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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.
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 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."
> Special ring? So much for swimming, showering, or any other activity you don't want to expose electronic to.
I know, it's horrible that 70% of the Earth's surface is a zone where electronics can't be used at all. Those poor bastards sailing the seas with their handheld sextants, mapping out courses with a compass and paper. If only there was some way to seal electronics in some sort of waterproof enclosure that was still permeable to radio waves. Maybe even have those same electronics energized by the device in question, like some sort of Radio Frequency IDentification tag that has no internal power source.
Naaah. That's crazy talk.
There's a reason why your phone can dial 911 without being unlocked....
It looks like you want to shoot a person of colour. Would you like help with that?
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
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.
"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.
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