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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.
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.
Denmark, Scotland, Norway, France and Belgium.
There's this wonderful technology, it's called concealed firearms. I don't propose that drunk patrons be allowed to bring them in (although that'd be better than the status quo), but it's really a shame that no one in the staff (save for one guy at the entrance) had a concealed firearm on them. This could be over in minutes with fairly minimal casualties. In fact, had he known he would see resistance there, he would likely have gone elsewhere. Instead the police waited for 3.5 hours (!) before storming the club. That's what they usually do, since they have no legal obligation whatsoever to protect anyone or put themselves in danger (Google "no duty to protect" if you don't believe me).
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.
The big difference: Europe never allowed citizens to own guns the way the US does. Maintaining the gun control in Europe is much easier than introducing one in the US. In the US, it requires the taking back of a lot of guns, which is not likely to happen. Specially not the illegal ones.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
The problem is the how.
It's easy to scream "ban the something" and enact laws etc.. but actually getting it banned? Now that's an different story entirely.
I bet that if you know how, you can buy cocaine in less than a hour in your own city, and all a "weapon ban" would do is just give the same guys one more thing to sell.
We have had a massive decline in gun violence, both in the US and abroad, and nobody really knows what the cause of the decline is. It isn't gun control or getting tough on criminals.
Furthermore, in the US, probably the single factor that sticks out most with respect to gun violence is "race": after all, despite the US's higher murder rate overall, as a "white" American, you are no more likely to get murdered than the people of Iceland, France, Denmark, New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Canada, Belgium, Israel, and Finland. But "race" (in the weird US sense) obviously doesn't cause violence per se; it must be a marker that correlates with something else.
So, given that we don't really understand what causes gun violence, and that it has been massively decreasing for poorly understood reasons, it's hard to come up with a technological solution.
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.
This is one stupid question and can be used as an example of a stupid question.
No, it us unpossible. You can NEVER solve a social problem with a technical solution. And no gun control is NOT a solution (and I am all for gun control, which is different from forbidding them). He would be able to do it.
And having MORE guns would eliminate the mass shottings, but will end killing more people. But that we do not see as those are not as important.
You will not see 100 news articles about 1 person being killed, you will only see 1 about the 50 shot by a lunatic.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
The problem is that this sort of automatic/semi-automatic weapons are LEGAL.
I suspect you don't actually know what those two terms mean, what type of weapon was used, or what difference it would have made had there been limits on the type of weapon.
But that's ok, lots of people who know nothing about guns just sure love to talk about them.
Bit of an innovative idea, but maybe lets try making it a little harder to get guns and stop promoting the idea that it is OK for an adult to have an invisible friend that talks to them and tells them who to hate. The current approach to the invisible friend problem seems to be to say "oh, I have the same invisible friend and they are totally nice" or "This bad person seems to have the wrong invisible friend, mine is totally nice". These are both unacceptable and fucking stupid responses to religious violence. It is not OK for an adult to abdicate their responsibility for their own ethical position to a supernatural entity and a book of hate. It is not OK to normalise those who do.
It is not OK to hate LGBT people. It is not OK to say "hate the sin and love the sinner" that isn't anywhere near good enough. It is not OK to send "thoughts and prayers" because in doing that you are promoting and normalising the position of having an invisible friend that hates people.
Yes, it should also be less trivial to obtain battlefield weapons, and we should stop normalising the ownership of guns, but we should do that in addition to challenging the ridiculous medieval beliefs that are distancing people from reality, gun control won't implement hate control but we should do it anyway.
Gun Control will not stop mass killings, If a person has decided they want to kill a bunch of people and guns are not available to them, they will use motor vehicles/home made bombs/planes. The biggest mass killings in the US did not involve guns, just box cutters and Jet aircraft.
Can Technology Prevent Shootings?
No.
Actually, maybe it could if it led to the extinction of humans. Then there would be no more mass shootings.
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.
You could remove all guns and mass killings will still occur.
Mix some bleach and ammonia and throw it around. Put together an explosive. Drive a car over the sidewalk. Poison the water supply. Release weaponized viral agents into a high population area.
The problem here isn't firearms, or cars, or machetes. The problem is an ideology that encourages and glorifies murder of people who don't agree with you.
Love sees no species.
Also, the worst mass killing in a nightclub simply used gasoline to kill 87.
I'd argue that there's a fair number of cases where the usage of firearms probably saved lives - because when terrorists go for arson or explosives they frequently kill more people.
Worst school attack, fatality wise? Explosives
Worst night club attack? Arson
etc...
I don't read AC A human right
These guys keep an archive of defensive gun uses:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.c...
Of course - you will say that weren't spree killings or mass shootings - well it could be that a "mass shooting" was prevented in many of these single instances of defensive gun uses.
I've noticed that many people who claim guns are useless for defense are not gun owners or have never carried one for self-defense.
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.
You are trying to avoid the crucial issue here. The problem is not whether we can go to zero crime, because... Newsflash! There is crime, even in countries where there are very strict gun laws.
Here is an example: Japan. Lowest gun crime rate in the world. Ultra-strict laws regarding gun ownership. And Japan is also a country where organized crime, the Yakuzas, is practically out in the open.
The goal of banning guns is to ban guns, and reduce gun-related violence and homicide. Banning guns will reduce violence and crime acros the board, but it will not suppress it completely.
Let's take your example: in any big city, american or not, you can probably find out where to buy cocaine. The difference is that, in the US, an addict can pull a gun on his dealer (or the reverse) and kill him for his stash. And whoever survives can then use the same gun to shoot at police officers and kill them. In the rest of the world, while this can happen, gun violence, even between addicts and dealers, is a lot less prevalent.
Yes, crime and law-breaking will always exist, gun ban or not. But banning guns will reduce violence and, ultimately, the number of deaths per year.
Here is another example: if the Florida shooter did not have access to guns, and he went into that disco to, say, stab people with a sharp knife or sword, he may have been able to kill a couple of people, at best, before being subdued by bouncers and others in the disco. This would now be treated as a horrible hate crime, and not as the bloodbath -- 50 dead, scores wounded -- that it is.
The Economist said it best years ago when they said "It takes a lot of knowledg and strength to kill someone with a knife or a blade. It takes none to pull a trigger." (and I paraphrase from memory).
Ban guns. This is the best solution overall, and it requires nothing more than courage and a willingness to tackle this problem.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It seems that what we really need is a bunch of new laws that will make it very very very illegal to commit suicide. With double penalties for committing suicide with a gun.
Indeed!
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 slightly 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.
Europe had "significant ethnic enclaves" when Americans were still hunting buffalo and building burial mounds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
ah so even you realize that Chicago barely eve makes the list.
and also for clearly showing that the cities at the top of the list are primarily located in red states/cities, and have less gun control and more guns.
in particular, note the lack of cities with strict gun control.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
As a Canadian gun owner, I'll just point out that our laws are laxer than some American states.
To own most rifles or shotguns, you get your PAL, or Posession and Acquisition License. You take and pass a one day course, you send in your application, which includes things like contact info for two years worth of 'conjugal partners' and references.
For handguns or 'scary' rifles (literally; an AR-15 in .223 is 'restricted.' You can get other semi-auto rifles in .223 which are considered 'non-restricted.' But people still have this weird idea that the AR-15 is 'military' and a hunting rifle isn't.) you do an extra six hour course and apply for the 'restricted' part of the license.
I'm a flaming Canadian lib, and I own more handguns, let alone more guns, than any conservative I personally know.
America doesn't have a gun problem; America has various problems which guns exacerbate. But if this guy didn't have a gun, he could have driven through the sidewalk crowd, or walked in with a backpack full of Molotov cocktails, or an amfo bomb, or chlorine and bleach, or a machete bought from the camping section of Wal-Mart, or any number of other things.
The issue here shouldn't be 'OMG he shot people!' It should be 'OMG he killed people.'
It's like when your kids are fighting; if Bobby is hitting Billy with a Tonka Truck, the solution isn't to ban Tonka Trucks from the house.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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