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Hacker Cracks Smart Gun Security To Shoot It Without Approval (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader shares a CNN report:Smart guns are supposed to be safer than traditional weapons. They're designed to only fire when paired with a second piece of technology that identifies the shooter, like an electronic chip or a fingerprint. Supporters say they could stop accidental shootings or misfires. And they've been lauded by law enforcement to prevent criminals from using stolen or misplaced guns. However, like any technology, they're not unhackable. A hacker known by the pseudonym Plore doesn't want to put a stop to smart guns, but he wants the firearm industry that's increasingly manufacturing these devices to know that they can be hacked. The model Plore hacked is called the Armatix IPI. It pairs electronically with a smart watch so that only the person wearing the watch can fire it. The devices authenticate users via radio signals, electronically talking to each other within a small range. Plore broke the security features in three different ways, including jamming radio signals in the weapon and watch so the gun couldn't be fired, and shooting the gun with no watch nearby by placing strong magnets next to the weapon.

319 of 501 comments (clear)

  1. Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who didn't see that coming?

    Oh yeah, fearful gun-grabbers.

    1. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      OR they knew a secure smart gun couldn't be created and intended this. Just think, make the legislation say it requires smart guns only if they are secure, leave it as vague as possible, then ban all smart guns that are made as insecure. Roundabout way to outlaw guns.

      Now THAT'S what gun grabbers really want.

    2. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by cayenne8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OR they knew a secure smart gun couldn't be created and intended this. Just think, make the legislation say it requires smart guns only if they are secure, leave it as vague as possible, then ban all smart guns that are made as insecure. Roundabout way to outlaw guns.

      I'd not put it past them.

      But man..."smart" guns IMHO are NOT a good thing to have.

      I mean, having a firearm that my life may depend on in a home invasion, that may not fire if I'm not wearing a watch (I usually do not wear one), or if I"m wearing it, happens to be low or run out of power....is not a good thing.

      I mean, if you want one, I think that's fine, but trouble is, if they become prolific, then I foresee problems with govt trying to mandate that all weapons be "smart" (likely cops are excepted)...and I don't like that mandate.

      I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on (some do have safety on, but the glocks do not).

      I don't want to have the risk that any of these would not fire due to a missing signal from a watch or other e-signature type device.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on (some do have safety on, but the glocks do not).

      Yikes, do you live in Detroit or something?

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    4. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on"

      Not that your a paranoid nutjob or anything. What are you expecting, a home invasion by Chuck Norris?

    5. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      Detroit, Chicago, LA, St Louis, Kansas City, Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans.....

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    6. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is it paranoid to have multiple fire extinguishers throughout the home, ready to go?

      Better to have it and not need it...

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    7. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by HumanWiki · · Score: 1

      But man..."smart" guns IMHO are NOT a good thing to have.

      Only smart gun I want is one that responds to Grenade, Full Auto Rapid Fire, Armor Piercing and Double Whammy with a nifty little red sequential light.

    8. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by mark-t · · Score: 1

      But man..."smart" guns IMHO are NOT a good thing to have.

      Until you are shot with your own gun, of course, or any gun that was stolen for that matter... which is what most murders with guns are committed with.

      Of course, since they can be cracked (and seriously, whoever doubted for a second that they wouldn't be?), even having a smart gun isn't a guarantee that it won't still be used against you.

    9. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      > (likely cops are excepted)

      I wonder about this. You're most likely right, but I have to ask, why should cops be excepted? The most visible, prolific sidearm presence is attached to a uniformed officer. In the interest of public safety, wouldn't we want to secure those weapons first? Isn't it a public safety issue that anyone could take a cop's gun and use it on someone else (or the cop)?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    10. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure that 99.999% of people who've ever tried to grab a cop's gun couldn't even spell "hacking."

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    11. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah, fearful gun-grabbers.

      The "gun grabbers" aren't the ones who are too afraid to walk down the street with a lethal weapon, you chick shit pussy.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    12. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      It sounds harder to hack this gun, than for a machinist to make a new gun from a block of metal.

    13. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      In the interest of public safety, wouldn't we want to secure those weapons first?

      They are secured. Each one is strapped to a personal bodyguard who has been trained in defensive and offensive maneuvers.

      Isn't it a public safety issue that anyone could take a cop's gun and use it on someone else (or the cop)?

      Not as much of one as having the weapon refuse to operate when the cop most needs to use it. In this example, all you need is an RF jammer to block the authorization signal and the gun isn't one anymore.

    14. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      In the interest of public safety, wouldn't we want to secure those weapons first?

      They are secured. Each one is strapped to a personal bodyguard who has been trained in defensive and offensive maneuvers.

      It so happens I'm a self defense instructor, and I've had some training in weapons retention. I don't *teach* weapons retention, so I haven't kept it fresh, and the training I had was some years ago. I don't know how effective I'd be right now. Similarly, I'm sure that cops get weapons retention training in police academy. But I wonder if they ever get refreshers? Or do they depend on a few classes they took several years ago to avoid losing their weapons?

      Moreover, a weapon strapped to a personal bodyguard who has been trained in defensive and offensive maneuvers who is currently dead or unconscious is most definitely *not* secure.

      Isn't it a public safety issue that anyone could take a cop's gun and use it on someone else (or the cop)?

      Not as much of one as having the weapon refuse to operate when the cop most needs to use it. In this example, all you need is an RF jammer to block the authorization signal and the gun isn't one anymore.

      Ok, granted. But say I have a weapon for defense of family and self, and occasion to use it. What would be the point of having one that might refuse to operate?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    15. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 1

      I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on (some do have safety on, but the glocks do not).

      Holy fuck! Paranoid much? I hope there are never any kids in your house.

      Maybe you might want to consider moving somewhere you might feel safer?

      Wow. I don't even lock my door at night here...

      I don't lock my door either.
      Because it's guarded by my dog...
      with a gun.

    16. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by friedman101 · · Score: 1

      I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on (some do have safety on, but the glocks do not).

      What sort of Mad-Maxian hellscape do you live in where this is necessary?

    17. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab

      I like to not live in a 3rd world shit-hole where my safety is dependent on being surrounded by weapons.

    18. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Multiple? Yes that too is paranoid. One covering the most likely place of a fire (i.e. not located in the kitchen but close to it).
      In America there are about 100 burglary related homicides per year, compared to 3300 deaths due to house fires.

    19. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1

      dumb ass.....smart guns are so you don't worry about that crook taking your gun and using it on you. you think they will be able to hack a gun while you are pounding them in the face to get it back?

    20. Re: Surprise, surprise, surprise! by oobayly · · Score: 1

      I'd love to know how well hidden they are. Odds are any home invaders will be gifted free loaded firearms.

    21. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      I mean, if you want one, I think that's fine, but trouble is, if they become prolific, then I foresee problems with govt trying to mandate that all weapons be "smart" (likely cops are excepted)...and I don't like that mandate.

      New Jersey actually passed such a law. I don't remember if it actually passed but I remember such a law being debated in California.

      The world of politics is like an enormous game of chess but we have a lot of checkers players in the world who are taking turns without any consideration for or ability to conceive of the mid-game and end-game.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    22. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      You already do. You just choose not to accept reality.

    23. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Not by any means. The hack involves putting a magnet to the gun to shoot it, or using a jammer to disable the gun. Both of these are incredibly easy to do.

    24. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      You already do. You just choose not to accept reality.

      [Citation needed]

      The only thing funnier than this being the comeback is the fact you don't even know where I live. What this points to is that you have such a low opinion of everyone to feel the need to be armed at all times.

      You should seek professional help before you hurt those around you.

    25. Re:Surprise, surprise, surprise! by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      So, what the hell do you think the police carry around on patrol? Do they subdue criminals with hugs in your fantasy world?

      What about the military? Do you think that a military carrying around sticks is going to deter another country from invading yours?

      If you think that you are not surrounded by guns keeping you safe you need to seek professional help. Some of us just don't have the luxury of having police less than 5 minutes away at all times, so we have to arm ourselves in order to protect ourselves and our families, otherwise there is nobody there to do it.

      Also, if you do not think there are people out there that will intentionally harm you I have a challenge for you. Walk all the way through your closest ghetto in an expensive suit with a little bit of money poking out of your pocket and then tell me there are no people out there who would harm you.

  2. Stopping it from firing is the issue. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

    Some elaborate hack or something that requires you to put magnets on the gun isn't really that big of a deal. But being able to wear e.g. a different watch that jams all these guns is of course a much larger issue.

    I find the whole idea of smart guns mostly silly. Even plain old guns, brand new designs or designs that have been tweaked and fine tuned for 100+ years, misfire sometimes. Adding another level of failure is pretty absurd.

    I can see them making sense in special circumstances, though. One that leaps to mind is prison guards.

    1. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by chispito · · Score: 1

      I can see them making sense in special circumstances, though. One that leaps to mind is prison guards.

      I feel like the guard would disagree.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    2. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by arth1 · · Score: 2

      But being able to wear e.g. a different watch that jams all these guns is of course a much larger issue.

      Issue? I would love to have a gun jammer in my car. Seems that these days, that would be a prudent safeguard.

    3. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 1

      This. The coolest part of this hack is jamming the gun remotely with RF.

      --
      That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    4. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And then you get mugged by a criminal who doesn't give a shit about the law and has a gun without a smart lock, then your gun jammer prevents a CCL holder or LEO with a smart gun from defending you.

    5. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      Issue? I would love to have a gun jammer in my car. Seems that these days, that would be a prudent safeguard.

      You seem to be assuming that the police will use smartgun technology. Ain't gonna happen! Cops want reliable firearms, not something that might not work when the time comes that you really, really need a gun....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    6. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      I doubt that they have a smart gun pointed at your head.

      I am in the process of making my house "smarter" so forgive the bad joke

      "Echo, fire gun"

      "Sorry, I could not find gum."

    7. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      Your gun jammer is bypassed by a dumb-magnet

      Or by not using a smart gun

    8. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      I feel like the guard would disagree.

      I actually foresee an exception to this for most ALL LEO's.....

      And frankly, what is good for LEO's weapons wise...is good enough for me. I tend to buy the same arms they have with the exception of full-auto which I don't have the ATF licensing for.....(yet).

      But if they don't want it on their guns, I don't want it on mine.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    9. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      Though, 3 or more firearms would be ideal, but difficult to fire that many with only two hands.

      That's why we have such things at holsters, scabbards and slings....easier to carry more artillery.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    10. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      And then you get mugged by a criminal who doesn't give a shit about the law and has a gun without a smart lock, then your gun jammer prevents a CCL holder or LEO with a smart gun from defending you.

      A modern day chickenshit lawman would not care about defending me - he'd care about pumping the robber full of lead to minimize any risk to his own precious self, and if he shoots me too, aw shucks.

      A robber won't shoot you if you give them what they want. Their goal is to obtain valuables - shooting people is generally bad for business.
      But gang members and police (but, I repeat myself) is a different story. They are in it for the brutality, not the money.

    11. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Do you REALLY think you know what's going on in a robber's head?

      Well, yes, it's pretty clear that he wants money and valuables. You can tell by him robbing you.

    12. Re:Stopping it from firing is the issue. by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      You need to get help. Your insecurities will probably get someone killed one day. If you want to play with weapons so badly join the fucking military.

  3. Good enough for practical situations by gnick · · Score: 1

    Supporters say they could stop accidental shootings or misfires.

    It sounds like they still will.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    1. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have to read very closely, but unintended fatal shootings in the US from 2005-2010 resulted in 3800 deaths, or roughly 760 per year. As a frame of reference, approximately 250,000 people die from medical mistakes at hospitals every year, yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors.

      Smart guns are a dumb idea trying to fix a problem that is much more effectively mitigated by proper education, training and proper storage of firearms (as evidenced by the fact that gun ownership is at an all time high, but accidental shootings are at nearly the lowest they have been ever). Smart guns tamper with and make less reliable the most effective self defense tool on the planet, potentially endangering the thousands of lives that are saved daily (every day hundreds of citizens use their concealed carry to protect themselves or others, and police officers do the same).

      As with any tool in this imperfect world, there are accidents, misuse and abuse, but we must weigh the cost vs benefit of guns, something that the fascist progressives and Dims refuse to do (and have prevented the FBI from collecting statistics on; there is a very cynical reason that you can't find statistics on incidents where citizens save lives or property using their lawfully owned firearm, you can only find "gun deaths").

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    2. Re:Good enough for practical situations by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      there is a very cynical reason that you can't find statistics on incidents where citizens save lives or property using their lawfully owned firearm, you can only find "gun deaths").

      And the fact that they lump in suicides with the larger gun death numbers.

      Those should be weeded out, as that this person wants to off themselves, and would do it by most any means. It isn't an unintended death, the gun is working properly, but the method doesn't matter, it is what the person wanted to do.

      I believe if someone wants to end their own life, well, sad as it is..that should be their choice.

      If nothing else, it should be separated out as it's own number and not a wrongful death number.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

      You have to read very closely, but unintended fatal shootings in the US from 2005-2010 resulted in 3800 deaths, or roughly 760 per year. As a frame of reference, approximately 250,000 people die from medical mistakes at hospitals every year, yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors.

      But this discussion isn't about "banning" guns (nor doctors). It's about implementing a technology to reduce the number of unintentional deaths. Implementing technologies to reduce the number of unintentional deaths is something hospitals do all the time.

      So your analogy fails.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    4. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Also, countries with much lower rates of gun ownership can match or exceed suicide rates (see Japan). So it's not the method of suicide that's the problem, it's whatever causes the mindset.

    5. Re:Good enough for practical situations by jsrjsr · · Score: 1

      Ummm... Given that gun sales have been through the roof for a long time now, no.

    6. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In reverse order of stupidity of your post doctor's are highly regulated and banning hospitals would cause the death rate to skyrocket, not dip. What amazes me the most is that I don't even think you are trolling. You actually thought that was intelligent discourse and likely handle guns. [Shudder]

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    7. Re:Good enough for practical situations by pz · · Score: 1

      yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors

      Ban hospitals, well, not in a blanket sense, but politicians do very often block hospitals from expanding, or acquiring / merging with other hospitals. And getting the zoning to build a hospital is a non-trivial and highly politicized task. Ban specific hospitals? Yes, that happens. Take political action against things like pharmacies (OK, not precisely a hospital, but bear with me)? Remember the New England Compounding Center that caused many dozens of deaths across the US about five years ago? No longer exists because of aggressive prosecution the strength of which was politically motivated (they used the RICO act, fer chrissakes). Moreover, we now have significant additional regulation (Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013) as a result.

      And, holy cow, if there is a profession that is more highly regulated than being a doctor, please show it to me. Physicians have to register with the government (in the US at least) starting in medical school, when they only want to become healthcare professionals, and from there it only gets worse. The level of regulation is staggering.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    8. Re: Good enough for practical situations by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure physicians are pretty heavily regulated. Not that it detracts from your point, however.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    9. Re:Good enough for practical situations by lgw · · Score: 1

      I've heard that it's common for the police to write up a gun suicide as "accident when cleaning the gun", so the family will get the life insurance, so the number get even more confused. (But really, who shoots themselves by accident when cleaning a gun? No one sober, for starters.)

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    10. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      And yet, medical mistakes account for 32,894% more of accidental deaths per year than guns. Logically, politicians should be calling for more regulation and safeties etc. than they do for guns, but that is demonstrably not the case, especially on the left...

      Incidentally, that formulary that was shut down was only done so because in addition to the deaths, they had ignored multiple prior citations for violations and other people who had been sickened by their products, and I believe several administrators and pharmacists were charged with criminal negligent homicide in that case. My guess is they plead to a lesser charge, but what you had in that isolated incident was gross negligence.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    11. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      And you are apparently unable to distinguish hyperbole from the underlying point, while simultaneously thinking you are the smartest person on the web...

      And you would probably be frightened of a loaded firearm laying on a table in front of you, thinking it might jump up and shoot you, but you will readily call armed strangers (police) to your house at 3am if you hear someone breaking in and rely on them getting there in time to save your family from whatever fate awaits them at the hands of the criminals breaking in.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    12. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Gavrielkay · · Score: 1

      Hospitals and doctors operate under tons of regulation. Saying that other things also cause death is no reason to stop thinking about how to minimize shooting deaths.

    13. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

      You have to read very closely, but unintended fatal shootings in the US from 2005-2010 resulted in 3800 deaths, or roughly 760 per year. As a frame of reference, approximately 250,000 people die from medical mistakes at hospitals every year, yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors.

      Terrible analogy: millions of people are saved by hospitals each year, so there's a significant positive gain. Cowboy movies aside, guns don't "save" anywhere near that number. For example, even if you take every police killing as justified and "saving lives", a theory easily disputed, that's still only around 1200 killings a year. Each of those killings would need to save dozens of lives in order to achieve the same ratio as hospitals' unintentional deaths:lives saved in order for your analogy to work.

      Smart guns are a dumb idea trying to fix a problem that is much more effectively mitigated by proper education, training and proper storage of firearms (as evidenced by the fact that gun ownership is at an all time high, but accidental shootings are at nearly the lowest they have been ever). Smart guns tamper with and make less reliable the most effective self defense tool on the planet, potentially endangering the thousands of lives that are saved daily (every day hundreds of citizens use their concealed carry to protect themselves or others, and police officers do the same).

      Those two statements are contradictory. Smart guns prevent use by anyone other than the owner (at least temporarily, until a hack can be applied), eliminating both the possibility of small children playing with the gun and the possibility of a hostile person grabbing the gun away from your concealed carry citizen. The former can be avoided by properly locking up the gun (including removing ammunition and storing it separately, using a trigger lock and a safe, etc.), but then, properly locking up the gun makes it significantly less obtainable and therefore a less effective self defense tool, potentially endangering yada yada. In other words, your former "just lock it up" is belied by your latter "it must be immediately ready to fire at any second".

      But aside from that, "proper education, training, and storage" would do nothing to prevent the gun from being used after taken away by a hostile actor. While the smart gun does address that potential.

      And finally, the same argument - "it's a potential source of failure, making the gun less reliable" - was also used to argue against safeties, including drop safeties. Police initially refused to have drop safeties, because they were potential sources of failure. But now, they're widely accepted. There's no reason to dismiss smart guns as being forever unacceptable, merely because they're a potential source of failure, other than hypocrisy and fear of technology.

      As with any tool in this imperfect world, there are accidents, misuse and abuse, but we must weigh the cost vs benefit of guns, something that the fascist progressives and Dims refuse to do (and have prevented the FBI from collecting statistics on; there is a very cynical reason that you can't find statistics on incidents where citizens save lives or property using their lawfully owned firearm, you can only find "gun deaths").

      And this is simply an attempt to rewrite history. The NRA prevented the FBI from collecting statistics on firearm use, not progressives.

      As a disclaimer, I use guns and have no problems with them, and am a strong believer in the second amendment. I also think that anyone other than a soldier in a foreign country who carries a gun in their daily life is a coward and a reckless idiot.

    14. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The gun industry has also made changes. Most gun owners these days store their guns in a full size or compact safe, and it is standard practice to cable lock or trigger lock all firearms not stored in a safe. Those are now industry standards that have greatly reduced the number of accidental shootings.

      Just because doctors and hospitals are making an effort doesn't mean that it is effective. Maybe you missed the stat:

      Medical mistakes: 250,000 per year, the third leading cause of death and on the rise http://www.npr.org/sections/he...
      Accidental shootings: 760 per year and the lowest in history with record gun ownership levels

      Yet politicians want to force substandard, defective guns on the citizenry in the name of safety, but there is no outcry over the hundreds of thousands killed every year by doctors. It is not about the regulation or implementing more safety measures, it is about the political pressure to move in a direction.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    15. Re:Good enough for practical situations by wildchild07770 · · Score: 1

      "yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors" You haven't been paying attention to the news lately, have you?

    16. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      "Cowboy movies aside, guns don't "save" anywhere near that number. For example, even if you take every police killing as justified and "saving lives", a theory easily disputed, that's still only around 1200 killings a year. Each of those killings would need to save dozens of lives in order to achieve the same ratio as hospitals' unintentional deaths:lives saved in order for your analogy to work."

      Please cite your source. The problem is the FBI is not allowed to collect those stats because the Dims blocked them by statute because the actual numbers put their arguments squarely in the toilet. Also, killing one criminal does not only save just one life. The Florida night club shooter murdered 49 people and wounded 58 more. If he had been shot after his first victim, it would have saved 48 people. Beyond that, you are not factoring in all of the non leathal shootings and just the threat of lethal force (defensive brandishing, etc.) is enough to often deter a criminal and subdue them. And those numbers fail to consider all of the citizens who brandish or defend themselves with their firearms. You cowboy movie allusion only reveals you ignorance and how brainwashed you are on the subject.

      Lets look at some numbers that I was able to find:

      1200 police fatal shootings
      7,459 (est) police non-fatal shooting incidents (the ratio appears to be around 230/37)
      22,750 (at least) police brandishing/aiming firearms to arrest dangerous felon criminals (virtually every arrest)

      For police alone, the total number of lives saved is at least 2-3x the number of uses, or 94,200

      The number balloons when you consider the 68,000,000 armed citizens:

      258 fatal justified shootings by citizens of criminals
      2,500,000 times per year firearms are used by citizens non-fatally to ward off criminal action (verbal warning, brandishing, warning shot, non-fatal shooting). Exact numbers not available due to obstruction by Democrat gun grabbers who know the statistics will not help their case.

      If a life is saved or a woman not raped or a person not kidnapped or assaulted those are a lot of lives not lost or destroyed (ask any woman if she would rather be raped or murdered, either one is horrible) for every legal, defensive use of a firearm, you are looking at 2.5M lives affected. You don't get to say how many lives are saved because the gun grabber anti gun crowd has blocked our society from actually knowing the numbers.

      Another way to look at this is look at countries like the UK. They banned guns and their violent crime rate doubled the next year. Sure, gun fatalities were down, but if some guy breaks into your house and chops up your family with an axe or a machete, it is no help to you that he didn't use a gun...

      So if we start with the evidence that gun ownership halves violent crime rates, including murders, then if we take our current number of annual murders at 20,200 into account, gun ownership saves about 20,000 lives per year, not taking into account all of the rapes, beatings and other violence that is also stopped.

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    17. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      "I also think that anyone other than a soldier in a foreign country who carries a gun in their daily life is a coward and a reckless idiot."

      So you think all police, bodyguards, armored transport, armed security, bank guards, pawn shop owners, gem dealers, MPs, etc... are idiots? You might want to rethink your position.

              "the possibility of a hostile person grabbing the gun away from your concealed carry citizen."

      The number of times in the last 10 years where a gun has been grabbed away from a citizen are minuscule to the point of having a higher chance of being struck by lightning. Yes it is possible, but any idiot who grabs for a gun 99.99% of the time gets shot. Only in Hollywood does anyone grab for a gun.

              "but then, properly locking up the gun makes it significantly less obtainable and therefore a less effective self defense tool, potentially endangering yada yada. In other words, your former "just lock it up" is belied by your latter "it must be immediately ready to fire at any second"."

      There are methods for storing guns that allow for rapid retrieval. If you actually owned and used guns you would know this. Several types of rapid handgun safes are designed to be kept nearby in the home with loaded handguns. They can be accessed in about a second by anyone who knows the combination, in complete darkness. So no, locking your gun up does not make it inaccessible for self defense.

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    18. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Not enough regulations, apparently, based on the fact that their mistakes are now the third leading cause of death in the US...

      "We should be focused on how to minimize all deaths." FTFY

      OK, I will start: lets execute every violent rapist, murderer and attempted murderer (just because they suck at it doesn't let them off the hook). I just reduced the homicide rate in the US by 60% (the approximate recidivism rate) and cut the costs to our penal system by about the same amount. (I just saved about 12,000 lives per year)

      I will go again: automatic death penalty for anyone who uses a gun in the commission of a rape, robbery or murder. (I just saved another 6,000 lives per year).

      If we are serious about saving innocent life, that is the way to go, not blaming an inanimate object for the actions of self willed individuals.

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    19. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      You don't evidently know what hyperbole is, and you certainly aren't smart enough to figure out that guns aren't the problem; idiots like you are.

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    20. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      the most effective self defense tool on the planet

      And yet the US homicide rate is still 3-10x higher than every other Western country, despite almost uniquely broad access to such an "effective" tool.

      I hear a lot from gun owners denying the need for harm minimisation, but never anything more than vague claims about supposed "benefits" that make guns worth the cost. You're happy to cite statistics showing there are worse problems than accidental shootings (always glossing over the vastly higher intentional shootings rate) - but when it comes to figures supporting the purpose of gun ownership, suddenly there must be a conspiracy involved to make them look bad.

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    21. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      If gun control were the answer to reducing crime and murders, then why are the liberal gun control bastions the murder capitols of the US: Chicago 500 murders, New York 419 murders, Detroit 386, Philadelphia 331, LA 299, Baltimore 219, New Orleans 193, Washington DC 135?

      As it stands, the US has a murder rate of 4.88/100,000. I could cut that to under 2/100,000 if we just executed convicted murderers, rapists and attempted murderers like we used to (recidivism/escalation rate is around 65%).

      Most western European countries are/were homogeneous Europeans. If you look at the Caucasian murder rate in the US it is comparable to Western Europe or better. For better or worse, we have imported many immigrants from other regions and cultures that are much more violent and they are committing murders at higher rates (the stats are there, draw your own conclusions).

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    22. Re:Good enough for practical situations by pz · · Score: 1

      Oh please -- 32 thousand percent?

      Let's make a fair comparison: what is the percentage of interactions where one person is pointing a gun at another person that results in a death? That's a far more reasonable comparison when talking about medical mistakes which require active interaction between (at least) two people, one of which has the ability to do mortal harm on the other. While I don't have the statistic for such gun interactions, but I'm pretty sure the pendulum would swing the other way.

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    23. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Medical mistakes per year: 250,000 / accidental shootings per year 760. You tell me which is the bigger problem.

      There are around 2,500,000 lawful uses of firearms by citizens in the US every year to prevent crime and save lives, so accidental death risk to lifesaving use ratio is 0.03%. We can use that number if you like, or that there are about 68,000,000 gun owners in the US so the irresponsible gun owner ratio is 0.001%. How about that number?

      OTOH, there are 916,000 actively practicing physicians, so in a single year, the risk of a physician killing someone by medical mistake is right at 27%. Don't like those odds? How about this, there are 5,564 hospitals in the US, so the odds of a hospital killing a patient in a year is 4,493%.

      Doctors and hospitals save lives as well, but so do guns, a fact that the liberal mind can't seem to fathom (likely a side effect of inexperience coupled with coddling by society). However, they firmly understand the concept of calling 911 to get armed strangers (police) to come and save them from criminals (if the criminals haven't already murdered them and fled 20 minutes before officers arrive). The question is, do you want unarmed police officers or armed police officers to come deal with your intruder. You really want that gun to come and save you at 3am with an intruder in your house. The cop is just the vehicle for that gun to arrive and be used. Myself and all other gun owners just don't like the delay so we cut out the middle man and own our own gun and get training ourselves.

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    24. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Gavrielkay · · Score: 1

      I never said I had only one focus, or even that I paid that much attention to the issue. But pointing out other problems doesn't invalidate the problem of accidental and felonious gun use. We can debate hundreds of solutions to thousands of problems if we admit there are problems. I think there is room for improvement on gun safety in America. There's tons of room improvement on other issues as well.

    25. Re:Good enough for practical situations by umafuckit · · Score: 1

      Those should be weeded out, as that this person wants to off themselves, and would do it by most any means. It isn't an unintended death, the gun is working properly, but the method doesn't matter, it is what the person wanted to do.

      I'm inclined to agree: suicide is a different issue. That said, I think the reason they leave that number in is because having a quick and easy method to kill yourself lowers the bar and makes it easier and more likely to happen.

    26. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Also, countries with much lower rates of gun ownership can match or exceed suicide rates (see Japan). So it's not the method of suicide that's the problem, it's whatever causes the mindset.

      But this isn't too big of a problem because the gun control activists like to compare us to other "developed *western* countries" so they can conveniently leave out countries like Japan and South Korea and claim our suicide rates are high exclusively because of guns. (See Vox's video on gun violence)

    27. Re:Good enough for practical situations by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Those should be weeded out, as that this person wants to off themselves, and would do it by most any means.

      Except they don't. Suicides are rarely death by any means and the vast majority are momentary lapses of reason which many people live to regret. Go look up some studies to see how the absence of guns actually makes suicide rates go down. Sure hospitalisation rates for attempted suicides go up, but that's what you get when people realise they made a mistake.

    28. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Johann+Public · · Score: 1

      wtf I love LEOs now

    29. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      And I too am happy to look at solving the problems of accidental gun use (felonious gun use is a consequence of a free society, as is felonious car use, felonious knife use etc. the only solution there is to make the penalty so high that no one does it, and/or execute everyone who does so that there are no repeat offenders.)

      As far as solving accidental gun use, any reasonable person should be able to agree that the solution to that relatively small problem (760 deaths per year out of 330,000,000 people is very small) must not result in higher overall deaths. You can check my other posts on this thread for the sources of the stats, but every year guns are fired in around 100,000 instances by police (40,000) or private citizens (60,000) to save lives (sometimes only one life, sometimes 50 or more lives are on the line) at either criminals or animals. Smart guns might reduce the accidental shootings by 50% generously (since there are a few intended users who are unsafe and result in some of those shootings.) So smart guns may save around 350 lives per year. In order for that to be a net positive for society, the failure to fire rate for the smart features of smart guns must be small enough to merit their adoption. If since guns are used 100,000 times per year and lets assume they save an average of 5 lives (sometimes only one, sometimes more than 50), guns save around 500,000 lives per year when used defensively by police and private citizens.

      If the failure to fire rate for smart guns is 5% (right now it is actually around 20% or more, depending on the model; it is 100% if someone uses an RF jammer on the gun mentioned in the article), then smart guns will cause the unnecessary deaths of around 25,000 people each year. And that is at a 5% failure rate. You can see how people who rely on guns for their jobs and personal protection despise smart guns as a stupid idea poorly thought through and never implemented well. You are looking at trading around 350 lives for 25,000 lives. By the way, those 350 lives could more easily be saved by teaching gun safety in schools (why not, we teach safe sex in school) gun safes, cable and trigger locks along with stiff penalties for not properly storing your firearm. Smart guns, at the end of the day, are a solution to a problem better solved with other methods.

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    30. Re: Good enough for practical situations by chihowa · · Score: 1

      Physicians are heavily regulated by a private organization composed entirely of physicians. We could just let guns be "heavily regulated" by the NRA and make the comparison complete. ;)

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    31. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

      "Cowboy movies aside, guns don't "save" anywhere near that number. For example, even if you take every police killing as justified and "saving lives", a theory easily disputed, that's still only around 1200 killings a year. Each of those killings would need to save dozens of lives in order to achieve the same ratio as hospitals' unintentional deaths:lives saved in order for your analogy to work."

      Please cite your source.

      http://killedbypolice.net/.

      Your turn:

      The problem is the FBI is not allowed to collect those stats because the Dims blocked them by statute because the actual numbers put their arguments squarely in the toilet.

      The entire US code is available online. Please cite this alleged statute.

      Lets look at some numbers that I was able to find:

      1200 police fatal shootings 7,459 (est) police non-fatal shooting incidents (the ratio appears to be around 230/37) 22,750 (at least) police brandishing/aiming firearms to arrest dangerous felon criminals (virtually every arrest)

      Please cite your source. And you're begging the question with that last statistic - even assuming that police are pointing guns at people 22,750 times a year, who's to say that they were at all dangerous, or that even a single life was at risk?

      Another way to look at this is look at countries like the UK. They banned guns and their violent crime rate doubled the next year.

      I'd ask for a citation here, but we both know this is a blatant lie and you'll just delete this paragraph from any reply to this post. But in case anyone else is reading this post and is potentially misled, here is a chart of violent crime in the UK, from the UK's office for national statistics. Violent crime peaked in 1995, the year before the handgun ban, and has declined almost every year since. It never "doubled" as you claim. There was nothing true whatsoever in your post, and you should be ashamed to have submitted that made up tripe while simultaneously demanding citation of sources.

    32. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Do you have any evidence that these cities wouldn't actually be worse without gun control? Or even statistics on comparative homicides per capita, rather than absolutes picked from large cities? Ideally with some attempt to control for exacerbating factors like socio-economic index - poor populations in ghettos are a lot more likely to experience violent crime than rich suburbs, after all.

      The US rate of 4.88 is nearly 5x that of Australia, where our firearm homicide rate has roughly halved since we banned most guns in the mid-90s (note that murders by knives have increased slightly in that time, but at a much slower rate). And in Egypt it's 1.2 per 100,000, while in Japan it's a mere 0.3, suggesting that race may not be the factor you seem to think - more likely cultural factors and poverty (access to guns just raises the stakes).

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    33. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Regarding Democrats blocking the collection of accurate statistics on defensive use of firearms, I am my own source. I watched and listened to it happen in the 90s during the first two years of the Clinton presidency when the AWB was passed.

      Regarding the use of firearms to save lives: https://www.gunowners.org/sk08...

      Regarding police using firearms in the US, it is standard procedure to perform all felony arrests at gunpoint. You can use Google yourself if you are that interested.

      Regarding the UK violence stat, sorry it didn't quite double, it went from 11% to 18%.
      http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ-K...

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    34. Re: Good enough for practical situations by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Bazookas for everybody!

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    35. Re:Good enough for practical situations by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

      Regarding Democrats blocking the collection of accurate statistics on defensive use of firearms, I am my own source. I watched and listened to it happen in the 90s during the first two years of the Clinton presidency when the AWB was passed.

      You: "the Dims blocked them by statute!"
      Me: "What statute?"
      You: "[shuffle shuffle] I mean, I totally remember it..."

      Regarding the UK violence stat, sorry it didn't quite double, it went from 11% to 18%. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ-K...

      You: "The UK banned guns and their violent crime rate doubled the next year!"
      Me: "No, it didn't."
      You: "[shuffle shuffle] Well, not the violent crime rate. Just the homicide rate. And not the next year, but 6 years later, during a massive global recession. And not doubled, but a 7% rise, which then fell when the economy improved 6 years later to the pre-recession, pre-gun ban levels."

      Just as a tip, you'd gain a lot more credibility if, instead of shuffling around, you actually admitted that you were wrong in your earlier post.

    36. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Ok, since you seem genuinely interested, here is my recollection:

      the Democrats realized when Bill Clinton got elected in 1992 (and they held the house and senate for two years) that the general public was comfortable with guns, and inherently understood that in the vast majority of cases, guns are used defensively by the 60,000,000 legal gun owners in the US. The Democratic party was focused on as one of their top goals, to confiscate all guns. They started in 1992 by shifting funding within the CDC to research "gun injury and deaths" to support this cause. They disingenuously did not use the FBI, because the statistics the FBI would have collected would have included the legal aspects of gun use, whereas the CDC was tasked with looking solely at the risks of "death" which might be a good thing (if a felon is killed to protect innocents) while ignoring any mitigating circumstances, legality or life saved.

      The 1993 report that the CDC came out with was flagrantly anti gun, and with extremely poor methodology (they stated among other things that your risk of dying from a gun increased in homes that had a gun, which clearly makes sense, because a gun is typically the most effective killing tool in the home), but did not differentiate between criminals and victims, did not look at even something as simple as checking if lawful inhabitants risk of violent death went up or down with having a gun in the home or not, they basically ignored other means of death in non-gun owning homes, etc... There were many other problems like that with the study, and it was almost universally panned, except on the far progressive left, where it was cited time and again as justification for gun control laws at the federal, state and local levels.

      After the the assault weapons ban (which was finally signed into law in 1994, even though those weapons accounted for less than 1% of murders, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... while cheap handguns accounted for something like 25% of murders) the Democrats lost the house and the senate in historic proportions in 1994. (I still remember that the 1994 AWB or Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 contained the language blocking the FBI from collecting and reporting defensive gun use statistics, but I can't find info on that, though it is possible that it was another bill, that was a long time ago.) The Republicans then worked on and passed a bill in 1996 that blocked any further funding of the CDC on gun related deaths and took away the funding that they had pissed away on the "gun deaths" study that they had done in 1993.

      I have made dozens of posts on this thread, the links to the other sources are there if you actually care (rather than just trolling). Feel free to read them.

      7/11=64% increase in homicide rates (huge jump by any measure, sorry if it wasn't quite 100%, I am not a walking encyclopedia). If it was due to the recession, then why didn't the US see the same over 60% rise in homicide rates? Most argue that the rates fell down because the UK made massive increases to the size of their police force after the spike in homicides.

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    37. Re:Good enough for practical situations by skam240 · · Score: 1

      Simple facts. Other Western countries have much lower murder rates rates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) despite having far less guns for citizens to defend themselves with precisely because they have so few guns that criminals have a hard time getting their hands on them. Their gun violence rates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) are vastly lower as well of course.

      All our guns don't make us safer and probably make us less so.

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    38. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Caucasian committed murder rates is right in line with other european countries https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...

      Whites killed ~2700, making the white murder rate ~1 in 100,000 which is actually below several western European countries, including France.

      The sad truth no one wants to talk about is we have a violent sub culture within a small minority in the US committing a lot of murders and it is not the Asians or the Hispanics. It has nothing to do with guns, it has everything to do with culture.

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    39. Re:Good enough for practical situations by skam240 · · Score: 1

      Oh, you mean the the people who were first slaves and then kept in a subservient position due to government mandated segregationist policies?

      When you shit on people long enough they become shitty. It takes a long, long time to change cultural values after all that.

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    40. Re:Good enough for practical situations by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Oh, you mean the the people who were first slaves and then kept in a subservient position due to government mandated segregationist policies?

      When you shit on people long enough they become shitty. It takes a long, long time to change cultural values after all that.

      This does't invalidate my earlier point that even with 300,000,000 guns in the US, the white majority (and other minorities for that mater) commit no more murders than Western Europe on average, which blows the earlier assertion that the murder rate in the US is about guns to pieces. I assume that you now realize that guns have nothing to do with the murder rate in the US since you didn't try to refute my facts. Nice try on changing the subject though.

      Furthermore, from the end of the civil war through the end of the 1950s (about 90 years) black crime rates were comparable or lower to the rest of society while poor blacks and poor whites committed no more crime than other segments of society. Their current murder commission rate has nothing to do with slavery, it has to do with welfare which has lead to the destruction of the nuclear family which has lead to the rise of gangs and the thug culture which is where most of the murders are coming from.

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  4. Smart guns & communism by DaHat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've long thought the two rather similar.

    In theory, both are great ideas... in reality, no one can ever seem to get it right.

    Don't worry though... THIS time, THIS time will be different! All of those previous attempts... those weren't real smart guns/communism!

    1. Re: Smart guns & communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We don't have to "believe" it. Its on the books snowflake. Stay the fuck out of a stranger's house if you value your life. Pretty simple to understand.

    2. Re: Smart guns & communism by ichthus · · Score: 1

      The important thing is that intruders believe the home owner has a right to shoot them.

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    3. Re:Smart guns & communism by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      In theory, both are great ideas... in reality, no one can ever seem to get it right.

      Communism was never a great idea; it is probably one of the worst ideas ever.

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    4. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      In theory, both are great ideas... in reality, no one can ever seem to get it right.

      I don't think smart guns are impossible (unlike successful large-scale communism by average humans). I do think that ensuring the smart locking system does not reduce the reliability of a possibly life-saving tool is really, really hard.

      Personally, I trust the police to validate the reliability of their firearms quite well, so I'll be happy to buy and use smart guns as soon as I see all of the police departments switch to using them. Police officers are not infrequently shot with their own guns, so they should be anxious to switch... as soon as they're sufficiently reliable.

      Which, as I said, is a very hard problem to solve.

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    5. Re: Smart guns & communism by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      Really? What do you believe?

      Do I have to have a fist fight with an intruder irst? I think I'd probably lose and know my wife with severe MS would most definitely lose.

      Or do I have to record myself saying "stop! I have a gun" then prove they understood the warning before I can shoot (while hoping they stand still so I can go through whatever dumbass checklist you think I should complete before firing)?

    6. Re:Smart guns & communism by G00F · · Score: 1

      Most crimes where "guns" are used, the gun is never fired. I quoted guns, because alleged and fake guns are often used.

      So a stolen smart gun, while unable to kill, will still result in crimes, including rape, and even death by other means. (I just watched a solved cold case type show where a mother and baby was lured with a gun to the woods, gun jammed but was promptly beaten to death with it, baby left to die by the elements. And lots of others where intruders get in by use of gun and kill the victim in others ways)

      Smart guns is a trap, of following one logical argument after another, where all the facts used to prop it up are not in fact facts.

      --
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    7. Re:Smart guns & communism by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      Hmm..just thinking about this...how easy would it be to let someone else shoot the gun? Can it be set for multiple people to be authorized?

      I mean, I'd want my significant other and kids (when old enough and trustworthy) to be able to use them....or what about at the gun range when you and friends or other folks there, want to swap guns to try out which I do all the time...?

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    8. Re: Smart guns & communism by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      Yeah, I don't get people like the original poster.

      I mean, I get it...if someone doesn't like guns and doesn't want to own and keep them in their house, more power to them.

      But there is no reason at all for an intruder to be in MY house, and given that an increasing number of break ins these days are home invasions with armed nasty folks coming in armed to do harm, well, the first thing they will hear to know I'm home is the first shots.

      I keep my weapons all loaded and chambered and I do not have to unlock them or get them out of a safe...I pick it up whatever room I'm in...take the safety off (if it has one) and boom.

      The nice thing about New Orleans cops is...if you shoot the intruder and he somehow happens to make it out your front door before dying, they'll usually help carry the body back inside your house before the pictures, so that things reporting and all goes a bit easier and cleaner to get you past all the paperwork.

      :)

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    9. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who cares? This tech will protect home owners from escalating the level of violence against a burglar.

      You mean "protect burglars from home owners", of course. And, obviously, burglars already have a sure-fire way to protect themselves: not breaking into homes. And note that smart guns that work correctly won't protect burglars from homeowners.

      Simply breaking into a place shouldn't be a death sentence.

      I actually agree with this. The problem is that it's very difficult to know what the burglar's intentions are. If I could be certain that all the guy wanted was my TV, and that if he got it no one would get hurt, I'd help him carry it out. My TV isn't worth anyone's life, and anyway, I have insurance.

      But if someone breaks into my house in the middle of the night, I can't know what they intend, other than that it's very unlikely that they intend to be nice to me or my family. So unless they can convince me pretty quickly that they don't intend to do my family any harm, I will be aiming a gun at them. Whether or not I pull the trigger will depend on what they do next. Raise their hands, turn around slowly and leave the house the way they came? Fine. I'll do my best to give the police an excellent description. Make any move that seems aggressive or threatening? I'm shooting first and dealing with the outcome -- which will probably include a lifetime of regret -- later.

      A 15 year-old kid was shot in my neighborhood a few years ago after walking through an unlocked sliding glass door. No thinking person would ever believe that he deserved to be executed for that.

      Deserved? Absolutely not. Even if he intended to rob the place. But neither does the homeowner deserve to be in fear for his life and that of his family... none of them did anything wrong at all! As for the young burglar, it's a tragedy, but the tragedy is not just that he got shot, it's also that he chose to commit a violent felony. He didn't deserve to die, but he made the choice to place his life in serious jeopardy, by threatening the lives of others. Or appearing to, at least, which is the same thing in the eyes of the law.

      I'm assuming that it was deliberate here, and not some sort of accident, of course. If it was an accident, that's also a tragedy, but it's way, way down the list of the ways that 15 year olds accidentally die.

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    10. Re:Smart guns & communism by s1d3track3D · · Score: 1

      Smart guns & communism

      Smart guns, Communism & Windows

    11. Re: Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

      Too many Republicans believe that you have the right to shoot an intruder.

      I'm not a Republican, but I believe I have the right to shoot anyone who threatens my life or my family's lives. Do you honestly disagree with that? The right of self-defense is the most natural of natural rights.

      I'll grant that an intruder may not intend harm, but I'm pretty certain he doesn't intend kindness. He's already demonstrated the willingness to commit a violent felony against me, and if I wait too long to see what he's going to do, I may lose the opportunity to stop him.

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    12. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      Hmm..just thinking about this...how easy would it be to let someone else shoot the gun? Can it be set for multiple people to be authorized?

      There's no reason it couldn't. But so far we don't have any smart guns that work reliably for one user.

      what about at the gun range when you and friends or other folks there, want to swap guns to try out which I do all the time...?

      Yeah, you'd probably want to be able to disable the locking feature.

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    13. Re:Smart guns & communism by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you'd probably want to be able to disable the locking feature.

      Yep..and really at that point, what's the point of having the 'smart' feature? I'd think a LOT of people would want to leave it 'unlocked' all the time....or, would it be mandated, etc?

      This smart feature causes more problems that it solves IMHO.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    14. Re: Smart guns & communism by OffaMyLawn · · Score: 1

      Generally the idea is to not leave it on the coffee table.

    15. Re:Smart guns & communism by ScentCone · · Score: 1

      That would also enable the use of the gun as a deterrent rather as the judge, jury, and executioner.

      What? So, if the gun works when and as the owner wants it to, you consider that a risk to the lives of the people who do home invasions. But if people's guns are hobbled to the point that they can't work well enough to hurt the person invading the home, then that's going to be a good deterrent ... how, exactly? That's not a deterrent, it's an invitation to break in armed with nothing but a pointy stick, because the homeowner can't hurt you in self defense with the electronically broken gun.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    16. Re: Smart guns & communism by lgw · · Score: 1

      Or do I have to record myself saying "stop! I have a gun" then prove they understood the warning before I can shoot

      The guy you're responding too may be full of shit, but you really want that outcome. If you actually have to shoot someone you'll be playing courtroom roulette, both criminal and civil. Vastly better to scare the guy away (which is why IMO a pump-action shotgun is the best home defense weapon - it's multilingual!).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    17. Re:Smart guns & communism by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      In most developed countries it's very rare for burglary to involve violence. Thieves generally try to avoid meeting the owner, for their own safety, but if they do they are usually unarmed.

      What is it about the US that makes it so dangerous? Other countries have high gun ownership...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re: Smart guns & communism by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      In most European countries you have to use reasonable force. If they are unarmed, if they try to leave when discovered, you can't try to kill them. You can't even attack them, you have to let them go, even if they are carrying your stuff.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    19. Re: Smart guns & communism by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

      Depends on the State.

      Break into a home in my State and if the homeowner doesn't shoot you, the neighbors probably will.

      Don't want to get shot ?

      Don't terrorize people by breaking into their homes. Not about to live the rest of my life wondering if you'll come back better prepared because I was nice enough to let you live. ( Tip: Dead burglers are not a future concern )

      Act like a thug, will get treated like one. Simple as that.

    20. Re: Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      In most European countries you have to use reasonable force. If they are unarmed, if they try to leave when discovered, you can't try to kill them.

      This is the case in the US as well, mostly. Even Castle Doctrine laws don't give you carte blanche to kill; all they do is say that if someone breaks into your home, your actions are presumed to be reasonable. That means that in order to convict you of murder, the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that no reasonable man would have done what you did, in addition to proving the other elements of the crime.

      In practice, attempts to prosecute homeowners' use of deadly force in their homes against intruders are extremely rare in Castle Doctrine states. Mostly homeowners are only prosecuted when they do something egregious, like shoot the burglar in the back as he's running across the lawn away from the house.

      You can't even attack them, you have to let them go, even if they are carrying your stuff.

      Every state in the US would allow you to use non-lethal force to keep them from stealing your stuff. Only Texas allows the use of lethal force.

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    21. Re:Smart guns & communism by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

      I'll buy one when I get to wear that cool Judge Dredd helmet , but not before then!
      "Incendiary!"

    22. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      If someone breaks into my house at night, I don't think I want to rely on it being "very rare" that he has violent intentions. This is why burglary is classified as a violent felony (many states use the term "forcible felony").

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    23. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      The problem is that it's very difficult to know what the burglar's intentions are.

      Then start a dialog.

      If I can be certain that he's unarmed, I definitely will. If I can't be certain of that, speaking may well make me a target.

      There are no hard-and-fast rules in situations like this. It's always a matter of doing the best you can based on what you know and what options you have. The preferred response (the one I teach in my gun classes) is to gather your family in a room with only one entrance, cover the door with your gun, and call 911. Let the police come deal with the intruder. But if that's not possible, you have to do what you have to do. Shooting another human being should always be the last resort... but it's better than allowing you or a family member to be killed.

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    24. Re:Smart guns & communism by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Windows are great. They let light in and keep rain out. What have you got against windows?

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    25. Re: Smart guns & communism by lgw · · Score: 1

      Any time you shoot someone, no matter how justified, you're still playing courtroom roulette - and those 12 jurors could decide anything (not to mention the wrongful death lawsuit). And, no, that burglar you scared off won't be coming back any time soon (and especially the drunk teen who stumbled into the wrong house won't be coming back, or all the other scenarios). Heck, just for the cleaning bill you're better off not needing to shoot.

      You seem eager to kill someone. That's a bad place for your head to be.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    26. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Raise their hands, turn around slowly and leave the house the way they came? Fine. I'll do my best to give the police an excellent description.

      Uh, no. Get down on their knees and wait until the police come as you keep them under control, yes. You are simply allowing them to go on the the next house, making you a passive accomplice in the next crime.

      Utter nonsense.

      Oh, I have no problem with holding the intruder for the police if I can do so in safety... but that's a really tough thing to do. Not only might the intruder be able to do something, but more than one homeowner has been holding a gun on a perp, and been shot to death by the police when they arrived.

      In one example, from a few years ago, the guy sent his family into the yard and his wife called 911. She told the dispatcher that her husband had the intruder at gunpoint, and described in detail their location, clothing, etc. The dispatcher passed all of that along to the police officers responding. When the police arrived, the wife reiterated all of this information to them directly before they went in. But when they walked in and saw a man holding a gun, they shot him, putting six bullets into him before he could hit the ground. Oops.

      Nope, unless it's absolutely certain that I can hold the perp and turn him over to the police safely, I want him to run away. And I'm a former police officer, who actually received training in how to safely disarm and secure a prisoner.

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    27. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you'd probably want to be able to disable the locking feature.

      Yep..and really at that point, what's the point of having the 'smart' feature?

      Keeping it locked when you don't have a need to pass it around, obviously.

      This smart feature causes more problems that it solves IMHO.

      And what are those problems it causes? (Assuming a highly reliable and effective implementation. Which is very, very hard.)

      --
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    28. Re:Smart guns & communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Smart guns, Communism & Windows

      Who told you the title to my Ayn Rand/Bill gates as detectives fanfic?

    29. Re:Smart guns & communism by Evil+Kerek · · Score: 1

      Yeah..well...sorry..breaking into my house is a death sentence. They just endangered my family which I find totally unacceptable. They picked the wrong house - I'm well armed and I have no qualms about how old you are, why you are doing this, how you were an abused child, [insert excuse for being a douchbag]. Hope they said goodbye to your friends and family. Actually, I don't care. I'm way over the way we treat criminals these days - we're more worried about their rights than their victims rights.

    30. Re:Smart guns & communism by Evil+Kerek · · Score: 1

      Show me some numbers to backup your statements. You're stating a supposition that the US compared to some unknown countries that have the same level of gun ownership (what country is that, anyway?) that there is a disparate level of violence in burglaries.

      I'm not sure there ARE many countries that have the level of personal gun ownership we have.

      Without some stats to back this up, I call BS on your statement.

    31. Re:Smart guns & communism by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I don't have any numbers, I'm describing the methodology.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    32. Re:Smart guns & communism by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      And what are those problems it causes? (Assuming a highly reliable and effective implementation. Which is very, very hard.)

      Making assumptions causes problems. Those problems are caused because there are no highly reliable and effective implementations of this technology, and there aren't going to be as long as firearms work the way they work now. Maybe someday we'll go to electrically triggered firearms, or flechette throwers, and then the mechanisms will change sufficiently for such a safety lockout to be meaningful.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    33. Re:Smart guns & communism by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The preferred response (the one I teach in my gun classes) is to gather your family in a room with only one entrance, cover the door with your gun, and call 911.

      If I had a panic room I might consider it, but that's quite expensive and I'm not going to trap myself and the ones I love in a room that could become a crematorium if someone drops a cigarette on the carpet. When seconds count, the police are over ten minutes away in the best case, and my road is paved! Plenty of people who live within shootin' distance of me live on dirt.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    34. Re:Smart guns & communism by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      In one example, from a few years ago, the guy sent his family into the yard and his wife called 911. She told the dispatcher that her husband had the intruder at gunpoint, and described in detail their location, clothing, etc. The dispatcher passed all of that along to the police officers responding. When the police arrived, the wife reiterated all of this information to them directly before they went in. But when they walked in and saw a man holding a gun, they shot him, putting six bullets into him before he could hit the ground. Oops.

      This recent incident with the Canadian woman really puts it all into perspective. I'm not calling the cops for anything, and if I do, I'm not going to be even vaguely nearby when they show up. When I see cops, I start looking for cover, in case they mistake me for a violent felon. They don't ask questions, they just start shooting, because of this bullshit "war on cops" rhetoric that they feed the kids in community college to become a cop. In reality, cop deaths are near a historic low, but cop murders of citizens are rising year-on-year. Then they act surprised when people shoot at them. Stop fighting a war against The People and maybe that will change.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    35. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      You're pretending that the entire world is full of scheming drug-addled monsters

      Nonsense. Clearly the world is not full of scheming drug-addled monsters. Criminals are rare. That doesn't mean they don't exist, though.

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    36. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      We need to send a few more people with your attitude to prison, IMO. I'm all in favor of legitimate self defense, and I fully support giving the homeowner the benefit of the doubt, but your attitude fails the basic test of civilization.

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    37. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      To be clear, I'm not saying you should be imprisoned for having your attitude or speaking about it, but for killing when it's clearly unnecessary.

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    38. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      The preferred response (the one I teach in my gun classes) is to gather your family in a room with only one entrance, cover the door with your gun, and call 911.

      If I had a panic room I might consider it, but that's quite expensive and I'm not going to trap myself and the ones I love in a room that could become a crematorium if someone drops a cigarette on the carpet. When seconds count, the police are over ten minutes away in the best case, and my road is paved! Plenty of people who live within shootin' distance of me live on dirt.

      If a room in your house is likely to be a crematorium in the event of a fire, you have another problem. Every room where people live should have windows that enable escape (building codes have required this for decades), and if they're too high you should keep a fire escape ladder handy (e.g. this).

      Also, obviously, if you smell smoke it's time to get out and if that means shooting the intruders, so be it.

      --
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    39. Re:Smart guns & communism by swillden · · Score: 1

      And what are those problems it causes? (Assuming a highly reliable and effective implementation. Which is very, very hard.)

      Making assumptions causes problems. Those problems are caused because there are no highly reliable and effective implementations of this technology, and there aren't going to be as long as firearms work the way they work now. Maybe someday we'll go to electrically triggered firearms, or flechette throwers, and then the mechanisms will change sufficiently for such a safety lockout to be meaningful.

      Nicely dodged.

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    40. Re: Smart guns & communism by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      I pick it up whatever room I'm in...

      So, does this mean you leave one in every room? So what if the burglar picks up the kitchen's gun before going to see you in your bedroom, and shoot you before you're awake enough to pick up the bedroom's gun?

    41. Re: Smart guns & communism by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      If you kill in home burgler while they are inside your house in texas, there is no court case involved.

      I prefer not to kill someone. That is why I lock my doors.

    42. Re:Smart guns & communism by s1d3track3D · · Score: 1

      Windows are great. They let light in and keep rain out. What have you got against windows?

      ;) I am of course referring to Microsoft Windows - In theory, a great idea... in reality, they haven't ever got it right

  5. If the gun fired, the secure owner fired the shot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Mr X, this gun can only fire if you pull the trigger. You're going away for a long time."

    "But I wasn't even in the city!"

    "The gun says you were. GPS tracking confirms."

  6. Keep the honest, honest. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    Most security features on personal items at best would be made to keep the honest, honest.

    You lock the door on your car, not because it is not impossible for someone to get in. But for that casual person who sees that you accidentally left your wallet there. will try to see if the door is locked. If so, they will not try further.

    The smart gun, can't be unhackable. Because the core technology of the gun is well understood, and designed to be reliable and easy to maintain. However the smart gun can prevent the person from taking someones gun and then shooting the owner with his own weapon. Or in cases of trying to resell the weapon via legit sources, a hacked gun, will scream that it is hot, and probably will not get sold for clean money.

    Also chances are getting caught with a Hacked Smart Gun, will probably get you much more trouble.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      However the smart gun can prevent the person from taking someones gun and then shooting the owner with his own weapon.

      Seems like it's something the police should have. So if someone looks like they're grabbing for an officer's gun, they no longer have an excuse to pump him or her full of bullets.

    2. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      If people are honest, do they need someone to keep them honest?

      If I see a wallet on the seat of a car with an unlocked door, or even an open car window, I am not going to steal it.

      If I found a wallet, say on the sidewalk, I would make an effort to try to locate the owner.

      Surely I am not the only one. There must be others.

      The real question is: what if the wallet had, say, $100,000 in it. I think I might just leave it where I found it. But the real test comes if I ever find myself in that situation.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    3. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by bjdevil66 · · Score: 1

      Also chances are getting caught with a Hacked Smart Gun, will probably get you much more trouble.

      This statement exposes the deeper motivation that is the fear in the hearts of many gun activists: "Wait - So, you'll want to punish owners of hacked smart guns? Why? How is that any different than owning guns without safety features? Should it be illegal to even own a gun without smart features? How far will the government go to keep us safe? It'll always be pushing for taking freedom away! Freedom! FREEDOM!"

      What seems perfectly reasonable to one person will always sound like another inch down the proverbial slippery slope - because of their personal biases.

      (Disclaimer: I own multiple firearms, including high-powered hunting rifles and handguns (no assault rifle - those are just for fun and machismo); In my opinion, "smart" guns are a good-intentioned but "dumb" idea.)

    4. Re: Keep the honest, honest. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Kids who grow up around guns arent the ones that have accidents. Your fundimental lack of understanding your fellow citizen is astounding.

    5. Re: Keep the honest, honest. by Mr307 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fired my first gun at the age of 9, owned my first gun at 11 and was allowed to take it out and use it anytime I wanted unsupervised.

      Was taught some very simple rules about guns and have followed them my whole life, without exception ever.

      1. Treat a gun as if its always loaded, even if you just unloaded it yourself, you act as if it is still loaded.
      2. Never ever point a gun at anything you dont actually intend to shoot.
      3. Finger off the trigger.
      4. Identify risk down range.

      There are more rules, but good teachers and role models make a big difference too.

    6. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Well keep the Honest, honest is the phrase. It is more correctly, most dishonest people are rather lazy, so in a movement of temptation any little excuse normally will stop them.

      Now these people who commit the petty crime of getting that $20 out of your wallet. Are often under hard times, and needs it for drugs, or more important reasons. When you are poor $20 can allow you to eat for a day.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    7. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by cogeek · · Score: 1

      I question your knowledge of weapons as a self-proclaimed owner of multiple firearms. There's no such thing as an "assault rifle." The AR on the big, bad, scary black rifle stands for Armalite Rifle, not Assault Rifle. And my 30-06 hunting rifle has a longer range and greater stopping and penetrating power than my AR-15. Should the 30-06 be reclassified as an Assault Rifle or is it safe because it's painted with camouflage pattern rather than black?

    8. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Well for some areas if you are caught with a gun, with the safety features disabled, you are already in trouble as you are caring a weapon with the intent to harm.

      The biggest problem I see today with the Gun debate, is how both sides dropped personal gun safety. 20 years ago the NRA would admonish a picture post of a person pointing the gun at an other person even if unloaded and just for a joke. They were involved in teaching Gun safety as part of how to use the gun. Trying to make sure the people who chose to have guns know how to use them and respect them properly.

      This departure and move towards nearly an all political motivation has created the problem where the Government is trying to step in in increase Gun Safety, as people are getting hurt from unsafe usages of guns. Then the NRA is fighting this government control, recruiting people who are not big into safety and just wants to have guns without the responsibility of having them.

      I myself am not a gun owner. I don't have any problem with people with people who are, a gun is just tool that I currently do not need or plan to use. I have been trained sense I was a kid how to use them and care for them. So I am not afraid of them. But people are getting guns now, not as a tool, but as a source of power, used to intimidate people, and to gain a false sense of self control. Making the person very dangerous. We really need to push gun safety as a national habit, much more then a gun control law. Because most people legally own a gun, until they use it illegally.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    9. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by bjdevil66 · · Score: 1

      I never said AR-15, "AR", or that AR stood for assault rifle. I just said that I don't own one. My brother has an Ar-15 that I can occasionally shoot if I really want - though his sucks because you can't hit much with it (has a 9:1 spin ratio in the rifling, cheaply made, etc.). A bro-in-law also has one but it's nicer - and he's picked up a suppressor (can't wait to try that out).

      I also own a 30-06 (a nice Remington) - but I never shoot that one because I'm not left-eyed and the bolt action is backwards for me. Someday I'll trade that in and upgrade. Until then, I stick to my 12 gauge for bird hunting (quail and dove hunting), 22 mag rifle for fooling around, and my snub nose, Ruger .357 mag - which I load with 125 grain hollow points for home protection (158 grain for when I go camping and heaven forbid I need something with a little stopping power. That fucker puts out a 4-6" podwer plume when you shoot dirty ammo through it and its smaller handle make it hard to handle for some.

      And yes, I'm aware that a deer rifle is going to have a LOT more range than a .223 round.

      Finally, if you Google assault rifle, I'm pretty sure you'll have to admit that there is such a thing.

    10. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Most of the time the kid who want to play with guns, are kids who were never exposed to them.
      My father had a rack of rifles hanging on the wall. For me those were mostly decorations, I knew they were real guns, and my father would use them. But for the most part I never gave them a second though.

      However when I had a friend over, they were much more curious about them and I normally had to tell him not to touch them. As an adult I am not a gun owner, not because of any moral stance, but just because I find them boring.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    11. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by cogeek · · Score: 1

      Google Doublespeak and you'll see that just because someone keeps calling something by a different name over and over not every thinking person has to accept the new name and blindly start calling it by that.

    12. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by suutar · · Score: 1

      "assault rifle" is a defined term for the US Army. this has some more information, but the short form is that it has the ability to do fully automatic or semiautomatic selectively, using cartridges between submachine gun and rifle in power.

    13. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by lgw · · Score: 1

      Of course you don't own an assault rifle, they're illegal for almost everyone. An assault rifle is not a "scary black gun", but a rifle or carbine with "select fire", that is, the choice between semi-auto and burst fire (or, occasionally, full auto, but most militaries don't want that waste of ammo). Guns that fire more than one bullet per trigger pull are very highly regulated.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    14. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

      You're mistaking "Assault Rifle" for "Assault Weapon".

    15. Re: Keep the honest, honest. by Mr307 · · Score: 1

      I expect you were just a troll but whatever.

      Not even sure what you are suggesting is coherent, adults are not perfect, they cannot protect children perfectly at all times. And of course every responsible gun owner locks their gun up, or has a locking trigger guard.

      BUT Are all adults responsible and conscientious? No of course not, hence:

      Example of adults 'contributing' to child death (as of 2014 leading cause of child death is improper restraint in motor vehicle accidents):
      https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns...
      http://www.jpeds.com/pb/assets...

      Are you suggesting that we dont teach children anything and just bubble wrap them from 1-17, then let them loose at 18 and 'hope' it works out somehow?

      There are endless 'tragedies in the making', are you suggesting that we lock everything and everyone down 'for our own good?'?

      Or do we make some kind of effort however feeble and try to teach children something? Yes including about guns, and car seats, and whatever else.

      Or did you just want to link a 'think about the children!' thing and moonwalk out of here?

    16. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Seems like it's something the police should have. So if someone looks like they're grabbing for an officer's gun, they no longer have an excuse to pump him or her full of bullets.

      It's something that the police should have so that we know that if someone was shot with their gun, they did the shooting. And the gun should also have a camera in it which goes off right before and after the shot. And then they will go looking for ways to bypass it so that they can use their gun for nefarious purposes, like they do now.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    17. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      However the smart gun can prevent the person from taking someones gun and then shooting the owner with his own weapon.

      Actually these guns described in the summary don't use the owner's fingerprint on the trigger, but just check whether the owner's bluetooth-enabled watch is nearby. Which will be the case whether the owner shoots or is shot at...

    18. Re:Keep the honest, honest. by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      The real question is: what if the wallet had, say, $100,000 in it. I think I might just leave it where I found it. But the real test comes if I ever find myself in that situation.

      ... or no cash at all. In which case it might not have been lost, but stolen, emptied and discarded.

      The owner might then assume you stole the contents...

  7. Not unexpected. . . by Salgak1 · · Score: 1

    . . . . nor was the remote Denial of Service attack against the weapon. In fact, many cops would call that a win.

    Or they would if anyone had actually BOUGHT an Armatix, a hugely-overpriced .22 semi-auto pistol with integrated electronics. . .

    1. Re:Not unexpected. . . by PPH · · Score: 1

      In fact, many cops would call that a win.

      Until that cop tries to fire his own gun and is denied.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:Not unexpected. . . by Salgak1 · · Score: 1

      You REALLY think the cops will buy DOS-able firearms ? How many Police Departments have bought and equipped their officers with Armatix pistols. . .

  8. Re:Still safer by guruevi · · Score: 2

    Or a smart mother for that matter.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  9. Smart Guns are just the first step by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The next step after smart guns is Cloud Connected guns.

    The government could keep track of how much ammunition is used. This would provide valuable statistics for the department of the census bureaucracy.

    Instead of requiring a fingerprint or gadget to authorize your gun to fire, you could authorize it to fire using an app on your smartphone. "hold on, just a sec, Mr. burglar, while I authorize my gun to activate . . . where did I put my phone . . ."

    The government could revoke the firing of weapons that have been stolen. The government could also revoke the ability to fire any weapon to certain individuals. Especially crazy people. And crazy could have a technical definition, such as "the desire to own or use a firearm".

    It's all for your protection.

    Think of the children!

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    1. Re:Smart Guns are just the first step by rossz · · Score: 1

      Anti gun organizations such as the Brady Bunch have made it quite clear that their intent is to slippery slope their way to a total ban on private ownership of firearms.

      --
      -- Will program for bandwidth
    2. Re:Smart Guns are just the first step by Ace17 · · Score: 1

      Alexa, fire!

    3. Re:Smart Guns are just the first step by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      It's okay for private citizens to own firearms. As long as there is no possibility that they can ever fire them. Smart guns seem like a better slippery slope.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  10. Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

    "make every bullet cost ten thousand dollars and there will never be another accidental shooting".

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

      Something many people may be unaware of, is that black powder weapons are completely uncontrolled. Bullets can't be expensive so long as lead is pennies a pound -- I've cast them myself, it's a really simple procedure -- and cartridges are frequently reloaded. It's a joke, and a reasonably funny one, but it doesn't go much further than that. Even if somehow all existing cartridges could be cleared from circulation to prevent reloading, you'd just see a rise in the ownership of black powder pistols.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    2. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

      Indeed it is a joke. There are incalculable billions of rounds of ammo in circulation right now; we couldn't make them all go away even if we tried.

      That said, I have a hard time believing that it would really cause an uptick in black powder sales. Right now as the law stands it is relatively easy to kill someone with a typical firearm. Hell in many states it takes less time to purchase a weapon than it takes to purchase sudafed. You buy the weapon and the ammo at the same time and only a couple seconds out the door you are ready to fire. Black powder isn't rocket science but to people who are unfamiliar with it there is quite a bit more effort and time into it. You can buy a black powder revolver but those are usually only 6 shots; you can buy a Glock with a 12 shot clip for little money at plenty of places, and even buy another 12 shot clip at the same time if you feel so inclined.

      If somehow we suddenly found ourselves with zero non-black-powder guns and zero ammo for them, I expect a lot of people who would have used those to kill people would just find it not worth the effort and walk away from whatever caused them to want to kill that other person.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    3. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      I have a friend who is a reformed felon. He would like to own a gun to protect his family but is prohibited. I told him about black powder revolvers. You can get .44 special performance out of an Army model black powder revolver and pretty good reliability.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    4. Re: Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Certain antiques and replicas are exempted at the federal level, but State laws may be stricter. Check with a lawyer, first.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re: Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Yup. I have boxes and boxes of ammo. I probably need a twelve step program.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      You buy the weapon and the ammo at the same time and only a couple seconds out the door you are ready to fire.

      It takes much longer than a couple of seconds for the mandatory background check to get to the FBI and for them to respond in the affirmative. The last time I had one, it was about fifteen minutes, but there were people who had been waiting an hour.

      The "sudafed" wait was about a minute of filling out a local-only form.

    7. Re: Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Yup. I have boxes and boxes of ammo. I probably need a twelve step program.

      Definitely - carrying those boxes up twelve steps sounds like a good way to keep fit :)

    8. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

      You buy the weapon and the ammo at the same time and only a couple seconds out the door you are ready to fire.

      It takes much longer than a couple of seconds for the mandatory background check to get to the FBI and for them to respond in the affirmative.

      I apologize if that was unclear. The "couple of seconds" was referring to how long it takes to load a modern gun once you have it in your hand and have ammo for it - the person I was replying to was making a claim that if ammo suddenly became outrageously expensive people would switch to black powder to which I countered by pointing out how the difference in convenience of firing and loading could well prevent that.

      The last time I had one, it was about fifteen minutes,

      The last time I went to buy sudafed it took me 20 minutes and there were zero people in line in front of me. I could have rushed the counter and stolen in (as I could see exactly where it was) much more quickly but being a law abiding citizen I waited for the pharmacist to handle it the correct way. Some gun purchases may take longer, but a sudafed purchase cannot be rushed much more than that without raising law enforcement flags.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    9. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      "make every bullet cost ten thousand dollars and there will never be another accidental shooting".

      That's ignorant at best. If every bullet cost ten thousand dollars then there'd be massively more people who own thousand-dollar reloading rigs. Which, mind you, is a reasonable estimate for what it will cost to buy the equipment to make high-quality bullets, from what I've seen while checking prices. If shell casings became expensive then you'd see more black powder weapons. The first all-steel revolver was a black powder weapon from the 1800s (The "Morgan") which was chambered for .50 caliber balls. It's not exactly new technology and you can order a reproduction today, for prices similar to the lower end of normal production pistols.

      In addition, the rule of thumb is that every shot fired at a human will cost the average civilian about $10,000 in court. So in a very real way, bullets already do cost $10,000 each.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      If somehow we suddenly found ourselves with zero non-black-powder guns and zero ammo for them, I expect a lot of people who would have used those to kill people would just find it not worth the effort and walk away from whatever caused them to want to kill that other person.

      The inconvenience didn't stop people from using them when they were first invented, and if you take away all the other options then you make them appealing again. People didn't use them because they were convenient by modern standards, they used them because they were more convenient than everything else they had available. You do know that humans occasionally still shoot humans with arrows, right?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re: Might be time for the Chris Rock solution by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I'm not even a militia guy, or your typical "gun nut." I do have a bunch of firearms, but I sure as hell don't plan on taking on the government with them. No, I'd probably just leave - if they came to confiscate them. I can leave the country, fairly easily. I also have Canadian citizenship.

      I just buy more ammo. I go through spells where I'll put a whole lot of rounds down range - and I'll invite friends. If I'm out and see ammo at a good price, or that looks interesting, I'll buy it. I've bought whole cases of the 500 .22LR boxes from Federal. I have to go to the sporting goods store this week. I'm probably gonna buy more. I don't even need it. I don't even care, I'll buy it anyhow.

      I have a whole room dedicated to firearms. I'm pretty sure I need a 12 step program.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  11. Huge problem with "smart" guns by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This hacker just demonstrated what gun advocates and critics of smart guns have been saying for years. The use of a gun is to stop a person or animal, often in a life or death situation. Guns are a powerful tool, and have historically relied on training to ensure gun safety and proper use. Smart guns attempt to take away some of that responsibility from the owner and in the process sacrifice key functionality. Guns have been developed over hundreds of years, and the modern gun is both extremely simple (relative to other technologies) and very reliable. As soon as you start adding other technologies, there are unintended consequences (or intended if you are a bit more cynical).

    I am a firm believer in a constitutional amendment that subjects lawmakers first and foremost to their own legislation, and this is just another example of where that would be an excellent idea. I think that the every politician who voted to require smart guns who is armed, and every armed bodyguard that they have (all the gun grabbing libtard politicians are armed and/or have armed bodyguards BTW; classic do as I say, not as I do) should be required to carry only smart guns first and foremost. Tax dollars well spent in my opinion. That way they can experience the problems first hand (running out of battery or malfunctioning or being jammed by a wide band transmitter etc.) when their lives depend on it. After the first few politicians have their guns fail when their lives depend on it, I suspect their positions will change.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    1. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by plague911 · · Score: 1
      This is not a huge problem. It is fucking trivial as fuck.

      Shocker/Not Shocker, hacker with physical access to a device can make a device malfunction.

      If an organization or entity is dedicated enough to have identified your particular firearm, built a device to disable your firearm, than actively use the device, guess what? You are dead as fuck and your trivial ass gun, smart or not, will not be able to do you any good

      I am rather neutral on gun control laws and see some rather philosophically valid arguments on both sides , however, the average argument put forward by the conservative troll community are completely fucking retarded.

      OMG WHAT IF A SUPER SPY HAS A SPECIAL SMART GUN BLOCKING MIND RAY. Well guess what? You are fucked. and were fucked either way.

    2. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Isn't that some kind of dll that prints nonsense to the terminal?

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      To be fair, it doesn't greatly deminish the usefulness of smart guns if magnets and other equipment are needed. Chances of a kid figuring it all out, or an attacker bothering to bring that stuff just on the off-chance they grab your gun are pretty low.

      Smart guns need to be evaluated statistically, not with fantasy scenarios. If it makes the chance of accidental injury/death 70% lower while only reducing effectiveness by 5%, it's probably with doing. If it's more like 30/30 then I imagine it won't be acceptable to a lot of people.

      --
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      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      So do you think your argument becomes stronger the more F-bombs you drop? Obscenities aside, your argument is incorrect.

      If I were a criminal and I knew that all citizens were required to own only "smart" guns, it is trivial for an engineer or hacker to build a small transmitter the size of a smartphone that jams the frequencies used by ALL smart guns (or just all frequencies) in a 30m radius (not one gun of one person, as you erroneously assume). And someone will be selling these jammers on the black market/criminal circles. Then the criminals can do whatever they want because they will either have older, dumb guns, or will stick a few neodymium magnets on their guns to circumvent the smart feature. Just wait until the cops have smart guns, then every criminal in the country will own one of those jammers and police shootouts will be extremely one sided...

      "Smart" guns add unnecessary layers of complexity that are trivial to hack or defeat to a tool that may at some point be critical to a person's survival and that requires safe storage and handling practices at all times anyway. The "feature" is not desirable and the added potential and penalty for hacking/malfunction/non-function is high, potentially the gun owners life. This is why no one wants "smart" guns except the politicians who have realized that gun confiscation is never going to happen in the US. Smart guns are the next best thing, because they only work about 80% of the time, they are 2-3x more expensive, and it would be trivial to disable them remotely.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    5. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 1

      Nice. Kind of like my modest proposal:

      If law enforcement at any level can have the weapon, the average citizen can have it. Period, no exceptions.

      If the average citizen can not have the weapon, no law enforcement at any level can have it. No exceptions, period.

    6. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by plague911 · · Score: 1

      Nope. But it is sometimes fun to use them to emphasize how ludicrous you believe a situation to be.

      Fear #1 Someone has a device to block your gun and will use it. Likelihood ~zero: While I do believe they could do precisely that. About 99.999999% of all violent crime is committed by some cracked out street rat who is too stupid and too cracked out to obtain then use the device. That remaining .0000001% is a cartel hit job where you are dead either way.

      Fear #2 some highly organized criminal organization will use them to fight the police Likelihood ~zero: No highly organized group ever fights the police here, cartels and high level gangs are not stupid enough because they know even if they take a few police down, the repercussions would still be devastating for their organization. The only groups stupid and organized enough to do that are right wing militias and thankfully we have SWAT and other specially equipped teams to eliminate them when they become a threat.

      Long story short. Your fears are well along the long trail of possibilities are you are about 1,000,000 times more likely to die while slipping and falling while taking a shit in the middle of the night.

      Here to toss you a bone, I do find the argument that these safety features could accidentally fail a reasonable fear. If those features were mandated with 100% confidence I am sure that there would be at least one time a gun would fail in a needed situation. However, the same can be said and WAS said about the gun safetys already mandated. They however are now generally accepted to be a very reasonable feature.

      Here is how the life of a new safety feature. 1) Someone suggests it.2) The idea gets statistical support 3) Crazy conservatives scream about some long tail potential issue 4) After a while society as a whole laughs at the conservatives and mandates the idea after realizing that yes there is some minuscule trade off between "freedom" and "not killing 100,000 people a year (think seat-belts) 5) Everyone realizes the counter arguments were insane (think seat-belts) and that the safety feature should have been implemented years ago.

      Here to toss you another bone, I wish I could trust conservatives to be good stewards of over zealous safety requirements. I, however, can not. Just like hippies who whine about everything environmental and can not be trusted to highlight true environmental threats, conservatives are a perfect mirror on that with safety features and specifically on gun regulation. Both groups fight for their topic like a holy war to the point that reasonable people view them as psychopaths.

    7. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Fear #1: if someone starts selling these jammers for $25 (google RF jammers on Ebay the existing models probably just need a little tweaking on the frequency range), then every thief will have one, along with the universal pantyhose/ski mask. Maybe not every crack head, but 8/10 is still a massive problem for a smart gun. Any idiot can order that kind of stuff online and press a button to turn it on.

      Fear #2: I'm not worried about organized crime, but see fear #1. If every 2 bit criminal is ordering these jammers from Ebay or the dark web, then every time an officer pulls someone over late at night on a lonely road and the suspect turns out to be a drug runner, the cop has to wonder if his gun will even fire, on top of all his other concerns. No officer in his right mind would put up with that shit, and I predict here and now that any department forcing "smart" guns on their officers will see massive numbers of officers quitting.

      I am probably one of the most safety conscious people you will ever meet. I design systems that have zero margin for failure and that can kill instantly in multiple different failure modes if the designs are not right. I carry that sense of caution with me in my personal life as well. If smart guns were truly smart (pick it up and it recognized you 99.99% of the time in under 0.1 seconds) and had a battery good for 20 years, I would be fine with that. But they don't so I'm not.

      I did the analysis in another post on this thread, but to boil it down for you, we are talking about saving maybe 50% of 700 lives per year from accidental shootings (some accidental shootings are the intended user/owner being unsafe; with almost 70,000,000 gun owners, some tiny fraction are just idiots). So you will save between zero and maybe 400 lives per year with "smart" guns. Alternatively, if you were to implement universal "smart" guns with a failure to fire rate due to the smart features of just 5% (real numbers right now with smart guns are somewhere closer to 20% which is why no one buys them, or 100% if someone has an RF jammer). However, just that 5% failure rate will wind up killing around 5000 people PER YEAR: police and crime victims who were unable to be protected by their own or others guns. For the "smart" guns to be a beneficial trade off you need the failure rate to be around 0.1%... and undefeatable by any reasonable means, let alone something simple like an RF jammer.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    8. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by plague911 · · Score: 1

      If *every* smart gun in a 30m radious can be jammed with a universal $25 device that would be a critical design/technology flaw which makes the tech useless. I ,however,see no reason to expect that to match reality and firmly stand by that being on the long tail

      I appreciate your analysis and if you are confident in net lives cost number by all mean stick by your position. That is a utilitarian argument. Your numbers however do not match my expectations due several reasons. 1) My trust in the studies indicating that owners "are morel likely to kill a family member than an intruder" thus a high gun failure rate would actualy save lives. I am aware of the standard counter points but even still the arguments presented around those studies are more convincing to me. 2) Your number for failure rate caused lives lost just seems off to me . My guess is you are assuming with 100% certainty that if a gun fails it results in a victims death.

    9. Re:Huge problem with "smart" guns by chihowa · · Score: 1

      Is that not the case in the US right now (at the federal level anyway)? I can't think of any weapon that law enforcement can have that ordinary citizens can't legally own. Some things require more paperwork (which is bullshit) for an ordinary citizen, like short-barreled shotguns, machine guns, or concussion grenades, but everything is still available to be had. Automatic firearms are stupidly expensive for ordinary citizens to obtain, but law enforcement don't use automatic weapons either.

      The only weapon that I can think of that ordinary citizens can't own is a switchblade and the laws surrounding those are slowly being dismantled.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
  12. Re:Magic bullet by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    I don't want magic bullets. (no matter what your balls are doing) What I want is individually authorized bullets. Say with an RFID tag in each bullet. That way the gun can read which bullet is in the chamber. The gun can connect to the cloud. Meanwhile in some immense database somewhere, a record is found and updated to indicate that particular bullet is now in the chamber, and to check whether that bullet is authorized to fire. (Suppose it was stolen ammunition?) Further m2m connections are established. Once the secretary general of the UN signs off, the gun is authorized and you can fire.

    Think of the children!

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  13. End gun violence now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ban the use of guns by the police department. You can save 900 people a year that way.

    fatal shootings by on duty police officers:
    2016: 963 fatal shootings
    2015: 991 fatal shootings
    and 2017 is on track to be in the 900's again.

  14. the army will not take any smart gun by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    the army will not take any smart gun.

    You want the them to work / not need battery's / need a network / be easy to fix in the field.

  15. One gun with electronics by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    The only gun that should have electronics is the M-27 phase plasma pulse rifle in the 40 watt range.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    1. Re:One gun with electronics by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      The only gun that should have electronics is the M-27 phase plasma pulse rifle in the 40 watt range.

      Hey buddy...just what you see on the wall, ok?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:One gun with electronics by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The only gun that should have electronics is the M-27 phase plasma pulse rifle in the 40 watt range.

      G11; OICW

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  16. "lauded by law enforcement to prevent criminals" by MurryVonSok · · Score: 1

    "lauded by law enforcement to prevent criminals" I'll send people with guns that I like to murder people that I don't like with guns. Statist logic. But you should call them when you need them, just make sure you don't /need/ or love your dog when they show up and shoot it.

  17. Nobody's coming for your guns by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and I wish you'd drop the issue. We here on the left have. Bernie f'in Sanders got an A from the NRA.

    Meanwhile it's being used as a wedge issue to distract you from economic issues. So you go to the polls and vote for the gun loving guy and he sells you out on the economy. How the hell do you think NAFTA got through? They knew the gun lovers would vote them in no matter what they did to the economy. Nevermind the fact that you and your little pea shooter of a rifle is about as useless as tits on a bull against a modern, well supplied military; 80s action movies to the contrary.

    How about this: You can have a mother f'in bazooka if I can have Single Payer healthcare & college tuition for my kid. Deal?

    --
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    1. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by slinches · · Score: 1

      How about this: You can have a mother f'in bazooka if I can have Single Payer healthcare & college tuition for my kid. Deal?

      There is a way we can all have it closer to our own way. Stop expecting that everything should be handled by the federal government.

      Why shouldn't there be a state with single payer healthcare and strict gun laws and other states with less restrictive gun laws and employer based insurance or offer private high-deductible plans and low taxes? Why do those in Nebraska or New York feel that they need to tell those in Alaska or Florida what rules they need to live by? Why even have states if everything is run at the federal level?

      --
      Knowledge Brings Fear
    2. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by ScentCone · · Score: 1

      Bernie f'in Sanders got an A from the NRA.

      And he was squashed by a woman who said she'd certainly consider an Australia-style confiscation program, and who said she considers the Supreme Court to have been in error as they ruled that the Second Amendment protects individual gun ownership. In other words, you're exactly incorrect.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    3. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by markdavis · · Score: 3

      >"How about this: You can have a mother f'in bazooka if I can have Single Payer healthcare & college tuition for my kid. Deal?"

      I have a better deal- you pay for your own children (or let them get their own loans and pay for themselves) and get your own health insurance AND we also obey the 2nd amendment, too.

      And I will further with: There is NOTHING in the Constitution that allows the federal government to mess with education nor health insurance, and if you want them to, then first you get a Constitutional Amendment passed.... then we'll talk about more Socialism after that.

    4. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"There is a way we can all have it closer to our own way. Stop expecting that everything should be handled by the federal government."

      Good statement

      >"Why shouldn't there be a state with single payer healthcare and strict gun laws and other states with less restrictive gun laws..."

      Bad example. The Constitution says gun rights SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. That applies to the States also (it is denied to the States for those rights to be infringed). However according to the Constitution, healthcare and education fall under the States (because they are not listed as powers belonging to the Fed nor denied to the States).

      So a better example/question might be:

      "Why shouldn't there be a state with single payer healthcare and heavily funded education laws and other states with less funded education and employer based insurance or offer private high-deductible plans and low taxes?"

    5. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by swillden · · Score: 1

      and I wish you'd drop the issue. We here on the left have.

      Some of you have. Many have not. Bernie isn't a good example because he's from rural NH and has always been soft on gun control.

      Bernie f'in Sanders got an A from the NRA.

      This is flatly untrue. He has never gotten an A from the NRA. The NRA's grades for Sanders have been:

      1992 - D
      1994 - F
      1996 - F
      1998 - F
      2000 - F
      2002 - F
      2004 - D+
      2006 - C-
      2012 - D-

      He didn't get a 2016 grade, but during the 2016 presidential election he was touting his D-.

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    6. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by slinches · · Score: 1

      I stand by the statement since this is a hypothetical and the only way we stand a chance of peacefully changing the distribution of power between the federal government and the states is by changing the constitution itself. Personally, I would even be open to considering relaxing the 2nd amendment protections as they apply to the states as long as it was strengthened to absolutely preclude the federal government from making any laws to restrict the personal ownership of arms.

      --
      Knowledge Brings Fear
    7. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Nevermind the fact that you and your little pea shooter of a rifle is about as useless as tits on a bull against a modern, well supplied military

      When a modern, well-supplied military starts committing home invasion robbery and burglary, your argument might be interesting somehow. It wasn't a modern, well-supplied military that got on a Portland MAX train and shot some people, nor was it a modern, well-supplied military that walked into Clackamas Town Center shooting random people.

      if I can have Single Payer healthcare & college tuition for my kid. Deal?

      You can have single payer healthcare today. YOU can be the single payer for your healthcare if you want. And YOU can be the single payer for your child's college tuition. Start saving early.

      The term 'single payer' is dishonest. "The entire taxpaying population" is not a single person. And your argument equating that with the ownership of a bazooka is specious: my ownership of a bazooka costs other people nothing, but forcing everyone to pay for your healthcare and your child's college education costs everyone else a lot of money.

    8. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      And I will further with: There is NOTHING in the Constitution that allows the federal government to mess with education nor health insurance,

      You haven't actually read the constitution, have you? Try this: promote the general welfare. The constitution is full of blank checks, like the ICC. HTH, HAND.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"You haven't actually read the constitution, have you? Try this: promote the general welfare. The constitution is full of blank checks, like the ICC. HTH, HAND."

      You really do like to insult people instead of having conversation, don't you? Yes, I have read it several times. "Promote the general welfare" is a general principle and generic statement that sets a tone that all laws must follow. "Reserved to the states or the people" is a VERY specific instruction. You can't just pick one OR the other that fits your need. If A must be followed and B must also be followed, then that means those powers not specifically granted to the Fed in the Constitution belong to the States or People and those that are listed to the Fed must also promote the general welfare.

    10. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"Surely collecting taxes and paying for education or healthcare would count as "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare". "

      Nope. Laying and collecting taxes, yes. Providing for the general welfare, yes.... But only for those things allowed by the Constitution, itself, which are defined by the 10th Amendment. Education and Insurance are State or people domain, not Federal.

    11. Re:Nobody's coming for your guns by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      I don't have any guns. I don't intend to have any guns. But I can recognize the potential endpoint of smart guns.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  18. Re:Still safer by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 2

    If firearm safety is what you are after then proper storage and training would go farther than any smart gun technology ever could. I own several firearms and the safe they live in cost more than all of them combined. That safe is securely bolted to the poured concrete floor and wall of my basement. If you wanted to steal the contents you would need a forklift or thermal lance, which if you have access to those you would be better off buying your own firearms. Then there is the training, I've been through the standard firearm safety course that most states require for going hunting, back when I was younger I got the various BSA shooting sports merit badges, have my state's CCW license, and recently have become a certified range officer and instructor for BSA shooting sports. Almost every "accidental" shooting I hear about really should be called negligent. Even the case you mention was negligence as I would never leave my firearms where a child could get at them and that is one of the many things that is drilled into you with any proper training course.

    --
    Time to offend someone
  19. Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill you by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But man..."smart" guns IMHO are NOT a good thing to have.

    To the contrary, smart guns are a good thing to have, and the fact that they can be hacked is almost irrelevant.

    The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other. This happens all the time-- 1300 children get killed by firearms per year. (alternate source)(another story on the subject).

    Even, if as you say "I mean, having a firearm that my life may depend on in a home invasion, that may not fire if I'm not wearing a watch" -- that's actually a good thing, because the thing that you should most be worried about in a home invasion is getting killed by your own gun.

    Worrying that a hacker is going to break into your home, hack your gun, and then kill you with it is pretty remote.

    You really want a gun that only fires when you fire it. A gun that fires when you don't want it to is not a good thing.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  20. That's how it used to work by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    what got discussions on gun control going (at least in the US) was when shooting became cheap enough that minorities could afford guns to defend themselves.

    Reminds me of one of the funniest things I've ever read. A bunch of those "People's Militia" folks decided to get their Assault rifles and go scare some Muslims by hanging around their Mosque with their guns slung over their back.

    Apparently these fine upstanding citizens didn't realize that the Nation of Islam is a different branch of faith than what they were used to. Then went home real quick when a bunch of brothers and sisters came to meet them with their own rifles slung over their backs.

    That said, it's funny in hindsight but I'm glad they back down without a shoot out. I'd prefer to live in a world where folks didn't do (and get away with) nonsense like that...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:That's how it used to work by damn_registrars · · Score: 2

      The NRA supports the rights of ANY legal gun owner to own or carry their firearms.

      Really? Then why didn't the NRA have more to say about legal gun owner - and legal permit-to-carry holder - Philando Castile when he was gunned down by the police?

      You can pretend that the NRA cares about non-white people as much as they care about white people, but the truth won't support it.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    2. Re:That's how it used to work by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      what got discussions on gun control going (at least in the US) was when shooting became cheap enough that minorities could afford guns to defend themselves.

      This, because it is a well known fact that Sandy Hook, Columbine, and Clackamas Town Center were all examples of minorities defending themselves.

    3. Re:That's how it used to work by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

      to smear gun owners and call them racist.

      I didn't say that. I said the NRA is racist. That is a big difference. The NRA doesn't give a shit about non-white people. The best they could do - and only when cornered in a TV interview - was call the shooting a "tragedy". Never a written statement or any display of concern.

      Granted, that is more concern than what they show for the hundreds of innocent children killed every year in this country as a result of improperly secured weapons left around by idiots, but they don't get interviewed about those killings.

      Fuck the gun grabbers. Thankfully they are out of power now.

      There haven't been "gun grabbers" in power any time in at least the past several decades. If you think Obama was a "gun grabber" than please show me one piece of legislation he signed into law as president or one executive order he issued as president that changed gun laws or regulations in this country. You can't, because he never did. Even when the democrats had both houses of congress no bill was ever proposed that did anything about guns, let alone voted on, passed, and sent up for his signature.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  21. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How would a proximity control prevent a toddler reaching in his mom's purse and shooting her point blank?

  22. Types of errors by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    I find the whole idea of smart guns mostly silly. Even plain old guns, brand new designs or designs that have been tweaked and fine tuned for 100+ years, misfire sometimes. Adding another level of failure is pretty absurd.

    It's useful to have a background in error analysis. You should think about Type I errors versus Type II errors. A Type-I error, here, will mean the gun not firing when you want it to. A Type-II error is the gun firing when you do NOT want it to. For this particular safety mechanism, the type-II error can be considered to consist of the case "the gun fires when somebody else has it", and the worst-case type II error is "the gun fires when somebody else has it and is pointing it at you or your family".

    It turns out that the cases in which the Type-II error will be deadly turn out to be much, much more common than the Type-I errors. There just aren't that many home invasions that are solved by the homeowner shooting the burglar, outside of Hollywood. For the most part, a Type-I error will mean that a piece of paper with circles on it will have fewer holes in it.

    A Type-II error, on the other hand, means that somebody you love gets shot. You want to avoid that.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Types of errors by dpidcoe · · Score: 1

      There just aren't that many home invasions that are solved by the homeowner shooting the burglar, outside of Hollywood.

      Out of sheer curiosity, do you have any actual numbers or studies on that?

    2. Re:Types of errors by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

      correct. Sometimes they simply scare the burglar away by brandishing the weapon.

  23. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even, if as you say "I mean, having a firearm that my life may depend on in a home invasion, that may not fire if I'm not wearing a watch" -- that's actually a good thing, because the thing that you should most be worried about in a home invasion is getting killed by your own gun.

    Most of the home invasions I'm seeing reported, the criminals are bringing their own weapons to the party.

    And at the very least, shouldn't it be MY decision to make?

    And..what about those of us with no toddlers or all children grown and out of the house...or if your kids are older and responsible enough they too can have access to said guns?

    One size does not fit all buddy.,

    My parents took me and showed me our gun (we only had one early on)....I shot it with them, learned how to chamber a round, how to shoot, how to SAFELY handle a fire arm.

    They showed me where it was kept, and I also had the fear of God put into me that I never, ever, ever had a reason to get it or touch it shy of someone breaking into our house or threatening me.

    Most of my friends were raised this way too....none of us would even think about getting that gun out to play with or even look at without just cause.

    It so happened, that one day while I was home and both parents were at work...I think I was in 9th grade or so....it was raining and some bum came to the front door knocking on it...asking for drink of water, etc.

    I was scared, but didn't panic. I went back, got the gun, chambered a round, and waited near the front door...till this asshole went away about half an hour later.

    After that, I took the gun back to my parent's room, removed the magazine, took the round out of the chamber and put the gun together and back where it was supposed to be.....and promptly called my Mom at work to tell what happened, she and my Dad were very happy with my behavior.

    So, are all kids today just too stupid for such training....or is the problem we have too many stupid parents today who don't care to train their kids or discipline them on proper behavior (not just guns, but most anything in life)?

    Toddlers and babies are one thing, but young kids can be trained and you only have to secure things as age appropriate....etc.

    Right now, I"m not worried about any of that...and I do not need a 'smart' weapon adding a new potential level of failure when I may need to kill someone in my home.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  24. Re:If the gun fired, the secure owner fired the sh by suutar · · Score: 1

    But my phone says I was in New York, and I even made calls.

    Hello, reasonable doubt.

  25. So all I have to do is by future+assassin · · Score: 1

    shoot the guy first or cut the guys hand off and wear the watch?

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  26. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    How would a proximity control prevent a toddler reaching in his mom's purse and shooting her point blank?

    Depends on the range that the proximity sensor is programmed for. I'd say that the optimal range would be about six inches,a bracelet or ring on the gun hand. This is an engineering trade-off, like any other.

    In any case, though, the fact that it wouldn't stop every shooting doesn't mean it's not valuable in saving some lives.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  27. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

    The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other.

    That's what safes are for.

    I have children and guns. I keep my guns locked up.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  28. Re:Should be your choice by Zondar · · Score: 1

    Then you disagree with the New Jersey law that would have mandates after Smart Guns could be sold, they were the only types of guns that could be sold x days later?

  29. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    But man..."smart" guns IMHO are NOT a good thing to have.

    To the contrary, smart guns are a good thing to have, and the fact that they can be hacked is almost irrelevant.

    The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other.

    The fact that I, like many adult, gun-owning Americans, have no children, makes this point moot.

    Also, pretty sure the "more likely to be killed with your own gun" myth has been debunked, or at least, proven inaccurate.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  30. An idea doomed to fail by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

    These are guns for people who don't like guns or the people who like guns.

    They're ridiculously expensive and why in the hell would I want a gun that can be remotely disabled? Lest we forget, the people that are the reason why we (in the USA) have the second amendment are the very people who would be able to remotely disable such a device. No thank you. Do not want. No bueno!

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  31. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3

    My parents took me and showed me our gun (we only had one early on)....I shot it with them, learned how to chamber a round, how to shoot, how to SAFELY handle a fire arm.

    THIS.

    The key to safety is knowledge, not fear.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  32. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by AdamStarks · · Score: 1

    That statistic is misleading. From another article talking about the same study: 53% are homicides and 38% are suicides, meaning 9% (aka ~117 kids) die from accidental handling.

    That's not to say homicides and suicides aren't a problem, nor that 117 kids dying accidentally is okay, but it's a small fraction of the ([VERY] roughly) estimated 22,260 kids that die each year, whether or not you include the homicides & suicides.

    My gut says taking all the money put into SmartGuns and directing it towards childrens' hospitals, child services, car safety, etc would give us a better ROI in terms of lives saved.

  33. I've got 5000 years of recorded history by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    where the gov't didn't do anything except fight wars and life was nasty, brutish and short. I've got about 70 years where the gov't did a bunch of stuff and things got a lot better really fast. You'd think folks would have noticed this by now.

    The reason you can't have a state do that is a state doesn't have enough power to stand up to a global mega corp run by robber barons. Did you ever see the pic of a snake cut in 13 pieces when you were a kid? It wasn't from a snake cook book.

    --
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  34. No, he was squashed by mega corps by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    backing that woman because she opposed progressive policies that benefit the working class. And Hillary couldn't give two shits about your guns either. She just needs some issue, any issue, to make her seem like something other than a Republican. Well, an issue that isn't economic anyway. She's not gonna support Single Payer in my lifetime.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:No, he was squashed by mega corps by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"And Hillary couldn't give two shits about your guns either."

      Wow. Well, we can only go by what she said she believed and would do. And trust me, she was about as anti-gun rights as any presidential candidate has ever been in modern history. So you can't just dismiss that as a "non-issue". It resonated very, very clearly with many millions of voters.

  35. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    To the contrary, smart guns are a good thing to have, and the fact that they can be hacked is almost irrelevant.

    The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other.

    The fact that I, like many adult, gun-owning Americans, have no children, makes this point moot.

    Uh, why does the fact that you have no children mean that you get to prevent other people who do have children from obtaining safer guns?

    Also, pretty sure the "more likely to be killed with your own gun" myth has been debunked, or at least, proven inaccurate.

    I believe the phrase "pretty sure" is a synonym for "I have no idea whatsoever." Cite data.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  36. malfunctioning safety by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    Good for you, but most gun owners don't. They say "I need a gun for self defense! A gun isn't any good if it takes me more than a few seconds to get to!"

    Besides-- what if your safe malfunctions? This whole thread is saying "if my safety device malfunctions, I'm going to DIE!" So: safes can malfunction. You trust mechanisms on safes, but not on guns?

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:malfunctioning safety by chuckugly · · Score: 1

      When I lock my bedroom door and open my nightstand gun safe tonight, I'll have all the time in the world to make sure it's open before I turn out the light. When I wake up in the morning and push the safe shut, it will lock reliably.

      It's not the same thing at all.

    2. Re:malfunctioning safety by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      Good for you, but most gun owners don't. They say "I need a gun for self defense! A gun isn't any good if it takes me more than a few seconds to get to!"

      I can get my hands on a gun in 5-8 seconds.

      Besides-- what if your safe malfunctions?

      Then, I'll buy another one. Safes are a technology that are hundreds of years old. We know how to make them reliably and how to tell when they're becoming unreliable.

      "Smart" guns, not so much.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    3. Re:malfunctioning safety by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 1

      Good for you, but most gun owners don't. They say "I need a gun for self defense! A gun isn't any good if it takes me more than a few seconds to get to!"

      Besides-- what if your safe malfunctions? This whole thread is saying "if my safety device malfunctions, I'm going to DIE!" So: safes can malfunction. You trust mechanisms on safes, but not on guns?

      I trust my safe because its mechanism does not have any electronics in it, just like the gun inside (aside from the mounted light).

    4. Re:malfunctioning safety by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      Here is a better one, I am an ex-criminal.. My crime involved guns.. I am no longer allowed to own or possess a firearm. I guarantee I could get an illegal gun, faster and easier than you, the legal gun owner could get a legal gun.. Just like drug laws, gun laws dont work.

    5. Re: malfunctioning safety by koomba · · Score: 1

      And a simple trigger lock can't be the same thing, just a MECHANICAL, as basic as possible guard, no electronics, computer chips, etc? Your strawman is completely transparent, that lame shit may work ranting on Breitbart article comments, but not here.

  37. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by markdavis · · Score: 1, Interesting

    >"The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other. This happens all the time-- 1300 children get killed by firearms per year. [cnn.com] (alternate source [newsweek.com])(another story on the subject [cbsnews.com])."

    Yeah, like let's analyze those numbers. That is 1300 "children" just being killed by firearms. Why not look at the SOURCE: http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

    " among children aged 0 to 17" "Nearly 1300 children die[...]for gunshot wounds each year." "older children more often died in the context of crime and violence"

    And here is the part of the study you need to speak about in regards to our topic with any meaningful force:

    "6% were unintentional [accidental] firearm deaths (n = 82)"

    So, the CORRECT number in this context is 82 per year. A mere 82, and that INCLUDES TEENAGERS 13 to 17 years old! Not 1300, not even CLOSE. Most of the rest is GANG VIOLENCE and there is NO EVIDENCE the gun was obtained, insecure, from their own house. Don't you love how the media can twice statistics around to make them sound like there is some horrible number of gun accidents that are killing our children?

    If you look at actual statistics about "children" accidental deaths, firearms are not even hardly statistically relevant. It is all about suffocation, poisoning, drowning, motor vehicle accidents, falls, medical errors, etc.

    "Smart" guns are a [non] solution looking for a problem that doesn't really exist. Instead, they will absolutely cause all kinds of unintended problems.

  38. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    Be a parent and keep your guns out of reach of said toddlers and you won't need to rely on laws to do your parenting for you. . . .

  39. People who need to rely on a firearm by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    will never rely on one that has a battery in it.

    Period.

  40. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by kaatochacha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have no desire to have a firearm ever present for safety. I just like to shoot.
    And I shouldn't have to justify it, either.

  41. Guns with safety features by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Be a parent and keep your guns out of reach of said toddlers and you won't need to rely on laws to do your parenting for you. . . .

    Who was talking about "laws"?

    The story in question was about guns that incorporate safety features.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Guns with safety features by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Who was talking about "laws"?
      The story in question was about guns that incorporate safety features.

      Who was talking about "laws"?
      The story in question was about cars that incorporate safety features. Nobody is going to force you to wear a seatbelt, dude. Nobody is going to make it illegal to disable an airbag. You're just paranoid, man.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Guns with safety features by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Well done! Illustrating the lies in the anti-gun lobby with a comparison to car safety laws.

      For the idiots who were not paying attention:
      - Not wearing a seatbelt is illegal in all states
      - Disabling your airbag is also illegal in all states
      Now, what about the argument that these "safety" features will not become mandated by law?

  42. Re:Should be your choice by kaatochacha · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, admit it: Nobody wants "safe" guns because of the mandates stated above: that once on the market, even if decidedly buggy, would then force ALL guns to be illegal that weren't "safe" guns. The laws exist, it's not a matter of conjecture.
    In the end, you're just hoping to use this as a run around to eliminate firearms altogether, because they simply make you nervous.
    If you really wanted to end gun violence, you'd address the root causes: gangs, drugs-such as the opioid epidemic, criminal culture, etc. You'd address gun safety training instead of barring it as a bogeyman in schools.

  43. Not fear, respect by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The key to safety is knowledge, not fear.

    The key to safety is knowledge and a healthy respect for the dangers involved. One without the other leads to mistakes and, since we are humans, mistakes will always happen. This is one of the many reasons why most countries strictly control firearms. It's not fear of them but a healthy respect for the dangers they pose in the hands of random humans who are sometimes drunk, forgetful, distracted, insane etc. While it's fine for you to suffer from your own mistakes and actions when firearms are involved it is usually others who do the suffering.

    So you get a choice: either to restrict access to firearms or you learn to live with mass shootings, a high murder rate and toddlers accidentally killing themselves. "Smart" guns are just one way to restrict access so if you prefer the deaths to restrictions on personal freedoms you should be opposed to them. Just don't fool yourself that guns are perfectly safe and pose no risks to anyone. They are designed to be lethal and are only safe when handled correctly which is never going to happen 100% of the time.

    1. Re:Not fear, respect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So you get a choice: either to restrict access to firearms or you learn to live with mass shootings, a high murder rate and toddlers accidentally killing themselves.

      No, you don't get a choice. You get to live with mass shootings, whatever murder rate that goes with the cultures you're living with, and toddlers accidentally killing themselves whether you restrict access to firearms or not.

    2. Re:Not fear, respect by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1

      false. The rate of all of those things is extremely low in all countries that restrict them and police the black market.

    3. Re:Not fear, respect by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      I see you have been suckling on the gun-grabbing propaganda tit.
      Your assertion is blatantly false. The countries with the greatest gun control have higher rates of mass shootings and murder rates. I haven't seen any credible statistics on toddlers killing themselves from other countries since they always hide that stuff as much as possible.

    4. Re:Not fear, respect by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      Your assertion is blatantly false. The countries with the greatest gun control have higher rates of mass shootings and murder rates.

      Sorry but that's not what the data say.

    5. Re:Not fear, respect by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      No, you don't get a choice.

      Actually the data show that society does indeed get a choice. Have a look at the the data. The murder rate in the US is about 10 times the rate in most other western nations which implement gun controls. The accidental death rate shows rates of 10-100 times increase over Western European states. So while you cannot eliminate the murder and accidental death rates from firearms you can enormously reduce them with gun control.

  44. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by ravenshrike · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What? Columbine was a straw buy. Moreover the presence of guns arguably made things less lethal. Had they concentrated more on their bombs they might not have been duds and would have been able to kill significantly more people and possibly burn the entire school down.

  45. Re:Should be your choice by mrclevesque · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "If you really wanted to end gun violence, you'd address the root causes: gangs, drugs-such as the opioid epidemic, criminal culture, etc."

    Root causes? How about less than adequate socio-emotional support in early development.

  46. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    But fear is what drives the desire to have the firearm ever present for safety. I dream of a society that does not fear firearms or desire them for safety.

    WRONG

    It's fear that drives the desire to take guns away from OTHERS.

    Again - it's the gun grabbers that are scared.

  47. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by unrtst · · Score: 3, Informative

    What value does a "smart gun" add that can't be had with a safety and/or trigger lock?

    You're saying the optimal proximity range would be about six inches, which means the gun in purse could still be fired by (ex. by a toddler rooting around in there). The simple safety is enough to prevent that situation.

    Six inches would also mean that you couldn't fire it with your other hand, should that be necessary, so I'd disagree with that proximity setting. Making it large enough to fire from either hand means 3 to 6 feet, which means the gun next to your bed could be fired by anyone walking in while you're sleeping.

    Worse, if you need a watch/ring/bracelet, you're unlikely to be wearing it while you sleep. And where do you keep it when you take it off? ... probably right next to the weapon.

    Smart guns are also said to prevent stolen weapons from being used, but this article debunks that. A couple magnets and it's easier for the would be criminal to use than for the owner.

    There's also a significant cost difference. You can get a master lock combination trigger lock for $13 (ie. no need for a key), and keyed ones are even cheaper. FWIW, I'm not saying that trigger locks should be mandated, nor should they be used in all situations, but, for the cases where you need/want to make sure that it's not used by someone else accidentally, they work perfectly.

    Smart guns may have a place in some special situations, but certainly not across the entire market.

  48. There's plenty by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Interstate commerce. Universities operate across state lines you know. And if you want to be a literalist then if you're not in a militia I'll be taking your guns please. And not just any militia, a well regulated one to boot.

    And why don't you go live in a cave. I mean that. Stop using my roads (built with federal money even if they're local), my telecom network built with that same federal money, the clean water regulated by the Federal government, taking medicine developed largely with grants, etc, etc, etc, etc.

    You benefit from my kid's hard work. Massively. You're being mean spirited and selfish and should be called out on it. I'm tired of you fair weather conservatives all in favor of personal responsibility as long as it's not something you're personally using. Move to Somalia and go enjoy your libertarian paradise.

    --
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    1. Re:There's plenty by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"Interstate commerce."

      Ah, the ultimate cop-out. You know very well that clause is not being used as it was meant to be used. Otherwise, the entire Constitution could be simply thrown out the window.

      >"Universities operate across state lines you know. "

      EVERYTHING operates across state lines, in one way or another. That is not an excuse to use the "Interstate commerce" to make any law wanted. If that were the intent, then the rest of the Constitution is meaningless.

      >"And if you want to be a literalist then if you're not in a militia I'll be taking your guns please. And not just any militia, a well regulated one to boot."

      I am not the one being the literalist. And the wording is clear on the second amendment, it doesn't mean gun rights are for just a militia, that is an introductory statement, not a requirement.

      >"And why don't you go live in a cave. I mean that. Stop using my roads (built with federal money even if they're local), my telecom network built with that same federal money, the clean water regulated by the Federal government, taking medicine developed largely with grants, etc, etc, etc, etc."

      Slippery slope.

      >"You benefit from my kid's hard work. Massively. You're being mean spirited and selfish and should be called out on it."

      Sorry, but YOU benefit from MY hard work. Massively. I chose not to have kids, why should I have to pay for yours?

      >" I'm tired of you fair weather conservatives all in favor of personal responsibility as long as it's not something you're personally using."

      I am neither fair weather nor double-standard. I am far more tired of leftist Socialists who think we can just spend everyone else's money however they choose because it makes them "feel good." Let's just keep throwing on that national debt until the next generation has 30 or 40 TRILLION dollars to [not] deal with and yet no personal responsibility to do anything along with less and less rights.

      >"Move to Somalia and go enjoy your libertarian paradise."

      Or perhaps you should move to Greece and enjoy YOUR Socialist paradise. Just because I want us to obey the Constitution and have a weak Federal government that has clearly defined powers as listed in the Constitution and also strong State governments, also as defined clearly in the Constitution, does not make me a libertarian. It makes me a patriot.

      If you don't like the Constitution, then work to change it through Constitution Amendments. Don't just ignore what it says or stretch out "interstate commerce" to mean whatever wanted to justify massive Federal power, programs, and inefficient spending.

  49. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by sexconker · · Score: 1

    1300 children get killed by firearms per year.

    So?

  50. The left gave up on Communism ages ago by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    and moved on to Democratic Socialism, which is working just fine everywhere it's been tried (I know, you're already furiously typing something about Valenzuela without realizing that before the oil boom they were a hopelessly poor country and after the oil boom they've gone back to one).

    Smart Guns are likely to be the same. It's a difficult problem to solve that's just in it's infancy. See, the solution to a difficult problem isn't to throw your hands up and say "I give up!" at the first sign or even the second of trouble. For the record some of us _like_ the idea of gun our kids can't accidentally shoot. And not all of us are planing on gunning down the first punk kid that breaks into our house. The dumb kid can have my TV. It's not worth his life.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  51. Huh? by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but what the devil are you on about? There are no laws anywhere regarding smart guns. Nor are there any plans to have laws regarding them (short of a few lawmakers trying to get the government to buy smart guns after they received rather generous donations from the makers of said smart guns).

    You're seeing a conspiracy where there is none and immediately jumping to a worst possible conclusion. Nobody is planing on forcing you or anyone else to use smart guns. If they're going to take your guns (they're not) they'll just send somebody to round 'em up. On the plus side you reminded me of this today :).

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Huh? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      California currently has a law on the books that requires all guns be sold with "smart" features withing 5? years of the technology being sold commercially. The gun grabbers tried getting the same legislation through at the federal level as part of the renewed AWB under Obama, but it failed to pass.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    2. Re:Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      California lawmakers are always doing stupid shit - look at how Enron fleeced them for a classic if old example (and the only developed nation with "brownouts", what fun!). Find whoever is putting LSD in whatever they are drinking and you'll have less trouble.
      One other classic was blaming the entire failure to balance the books for the entire state on prison guards asking for more money!
      So yes, stupid shit as normal and an utterly insanely complex voting system to discourage people to do their duty and vote for representatives of worth.

    3. Re: Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      You mist have misheard the situation

      No there actually were elected idiots blaming payroll for a small number of employees for all of California's financial incompetence.

      Australia has had issues

      An amoral opportunistic academic economist (Allan Fels) at a third ranked University in a provincial city managed to convince a political party that a California style energy market would be a good thing. It was for him, he's on a dozen company boards now when otherwise he'd just be whining that he'd never end up as head of department. That has produced an environment where some of the lowest electricity generation costs in the world turn into some of the highest retail charges in the world - massive profits from a captive market. Add in games like gas turbine owners waiting until there is a shortage and thus a high price for their electricity and there's plenty of secondhand stupidity to go around.

      Nobody really cares about the engineers warning that the grid needs maintenance

      I used to be one of those, but instead of that extra work being done it was cut back and I was laid off along with a lot of others

    4. Re:Huh? by pi_rules · · Score: 1

      You're seeing a conspiracy where there is none and immediately jumping to a worst possible conclusion. Nobody is planing on forcing you or anyone else to use smart guns.

      New Jersey has a law on the books already that will mandate use of smart guns once they're commercially available. Law enforcement is, of course, exempt from the rule.

    5. Re: Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I could accept that you were talking about Australia

      "Brownout" is low voltage or low current and is a failure mode unexpected in developed countries (because it tends to break stuff) and is not what happened in South Australia. It's a sign of incredibly poorly managed electricity infrastructure. Good supply or nothing is what is supposed to happen. Also comparing two events to the hundreds that happened during the Enron debacle alone is a bit much.

      Over 11 billion dollars

      On payroll for prison workers? They could move a lot of goalposts on that money. I really do not appreciate being seen as so stupid and what's with the dishonesty?

      My point here is that stupid shit is drafted into law in California such as the one being discussed, not that they are in any way unique in that behaviour.

    6. Re: Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      You apparently believe that you can simply declare something

      Of course I can. Such a declaration is what is called an example.

      What's with the truckload of baggage? I never said the rest of the world is perfect, just that California has had some odd laws and mismangement. Your obsession with definitions on one hand and dismissal of the inconvenient ones on the other is kind of pointless in this context. If you accused another place of having a "brownout" without knowing what it actually means (or more likely the pretence of ignorance for the sake of convenience) that's not my fault.

      Unfortunately, I believe you have succumbed to a mindset, where instead of realizing your faults, you reject criticism and fail to improve your arguments.

      Sorry, but I laughed when I read that - good advice but in this situation it applies to yourself and not the very short and simple statements of examples (not arguments at all) that I gave above. You are coming off like an Eliza bot completely unaware of what you have written only a few lines before.
      It kind of looks like a cut and paste insult you've used before that hilariously applies to yourself instead.

    7. Re: Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Why write so much when you know that you are not going to be taken seriously for any of it?
      Your stupid thin-skinned kneejerk stuff above happened and trying to bury it under a bigger pile of bullshit is not going to help.

    8. Re: Huh? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Oh my, and yet somehow, I actually think the fault you describe, lies in yourself, not the stars

      It appear that there is no fault at all - simply a couple of examples that you have taken a great deal of offence about and wasted a vast amount of time writing meaningless drivel about.
      It reads like a parody instead of something to be taken serious - at least the portions I bothered to read. "Why write so much when you know that you are not going to be taken seriously for any of it" should have been a bit of a clue to you that most of what you'd written earlier was not looked at beyond the first bit of overt stupidity and it's the same this time. If you want to be taken seriously get an account and try for brevity instead of vast volumes of empty outrage that misses the mark by a mile.

  52. So by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    1300 children get killed by firearms per year.

    So?

    So a device which means that only the owner can fire a gun would save lives.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:So by Known+Nutter · · Score: 1

      So a device which means that only the owner can fire a gun would save lives.

      So a device which means that only the owner might be able to fire a gun could save lives if it doesn't malfunction or the owner is able to get off a shot in time.

      --
      Beware of the Leopard.
  53. Re:Should be your choice by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    We have (and mandate) things like seat belts and air bags.

    Why not just address the "root causes": people driving badly?

    Because BOTH are needed.

  54. Guns and Fear by TiggertheMad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like to keep my guns loaded, chambered and hidden throughout the house...where I'm never but a few steps away from any weapon that I can grab, and pull the trigger on (some do have safety on, but the glocks do not).

    Sweet Jesus, are you that paranoid that someone wants to come take your shit? What is going on with you mentally that you have multiple guns, cocked and loaded all over your house? What is wrong with you, why are you so scared of everything?

    --

    HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
    1. Re:Guns and Fear by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Sweet Jesus, are you that paranoid that someone wants to come take your shit?

      What? Of course someone wants to come take his shit. Even nature hates order. We call it entropy. At the societal level one way this manifests is that some percentage of the have nots are continually roaming around looking to take stuff from the haves. The best solution is for society to turn the have nots into haves, but in the meantime there's still fallout to deal with. Anyone who arms themselves against the poor and then also votes against the poor is a piece of shit, but anyone who ignores reality is a tool.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  55. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

    Also, pretty sure the "more likely to be killed with your own gun" myth has been debunked, or at least, proven inaccurate.

    Considering the suicide rate is about twice the homicide rate, isn't it pretty much a given that you're more likely to shoot yourself than shoot anyone else?

    --
    This space intentionally left blank
  56. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 1

    The devil is in the details... The devil lurking in this study is ... just exactly how do they define "child"?

    Checking the article and following the link to the study, I find exactly what I expect to find in a study like this that has numbers that seem too high to be believable:

    "Child" is under 18. So they're including teenagers up to 17.

    From the same American Academy of Pediatrics article, reading down a ways, they admit that over 90% of that statistic is in the 13-17 age group.

    Not exactly representative of the anecdotes about the 3rd grader and the 6-year-old that CNN chose to "make representative", though they did admit to the "90% over 13" bit near the end of the article.

    At least they cut it off at 18. Some studies in the past (maybe they're still trying this scam) have defined "child" as under 21, or even up into mid-20s.

  57. Re:Should be your choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Before you blame "gun nuts" for the lack of smart guns, educate yourself a bit about the engineering challenges involved:

    "'If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?' - Barack Obama
    It turns out that it is, in fact, a lot harder to build an iGun (as one smart gun design is dubbed) than an iPhone. One reason: it’s simply tough to design it right and build it well.
    Whatever strategy you choose, you’re going to face problems and tradeoffs. When people use guns for self-defense, police work, or in the military, they care most about reliability. You don’t want bugs in the software; you don’t want sweat or temperature extremes to cause a malfunction. The inside of a gun, smart gun proponents admit, is hard on electronics. In terms of engineering tolerances and failsafe expectations, making a smart gun is less like making an iPhone than like building an airplane."

    https://www.wired.com/2016/03/...

  58. Guns, Cars, Airplanes, Women by sycodon · · Score: 1

    I like my guns to be "dumb", Car to have a steering wheel, Airplane to use cables, and my women to be real (not some synthetic robot).

    Call me old fashion.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  59. Smart guns will kill 4400 more innocents by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    "Smart guns need to be evaluated statistically, not with fantasy scenarios. If it makes the chance of accidental injury/death 70% lower while only reducing effectiveness by 5%, it's probably with doing. If it's more like 30/30 then I imagine it won't be acceptable to a lot of people."

    You seem to lack a basic understanding of the situation. First off, if someone uses an RF jammer your failure to fire is 100%, and it is fairly trivial to jam RF bands. Even the magnetic finger ring safety has a failure to fire of about 20%. However, lets say for the sake of your argument that all guns are required to be smart guns and they have the much lower 5% failure rate that you cite. There are about 700 accidental shooting fatalities per year (see my other posts for the stats used here). Lets assume that number is reduced by 90% (generously) due to smart guns, saving 630 lives.

    Conversely, firearms are used about 40,000 times a year by police to protect lives (themselves or others) from violent criminals who will kill someone if they are not neutralized. If the effectiveness is reduced by 5%, you have just killed 2000 people with your "smart" guns because they didn't discharge when they should have.

    Additionally, guns are used about 2,500,000 times per year defensively by citizens to prevent violent crime, rape, murder etc. (we don't have exact numbers on this due to anti gun Democrats blocking the FBI from collecting the statistics). Non-fatal and fatal shootings and defensive discharges account for around 60,000 of those incidents (the others involve verbal warnings, brandishing and pointing). Reducing the effectiveness of the discharge related events by 5% means you just killed 3000 law abiding, innocent citizens.

    So you want to save 630 lives, more easily saved with education, gun safes, lockers, cable and trigger locks and strict gun safety laws and in return you are willing to let 5000 people die. When you consider percentages, you must also consider the actual numbers, which are where the rubber meets the road.

    So to boil it down to a single line, universal smart guns will kill around 4400 more innocents than today.

    The diminished usefulness is the fact that it won't fire when it needs to. This will cost far more lives than are saved.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  60. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

    Again - it's the gun grabbers that are scared.

    One of our elected officials let that secret out of the bag. She told a reporter that she was afraid of all the people who had concealed carry permits. It was as if she was planning on assaulting random people on the street and didn't want to have to worry about being shot in self defense.

  61. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by GerbilKor · · Score: 1

    You can get a master lock combination trigger lock for $13

    Or for free from many local police stations, or from many retails when you purchase the gun.

  62. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

    Considering the suicide rate is about twice the homicide rate, isn't it pretty much a given that you're more likely to shoot yourself than shoot anyone else?

    Applying bulk statistics to individual members of the population is rarely productive, informative, or accurate. The fact that 3% of a population might kill someone, with two thirds of those "someones" being themselves, does not mean the 97% left over are likely to shoot themselves, too.

  63. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    And the NRA used to be all about gun safety, before it turned into a paranoid political lobbying group.

  64. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by vux984 · · Score: 2

    What value does a "smart gun" add that can't be had with a safety and/or trigger lock?

    *Anybody* can easily turn off the safety.
    *Nobody* can use a gun with a trigger lock on it.
    See the problem?

    You're saying the optimal proximity range would be about six inches, which means the gun in purse could still be fired by (ex. by a toddler rooting around in there).

    Why would that be within 6 inches of the enabler?

    The simple safety is enough to prevent that situation.

    err... no.

    Six inches would also mean that you couldn't fire it with your other hand, should that be necessary, so I'd disagree with that proximity setting. Making it large enough to fire from either hand means 3 to 6 feet, which means the gun next to your bed could be fired by anyone walking in while you're sleeping.

    Ok... now I'm curious what your handgun stance looks like?

    https://www.pewpewtactical.com...

    Because it really shouldn't matter what hand you use when you are in anything resembling a proper stance...

    https://assets.shootingillustr...

    Worse, if you need a watch/ring/bracelet, you're unlikely to be wearing it while you sleep. And where do you keep it when you take it off? ... probably right next to the weapon.

    I'm unlikely to be shooting while i sleep too. And I'm not sure why i'd put the 'keys' right next to the weapon, when im not using it. Sure some people would, but those people have a sticky on their monitor with the password too -- i don't think that's a flaw of passwords.

    Moreover, I don't sleep with a gun by my pillow in fear of midnight attackers. That is simply not something I live in fear of happening, and it is simply NOT a use case that defines my requirements at all.

    Smart guns are also said to prevent stolen weapons from being used, but this article debunks that.

    not really. nobody thought it would be impossible to defeat the protection. And the deterrents to theft remain ... few people are going to want to buy a gun that is obviously 'hacked'; no legit buyer will touch it; and even criminals won't want the attention it might bring, or the fear that the hack job isn't reliable.

    plus the first person I'd be worried about my stolen gun getting used on, is me, in the act of them stealing it... so unless they plan to hack the gun on the spot, it could save my life.

    Smart guns may have a place in some special situations, but certainly not across the entire market.

    I agree reliability is paramount. I concede it is another system that could fail. But I think in a lot of environements we could get the reliability up to the point that the rare failure to fire when it should would be more than offset by the benefit of it not firing when it shouldn't.

    For police, for security, for home owners, etc.

    Now I realize the police are dead set against it, and I respect that and understand why. But *if and when* the benefits outweigh the risks it will be rational for them to switch.

    If the odds of being killed with your own gun by a criminal during an arrest/confrontation are 1 in 20,000 with a regular gun, and 1 in 200,000 to 1 with a smart gun; that suggests smart guns are worth looking at.

    Now suppose the odds of a regular well maintained handgun failing to fire with good ammunition is say 0.5% (due to ammunition issues, mechanical issues, etc).

    If the odds of the smart gun failing to fire due to electronic issues was 1 in 100,000; then it too would be dominated by the same issues as non-smart guns. so 0.500001%.

    If we could get smart guns to that point, it seems to be a no-brainer... no? If not why not?

  65. That's not the main thing I hear from the progun by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    lobby. I hear how the right to keep and bear arms is to protect them from the government. If you just wanted a pistol to threaten a few punks with then gun control wouldn't be an issue. Hitler rounded up guns because the gap between a military and a populace wasn't anywhere near as wide in 1945 as it is now.

    And no, the term is not dishonest. It's exactly what it says on the tin. You're a right wing troll or you're repeating talking points from one. My point, which you know full well, is that the working class should stop fighting among itself and switch to proven solutions to the problem of civilization.

    Look. I get it. You don't like being told what to do. You didn't when you were a kid and you never grew out of it. But it's time to grow up. Stop dragging us down with your childishness. And If you really don't want to live in civilization go live in the Ozarks or Afghanistan or some crap. Leave. Go. Get out. We'll air drop you food from civilization when you start to starve to death.

    --
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  66. Problems&Trade-offs: what engineers do for liv by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Before you blame "gun nuts" for the lack of smart guns, educate yourself a bit about the engineering challenges involved...
    Whatever strategy you choose, you're going to face problems and tradeoffs.

    Wow. Problems and trade-offs.

    Dealing with problems and trade-offs is what engineers do for living.

    https://www.wired.com/2016/03/...

    Very interesting article. You did read it, right? It basically says that the hardest problems with smart guns are not technical:

    But the hurdles aren’t only technical; they are sociopolitical as well. The National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the gun industry, say they’re not against smart guns per se, just for consumer choice. But in practice they have formed a united front against smart guns, after abortive efforts to develop them in the 1990s by companies like Smith and Wesson and Colt faltered, in part thanks to an NRA boycott...

    ...gun-rights true believers made it a holy mission to bar smart guns from the marketplace and stop the New Jersey ban from kicking in.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  67. Re:Should be your choice by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    because they know eventually such features would be mandated..as you damned well know.

    I am not a gun nut either.

  68. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    All that creates is a target rich zone. Why do you think asymmetric warfare (ie terrorism) works well in so called 'progressive' countries? Their citizens are unarmed, unaware, and unconcerned.

  69. Nice article by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Nice article, Mr. coward.
    Do you only read article supporting what you already believe, or do you ever read articles that might confront your opinions?

    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506

    http://archive.jsonline.com/news/opinion/are-you-safer-owning-a-gun-for-home-protection-b9912440z1-207958831.html/

    https://law.stanford.edu/2015/10/12/professor-john-donohue-facts-do-not-support-claim-that-guns-make-us-safer/

    https://www.bustle.com/articles/92454-does-owning-guns-make-you-safer-statistics-say-youre-actually-at-much-higher-risk-of-being

    http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/01/good_guy_with_a_gun_myth_guns_increase_the_risk_of_homicide_accidents_suicide.html

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/slightly-blighty/201601/does-owning-gun-protect-you

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0804-hemenway-defensive-gun-home-20150730-story.html

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re: Nice article by koomba · · Score: 1

      Yeah and the New England Journal of Medicine and Stanford are also just biased, gun hating shills for the BAN ALL GUNS zealots too, right? Get a fucking clue, not everyone who you disagree with is automatically an invalid source.

    2. Re: Nice article by Entrope · · Score: 1

      The NEJM article was the Kellerman study for which a debunking was linked earlier. The sample size in that study was ridiculously too small to accurately control for the number of variables they did. Improperly modeled correlations and omitted confounders would swamp the effect size they claimed to find, at least as to the risk of personal gun ownership.

  70. Smart guns don't ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... address the elephant in the room.

    ...more than 60 percent of the nation’s 30,000-plus gun deaths each year are acts of suicide, not accidents or homicidal attacks.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  71. Not much point anyway by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Smart guns are really a clueless consultant trying to find something to say idea instead of a practical one. I'm no expert, nothing like it, but the veterans I've talked to see a gun that locks people out as a dangerously stupid idea that's going to get a lot of people killed.

  72. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by rossz · · Score: 1

    In an emergency, you may not be able to be in a "proper" stance. I assume you are referring to a Weaver or an Isosceles stance. A two handed stance is preferred, but not always practical.

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
  73. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by vux984 · · Score: 2

    In an emergency, you may not be able to be in a "proper" stance.

    Sure, you might need to fire a pistol one handed, offhanded, with your primary hand hand and one foot cuffed to a bedframe, because your home got invaded by armed theives while you were in the middle setting up some light BDSM with girlfriend.. could happen to anyone.

    And because you are such an American hero type, you've been practicing that kind of shot too... so you might even hit what you are shooting at.

    And there shouldn't be a law mandating seatbelts because you know of a guy who was safely thrown from his convertible into a bush when the car rolled off a cliff, caught fire and exploded as it tumbled down, and then it reached the rushing river at the bottom and sank to the bottom, right? Why he'd have been mangled, burned, and drowned if he'd been wearing a seatbelt. :)

    The fact that you can come up with scenarios where a smart gun is bad, doesn't mean that its a bad idea. Like seatbelts, its a question of likelihoods and a balance of risks.

    I don't think smartguns are where they would need to be yet. But I also don't think its undesirable or impossible to get them there.

  74. Not going to have to reboot my gun.... by Evil+Kerek · · Score: 1

    There is no way...repeat NO WAY I'm ever going to rely on electronic technology to make my gun fire. Not happening. The number of points of failure that would be introduced is laughable.

    The first time one of these stupid 'smart' guns malfunctions and either prevents a gun from firing and gets the owner killed or IS fired by a child because people relied on the tech instead of teaching their child about guns/putting them out of reach, this shitty idea will come to a complete stop.

  75. Re:Problems&Trade-offs: what engineers do for by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 1

    I like how "the hurdles aren't only technical" in the article turned into "the hardest problems aren't technical" in your post. Even this extremely biased article didn't go that far.

    Gun owners oppose the technology because we know once the technology is there it will be mandated, even if it is buggy as hell. See California and microstamping -- a required technology that doesn't even exist in the form that they are mandating. New Jersey already has a law on the books that once "smart gun" technology is there it is mandated. Also, the line you quoted about the boycott doesn't tell the whole story on that either (but it isn't in the article so I wouldn't expect you to know that). For the sake of the length of this post I won't go into that.

    Also, Obama made the FBI come up with a list of criteria for accepting a smart gun. He knew gun owners didn't want them so he figured we can have the federal government create the demand to develop the technology then force it on the general population. If you read their list of criteria it is nearly impossible to implement and requires multiple ways to turn it off (including requiring that the failure mechanism is the gun must work if the "smart gun" tech fails in any way). Requirements I'm sure would be removed when forced on civilians. I got the impression the FBI knew it was a stupid idea.

    Currently gun owners do not want any required electronics on their guns that do not have a mechanical backup. Red dot sights have backup iron sights in case the electronics fail, etc. Until we are shooting energy weapons that require processors and batteries to operate, sticking unnecessary electronics into a mechanical device where reliability is a top priority is not acceptable.

  76. Yes it is actually by Viol8 · · Score: 1

    Unless you're an arsonist.

    1. Re:Yes it is actually by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      I am just in complete awe of the overwhelming amount of thought you put into that comment...
      Seriously, at least give us something that someone out there is dumb enough to go along with.

    2. Re:Yes it is actually by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      Right - then it's not paranoia, it's preparation

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  77. Speedy Response by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    OK, so I wake at 4 am due to a burglar being in my bedroom. I struggle to get my wrist watch on so that my gun will help me stay alive. NOT ! No Way ! the idea of control systems on a gun is absurd. People need to be responsible for their own actions rather than ruining the very concept of a firearm as a ready to go weapon that can be used suddenly with great effect.

  78. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

    When in the last 10 years has a "Smart" Anything been a good idea? we see articles of them getting owned every other week. you think for slashdot, even with all the gun grabbing leftys there would be a sense of a bad idea here.

  79. Re:Problems&Trade-offs: what engineers do for by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Very interesting article. You did read it, right? It basically says that the hardest problems with smart guns are not technical:

    No, no it does not say that. It says that not all of the problems with smart guns are technical. You are being dismissive of the technical challenge, which is real. If it weren't, someone would have come up with a smart gun worth one half of one shit by now. No one has, in spite of lots of people being very motivated by money to create one. QED.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  80. Re:Still safer by GWXerog · · Score: 1

    I don't mean this in a condescending way, more in an educational way, but if you bought anything that's marketed as a "Gun Safe" you can get into them in about 20 minutes with an angle grinder. No thermal lance required. Gun safes aren't even safes, they're "Residential Security Containers" and the fireproofing rating on them (if any) is literally made up by the manufacturer and it's method of action is drywall insulation. Most (all?) gun safes have a nice think huge metal door with literal sheet metal siding reinforced with drywall so it sounds think and secure when you knock on it, but again, angle grinder.

  81. Re: Should be your choice by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    You DO realize that drug sellers and users are ALL races, right?

  82. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1
  83. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by vux984 · · Score: 1

    "When in the last 10 years has a "Smart" Anything been a good idea?"

    They aren't cloud-connected or internet enabled, you are trying to tar them with a brush that doesn't apply here.

  84. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by koomba · · Score: 2

    I've seen every comment against smart guns so far only mention these radio signal, watch type systems, and seem to base their objections on that specific implementation. But is that really the only option?

    Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think that maybe a finger print system would be a good solution. You wouldn't have to worry about ever losing the watch/ring/etc or not wearing it, using either hand would be no problem assuming you could have multiple approved prints stored in it, and it wouldn't be susceptible to this kind of hacking that intercepts, blocks or otherwise interferes with any kind of broadcast signal.

    So the fact that this particular smart gun solution seems easily defeated doesn't look to me like any kind of definitive argument against the idea in general.

  85. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by koomba · · Score: 1

    Your level of respect and caution is laudable, and the way you were raised concerning guns. But unfortunately, your experience is far from universal. I know way too many people and grew up with many kids for whom guns in their house were something "cool," forbidden and generally speaking something to get out without permission when the parents were gone, usually to impress friends.

    And they are so easy to get, especially shotguns and hunting rifles, that plenty of people get them and have no or poor gun safety knowledge and just a lack of respect and the wrong attitude, IMO.

    So I would say that given how ingrained the idea that guns are the natural, god given right of every American and ANY attempt at even minimal regulations is just the first step of them TAKIN ALL OUR GUNS!, that attempts at smart guns or things like it will continue.

    If we aren't ever going to make proper handling and safe usage and ownership an ingrained part of gun culture for everyone, then I think you'll always have some group or people pushing for some kind of mitigation of irresponsible owners accidentally injuring or killing themselves and others.

  86. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by koomba · · Score: 1

    Either secure them properly, or don't own them? Yeah that's a great sentiment, but tell me, how are you going to enforce that? How is that any more likely to be a feasible solution than having some kind of smart gun?

    Honestly that sounds a lot more like "take away their guns" than any of the suggested regulations are, so I don't see how you could possibly think that would ever work? How do you know who isn't securing them right? How do you know who has irresponsible gun handling and storage habits? The pro gun crowd is generally against even small things like requiring gun safety, firing, etc classes for ALL guns, not just hands guns, so you can't figure it out that way.

    So when the super fun fanatics continually oppose virtually any type of regulation, then you'll continue to see ideas like smart guns attempted, because the NRA crowd seems to have an instant, knee-jerk reaction of NO, NO, NO to any gun laws whatsoever.

  87. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kil by oobayly · · Score: 1

    Even including terrorism, I've a much smaller chance of being murdered in the UK than I would in the US. Same goes for the rest of "progressive" Europe.

  88. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  89. Um.. can you cite any actual laws by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    because conjecture and law don't go hand in hand. People have tried to sue gun manufactures for selling a dangerous product and failed completely. Sure, gun manufactures have to sell you a gun that doesn't blow up in your hand, but that's about it.

    And we can't address those issues because the people who pro-gun also tend to oppose addressing those issues. They don't want to have to pay for it. So they come to the poll to vote for their guns and stick around to vote against any measure that would solve things. For example, nobody cared about drugs until middle class (mostly white) folk started having problems. And all that got us was lip service. Meanwhile our AG is openly in favor of 'tough' drug laws, meaning longer sentences and bigger crackdown.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  90. 30 years of media scaremongering by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    to feed the private prisons and divide the working class against each other. He most likely believes crime is increasing, even though 30 seconds on google proves otherwise.

    --
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  91. Re: Should be your choice by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

    "Uhh because socioeconomic status is weakly correlated to gun violence"

    I said "less than adequate socio-emotional support" and that applies no matter the 'socioeconomic status'.

    "Want to know what the strongest correlation is?"

    I'm talking about about violence, all kinds, and I'm not saying there's only one factor that contributes to kind of violence you're alluding too.

    "Look it up. You're not going to like it though, my socially just friend."

    And correlation is not causation, buddy :)

  92. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

    Neither were RFID credit cards. politicians and business throw "smart" in front of anything to try to sell it to stupid people.

  93. Re: Surprise, surprise, surp by ScentCone · · Score: 1

    Yeah, yeah, cherry pick away. Go to as much trouble as you can in your anonymous cowardice to avoid the fact that the FBI in, say, 2000, performed under 9 million background checks, but is now performing well over 20 million a year. Or that manufacturing for the US retail market has more that doubled in just the years Obama was in office. Or that notorious gun pimping paper, the New York Times, reports that the most rapidly growing presence in gun ownership and shooting sports is female, or that known puppet of the NRA, NBC News, reports that extensive interviews at the retail and manufacturing level and at ranges show a surge in new business from African American customers. Or that state-issued permits for concealed carry have surged by almost 2 million in the last 12 months alone, with minorities and women making up most of that new activity. But please, cherry pick some more so you can wish reality away, as you always do, coward.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  94. Cars are better if they don't have safety features by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    The story in question was about cars that incorporate safety features. Nobody is going to force you to wear a seatbelt, dude. Nobody is going to make it illegal to disable an airbag. You're just paranoid, man.

    Wait, what? You are arguing that cars should not have any safety features because you're afraid that if if somebody makes a safer car, the safer cars might be mandated?

    Do you really actually believe that cars should not have any safety features? Or are you just making an argument you don't actually believe, because you're blowing smoke because you like arguing?

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  95. You want to take away my choice by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Read the article. You posted the link, read it. The article was about the social problems. The technical ones were solvable.

    Basically, you just said that you want to take away choice. You're telling me that you don't want people to have the ability to buy a safer guns, because you are afraid that the government may mandate them.

    You think you're in favor of choice, but that is actually just argued for: taking away the ability to choose.

    By the way, you're wrong. The NRA is the most powerful lobby in America, bar none. What you are afraid of simply is not going to happen. (And the only way the silly law in NJ was allowed to pass was because the NRA allowed it to pass because it was irrelevant.)

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  96. We can solve technical problems. by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    I will repeat what I just said in the headline: Dealing with problems and trade-offs is what engineers do for living. We're good at it. We can solve technical problems.

    Idealogues like you who are trying to take away my ability to choose-- now, that's harder.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:We can solve technical problems. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I will repeat what I just said in the headline: Dealing with problems and trade-offs is what engineers do for living. We're good at it. We can solve technical problems.

      You're not as good as you think, because lots of people have spent lots of money trying to do this, and none of them have succeeded yet. If it's so easy, go forth and solve it. Smarter people than you have tried and failed.

      Idealogues like you who are trying to take away my ability to choose-- now, that's harder.

      It's the ones who want to take away the ability to choose who are pushing hardest for "smart" guns.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  97. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by unrtst · · Score: 1

    Thank you. You summed that up better than I.

  98. Re: Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by unrtst · · Score: 1

    The first time I saw smart gun things, they were using biometrics (finger prints). Those have plenty of their own issues, which is probably why they've moved on to these other solutions (NFC/RFID/etc). Some example: doesn't work if you're wearing gloves of any kind; doesn't work well if your hands are dirty/muddy/bloody/etc; takes significantly more processing, which used to take quite a bit more time to authenticate; handedness is still a concern due to sensor placement (tend to be either convenient for one hand, or universally inconvenient); fingerprints are easily lifted and reproduced from well maintained guns with a thin oil coating, reducing the effectiveness against theft; difficulty/complexity when adding users/prints; storage concerns since it requires a fair bit of battery power to authenticate, and maintain that system; ... etc ...

    It's very very very unlikely that they're going to get a near perfect solution, which means it shouldn't become the only way to sell new guns. But if smart guns aren't mandated, I don't believe the market will support that industry. IMO, this is one of the biggest underlying reasons that gun folks are anti-smart-gun, because they know they can't succeed without forcing it.

  99. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by KingBenny · · Score: 1

    dunno ... "back in the day" when my old man was heavy into neo-nationalism and him and all his friends were gun-collectors ... sidearms, longrifles, scopes ... you know, all those toys for boys, i once got a chance to fire one those m-15 (m-16?) as a kid (no clue cos im not into that. He put a lock on the trunk with the ammo so no matter how i was scoping passersby with a snipe ... i couldnt really shoot anything lol was kinda smart (sounds a bit american maybe but it was kinda trendy here 20-30 years ago) they did a huge sweep in flanders, maybe whole belgium, gave everyone a chance to turn in their armory without prosecution (like you cant get licenses for military grade equipment or grenades and stuff you know ... those collector thingies for adult boys with toys) So i never shot anyone ... not even when i was like totally miffed or pissed off or had been in a fight, not even when i was enough to crack a lock lol maybe its in your nature, i personally never had a gun in my life. Radiojammer seems kinda easy to carry around if its the new thing in law-enforcement. Did he try broken open microwaves lol ? So there's room for improvement then ? (oh the vmo got disbanded and its no longer trendy, its just very racist lol ... well a lot of people are, its just the spirit of the place, its why i fit in so well i guess) good old days memories ... i dont think a smart gun is a good thing to have if it can be jammed easily, i think you're better off with classics like a glock or if you wanna bling a desert eagle, and put it in a safe where your kid cant get to it. No jamming the glock lol good, enough remniniscing and yea i do think a gun that cant be jammed with "another smart watch on the intruders arm is definitely the better option when it comes to ... whats it called ? personal defense ! ) You just have to be a so-called responsible parent and maybe if you like having guns in the house teach your kid from very young age what they are. I knew pretty fast as a very little kid to never point anything at people i wasnt gonna shoot, not even when its not loaded. Got more than an earful in case lol olol... im sad he sold off the blade collection though, all those daggers and blades, that was cool guns dont really speak to me (maybe good who knows what might have happened instead by now)

    --
    Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
  100. Re:Still safer by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

    No this is an actual real safe not one of those case hardened sheet metal cabinets with some fire board glued to the inside. This is a real safe with a 2.5 hour at 1200F fire rating that took a 4 big guys to move in and initially place because it weighs in at just under 1000 lbs empty (I got the small one). I am aware of the inexpensive gun safes you speak of and went for something else specifically because of the reasons you mentioned. Add in that I do have other valuable and important documents so now I have a good place to store them as well. Even one of those cheap gun safes or metal cabinets would be better than what most people have given how they just store them up on a shelf or in one of those locking glass display cabinets (what the fuck is the purpose of that lock).

    --
    Time to offend someone
  101. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

    Moreover, I don't sleep with a gun by my pillow in fear of midnight attackers. That is simply not something I live in fear of happening, and it is simply NOT a use case that defines my requirements at all.

    But, you're use case, lowest common denominator, should not be used as the use case for everyone.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  102. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    Anything bad for the gun owner is considered a great idea by the communist loving left. The idea that a gun can be disabled from a distance makes their commie panties wet.

  103. Easier 4th way... by MercTech · · Score: 1

    With the solenoid disengage system used by the cited weapon; you can open the gun, engage the solenoid, and lock it in place with a drop of superglue. No more "smart" to the gun.

    This article is a good example of why there was so much vehement and vociferous opposition to politicians that mouthed the concept of making smart firearm technology mandatory. Smart gun tech is expensive, cumbersome, and flat out doesn't work reliably in the real world.

    --
    NRRPT/RCT
  104. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    So, are all kids today just too stupid for such training....or is the problem we have too many stupid parents today who don't care to train their kids or discipline them on proper behavior (not just guns, but most anything in life)?

    Without doubt it is the parents. There is also a lot of influence from school, but the parents have no excuse for not teaching their children about gun safety when they are young. If you do not know what a gun is, what it can do, and not to touch it by the time you are 5 then your parents are absolute failures. The same if you do not know how to shoot it by age 8.

  105. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    The NRA was first founded to protect the rights of black Americans to keep and bear arms. It was later infiltrated by democrats and started to advocate "reasonable" restrictions in order to slowly take away rights. Of course this disproportionately affects blacks and other minorities in the US, and that was the whole point of it in the first place. Gun laws, just like drug laws, have always been about racism.

  106. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    Columbine was caused by psychotropic drugs being forced on children. The boys had been telling their parents, teachers, and councilors that they had been having vivid and terrifying hallucinations, as well as long periods of lost memory where they had no idea what they had been doing, since they had started the drugs they were being forced to take. They tried to get help, but everyone ignored them until it tragedy struck.

  107. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    So, you are trying to tell us that a man does not have the right to end his own life?
    I disagree. If a man doesn't have the right to end his own life then he is a slave with no rights.

  108. Re:Don't worry about burglars- toddlers will kill by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Not sure where you're coming from. The NRA was founded to promote gun practice because of the poor state of Union soldiers in the civil war. It did not get involved in gun legistlation until the 1930s. Although I am seeing a lot of stories on google from typical far right people trying to claim that it was formed to protect black gun ownership. There's a lot of fake news out there, you have to take it with a grain of salt, and if you see anything by Ann Coulter on the topic then just assume it's not worth a mouse click.

  109. Re:That's not the main thing I hear from the progu by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

    I hear how the right to keep and bear arms is to protect them from the government.

    The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right, enumerated in the First Amendment, and as such, needs no specific purpose.

    And no, the term is not dishonest. It's exactly what it says on the tin.

    When the bill is being paid by several tens of millions of taxpayers, it is seriously dishonest to claim that it is "single" payer.

    You're a right wing troll or you're repeating talking points from one.

    Wrong on both.

    My point, which you know full well, is that the working class should stop fighting among itself and switch to proven solutions to the problem of civilization.

    I don't know what your point is. You want someone else to pay for your healthcare and child's college is about all I can figure out.

    Your ad hominem is cute, but not as grown up as you pretend to be.

  110. Selective? by dbIII · · Score: 1

    selectively quote people

    All your text is there above so "selective quoting" does not matter - it's just to draw attention to the small portions of your mostly irrelevant walls of text that are not entirely ignorable.