually unlock on fingerprints for this reason. Some do, but more often they arm on proximity to an RFID tag worn by the user on a ring or bracelet. The main target market is law enforcement - ensuring that if a police officer's gun is grabbed by a fight it cannot be used against him. Some models use alternative biometrics like grip identification, but I don't know how reliable those are.
Don't go anywhere near balls of rock with spinning lumps of iron inside, then.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, of course that's also the problem with non-smart guns. The difference is that with non-smart guns, the failures are mostly Type I (gun fires when it's not supposed to), while with smart guns, Type I failures are decreased at the expense of an increase in Type II failures (gun doesn't fire when it's supposed to.)
Not necessarily. A gun programmed to scan its video feed, recognize the face of a particular Geoffrey Landis, and shoot - will be called a very smart gun indeed. Such a gun can easily be imagined to have more type-I failures than a 50 year old reliable gun.
Wow, and I'd thought I was the science fiction writer here.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The United States Government Will Likely Be the ONLY Customer For Smart Guns" Absolutely no one with any experience using guns will willingly buy one. For a comprehensive, 3,000 word essay check the article by Jon Stokes here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/...
"Wayne Lapierre States that Programming all Firearms with Asimov's Three Laws was Big Mistake"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
faggot shit.
I particularly liked the smart Glock conversion shown in Law Abiding Citizen. (Which is saying: I'll pass, thanks.)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.