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?
What would help us a less violent surrounding, i.e. less guns. In case of Orlando , the guy was mentally I'll and violent. He should have been in treatment, but in the US you do not send the mentally ill to proper institutions (at least not right away). The thing that would help is a social security system and protection of the poor. You may supplement it by gun laws which forbid selling guns to people who are violent and crazy. In short Bernie could but it looks like you get Trump a fascitoid angry white guy who does not care about the poor or Clinton a Wall Street representative. At lest she will not scrap medicare.
In the context of "nightclubs", not so much. There's good reason most states ban carrying where alcohol is served, and all if you're drinking. The recent shooting was yet another in a gun-free zone.
Technological fix? No. Smart guns? It's the terrorist's gun. Metal detectors? Terrorist. Outlaw guns? Terrorist (much like shootings in nightclubs in other countries).
Outlawing religion seems a better bet, except historically religion has thrived on that.
No easy answers to evil men.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
You don't need to disarm people, just stop selling them new guns. Criminals will also find it much harder to get guns then (fewer legitimate reasons to be handling them) and over time the ones in circulation will be discarded.
Before you claim it won't stop criminals getting guns, it largely does in most developed countries.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Norway is an interesting example, apart from Brevik there have been very little gun violence.
If we look closer at the Breivik case we know that he assumed that he couldn't get a gun in Norway due to the strict gun control.
Because of this he traveled to eastern Europe to try to acquire guns illegally. This failed since the criminals there thought that there was something off with the guy and refused to deal with him.
He the tried to get guns legally in Norway and realized that the gun control weren't that strict at all.
In fact, if Breivik hadn't been able to get guns legally the how would have been out of options. Perhaps he could have tried with a knife but I doubt he would have been able to kill many that way.
All sounds nice in paper, but yet, you still can buy cocaine easily, and the laws on it are pretty much just as rough as the ones you just proposed.
Obviously there would a good benefit on performing a good background check and actually training the person how to safely handle the gun instead of just "LETS GIVE WEAPONS TO EVERYONE LOL", but banning guns won't solve the issue of people that want to commit crimes having access to weapons.
The best approach is giving people less reasons to want to commit crimes in first place.
Does it matter? It is all just theory-crafting anyway.
Not at all. There are hard statistics available on the crime trends since we've gone from a nation with zero concealed carry states to now 50 concealed carry states. What you "theorize" didn't happen. On the contrary, crime (including violent and gun crime) has continued to decrease and there are virtually no cases of crimes being committed by permitted concealed carry holders. There are however, myriad documented cases of crimes being interrupted and prevented by armed noble citizens. Too many to count! But there are blogs dedicated to publicizing them since the mainstream media doesn't. Not a conspiracy, perhaps; just that non-news doesn't make headlines: "Man not killed because attack didn't happen because of an armed bystander."
NOTE: Guys carrying long rifles and using them in mass shootings is an entirely different legal topic than concealed carry to reduce them. Remember that before responding.
Also, I can't not highlight your naive comment suggesting that somehow we could just copy what other nations did and have the same results. That ignores the reality of the unique history of the United States in relation to guns and the immutable fact that they *already* exist here in large numbers and aren't going away, regardless of what laws you craft.
So, am I to believe that no atheist has ever committed a crime of any kind? Nonsense.
Jesus said that we will know them by their fruits. Don't listen to what a man says; watch what he actually does. That's the only way to judge what is in a man's heart. Islam has some pretty rotten fruits. Wake up and look around.
Because education and common sense are completely relative terms.
Education in Islam = Knowing the quran by heart.
Common sense in Islam = Killing anybody who is not muslim, who is not straight, and in the end who does not agree with Islam.
There is no such thing as common sense/education, it's not measurable and certainly not enforceable.
Why don't you try education and common sense?
The federal government has been waging war on education and common sense since the fifties. They are horribly inconvenient in a populace you would like to control.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...
In 2013, there were 5723 murders recorded in the FBI stats.
https://www.nationalgangcenter...
In 2012, there were 2,363 gang-related homicides (2103 data not provided yet it seems), but it seems fair that around 2,000 gang-related homicides occur every year. In other words, about 40% of all murders in the US are gang-related homicides. With an estimated 770,000 gang members accounting for 40% (about 2300) of all murders, the rest of the population (314.8M) produced about 3360 murders, or about 1.06 murders per 100,000 non-gang people. This is clearly on par with other countries who do not have similar gang problems.
From the FBI numbers above, it also seems that black-on-black murders are quite disproportionately represented. At about 17% of the population, black-on-black murders were also about 40% of the total (2245). White-on-white murders were somewhat higher as an absolute number (2,509) but there are 195.6M whites compared to 53.6M blacks.
The numbers say that blacks murder blacks at 4.1 per 100,000; whites murder whites at about 0.77 per 100,000. Blacks also murdered 409 whites; whites murdered 189 blacks.
If we focused on eliminating the actual criminal gang element, we'd have European-level murder rates.
Judaism is a lot older than that, actually, while Islam is a lot younger.
More importantly, Islam — uniquely among Abrahamic religions — compels the followers to do something about it. A Christian can be a "good Christian" if he merely prays for the sinners' salvation. A Muslim must act — and homosexuality is the greatest sin .
And then there is the inconvenient truth about Islam-prescribed world-order. Whereas (the original) Christianity left sæcular affairs to the contemporary government whoever they are — "Cæsar's to Cæsar" — Islam explains exactly how the government should be structured: a Theocracy with a Caliph at the top. This alone makes Islam incompatible with America's Constitution — but the same Constitution bans us from collectively acknowledging the problem.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Except guns in the hands of non-criminals STOP VIOLENCE ALL THE TIME. I've done it myself. And why are you assuming that the staff of the club would all be drunk and in drug-induced haze?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
more than one good guy will pull out a gun, they won't all be accurate, and the bad guy being killed would not guarantee the shooting stops, because -- and here's the crucial bit -- the good guys won't be wearing special good guy uniforms. So each good guy could make an unintended error and shoot another good guy, because there's no easy way to tell good from bad.
I really am quite sick of this strawman. Look, I own firearms, but I am not a member of the black helicopter crowd. I have a concealed carry license but I rarely (count on one hand, 2016 year to date) use it, because I do not feel the need to be armed everywhere I go. I do not own what is commonly but inaccurately referred to as an assault rifle. I do not feel that "MORE GUNS EVERYWHERE" is the best solution to the problem of mentally deranged spree killers. Even if you increased the number of individuals who regularly carry by a factor of ten they're still going to be squarely in the minority. In short, the "good guys" will not and can not be everywhere.
All that said, your argument is stupid. It's the stuff of people who do not like firearms and grasp to any argument -- no matter how tenuous -- that can be made to discredit their use. You want to know how you tell the good guys from the bad in the midst of such chaos? The good guys are not fucking walking around shooting masses of unarmed people who are begging for their lives!!!!
I also find the "do nothing, wait for the professionals" argument offensive. If someone is walking around killing innocent people you do whatever you fucking can to stop him. You do not cower and beg for your life; you fight back with any and all means at your disposal. This is the same "you've already lost" victim mentality that advises women to tell a would-be rapist she's menstruating. Fight or flight is an instinct that's billions of years old; it needs to be embraced, not discouraged. The most important part of self-defense isn't your weaponry, or your training, it's your mindset.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.