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New Smart Guns Will Have Fingerprint Readers (computerworld.com)
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described the International San Francisco Smart Gun Symposium, and the "Mark Zuckerberg of guns," a Colorado 18-year-old who's developing a gun which only fires when its owner's fingerprint makes contact with the pistol grip. But it looks like he'll have competition. Lucas123 writes:
Armatix LLC's new iP9 smart gun will go on sale in the U.S. in mid-2017 and...will have a fingerprint reader that can store multiple scans like a smartphone. The iP9 is expected to retail for about $1,365, which is more than twice the price of many conventional 9mm semi-automatic pistols...
The company's previous product was a smart gun which only fired when it was within 10 inches of radio waves emanating from its owner's watch, but they had trouble attracting buyers. Armatix now also hopes to interest shooting ranges in a gun which only fires when its built-in RFID system recognizes that it's pointing at a shooting target.
The company's previous product was a smart gun which only fired when it was within 10 inches of radio waves emanating from its owner's watch, but they had trouble attracting buyers. Armatix now also hopes to interest shooting ranges in a gun which only fires when its built-in RFID system recognizes that it's pointing at a shooting target.
much
What, did he steal the idea too?
Here in NJ they tried to pass a law to force gun shop owners to stock these "smart guns" and it failed. If people wanted these, they would stock them. For something as important as a firearm the added complexity of fingerprint readers simply increases the likelihood of failure when it is needed. These features aren't safe, they are dangerous and potentially deadly.
As so often happens with these things you have to do it more than once. If you really need a gun to work at a moment's notice, owning a weapon that may or may not work when you pick it up seems utterly stupid.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
With our history of smart devices being secure. /s
We are doing things right.
The problem with 'smart' guns is that when you want to use a gun, you REALLY want that gun to fire. A smart gun might not fire 1 percent of the time.... and you might die. So, I will stay with reliable low tech for guns.
Imagine if you had a password that you couldn't change, and you dropped pieces of it everywhere you go. That's what your fingerprint is.
Not only that, but gun owners don't want additional potential failure points in their firearms. I'm not surprised they couldn't find buyers for their previous watch-radio-wave enabled design.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
I don't know any gun owners who aren't also college educated professionals. Now that is just my personal experience, it by no means speaks for all legal gun owners. However your (anonymous) comment that gun owners aren't smart is likely just troll bait, but if it isn't then it is ignorant and part of the problem.
Because when I'm being attacked and have two seconds or less to save my life, I want to fuck around with a superfluous, unnecessary, battery powered, Chinese made piece of plastic and metal first.
These things are usually dreamed up by anti-gun proponents who wish to push this technology into law so they can bury gun owners with regulations and thus restrict access to firearms.
That's what the safe handgun list in California was for, as well as the "microstamping" law.
If you can make it so difficult to acquire, legally, that the average person doesn't want to be involved due to the regulatory burden, congratulations, you have just restricted and/or removed the right to access that item.
The "Mark Zuckerberg of guns"??
Really?
Is Zuckerberg a massive failure too?
Does he champion a product that fleeces stupid investors too? Okay, that might be a draw.
(He said draw, while talking about guns! He should be banned!)
Beautiful, take away the ability to use it the the most common function of self defense but cleverly leave the common use of sick peope available, suicide.
I submit they ought to name this suicidal gun "The Kevorkian, model 666".
It's also cheeper than my obamacare deductables by far.
No brain, no pain.
You can wait for the cops and they can find your corpse. I'll still be alive, thanks.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
These won't sell. When you add technology that can fail for a variety of reasons to something someone may be counting on their life to use, you get a failing product.
Is this so reliable and worthy that all police forces and military will replace their issued weapons with ones like this? No? OK.
Would you buy a gun that is as reliable as the fingerprint unlock on your phone? I don't know about you, but I have like 1 in 3 chance of not unlocking at first try. That's a gun that will not fire 1 out of 3 times when you need it.
And have you ever tried to unlock your phone while being just a bit nervous? And can you imagine how nervous you will be if you are in a life-or-death situation?
Actually, it's a fitness band that shows the time. It's supposed to unlock my phone automatically if I'm in range. Since I hold my phone with the hand with the watch on it, and swipe with the other, the band is always in range. I'd say 6 times out of 10 it works OK, 2 times out of 10 there is an irritating delay while it displays the password prompt and figures out it should unlock, and 2 times out of 10 it doesn't work at all and I have to input the password. Not something you want your life depending on.
Firearms are already complex mechanical devices, there is a lot that can go wrong already. 10 minutes after the smart band becomes legislated into existence, evil men will start carrying jammers to interrupt the signal so that other people's (legitimately purchased) firearms can never be fired. Including the police. The criminals, will, of course, not be subject to these restrictions. Not following the law is kind of the definition of what a criminal is.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This is not new, this fingerprint reader has been worked on for several years by several people and manufacturers. Basically, this kid is doing the same thing that the Texas clock maker did, take a object apart and put it back together in a different pattern. It is not a new idea, it does not work reliably and it is just a publicity stunt.
Passionately Indifferent
This is a smart gun. Did the target move while you were shooting -- that's what mid-trajectory course corrections are for!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
westworld guns what can go wrong?
Just glue a Life Alert button to it
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
When someone comes up with a system that police officers are OK with using then I'll look into using it. Until then, if a cop won't trust it with his life, why should anyone?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I categorically refuse to buy any firearm that depends on electronics to fire. A gun needs to work when you need it, with no tucking around.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That would draw the police to a lot of private gun ranges, where owners who have sufficient property practice on their own.
Also, who would pay for the cellular connectivity? The gun owners? Yes, the anti-gun crowd would like that as it increases the cost of gun ownership.
Since he never claimed that every gun owner is responsible, what is your point?
Many people don't even like the concept of the lock added to the S&W revolvers, or the magazine drop safety, simply because any extra moving parts on a firearm could mean the difference in a failure that could save your family's life, or not. Firearms are supposed to have simplistic controls, and be as readily available as possible. The videos I've seen at gas pumps or convenience stores tend to show a guy waiting for a fraction of a second for the armed robber to look away before drawing. Holding your hand on the fingerprint reader long enough for it to register would get innocent people killed.
It fires only if your fingers are clean and sweat free, if you aren't wearing gloves, and if the battery is charged. Oh, and there is a delay before the gun unlocks.
That makes it ideal for premeditated murder. For self-defense? Not so much.
What some people may also miss is that not only is the potential unreliability a problem, there's also a liability in having a firearm logged as only usable by you. It's no different to owning a computer that has been hijacked and used for malicious purposes.
While the physical nature of a firearm makes it less likely be hacked and used in a situation where the owner is framed (for instance), with DMCA making it illegal to investigate a security measure, in a circumstance such as that, it could be completely illegal to try to investigate the device and attempt to prove your innocence.
At the end of the day, this won't go anywhere. It's something which will be pushed by the anti-firearm community, but at the same time, even groups like police and military won't have any of it. If it's not good enough for them, then why should us plebs use them?
There's a reason why so little has changed in firearm technology over the last 50 years, and in some cases, even the last 100 years, and it's because what works has largely been figured out and there haven't been any notable innovations to improve on the situation. Even things like electronic ignition systems have been trialled, and largely not adopted, I can only presume because you can't beat the reliability and availability of a spring powered mechanical system in this sort of application.
One of the problems is, I believe, a law in New Jersey that says once they are available they are mandatory. Instead of resulting in a rush to make them, this has so far been a reason to absolutely not make them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
They believe they have the moral high ground. Righteous indignation is a hell of a drug.
How about a gun that, when you pick it up, hold it properly and pull the trigger, shoots a projectile forward in the direction that the gun is pointed?
Now that's a smart gun!
Oh! We have those already!?!
Too many people see guns are nothing more than a dangerous toy for redneck and right wing a-holes. That's far the reality of it, even if recreation is a part of gun ownership for many. Although I'll not here to try and proselytize the 2A or anything. My point is, is that a firearm is often a safety device as a properly handled weapon can sometimes be the only thing that keeps you alive.
And with that in mind we can also note that as a safety device the most important measure of that device is that it must be reliable as possible. Which is why all modern guns are still all mechanical I natural. Well mechanically and sometimes kind of pneumatic, if you count modern gas operated auto loading firearms. But ultimately there just isn't any technology out there that can make a gun that's both acceptably reliable enough to be deadly to your attacker and make sure that only you the one firing the weapon that you own.
There are more irresponsible car owners than gun owners.
Study after study has shown that concealed carriers commit far fewer crimes of any sort than off-duty police.
When you are perfect, let us gun owners know, and we will proceed to the next step in your embrace of reality.
Infuriate left and right
Apparently I missed the part of this story where these manufacturers are trying to take your guns.
And on that subject, how many people have you guys turned out to the polls every time warning that the Democrats were with some imminent plan to take all your guns the second they take office? How did that turn out? Apparently I missed the massive seizure of privately owned weapons that you guys are constantly talking about.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Also consider anything with electronics in it has to have a power source. Batteries tend to stop functioning at the most inopportune times.
Add to that added complexity of electronic circuitry.
No thanks. If I should ever require a firearm, I want one that functions with reliability and simplicity.
Additionally, criminals tend to have illegally-procured firearms. I doubt if they'll bother with a fingerprint reader.
Not this bullshit again....
The fact is that 99.999999999% of firearm owners DO NOT want this "feature".
I've said it before and I'll say it again: when I pull the trigger on my sidearm, I want it to go "bang". I don't want a beep or a chime or a low-battery error message, I want it to go "bang", plain and simple. I've carried daily for over 30 years, and I won't carry any firearm that requires a battery to fire.
I don't give a flying fuck how enthusiastic other people are for my gun to have a fingerprint reader, I don't want it. I don't want any electronics in or on my gun that could possibly cause it to malfunction when I pull the trigger, period. After 50+ years of experience with electronics, from consumer-grade junk to mil-spec gear, there is no electronic doodad that I'd trust not to malfunction at a critical moment.
If these are so great, let the military and the police use them for a decade or two, then I'll think about following suit.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> Just because you know people who are responsible gun owners does not mean everyone is and the statistics prove it
Sure. We have Chicago.
You can distort the statistics. You can over report suicides as murders and ignore that most murders (and crime in general) happen in a small number of high crime areas.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And what are you supposed to do when you go target shooting? Owning a firearm without learning how to properly use it (and retain that knowledge over time) is not only unsafe, but retarded.
I had a gun safe with a fingerprint reader unlocking mechanism next to my bed at one time. When it worked, it was kind of cool. The problem is it turns out a lot of things affect the ability of the scanner to read fingerprints. For instance, humidity. So while the reader might work fine one day, on a drier day, it would not work at all. Or vice versa. This made the gun safe useless. If I needed to get in it in an emergency, I needed to get in it immediately. Being delayed a few minutes - sometimes having to go and get a washcloth to clean the scanner or whatever it took to make the lock mechanism open, was inconvenient. Being delayed in an emergency could prove fatal. So I got a different gun safe, and I will never use biometric verification for anything involving firearms again.
Only works on targets? Good luck with that.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
And how do you get the grizzly to wear the RFID tag?
Have gnu, will travel.
> You have NO IDEA how effective
That's a problem when your life, and the lives of your family and buddies depends on 100% reliability.
By far the most popular handgun ten years ago was the model 1911. So named because it was first made in that year, 1911. 20 years later, it had been proven extremely reliable so that's what professionals and careful civilians caried for almost a hundred years. Besides handguns, almost all trusted guns, from shotguns to ship cannons, were designs from John Browning or Samuel Colt. If you aren't Browning or Colt, we're not trusting our lives to your "clever", more complicated design.
After about 75 years of different people trying, Gaston Glock came up with a design which might rival the 1911, so after it was proven in military and police testing and proven in the field for 25 years, a lot of people switched from the 1911 to Glock. That's the switch, from a model that stood the test of time since 1911 to somethinf better only 90 years later.
Take your "you have no idea if it'll work" and do the USMC testing to it - bury it in wet sand, pull it out, and see if it fires reliably, every time. Keep that up for 25 years and maybe we'll trust our kids' lives to it. Until then, save your "maybe it'll work, maybe it won't" for video games.
Even when it becomes mandated
People will figure out how to stick a paper clip in the enable solenoid and keep the action unlocked at all times. So we will have spent an extra $1K for something that many gun owners and most certainly the entire arms black market* will have rendered useless.
*Outlaw tampering? Stealing guns and selling them out of the trunk of your car was illegal to begin with. How well did that law work out?
Have gnu, will travel.
Funny enough, in New Jersey, when smart guns become available for sale, regular handguns are indeed banned after 3 years. "New Jersey Childproof Handgun Law", in case you are curious. Hence an entire state has a high incentive to make sure biometric safety handguns don't go to market.
A liberal acquaintance of mine told me "the second amendment is stupid, and harmful, because it prevents meaningful conversation. It allows people to take an absolute extremist position and prevents any reasonable discussion about practical compromise."
Fancy words. If the second amendment didn't exist, the immediate "meaningful conversation" would be something like "lets make all handguns illegal across the board and then think up regulations around permitting for people who have some justification for gun ownership beyond "I want one.". This would seem perfectly reasonable to a group of liberal extremists, while being bloody-revolution material for the opposing group.
My point there is that nobody will ever agree on what "reasonable" means. It is impossible to find agreement, in this context. Which brings me to my main point:
Eventually, private gun ownership will be abolished in America.
This is a simple matter of sociology. The greater the population density, the greater the fear of one's neighbors, and hence the greater the public interest in weakening one's neighbors. This is the reason that most crowded countries have disallowed civilian gun ownership: it has nothing to do with the state of civility of their culture but everything to do with how crowded their cities are (which is where most of the voters are).
There are exactly two reasons why this hasn't already happened to America: 1) we still have an extremely high rural population (especially compared to countries that have disallowed gun ownership), 2) we have the second amendment.
The migration of our citizenry from rural to urban areas continues, however, and so the political winds on that front continue to shift. Eventually, the city-dwellers will have the raw numbers, and their natural fear of strangers will drive them to take everyone's guns away. Of course, this will just produce more attractive targets and invite more violent crime, but those facts will not overpower the emotional response one has to being surrounded by strangers, and needing to walk by them every single day.
The process will be slow. Slow enough to prevent revolution. But it will happen.
I suppose no one should be worried about some way of mass disabling the electronics in a freedom zone so they citizen can't use their given right...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
or a pistol? The guns that scare the libtardos (because they're used over and over in mass shootings) are either "hunting" rifles (if /. allowed css fonts I'd make those quotes bigger) or used for target practice. If you were planing on using them against the United States Military when Crooked Hilary gets elected it'll be too late by then. You and your AR-15 don't stand a chance against a modern mechanized army with supply lines and tactical training. If freedom's your bag start trying to figure out the wealth inequality problem. Money is freedom. It's the only thing that really matters. People don't oppress you for the hell of it. They want your money.
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you don't usually use one of those to scare off a bugler, you use a pistol (to be fair, the AR-15 _was_ designed from the ground up for killing men, but I digress).
Put it on your target shooters and "hunting" rifles. That way when some depressed teenager reaches for it (either to shoot themselves or someone else) it doesn't work. Good friend of my brother's, Amazing singer, killed himself that way. Temporary chemical depression that coulda been treated. But pulling the trigger's real, real easy...
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This would work well for that. Put it on AR-15s and the like. Also could stop a lot of suicides.
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The funny thing is that this kid isn't old enough to legally buy the gun he is using in the build.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The evil libtardos aren't coming for your guns.
You need to talk to some liberals. I live in the SF Bay Area, so I talk to plenty of them. Some lean libertarian, and support (or at least tolerate) gun rights. But most lean authoritarian, and think guns should be completely illegal for private citizens. No one, absolutely NO ONE that I have ever met, thinks all we need is to close the "gun show loophole" and then everything will be hunky-dory. Politically, it is always about "just one thin little slice", but the real goal is the whole salami.
Gun enthusiasts don't want them.
Police and military won't take them.
Non-gun people aren't going to spend that kind of money.
It doesn't make any sense other than as a propaganda tool.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
We need a "Full Retard" moderation Tag.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Seems like it would be useful in an environment like a gun range where you aren't relying on it for safety.
A) as another poster noted, the whole reason you go to a gun range is to get more better at shooting the guns you have, so that if you need to (or want to) use them for real later - either quickly like self defense, or more methodically like hunting - you know how well you can aim with them, what realistic distances are, how much kick to absorb or correct for...
B) Which leads us to a fingerprint scanner being a disaster in a crisis situation like a home invasion, you don't have the time for that nor want to rely that a gun you might have not touched for a while still has power enough to enable the fingerprint scanner. Similarily if you go hunting, it would REALLY REALLY SUCK to travel for hours to find out your fingerprint friend has no power or just decides that environmental conditions mean your fingers are now invalid.
So said fingerprint scanner gun would never be a gun you would use in real life, making it pointless to shoot at the range,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You have NO IDEA how effective the finger scanner will be.
Because it's an added layer on top of a system that already sometimes fail (guns jam or sometimes safeties will not release), and furthermore it's an electric system requiring power to function - I can guarantee it will increase the failure rate in successful access to gun for self defense.
To put that in real world terms, lets go for a very low figure and say the increase in failures means there are twenty more women raped in a year. Why would you be for that? Doesn't sound like a good tradeoff to me.
In reality of course the increase in allowed raped would be much higher because it would be mostly females purchasing a "smart" gun, misled by people like yourself into thinking they are better in some way... it's kind of like you are just one step removed from raping them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The evil libtardos aren't coming for your guns
They've been trying for 50 years and their repeated failures have been precisely because we take a hard line on the issue. Not one inch.
It's been 8 years. Don't you think if he was going to do it he would have?
He has done everything within the power of the executive branch. Operation Chokepoint was instituted to make it hard for gun related businesses to do business. He has blocked importation of perfectly legal guns from Russia and South Korea. He has been hostile to the American gun owner, even if he doesn't have the votes in congress to pass a new anti-gun law.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Last time I checked we wouldn't be fighting against a modern, mechanized army. Not just because a large portion of said Army would walk out the day after being ordered to attack citizens, but the simple fact that their families would be EXTREMELY vulnerable to an irate, heavily armed portion of the population if they were break their oaths and turn on the citizens of the country. Most would just simply refuse to act rather than follow orders.
The stock Glock grip doesn't work too well in my hand either. Of course I know I can get all kinds of different backstraps, with and without beavertail, and other options to adjust it to my preference. I do believe my next purchase may be a 1911, though, perhaps the Ruger version.
I talk to plenty of them. We've got our nuts. Our version of the alt-right. We ignore them, same as the right. They're much less loud and much less potent since they lack a fox news equivalent ( MSNBC isn't even close, they're still pretty conservative on economics outside of Rachel Maddow who's got her hands full defending gay rights).
:P
The goal, by and large, is to stop the mass shootings and suicides. If we thought we could get the right wing to pay for mental health services we'd all shut the hell up about guns. You do know it was the Black Panthers and fear of the Bloods and Crips (remember Colors?) that made gun control a thing, right? The right wing didn't want blacks to have guns. Reminds of of one of the funniest things I've ever seen: A bunch of alt-right douche bags thought they'd go scare some Muslims by cruising by their church with their AR-15s; apparently unaware that the Nation of Islam was something a little different
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Dealers that have offered smart guns along side regular guns have almost been bankrupted by the gun owners refusing to do business with them. People that truly appreciate fine guns will hate this idea. And the price problem is a real killer as well. What we need to get through to the public without being rude is that many, normal people, should never touch guns. It is rather like some people with a skill saw, a table saw, or a chain saw. they often know that they should not handle such tools for various reasons but we all know people that simply screw up around mechanical devices and if they get near guns bad things are almost certainly going to happen. Some people easily get distracted. Some people get too angry, too easily. Some people just lack mental co-ordination and fail to foresee a bad situation approaching. It reminds me of a teen with skates on trying to trim a hedge with a chain saw. You just know that that big ouch is looming over him. Some people are just willing to assume way too much risk. In my humble opinion no gun should have a safety on it. There is nothing wrong with being aware that one instant of careless handling may take your life or the lives of others. If by mood, or lack of intellect you can not maintain that at the top of your thoughts you should never touch any gun.
The touch sensor on my iPhone doesn't work if there's the least amount of water on my thumb. Now this isn't a huge problem for me, but if I had to defend my family and the gun wouldn't fire because my fingers were wet or had a foreign substance on it (say grease from food I was eating)... that's a whole different story.
You do realize that it's a very dangerous idea to buy a gun that you only ever shoot when you need it right?
Unlike in the Walking Dead - guns to shoot tiny laser guided bullets. It takes a lot of skill to not only operate the gun in a safe manner, but also to actually hit what you're shooting at. If you only pull the gun out "when you have to" - it likely will do more harm than good.
Any responsible gun owner should practice with at least 100 rounds every few months at a bare minimum.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's much more than twice for most of the guns I own. The only one that comes close was a stainless Beretta 92; the latest one I bought is actually less than 1/3 of that price - and I don't buy the really cheap guns.
It better come with a built-in video camera or some such for that price.
But are we really different than the German population was 80 some years ago, or any other population throughout all of human history whose gov't went bad? I bet even around, say, 1930, there were plenty of Germans who thought that a significant portion of their military would go AWOL if their gov't turned completly tyranical. And lets say a huge portion of our military did break off and fight against the gov't. We have this giant stockpile of nukes and many other kinds of nasty weapons, plus I doubt Russia or China will just stand idly by while America fights Civil War 2 amongst all of this leathal shit, and while we have our tentacles dug in deep all over the globe politicaly, economicaly, and militarily. If we ever do have another civil war, the entire world is going to suddenly become an unimaginably scary, dangerous place to be, far worse than any other time in human history.
I would like them to try to ban socks and D batteries. Or butcher knives. Or a baseball bat, or any of the billions of other things that can be used to kill someone.
... is always fucking retarded beyond belief?
Do you have any idea what you're chances are against a modern, mechanized army?
The Viet Cong were successful, and the Taliban are doing pretty well.
I agree that fingerprint sensors are nowhere near reliable enough to use on a device that you are depending on to save your life. Since a significant percentage of slashdotters are hardware and/or software folks, does anyone here have an idea as to how the reliability of these sensors could be improved?
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
And what possible difference would it make if we did? Do you have any idea what you're chances are against a modern, mechanized army?
Police are needed to maintain a police state. And no matter how many police you have, they are always greatly outnumbered by the people, which is why it is vital for police in a police state to have automatic weapons and for the oppressed people to have nothing but their limp dicks.
An armed populace makes enforcement of a police state impossible by default.
Don't you think if he was going to do it he would have?
Apparently you haven't noticed his constant attempts to do just that. Which would make you either uninformed or willfully ignorant. As a college-educated NRA member, I am neither. Please remember this the next time you deign to talk down to us.
is that they can happen to anyone, including the well off. Those "normal" shootings tend to be the lower castes shooting each other. That's why the mass shootings get all the noise. I don't care of two drug dealers blow each other away. If I'm middle class I probably don't care that the occasional kid gets caught in the cross fire. When somebody walks into an upscale theatre and starts blowing everyone away I start caring.
This goes back to my original comment, which is that gun control didn't get anywhere until whites wanted to take guns away from blacks.
Anyway, getting back to your point, you're more or less right. If we actually want to stop gun violence (and violence in general) the solution is to attack wealth inequality and legalize drugs. I'm all for that.
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Last time I checked we wouldn't be fighting against a modern, mechanized army. Not just because a large portion of said Army would walk out the day after being ordered to attack citizens, but the simple fact that their families would be EXTREMELY vulnerable to an irate, heavily armed portion of the population if they were break their oaths and turn on the citizens of the country. Most would just simply refuse to act rather than follow orders.
Honest question, because I don't know the answer: Did anyone refuse to act rather than follow the orders to round up American citizens and put them in internment camps, when it happened in the 1940s? Certainly "a large portion" did not, but I'm curious if it ever happened.
It seems to me that the assumption here is that the "citizens" that the military are ordered to oppress are nice white folks. That would never happen for the reasons that you state. But what if it was President Trump ordering the forced registration of all Muslim Americans?
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You're comparing hard nosed developing world lunatics who knew the terrain really well with soft lazy first worlders who have no idea how to fight.
I'm so glad these guns will need software to work. As someone who works with computers every day, I'm very impressed at how software always does exactly what I expect it to every time. So much so that I'm really hoping that something that my life could depend on could also rely on software.
Oh, and radio signals. That's another thing that always works for me in every circumstance.
Oh, and batteries. I have a 100% success rate with batteries, they have never failed on me or anyone else in any circumstance.
Oh, and fingerprint recognition. That always works the first time. I never need to reposition my finger repeatedly, and I have never had it just refuse to read based on temperature of the sensor, more or less blood in my hand, or gods only know what astral plane bullshit affects it. None of that ever happens.
Also none of these things are disturbable by hostile actors in any way. Software has security, so no one ever gains access in an unauthorized fashion, and it is impossible to disrupt legitimate access via any manner of denial of service. Software is immune to this. Likewise, radio can never be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise screwed with. Just as when seconds count the police are only minutes away, when someone has a twelve dollar Chinese jammer than blocks your communication with your gun, the FCC is only weeks away from sending a fine to the perpetrator, or perhaps days if there are local ham volunteers. And there's definitely no problem with having an RF signal that is detectable at some distance, especially if your life depends on your hiding. That's definitely not a problem.
I say, lets bundle up the software, with the radio, and the battery, and then mandate that everyone use it to defend their lives. Nothing can go wrong!
In fact, New Jersey has already mandated the exclusive use of these as-yet nonexistent weapons, the moment they actually exist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Such a great idea! For you, at least. I mean, I'm sure the police and military will stick with old fashioned weapons. They are so traditional like that!
The Russian solution to that (which you will find has been copied and applied to the troops near you) was to post people in places a long way from where they are born so they have little empathy with the people they may have to control. It worked brutally well in the USSR.
Also you seem to have forgotten examples of US National Guard firing on protesters when ordered to do so. They didn't walk out. It was a long time ago but what has changed that would make them walk out?
If things go to shit so badly that the Army is called in they are going to know they are needed and will do the job, no matter how bad it sounds, and not desert. A few guys who hunt for ten days a year, even if they have the best guns they can buy, are going to be nothing but quick suicide by a professional force. All this "arming for revolution" shit is just a way for people to be legends in their own minds.
Very wrong. Tragically wrong. A well armed lone gunman is just a target to a large well armed and well run group.
You've got the lone hero myth stuck in your head. It's bullshit. Washington didn't win a country. Washington and his army won a country.
As an example of an armed populace under a police state - Chile under Pinochet. People could buy all the automatic weapons they could afford but they were getting truly fucked over by their government.
It makes perfect sense because if they are too cowardly to openly carry then they are likely to be too cowardly to commit crimes so they are not people that society needs to worry about.
A stupid fantasy of pulling a hidden gun on a shocked mugger should not be pandered to by law. Wear the fucking thing on your belt and you won't get fucking mugged in the first place.
Can't see *any* prank potential there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Did you inherit that user ID from your grandpa?
# Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, ...
We're finally on our own
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
General: "Don't worry about your families, boys. We moved them all to Fort Chupacabra, just while the emergency lasts, to keep them safe. So go out and do your duty without worrying about them."
They're guarded by troops from an entirely different unit, of course. In the Russian case they'd most likely be a different ethnicity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The evil libtardos aren't coming for your guns.
Well, Hillary Clinton thinks the Supreme Court is incorrect, and that we don't have the individual right to own guns. That what she says to her money people when she hopes the press isn't listening. She's also said she'd consider confiscation, a la Australia. And the left is cheering her lying, corrupt self into office - not least because they agree with her on this - the constitution is there to be "reinterpreted," as Clinton puts it.
Do you have any idea what you're chances are against a modern, mechanized army?
What does that matter? That's not why millions and millions of Americans own guns. They use them for sport, for hunting, and - as record numbers of recent buyers are showing in research - for self defense, especially in the context of social unrest. That's EXACTLY what the founders had in mind when they said that the government could not be allowed to have the monopoly on keeping and bearing arms: so that individuals could exercise their own rights to do so if and as they see fit. For whatever reason they see as appropriate. A standing army being necessary for the country, it's not to be considered justification for infringing the people's rights to their own tools of self defense. Sound familiar?
Stop caring so damn much about your precious firearms and start doing something about oppression brought on by wealth inequality.
Ah, I get it. Because someone else is prosperous, your right to vote is being oppressed. Or your right to assemble, or freely speak. Or your ability to go to school. Or your ability to ... which ability is it that you're being denied because someone else has money, again? It's not a fixed-sized pie, dude. If it was, we'd all be living in total poverty. But we're not. The standard of living has never been higher in human history. The "poor" live better than the vast majority of humanity ever could have dreamed.
Wage slavery? Get rid of nonsense like Obamacare, which went out of its way to entrench the system that prevents you from shopping across state lines for health insurance, and went out of its way to keep such services expensive by carefully avoiding tort reform at all costs. Or... do you mean that people who haven't trained themselves to do something valuable are finding it hard to move on in life? Yes, getting rid of our ability to defend ourselves will definitely fix that. We can only do one thing at a time, right?
Voter disenfranchisement? Yes, this is a real problem. We have millions of dead an ineligible people registered to vote. Every time a vote is cast in one of their names, that disenfranchises a person who is voting legitimately. When the Clinton campaign spreads around information, as we've just seen, about how to get illegal immigrants into the voting booth, that disenfranchises people who play by the rules. Definitely a serious problem, I agree. But the disenfranchising actions of voters mostly as encouraged by liberal activist groups go largely unprosecuted because that task would fall to the very party in power that encourages the crime. So, we have to live with it. Steps to mitigate it, like having to show who you are when you vote, just like you have to when you cash a government check, are considered "racist" by disingenuous people who know perfectly well it's not, but there you have it.
Hell, there are folks who matter talking about taking away women's right to vote.
They only "matter" in the sense that you're enjoying mentioning them. There is nobody with any prospect of infringing that liberty calling for that. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who certainly leans towards infringing constitutionally protected liberties and says so out loud, to great applause from the usual would-be little tyrants on the left.
It's been 8 years. Don't you think if he was going to do it he would have?
He kno
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Stop selling guns is the much better approach to safety.
It's not "gun controllers bringing it up", it's manufacturers working on them. What do you have against manufacturers developing new products?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
You just described a huge majority of the folks that make up the military. Maybe in the Army and Marines you have a useful percentage of trained infantry and other combat troops. But in the Air Force you'd be looking at maybe 1:100 if not 1:1000 actually having any kind of combat training beyond the joke of basic training. I would expect the Navy to have similar numbers to the AF in terms of combat training. In the end only a small chunk of the military would actually be usefully trained to fight, maybe 20% at the very best, but I would expect more like 10%.
A more critical issue in my mind is when fighting overseas the military is able to limit its exposure as much as possible so that only the teeth and a well protected perimeter is all that is visible. That is not the case within the USA. Most bases I've seen are essentially wide open to infiltration and have impossibly more perimeter than can be defended. The military is also pretty gung ho on gun control on its bases so that even if there are enough small arms to go around and defend the perimeter they are almost entirely locked up in an armory. The personnel also mostly live off base on the local economy and so they and their families are vulnerable. Also the utilities for each base are usually coming from the local community and don't have meaningful backups where they can be protected.
Did you inherit that user ID from your grandpa?
Believe it or not, not everyone here is American. Never heard the lyrics you quoted, but I did work out (without looking them up) what they might refer to, and now I'm wondering what would have happened if Kent State had campus carry at the time.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
These finger print readers, as anyone who has used one "on a smart phone" would know, don't do well if you have anything on your fingers at all (grease, water, gloves, etc.). This is the proverbial "magic button" people are looking forward to make their guns secure, yet, unwittingly, unusable. When you have considerable room for error, and there is plenty here, it is effectively useless. I've used a firearm when a would-be burglar attempted to enter my home and I will tell you there is no time for fuck-ups and repositioning your finger while Siri says "I'm sorry, I didn't get that." How little time am I talking about? A window shattered and I was firing before the glass hit the floor.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Why are you trying to compare the number of homicides to suicides? Neither homicide nor suicide saves lives, dummy. Self-defense and defense of others saves lives. When you're trying to run away from the bad guy and I'm running toward you both to take him down, that's saving lives.
90% of suicides don't involve a gun, BTW. You don't need a gun to off yourself, a Chevy will do the job quite well.
Thanks for the info.
"Lone gunman?" "Lone hero?" Who ever said anything about that? This is a strawman, and a poor one. Resistance of possible tyranny or foreign military invasion has never, ever been predicated on a "lone gunman," which is why the Second Amendment specifically mentions "militia."
As for Pinochet, the arms confiscations and gun control policies implemented by his vicious and dictatorial regime are one of the most oft-cited examples of how gun control and tyranny go hand-in-hand. Please educate yourself before you deign to lecture others.
Love, two-thirds of Americans have some tertiary education and a half of those hold an undergrad degree. Now that is just my personal experience, but a good number of these people are complete and utter idiots.
Keep "sport" out of it. It has nothing to do with the law. That's some BS the left put out there to try to limit and take away guns.
Probably better than a bunch of guys who get drunk and shoot cans once a week. The Taliban are genuinely terrifying because they have are fanatics with nothing to lose. How many of the putative US rebels are like that? Even so, most of the western casualties in Afghanistan were from roadside bombs, not guns.
Right. Out of the 330 million people in the US (not counting the broader market, there's "nobody" who wants a gun that can't be accidentally picked up and used by their young children or an intruder. Literally "nobody". Yeah, totally believe you.
They have a niche. You want to prevent them from filling it.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Seems like a question that is varies greatly by region. Northern New England, especially Vermont, is home to liberals who are gun owners and right supporters but to a lesser degree than the GOP and NRA. I think one of the biggest factors is we don't use guns for shooting each other much, so the level of anger and fear is much lower than it is elsewhere.
If you've been IN the American Military, then you know the odds of them complying with such an order is practically zero.
Would you care to take a guess which side of the 2nd Amendment debate they typically fall on ?
Want to take a guess which team they typically vote for ?
A Military Coup and / or Civil War would take place within a few days following any decree or announcement of such a thing.
I'm not arguing one way or the other, but I do think your specific point is missing something - you're forgetting that there are more veterans than acting military. This country is chock full of people who know exactly how to fight. The lazy part of your argument probably holds. I wouldn't call it lazy, but I will say that it's tough to risk the lives of you and your family when there is food on your table. I don't think there have been many rebellions by populaces that are warm and full.
So where is your local well organized militia that is going to work together and work as you are suggesting? They don't exist! Looks like lone gunman getting picked off one by one to me.
Your armed populace is worthless and a minor speedbump unless it works together. A few guys with guns are nothing but targets.
Sorry to burst your bubble but you keep on preaching stupidity. Go talk to someone in the military to find out exactly how stupid you have been.
Chile had a VERY well armed population when Pinochet came to power - it didn't help. There are many similar examples.
He's got a low UID - he will know unlike millenials who may have never heard of it.
Also I was attacking the kneejerk assumption and not the person.
As soon as the iphone fingerprint reader works reliably, in all weather conditions without delay, and is no longer easily defeated by anyone with a 3-D printer, perhaps there would be some few people interested in paying extra money to make a perfectly functioning life-saving machine more complicated and prone to failure.
Citation: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5... [Your phone’s biggest vulnerability is your fingerprint]
Design complexity breeds system fragility.
I buy older cars because I hate these 'driving assists' and other BS cars are being made with now. I will also buy older guns, without the gadgetry tyvm.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
It's not "gun controllers bringing it up", it's manufacturers working on them. What do you have against manufacturers developing new products?
I have absolutely nothing against manufacturers developing new gun safety products and offering them on the market. The concern with these "smart" guns is that they'll be mandated by law. This has already happened in New Jersey. The 2002 Childproof Handgun Law says that three years after "smart" guns are available for sale in the US, all guns for sale in New Jersey must be "smart". The law doesn't require that the guns be in any way reliable or have obtained any significant market share, just that they've been available for sale. So if these actually make it to market people in NJ who want reliable guns are screwed. And if any other states, or Congress, passes a similar law, then all of us are screwed.
Actually, I'd have no problem with smart guns if they were really reliable. And there's a really simple reliability screening test we can use: offer them to military and law enforcement personnel. Cops in particular should see a lot of value in smart guns because cops occasionally get shot with their own guns. However, they also need their guns to be extremely reliable, and big departments and the FBI have the institutional resources and motivation to seriously test them. So, once the technology reaches a level where police are not only willing to use smart guns but actively want them then it's fine to mandate them for civilians.
Of course, thanks to the NJ law, civilians are going to fight like hell to keep these things off the shelves, which means that the years of refinement needed to make them reliable is never going to happen. Not in the US, anyway.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Many countries will not be idle if the US does Civil War 2. You can kiss Europe goodbye and China will consolidate it's empire in Asia once again. The Middle East will be a bunch glowing parking lots of former arab capitals because Israel is not going to wait around to be steam rolled by the hoard. Africa will still be Africa.
The worst thing that will happen will be that a lot of people will starve to death in the US. Too many people are on the dole and can't/won't take care of themselves. You'll see a massive die off of the elderly and the poor if economic systems are disrupted due to conflict. Frankly if we are in the middle of our own civil break down. I won't much care about the rest of the world.
Why would we register Muslim Americans? You don't think the government has already been doing that for the past 50 years? Think about ANYTHING you have ever filled out with all the little check boxes and then try to tell me that isn't true. There are plenty of lists of who is who and thanks to companies like Google its really easy to sort through the data.
Most people would have a problem with them rounding up the average Muslim in the US. On the other hand I highly doubt anyone would even blink (those nice people you mentioned, not including Liberals, they are not nice people) if Trump ordered every non-citizen Muslim with even a whiff of ties to any terrorist group deported tomorrow and a long hard look at the citizen variety with the same. Those that have real links could find themselves facing legal prosecution.
How exactly is that a problem? Why would that be wrong?
In order to change those things we will need our guns. Without them we are completely powerless to change anything within the government, because governments do not fear an unarmed population.
If you are shooting at authorities, you're a rebellion and fair targets for the Army, and nobody's going to break any oath. The Army trains soldiers well, and they're unlikely to refuse to fight rebels. If you're threatening the lives of families of soldiers, they're going to get more determined to stop you and less fussy about collateral damage. Even if you do get a lot of them to desert, what's left is a modern mechanized army that will smash any citizen resistance it finds. Not only because of weaponry, but because regular troops are far more effective in combat than brave armed civilians.
There is no way in the world private gun ownership would stop the US government.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The Viet Cong were ineffective in stopping US troops. They were much better at fading into the scenery and coming out later. Eventually, they did get into serious battles with US troops, and were wiped out. The conflicts in the 1970s were basically invasions from North Vietnam with a little local cover.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So get out and vote. The US government is not some sort of malign extradimensional entity. It's what people vote in. The government is much more interested in who you vote for than who you shoot.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The evil libtardos aren't coming for your guns.
Is that their private or public position?
I'm pretty sure anyone who actually goes out and shoots regularly on their own time is going to be a better shot than the vast majority of non-infantry troops. See ammo costs money and consequentially range time is usually kept to the bare minimum required in the military. Depending on your job in the military that might mean firing as little as 100 rounds every 18 months.
I'll grant you that the enemies we've fought in the middle east have been fanatics on the edge of losing everything. And of course underestimating a fanatic is easy and dangerous as hell. I don't think we have many people like that here in the USA currently, but it would be silly to say that such a situation couldn't or wouldn't arise here in the USA.
The bombs over guns situation is a result of the many imbalances between the military and the various guerilla groups. The Taliban uses bombs because it is more cost effective and lower risk than committing their limited warm bodies. Professional militaries do the same thing only we deliver our bombs and missiles by remote, and because we try to an extreme extent to minimize personnel loses.
If they don't want them, they can return them to the US government which owns them.
They were given to the South Koreans. They no longer need them and would like to sell them to largest group of collectors on the planet.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano