I dunno about "mandatory" smart triggers, but a little less reliability seems like a very worthy tradeoff for the feature of making kids or other unintended parties unable to fire the weapon.
A lot of naysayers of smart triggers are using the supposed inevitability of remote kill switches as part of their arguments. Which I find a little absurd, a little too much conspiracy theorizing. (For example, I don't ever recall any Democratic leader asking for such a thing.) If this is a real concern, then I would like something more to substantiate it. That was the only point of my original post.
You misunderstand the market for smart guns. They appeal most to inexperienced and/or untrained people worried about self defense, as well as people with kids, worried what might happen if those kids start messing around with stuff they shouldn't. (I'm not necessarily endorsing their parenting skills here.)
I suppose the government financially benefits if a sick or old person dies. When a young healthy person dies, that's a lot of lost income tax revenue. And if a government is not vested in protecting children, it's a pretty lousy government.
Training and experience are huge. A novice with neither of those typically endangers themself when pulling out a gun on an assailant. While for a pro, obviously the gun is an asset. So the smart gun ought to appeal to the novice more than the pro.
Why should the government not help along this niche industry? It may actually be in the government's own financial interest to do so, especially if such technologies actually do reduce deaths and injuries from firearms. There are a lot of accidental deaths due to children getting hold of guns... that alone gives the government a moral imperative to support smart guns already.
What does it matter if somebody demands a kill switch? If somebody adds that in, then we are free to not buy the gun. If they leave it out, then the smart gun is more appealing. In any case, I don't yet see anyone who matters who is demanding this kill switch feature in the first place. Way too much tin foil hat.
It's interesting timing, this discussion coming just weeks after Blizzard's first foray into Mobile, Hearthstone, launched on the iPad (coming soon for Android and iPhone). Hearthstone might possibly be the best freemium game in recent memory, with great balance between "Yes, you can excel at this card-battling game without paying money, with a reasonable amount of grinding" and "Spend $30 or so, and it will shortcut much of the grinding to build decks, but you still need skill to actually win anything" No ads in the game, unless you want to infer the game itself is an ad for other Warcraft titles. I'm definitely less jaded about Freemium after playing this game.
Snapchat is basically a sexting app. The word-of-mouth marketing message is "go ahead and send a nude selfie to some random internet person, without worry!" With all the existing worries over teen sexting, bullying, revenge porn, etc. such a service was probably bound to generate government scrutiny fast. Maybe the FTC did just use a pretext.
If indeed the government is being unusually harsh, then maybe it's the sexting thing? Maybe some right wing group pressured the FTC because of worries of under-18 girls sending nudie pics?
The entire point of Snapchat was proven to be an advertising lie. That's different than, say, bullet 12 on three pages of advertising claims turns out to be an exaggeration. How could the FTC ignore this one?
Pipelines only reduce the need for rail transport, not eliminate it altogether. Only high production areas like the Alberta sands and the Bakken will get pipelines... the smaller fracking sites dotting the country will still need rail. Your post unnecessarily detracts from the main issue, about the need for stronger regulations.
Comcast must be thrilled Netflix has emerged as the proxy case for Net Neutrality. Netflix, a company that commands a large double-digit percentage of all US traffic, with plans to aggressively push 4K streaming later this year. It's so easy to paint such a Goliath as needing accommodations, as a company singly adding bandwidth stress on its own.
The FCC has no experience or competency trying to regulate "fair play". The FTC, on the other hand, has been doing such for decades. Let the FTC manage this issue by simply squashing anticompetitive behavior, as they have always done.
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I dunno about "mandatory" smart triggers, but a little less reliability seems like a very worthy tradeoff for the feature of making kids or other unintended parties unable to fire the weapon.
A lot of naysayers of smart triggers are using the supposed inevitability of remote kill switches as part of their arguments. Which I find a little absurd, a little too much conspiracy theorizing. (For example, I don't ever recall any Democratic leader asking for such a thing.) If this is a real concern, then I would like something more to substantiate it. That was the only point of my original post.
Really? That's pretty sad if true. Do you have a citation?
Thanks for the link, but there is no indication of mandatory remote kill switch.
Why can't we have both? Safes and smart triggers? They are not mutually exclusive.
They are only mandating smart features, not kill switches, according to the article.
You misunderstand the market for smart guns. They appeal most to inexperienced and/or untrained people worried about self defense, as well as people with kids, worried what might happen if those kids start messing around with stuff they shouldn't. (I'm not necessarily endorsing their parenting skills here.)
I suppose the government financially benefits if a sick or old person dies. When a young healthy person dies, that's a lot of lost income tax revenue. And if a government is not vested in protecting children, it's a pretty lousy government.
No machine is 100% reliable.
Which states? I googled a bit, came up with nothing.
Suburban households with kids present.
Training and experience are huge. A novice with neither of those typically endangers themself when pulling out a gun on an assailant. While for a pro, obviously the gun is an asset. So the smart gun ought to appeal to the novice more than the pro.
Why should the government not help along this niche industry? It may actually be in the government's own financial interest to do so, especially if such technologies actually do reduce deaths and injuries from firearms. There are a lot of accidental deaths due to children getting hold of guns... that alone gives the government a moral imperative to support smart guns already.
What does it matter if somebody demands a kill switch? If somebody adds that in, then we are free to not buy the gun. If they leave it out, then the smart gun is more appealing. In any case, I don't yet see anyone who matters who is demanding this kill switch feature in the first place. Way too much tin foil hat.
It's interesting timing, this discussion coming just weeks after Blizzard's first foray into Mobile, Hearthstone, launched on the iPad (coming soon for Android and iPhone). Hearthstone might possibly be the best freemium game in recent memory, with great balance between "Yes, you can excel at this card-battling game without paying money, with a reasonable amount of grinding" and "Spend $30 or so, and it will shortcut much of the grinding to build decks, but you still need skill to actually win anything" No ads in the game, unless you want to infer the game itself is an ad for other Warcraft titles. I'm definitely less jaded about Freemium after playing this game.
Snapchat is basically a sexting app. The word-of-mouth marketing message is "go ahead and send a nude selfie to some random internet person, without worry!" With all the existing worries over teen sexting, bullying, revenge porn, etc. such a service was probably bound to generate government scrutiny fast. Maybe the FTC did just use a pretext.
If indeed the government is being unusually harsh, then maybe it's the sexting thing? Maybe some right wing group pressured the FTC because of worries of under-18 girls sending nudie pics?
... nudie pictures of either myself or my wife, please delete. Pretty Please. Cherries on top.
The entire point of Snapchat was proven to be an advertising lie. That's different than, say, bullet 12 on three pages of advertising claims turns out to be an exaggeration. How could the FTC ignore this one?
Maybe pictures don't disappear cleanly, but that $3 Billion offer for the company sure disappeared fast.
Pipelines only reduce the need for rail transport, not eliminate it altogether. Only high production areas like the Alberta sands and the Bakken will get pipelines... the smaller fracking sites dotting the country will still need rail. Your post unnecessarily detracts from the main issue, about the need for stronger regulations.
We are trying to understand those things we can observe. That doesn't preclude us from trying to observe more stuff.
Finite element analysis with discrete chunks basically the size of small galaxies. Pretty strange...
Comcast must be thrilled Netflix has emerged as the proxy case for Net Neutrality. Netflix, a company that commands a large double-digit percentage of all US traffic, with plans to aggressively push 4K streaming later this year. It's so easy to paint such a Goliath as needing accommodations, as a company singly adding bandwidth stress on its own.
The FCC has no experience or competency trying to regulate "fair play". The FTC, on the other hand, has been doing such for decades. Let the FTC manage this issue by simply squashing anticompetitive behavior, as they have always done.