Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Can Technology Prevent Shootings?
An anonymous reader wonders if there's a technological response to mass shootings like this Sunday's attack in Orlando, Florida:
We're in for a sadly obvious debate now with all of the usual scapegoats, but instead of focusing on who's to blame, it'd be better to identify some specific actions that could actually generate real increases in public safety going forward...
If we're looking for radical changes in the way we live, does technology have a role? Is the answer smart gun technology? Mandatory metal detectors at night clubs? Better data analysis algorithms for the federal government? Bulletproof fabrics?
Share your best ideas in the comments. Could there be a technological solution to the problem of mass shootings?
If we're looking for radical changes in the way we live, does technology have a role? Is the answer smart gun technology? Mandatory metal detectors at night clubs? Better data analysis algorithms for the federal government? Bulletproof fabrics?
Share your best ideas in the comments. Could there be a technological solution to the problem of mass shootings?
Why don't you try education and common sense?
No
load "linux",8,1
No, don't use technology to try to solve a problem that's not a techical one. This problem, the reason why some people start shootings, is a social one. Use social means to solve it.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Metal detectors might keep people from bringing in a concealed weapon, saving the occasional life when a fight escalates. They would do nothing in a situation like Pulse, as the shooter wouldn't try to pass through undetected. He'd just storm the place, shooting the guards at the entrance if need be.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Gun control is no longer an option in the US. You can impose gun control rules on citizens, but not on criminals. I often hear the excuse for not having gun control: in area's where there are more strict rules for owning a gun, there's more gun violence. That might be true, but it also proofs my point.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
You all remember the Virginia Tech where one of teachers was an Israeli who had a specific training and could kill the criminal but had no gun.
But I heard that is Virginia there was a mass shooting some years before. But it was NOT the arms free zone. So the students went to the parking, took their gins from their cars and shot the criminal. It's a hint.
The only method that could save you Americans from mass shooting is the perspective for the shooter to be immediately shot. So your Second Amendment is precious.
The reason some people revert to terrorism-type attacks is that it is basically impossible to prevent them. Not even full-blown fascism can prevent terrorism. Of course, the surveillance-fanatics and the police does not want anybody to realize that, as such attacks are the things that allow them to push for even less freedom, even more surveillance and and even worse police-state.
Terrorism is something society has to live with, as trying to prevent it (for example in the utterly moronic form of a "war on terror") is futile and makes the problem worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Europe never allowed citizens to own guns the way the US does.
This is untrue. Restrictions have been gradually increased during the 20th Century, and have not been in place forever.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The caveat here, is that the European countries with the lowest crime rates have the highest rates of gun ownership, as well.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
if you want a technological solution... one accessible right now is guns and body armor. What technology do the police or military use to deal with guns? Words? Education? Do they offer the crazed gunman money?
Guns to kill or threaten the shooter... armor and tactics to avoid being injured while the deed is done.
Here someone will say "but I want the world to be full of rainbows and unicorns"... Childish.
Consider the numbers. The vast majority of the population is peaceful, law abiding, and has a strong interest in law and order. What is more... anyone will act in what they see as their self interest to defend themselves.
Consider that the error is that we haven't gone 180 degrees and encouraged MORE guns.
Vulnerability or perceived vulnerability invites attack. This is a well established and accepted strategic and tactical concept in war.
Look weak and you'll get hit. Look strong and you'll be avoided. If you WANT to be attacked in war, the best thing to do is to LOOK weak by hiding your strength. That is the nature of a trap in war. You trick the enemy into a miscalculation and destroy them. The point being... again... weakness invites attack.
If you wish to NOT be attacked... do not allow the enemy to think you are weak... either by not appearing weak or by actually being able to respond forcefully.
I'm sure I'm going to get statements like "typical american" or something equally infantile.
We'll see if any one has a substantive response to my point. I expect nothing but cowardly downvotes and idiotic insults from ACs without a hint of an argument.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Such bullshit argument.
Gun control is enforced everywhere in Europe, and we have a rate of mass shooting which is 10% of what you have guys.
You don't have significant ethnic enclaves (well, until recently) that are large enough they can be insular from other ethnicities, without an international border being there.
You also don't have historically based ethnic and racial economic disparity, many times enforced by economic and racial self segregation.
That was a recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, about racial segregation of schools by regions within Brooklyn, which is largely self-imposed ("we want to live in NYC for no good reason") and economically imposed ("but we can only afford to live in this economically depressed area").
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06...
Europe is just starting to have large scale emergent problems of the type that the U.S. has had for about 150 year (or 240 years, if you count Native Americans, or over 4 centuries, if you count the pre-constitutional United States as "the U.S.").
Welcome to our world. Strap yourselves in, Europe: it's going to be a bumpy ride.
You cannot use technology to solve a cultural/societal problem.
Any attempt to do so will be nothing more than a "feel good" measure with no lasting impact.
I'm a brit and I'm aware of two terrorist knife attacks on UK soil. There are more than in the US and there may be more that I couldn't recall and/or find on Google but I'd characterise the number of terrorist knife attacks as "some" rather than "quite a few". Casualties in the murder of Lee Rigby: one. Casualties in the Leytonstone Tube stabbing: one. These are serious but casualties aren't on the scale of 7/7 or Mumbai.
Such bullshit argument.
Gun control is enforced everywhere in Europe, and we have a rate of mass shooting which is 10% of what you have guys.
Criminal or not, anyone that carry a gun without a license goes right to jail, that's it. No more complicated than this.
And you will, miraculously, you mass shooting rate will go down.
The problem is, that's "racism", because in the US it's almost always blacks doing that, not other folks. (A few "white hispanics" and asian gangs too.) When you start to lean on them and get into that project, it will be stopped.
Also, mr bright guy, mass shootings and who carries concealed weapons illegally are two groups that rarely have members of both. Your plan would do nothing to stop mass shootings. There are so few mass shooters that there's no chance of catching them with illegal concealed weapon charges, even if they carry daily.
Chicago's trash, will kill more than 50 people in three weekends this summer, and wound far more than that. Nobody gives a shit. Because, they expect it. That stuff is a natural side-effect of the democrats' kept voting livestock in the area. Democrats created that situation because they get almost all the votes out of it, they are using the blacks to get votes.
Europe had "significant ethnic enclaves" when Americans were still hunting buffalo and building burial mounds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think we all know, if we are perfectly honest with ourselves, that when the amount of high-powered firearms that are freely available is higher, then the number of people killed in shootings will be higher as well.
Studies agree with you. However, studies do no agree with your implied conclusion: firearm availability causes higher homicide rates.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/...
The end of the article summarizes it nicely:
In comparing the United States to industrialized democracies, the Academies says data show the U.S. has the highest rate of homicide and firearm-related homicide. But this also raises a chicken-and-egg question. "A high level of violence may be a cause of a high level of firearms availability instead of the other way around."
Does the higher availability of guns in the U.S. cause the higher homicide rate, or does the higher homicide rate lead to the higher availability of guns in the U.S.? There is no causal relationship between the two; there is merely a statistical association.
In particular, pay attention to the non-firearm homicide rate in the U.S., which is also higher than in any other industrialized country. This strongly implies that firearms are a red-herring. The U.S. has deep societal problems that are unrelated to the availability of guns, and that do not fit into clean, easy pigeon holes. Gun death is merely a rough measure of those deeper problems, which will not be solved even if guns are eradicated from the country. The means of homicide will change, but not the underlying cause.
Impossible to prove?
Not really.
statistics bear it out.
Number of mass shootings in France last year: 1
Number of mass shooting in the US in just the past 6 months: 136
Gun control may not prevent 100% of shootings, indeed few things are 100% effective.
But >99% is still pretty damn good.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Nice attempt to get out of cherry picking by putting up a strawman defense.
Guess what? You just affirmed that your cherry picked argument is full of shit - WHILE piling more fallacies on your own doorstep.
You should really stop digging once you hit the septic tank, you know?
But while you're wallowing in your own shit there... back to your non-argument about "terrists" and illegal guns.
Which could be disregarded simply on account of logic - cause you are pulling an onus probandi disguised as an argument.
I.e. Claiming something would happen, without any proof for it (even with immense proof against it) and shifting the burden of evidence on the other side, demanding that I prove your wild hypothetical guess you pulled out of your ass - to be factually wrong.
And that's not an argument. That is, again, a fallacy.
But why even bother with hypotheticals when there is DATA proving you wrong RIGHT NOW.
In 75% of cases of mass shootings, between 1982 and 2012, gunmen used legally purchased guns.
Even this last case was committed with perfectly legally purchased guns.
Guns don't kill people. Legally purchased automatic weapons with high capacity magazines kill people.
The fact is, that though the terrists are carefully concealing their identities, secret plans, hiding their true intentions from the public and the police - they are showing no attempt to try to conceal their gun purchases.
Omar Mateen RENTED A VAN despite owning a car - but had no need to conceal his gun purchase.
Why should he?
Buying an automatic gun which can't be used for hunting and will kill your neighbors across the street if you use it for home defense, yet you still want one of those things designed solely for mass murder of people - that is not at all suspicious.
On top of that, had mass shooters been buying illegal guns, even a tragedy such as Orlando would have had a positive side - there would be a clue towards breaking up an illegal, terrist supplying, gun selling chain.
But since all these guns were legal - they are not only cheaper, there is also nothing to investigate.
In fact, those guns being legal and thus cheap and available to any loon - is GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZING of spree killings.
It's like the US government is paying people money to gun down its citizens.
Or at least lowering the entry fee.
Nearly everywhere else they would be FORCED to pay more.
And to jump through some very hard loops. Like, you know... meeting people who break laws for living... in secluded places... where they have guns and you have money...
All while leaving a bigger footprint for the police.
Except in the land of the flee. Home of the scared.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens