Slashdot Mirror
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.
The goal is to shove this down the throats of all gun owners
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.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
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 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."
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!
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.
I don't want this technology on any gun I own, certainly not in its current state, and maybe never. But neither do I object to to furthering R&D on something that may reach beyond the capabilities we foresee now. The reason I, and may other gun owners, don't want them in stores explicitly derives from the regulatory history of Washington, DC: today's "good idea" becomes tomorrow's requirement, and like many of the solar projects, far prematurely to the technology's maturation.
The reason, however, politicians like Bloomberg and Obama want this technology likely stems from something other than a motivation other than making a gun safer: a motivation to price common people out of the market. Smart gun technology has a high price tag, and the mentality that common people shouldn't have certain things runs through Washington consistently. And this way of thinking has pervaded us for a long time. Consider Prohibition. Most of the politicians who voted for Prohibition consumed alcohol during its time. Their reasoning: the upper crust of society can suavely dodge the law and harmlessly so while the common man won't make a mess of society with drunkenness. The wealthy and influential can have their armed escorts because they can afford expensive guns, while by raising the cost quite substantially they have not technically infringed upon your rights, but have effectively priced you out of exercising them.
New Jersey probably did it for that reason, and so would Obama.
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!!!
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.
That is extremely logical. Which in and of itself is enough to keep the US left from ever doing that. But the real reason the left is not trying to amend away the 2A is because they can count votes. And because of what it takes to get an amendment past the house and subsequently ratified, it would never pass. The votes aren't there for either step.
Also consider this: if the left ever proposed an amendment to replace the 2A, it is an admission that the 2A means what it says, instead of what they *wish* it said, which is their current operating procedure. That kind of huge admission totally sinks their cause.
"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
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.