Smart Guns To Stop Mass Killings 1388
New submitter Bugs42 writes "CNN.com has an opinion piece on the possibility of cramming guns full of computers and sensors to disable them in certain buildings or around children. The author, in true mainstream media fashion, completely fails to see any possible technical problems with this. Quoting: 'How might this work? Start with locational "self-awareness." Guns should know where they are and if another gun is nearby. Global positioning systems can meet most of the need, refining a gun's location to the building level, even within buildings. Control of the gun would remain in the hand of the person carrying it, but the ability to fire multiple shots in crowded areas or when no other guns are present would be limited by software that understands where the gun is being used. Guns should also be designed to sense where they are being aimed. Artificial vision and optical sensing technology can be adapted from military and medical communities. Sensory data can be used by built-in software to disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child or someone holding a child."
What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe painting them pink would help reduce the number of gun fatalities ?
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe painting them pink would help reduce the number of gun fatalities ?
Pastels do tend to have a calming effect...
Maybe adorn them with butterflies and stylized dinosaurs, too? What could possibly go wrong?
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe adorn them with butterflies and stylized dinosaurs, too?
D'oh. You just leaked part of Borderlands 3.
Honestly, those game have the prettiest guns ever. :-)
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
I seem to recall hearing about a study regarding the color pink. The researchers found that taking an aggravated individual and placing them in a pink room had a calming effect over the course of the first fifteen minutes on average, but that after that the effect reversed and quickly led to increased levels of aggravation and irritation. I hardly think that's the sort of thing we want to be encouraging among gun wielders.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Funny)
ah, but would "you have a small penis" arguments then no longer be used as compensation for not actually having any logical arguement?
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
Your 'humble opinion' is absurd.
But anyway: http://www.riflegear.com/blogimages/ShootingKitty1.jpg [riflegear.com]
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
Well that might explain why there are so few people with large penises these days, the small penis'd guys killed them off.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Funny)
Not only would painting guns pink keep men from buying guns to look cool, Painting guns pink would also have the added benefit of getting women more interested in gun ownership.
Congress must pass a law immediately requiring all guns have a minimum amount of flair in order to be legal.
"Sorry sir, this AR-15 only has 23 pieces of glitter, hello kitty pendants, and rhinestones. The law states you need at least 24 pieces of flair. Get yourself down to Claire's and bling this weapon up immediately".
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
My fiancee loves black guns, and doesn't care for pink.
Well you know what they say about black ones ....
Re:Or inceasing the cost of ammo? (Score:5, Informative)
It's cute how people think stuff like this would work.
Black markets don't only trade in illegal goods.
In Soviet Russia (ha!) and similar environments, if anyone wanted to know the real value of any good or product, they checked the black market prices.
Re:Or inceasing the cost of ammo? (Score:5, Informative)
It works better as a joke, because making your own bullets is pretty easy to do (pretty much trivially so if you have the equipment, which isn't hard to get).
Re:Or inceasing the cost of ammo? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good point. Pouring lead bullets is pretty trivial and people have been doing that for centuries. But modern cartridges need brass shells which aren't that trivial to manufacture (which is why reloaders are called "reloaders" and not "people who make cartridges from scratch"), and neither are the primers, which use small charges of high explosive.
Making your own ammunition isn't that hard if you're making ammo for a black powder rifle, but for a modern rifle or handgun it's not.
Re:Or inceasing the cost of ammo? (Score:5, Informative)
>
Last century but one, this was tried with printers' ink.
Supreme Court ruled that you couldn't infringe a Constitutional Right via onerous taxation....
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. Also, was I the only person to think 'Judge Dredd' when I read it?
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing related to guns can ever be considered "smart", since guns are for weak and fearful.
Smart people never own guns, because smart people know guns are more harmful than they are helpful.
Smart people do not make broad generalizations that are misleading and mostly incorrect.
Thanks for confirming that you're a complete moron.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
Using your definition you have just insulted every single Law Enforcement Officer, member of the military, private armed security who own guns for their jobs. Do you really think there aren't smart people in those fields?
Guns are tools, nothing more, nothing less. People like you are the ones acting from fear and ignorance and are a threat to the future of the United States.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
because smart people know guns are more harmful than they are helpful.
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
The problem, as ever, is that people who have none of those qualities that you have and who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop or any other place where you can legally buy guns and start making it mandatory for gun owners to undergo serious training before getting to own a gun. Smart people also know that even if we do this will take a loooooong time for things to change. Stuffing guns full of sensors that deactivate them in the vicinity of schools won't help either since there are way to many legacy weapons with no such sensors and safety devices in circulation already. The USA has already created a situation where there are so many firearms in circulation and they are so easy to obtain in ways the police is powerless to monitor that no amount of legislating, policing, training or educational efforts by gun clubs/owners-associations will ever be really effective at keeping guns out of the hands of nutters and criminals unless, as I stated before, these measures are given a take a long time to take effect (not years, decades). Gun control works in Europe because it has been in place for many, many decades and the bar to owning a gun is so high you have to quite motivated to complete the process of getting a weapons license... especially one for a pistol. The byproduct of the European approach is that the vast majority of gun owners are people like you, well trained, responsible, mentally stable and not likely to treat a gun frivolously.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns.
...and gasoline, gunpowder, plans for explosives, and many other cheap and legal means to kill people. Solving gun violence doesn't solve violence. I agree in general that more stringent rules for purchasing guns and being issued concealed carry permits would not be a bad thing. I don't think the required changes are likely to be made, but perhaps that is another argument. Looking at myself, not only do I have military training (as do millions of Americans), but I have had 4 concealed carry permits issued in 2 different states which means 4 background checks. I have a security clearance, and have had 3 intense background checks done, every 5 years. I have undergone a psychological test in order to work in a particularly sensitive unit. I have undergone a polygraph, during which they asked me questions to determine if I was a spy, a saboteur, and or a terrorist. I passed. I think I can be trusted to carry a gun at this point, and even carry one into a school. (I also think I can be trusted to carry a knife on a plane since the govt is convinced I am not a terrorist, but that is yet another argument). There are millions of Americans who have military or law enforcement training, security clearances, and clean backgrounds. I have heard some say, here and elsewhere, that only police should be able to buy guns, and I think that there are plenty of people like me that are in effect trustable, and at least these people should be able to have guns. I think that teachers that meet similar criteria (there are plenty of former military teachers) should be able to carry a concealed pistol to school. Allowing trusted citizens to carry pistols into schools, sporting events, etc (as well as allowing them to carry non-firearm weapons on planes) would help curb some of these types of rampage shootings where someone is able to kill multiple unarmed people.
On a separate note, I think America's very recent history of having a revolution and a dangerous frontier has made the personal firearm a part of our culture. So while much of Europe enjoys lower murder rates and fewer guns, our culture is just different and solutions that worked for Europe may not work for the US.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem you and everyone else seems to be misled on is that the idea that removing guns will somehow stop violence. The anti-gun crowd ONLY want to quote statistics on gun violence and not overall violent crimes. The per-capita statistics on overall violence is still very high when you don't pick out some meaningless statistic as the instrument used to commit the crime. By the same logic I could say that we should ban the import of British cars in the USA because the number of drunk driving incidents involving British cars in England are astronomically high; and here, where there are fewer British cars, there are almost no drunk driving incidents where those cars are involved. Its a useless statistic that does nothing to address the real problem associated with drunk driving.
The truth is, getting rid of the gun does nothing to stop someone from committing a violent crime no more than banning straws keeps you from drinking your soda. When Hamas blows up a city bus in Tel-Aviv they manage to kill 20 people without so much as firing a single bullet. They make their bombs out of grocery store items including table sugar. There is nothing you can do to stop a determined crazy person hell-bent on mass homicide. They will research how to make bombs or whatever alternative solution they choose to carry out their plan. In China, back in October, a person went into a school and killed 6 or 7 kids with an Axe. Its not like 6yr olds can put up such a fight that making due with some other weapon wouldn't do enough carnage. The same psycho could rush in and hack the teacher to death first, before he/she had any warning, leaving you with a classroom of 20 or so terrified children unable to defend themselves. In theory, a sick individual could lock the door and kill them slowly, one at a time, hacking them to pieces before the cops could arrive and break down the door.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
The only lack of intelligence is on your part.
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
What do you do?
If you own a gun, you shoot him, just as my grandmother did a year ago.
Guns are for the weak? Yes, in the sense that they enable a frail old women like my grandmother to stand up to someone 3x her size, and survive. Nothing else would have enabled her to do that.
Guns are for the fearful? Yes, in the sense that she was afraid of dying and did not desire to do so.
Smart people never own guns? I guess you believe that there's a real world analogy to the charisma score in D&D talking your way out of harmful situations with someone intent on doing you bodily harm?
Guns are more harmful than helpful? Only to the criminal that illegally entered her house in the middle of the night. What is she supposed to do, try to reason with him? Hope the cops can get there faster than he can cross the house?
A gun is the equaliser that allows a tiny old lady to defend herself against someone 3x her size.
You are an absolute fool for saying what you did.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the kind of story I'd like to see a link to, but let's assume it's true.
If your grandmother has a gun in her house, she's more likely to use it to kill herself, or another innocent party, as she is to use it to defend herself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/at-the-er-bearing-witness-to-gun-violence.html [nytimes.com]
At the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence
By DAVID H. NEWMAN
Published: January 1, 2013
I do not know exactly what measures should be taken to reduce gun violence like this. But I know that most homicides and suicides in America are carried out with guns. Research suggests that homes with a gun are two to three times more likely to experience a firearm death than homes without guns, and that members of the household are 18 times more likely to be the victim than intruders.
Emergency rooms are themselves volatile environments, not immune to violence. Over the last decade, a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed with guns wrested from armed guards.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.long [oxfordjournals.org]
Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study
Linda L. Dahlberg, Robin M. Ikeda and Marcie-jo Kresnow
Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4).
The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506 [nejm.org]
Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home
Arthur L. Kellermann, Frederick P. Rivara, Norman B. Rushforth, Joyce G. Banton, Donald T. Reay, Jerry T. Francisco, Ana B. Locci, Janice Prodzinski, Bela B. Hackman, and Grant Somes
N Engl J Med 1993; 329:1084-1091
October 7, 1993
DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3713749 [nih.gov]
N Engl J Med. 1986 Jun 12;314(24):1557-60.
Protection or peril? An analysis of firearm-related deaths in the home.
Kellermann AL, Reay DT.
Only 2 of these 398 deaths (0.5 percent) involved an intruder shot during attempted entry. Seven persons (1.8 percent) were killed in self-defense. For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms. Hand-guns were used in 70.5 percent of these deaths.
http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(12)01408-4/abstract [annemergmed.com]
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 60, Issue 6 , Pages 790-798.e1, December 2012
Hospital-Based Shootings in the United States: 2000 to 2011
Gabor D. Kelen, Christina L. Catlett, Joshua G. Kubit, Yu-Hsiang Hsieh
In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer's gun taken by the perpetrator.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Interesting)
So self protection doesn't count if the attacker is shot but lives? Or if the defender fires but misses and the attacker runs away before the defender fires again? Or if the defender pulls the gun and points at the attacker, who discovers he has a pressing engagement elsewhere before the defender pulls the trigger?
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Interesting)
The only lack of intelligence is on your part.
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
Out of interest, how come he wasn't armed?
Do you have a news story backing your claim up?
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
It's funny because a very noisy, home invasion type crime such is this is the only scenario to my mind where the right to keep a gun in your home is any use.
The problem is that it hardly ever happens in the manner you describe. What actually happens is that the guy knocks on the door, old lady answers it and is then taken by surprise and subdued. As she was surprised a gun would only help if she was carrying it in her hand and only if she could keep some distance between her and her attacker which is unlikely.
This to my mind is always the problem with the idea of guns as a method of preventing crime: criminals generally prefer to rob you on the quiet when you are out or to ambush you in such a way that nothing you can do (even if you are carrying a gun) will help you or put them at any risk.
Guns are not really much of an advantage in a hand to hand combat scenario. They only really come into their own when at ranges greater than a few feet.
I would be interested to know whether the amount of crimes they prevent actually balance the number of car jackings they make much easier (without a gun in your hand convincing someone not to just run you over would strike me as difficult) .
Re:Why smart people don't own guns (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the US has *not* always been like any other system of government. The fact that we're on Slashdot having this damn discussion proves it. No, we're not perfect in the US -- there are bits of tyranny lurking around, but to say that we're the same as the Chinese or the Cubans or the Soviets or Mugabe's Zimbabwe? Ludicrous; the fact that you think that the US is just as tyrannical as these real tyrannies says something pretty sad.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Informative)
He was incarcerated and killed for his beliefs. Funny how all those pro-gun people who trot out the "we need to defend ourselves agaisnt the government" revile Mcveigh rather than actually look up to him for doing exactly what they claim they need their guns for!
Wow, this is truly one of the stupidest things I have ever read in my life. Timothy McVeigh was incarcerated and "killed" (as you put it) for murdering 168 innocent people. He was not defending himself or his beliefs. He was not engaged in combat. He just drove a bomb up and killed them. That is not something people should "look up to him" for. I would assume you're a troll if you had posted AC. Since you logged in, perhaps you are just crazy?
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say that guns do have a peacefull purpose.
The very fact that a populace is armed means the government remains relatively peaceful torwads that population. It is when the populace is unarmed, that tyranical governments do their worst. That doesn't mean that it will always happen, but there is nothing to stop it if you are unarmed.
Re:Smart people know how to safely handle/store gu (Score:4, Insightful)
What most pro-gun people don't tend to consider is that when everyone has guns, it's more likely that someone will lose their cool and fire one in anger at someone else. Or just be a dick and use one to commit crimes.
Switzerland proves otherwise. They have universal conscription and have hundreds of thousands of genuine fully automatic assault rifles in private homes. Plus they also have hundreds of thousands of so called "assault weapons", semi-auto and capable of accepting military high capacity magazines, in private homes as well. However given universal conscription the gun owners have had proper training in safe handling, the guns are stored locked and the owners have had a background check.
I grew up in a part of the U.S. where hunting and firearms ownership was fairly common. A region with town populations generally in the low tens of thousands, a few over a hundred thousand. Our per capita crime rate involving firearms was low, far lower than more urban regions where firearms were banned or severely restricted.
Its not the guns. Its the lack of training, proper storage and background checks that seem to be the problem.
Its funny that you use the phrase "pro-gun". It seems that people familiar with firearms tend to support private ownership of firearms, even those that choose not to own one themselves. While those unfamiliar with firearms tends to be against private ownership. Familiar as in having gone shooting to some small extent at some point in their lives. Unfamiliar as in what they "know" they "learned" from the mass media, TV and movies. What does that tell you?
Again, just to be clear. Private ownership is one thing, however I think both the pro and anti sides generally agree that safety training, safe storage and background checks are all good things.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:4, Informative)
Just like the driver with seatbelts who gets stuck in a burning car, the man who finds out at the wrong time he is allergic to latex in condoms, or the patient who gets a vaccine develops the disease because the virus in the vaccine batch was not really dead after all.
Not owning a gun makes you safer [news-medical.net]. You may feel safer with a gun because you think you are in control, just like people feel safer in their cars but not in aeroplanes (even though last year only over 30,000 people died on cars in the US, none in airliners AFAIK).
The whole picture includes you having a gun during a serious depression and killing yourself over a moment of desperation, your children finding the gun the one time you left it loaded, you discovering you are a sleepwalker the day you shoot your wife in your dreams, and that angry dumb person with a gun (who might have been satisfied by robbing you) that turns out to be a faster shot than you are, and leaves you in a pool of blood.
Are you always less safe with a gun? No, in some limited cases it makes sense, such as when going in areas with aggressive wildlife (e.g. polar bears). In some occasions even in normal, civilian life it might be advantageous to have a gun to scare a casual would-be thief. But on average, all things considered, statistics shows that it is a safer decision not to have a gun around.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:4, Informative)
Not owning a gun makes you safer .
Ah, the Lippmann study rears it's head.
Hint: There is one time that people in the gun culture believe it is not merely moral, but sometimes morally required, to lie. That is when someone asks you about whether you have/what guns you have, in an inappropriate context and/or when they're not entitled to the information. An example of such a context is when you're in a doctor's office or emergency room being treated for something NOT related to an injury resulting from your own firearm.
The right answer to such questions is "no", unless it's obvious (like from an accidental self-inflicted wound) the answer must be "yes" - but with details withheld.
Such reporting bias invalidates studies dependent on questioning the subjects. (And how else can you obtain the information?) Authors of similar studies in the past (notably Kellerman, author of the debunked study behind the "43 times more likely" meme) have actually repudiated and withdrawn their own work once things like this were pointed out.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry. What you're looking at is someone contorting statistics to try and prove a point.
That's like saying "100% of people who've never flown have never died in an airplane crash".
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html [guncite.com]
Also, read the book More Guns Less Crime, by Professor John Lott.
Statistics aside, I have the moral right and duty to protect myself from unwarranted aggression. This right was recognized in the middle ages as existing independently of any government, and was codified in the English Bill of rights, which was one source of inspiration for our own Second Amendment. That a gun helps me in that effort is indisputable.
Re:Nothing related to guns can be considered "smar (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI Modern militaries don't "charge at each other". And military guns still have bayonets and soldiers still have combat knives. Most death in combat comes from indirect fire, a.k.a.: not from an assault rifle or pistol. Also, if guns are the cause of so much violence, why hasn't the crime rate in the UK dropped since the banning of guns? Why has the crime rate in the US dropped during the same time period without the use of draconian gun laws? In fact it has dropped since the assault weapons ban expired. All of this seems to contradict the idea that guns cause violence.
You may not like this becuase it doesn't fit your little world view, but millions of people defend themselves each year with guns. This is a recent example of a mom who saved herself and her children [digitaljournal.com] from god knows what - with a gun.
The truth of the matter is that people cause violence. It's not a coincidence that all of the recent mass shootings in every country have been the result of mentally unstable people. Banning guns does nothing but put the guns in the hands of criminals and removes them from the hands of people who would otherwise protect themselves from the same criminals who are going to have guns no matter what the law says. People, who want to ban guns in good faith, are ignorant and have the blood of innocents on their hands.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
From CNN, what did you expect?
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
From CNN, what did you expect?
First, it's an opinion article. Second, Editor's note: Jeremy Shane, who served in the Justice Department during the George H.W. Bush administration. It's right there under the headline. Heeeeere's your sign.
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing can go wrong... go wrong... go wrong.... [wikipedia.org]
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite possibly the dumbest article I've ever seen.
Gunman walks into school, opens fire. Citizen nearby with legal carry and conceal permit and gun responds. Raises gun to kill gunman as he's mowing down little children and... *click*. Nothing. Gunman blows away citzen, continues on his rampage. How could this have happened? Easy: The deranged lunatic took out the batteries. Sorry, Would-Be Citizen Hero And Families Of All Those Dead Kids, our bad.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
They may disarm the citizen, but I doubt even obtaining the weapon makes him more dangerous. All these guys come loaded for bear anyway, it's not like one extra gun is going to make them feel better when they already have three.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
They may disarm the citizen, but I doubt even obtaining the weapon makes him more dangerous. All these guys come loaded for bear anyway, it's not like one extra gun is going to make them feel better when they already have three.
^^^ This.
Also, statistically, in the mass shootings where an armed citizen fired back, how many rampaging gunmen have disarmed said citizen? Answer: nil.
Now, notice that I'm not arguing about having more people with guns walking around. But the suggestion that an armed citizen will surely be disarmed and give the mass murder an additional edge is a perfect example of people reaching so far up their asses to make some pretty dumbest pro-gun-control argument, it's just sad.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's talk the fundamentals. The deadly part of a gun is not the gun at all, but the small charge in each round of ammunition. The whole rest of the device is just a convenience to direct that energy. You can't put an encrypted lock on gun-powder.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite possibly the dumbest article I've ever seen.
At least someone is thinking outside the box and looking alternatives. I have to give him credit for that.
I cringe at the thought of all the different failure points of his proposals. But to say our current debate on guns (two sides: 1) ban all or some or 2) make them more available) will find a solution is simply head-in-the-sand refusal to admit our political process for solving social issues is useless.
So I give the guy credit for keeping an open mind and proposing some new thinking on a very old problem
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is worse, because anyone who is going on a spree can disable it (trivially so if modern DRM systems are anything to go by) or buy a gun without it (legal or not, he doesn't care), while the people who carry guns for self defense would be locked out by such systems when they need it (especially since the shooter would have a gun that isn't recognized as such by the unhacked gun), even assuming the shooter doesn't go all out and hack the guns of everyone around him, meaning potentially not even the police could stop him (which would be vastly worse than our current situation). Since the majority of killing sprees are pre-meditated, gun locks won't do a single damned thing. It's a system that could almost only have negative results. The times when it would help are the incredible minority (someone steals a gun off a legal carrier, for example).
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the hacker may disable the disabler and go on a spree, but then it's no worse than what we have now.
Wrong. Sadly and ignorantly wrong.
The guy who disabled the "disabler" would be able to shoot up the place just like he could now, but someone who has a smart gun that would have been able to shoot the bad guy to stop him won't be able to. The "smart gun" will notice that it is in a "congested area", and won't know that the other, disabler-disabled gun is there because the signal it would transmit has been DISABLED. That's worse than what we have now.
And this fancy new "law" would fail for exactly the same reason that the myriad of gun laws already fail to prevent nuts from going on shooting sprees: nuts who want to go on shooting sprees IGNORE THE LAW.
If we consider a 10% failure rate in either direction, it's still better than what we have now.
When your life is in danger and you have a weapon you could use to keep from dying, I think you'd probably not want that 10% failure rate. When you're a soft-fuzzy-warm-feelgood anti-gun nut who wouldn't have a gun anyway, that 10% failure rate for someone else doesn't seem so much of a problem.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's cute - you assume that all hacks are digital.
You completely forgot that someone with a bit of machinist experience and a few decent tools could simply replace the whole damned trigger/firing-pin/whatever-else assembly.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the disabler mechanism can only disable the weapon and have no way to fire it off, then the worse that can happen is the gun wouldn't work or the disabler wouldn't work if hacked.
No, the worst that can happen is that the shooter gets himself a pre-idiocy gun, tapes a few photos of babies to himself, then goes on a rampage. Nobody else will be able to do a damn thing about it.
Re:What could possibly go wrong... BSOD (Score:4, Funny)
are you sure you wanted to do that? click yes or no
And when you are defending yourself against an armed assailant, this gives a very literal meaning to "blue screen of death".
Helpful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Helpful? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no, hes run in to the subway, there's no GPS down there our guns are useless!
The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:3)
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem ISN"T the guns, its the idiots who think its a good idea to shoot people with them. Its the lack of reverence that our culture has for human life. Its the lack of empathy that our culture allows.
Hell, look at all the bullying stories in the last several years. Do you really think that those incidences would have occurred had the bully been taught empathy by his or her parents? Someone that goes into a crowd and starts shooting has a distinct lack of empathy. Is there perhaps something we can identify in that behavior and perhaps take action against?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, blaming a physical object for a _mental_ problem is the "problem".
You're an idiot.
Humans have been killing one another for thousands of years. The problem isn't the tech -- it is the spiritual retards who exert to violence.
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the problem is the guns. Or, rather, it's that guns are so widespread and easy to obtain that any nutcase can get one.
Because it is impossible to cause large scale death and destruction with absolutely nothing else? Because it is impossible to do it with knives or more likely gas bombs or half a dozen other things any of us could easily think of?
The problem is not guns. The problem is nutcases. Until guns, or anything else, is capable of independent action the problem will always be nutcases. As long as people insist on blaming objects and ignoring the real problem nothing will be solved.
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is impossible to do it with knives or more likely gas bombs or half a dozen other things any of us could easily think of?
In China a week or two ago, a man attacked schoolchildren with a knife. He injured about 20 or so. No one died.
In the last 20 years, 13 people have died from gas bombs. Five people died from biological attacks in that same amount of time. Care to guess how many people have been killed by guns?
So thanks for making my point. It's not impossible to kill someone with other tools, but it's nowhere near as convenient.
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It also involved months of planning. If you want to kill a bunch of people in a school today, all you have to do is head to a gun show and pick up an AR-15.
Re:The problem never seems to be the guns.... (Score:4, Insightful)
And in 2010, another man attacked schoolchildren with a knife, and killed 7.
Feel free to check my math, but seven is a lot lower than 28 (Sandy Hill). Or 13 (Columbine). Or 32 (Virginia Tech).
Moreover, it's actually possible to defend oneself against a knife, whereas you can really only defend yourself from a gun if you're already in close quarters. So don't scoff at the idea of fighting off attackers with brooms -- after all, this is coming from the country that invented kung fu.
Oh, now this is fucking brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, now this is fucking brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh, now this is fucking brilliant (Score:5, Informative)
As a counter argument, about a year ago a bystander with a gun killed an off-duty ATF agent who was struggling with a pharmacy robbery suspect who had a gun. The bystander thought he was shooting the bad guy, but he shot and killed a 20-year Federal agent who had a wife and two kids and was at the pharmacy to pick up cancer drugs for his dad. Then a cop killed the suspect.
Intervening After Robbery, an Off-Duty A.T.F. Agent Is Killed [nytimes.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How many gun nuts have been stopped in the last years by bystanders?
Zero, but that's merely by virtue of the fact that the people assholes like you like to marginalize with the label "gun nut" are not the type of people who go on rampages.
But by all means, don't let facts stop you from being an uptight prick.
It will just create... (Score:5, Insightful)
... a black market for guns that don't have these features should it ever come to pass.
American Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
How are we supposed to secure a free state if the tyrant can wirelessly disable our arms?
Re:American Revolution (Score:4, Interesting)
This argument baffles me in a modern context.
Say that the US government was tyrannical and dictatorial, so the majority of the US poulation decides it's time to kick them out using force. The situation is probably going to go down in one of three ways:
A) The majority of the US armed forces agree with the civvies. Professionally trained and supported troops, armoured vehicles, helicopters, jets and ships blow the crap out of the government. Problem solved, civvies with rifles not needed.
B) The majority of the US armed forces side with the government. Civvies armed with handguns, shotguns and rifles with little to no training or experience take on professionally trained and armed troops, armoured vehicles, helicopters, jets and ships. Civvies most likely get massacred (good luck taking on that MBT or Apache gunship with your AR15): armed civillians ultimately pointless.
C) US armed forces split between government and "rebels". Govt. and rebel armies clash, using whatever professionally armed and trained troops and vehicles they kept hold of. Civvies on either side likely to be fairly useless and possibly even get in the way of the professional troops, let alone the MBTs and gunships.
The entire deal with the Arab spring nations shows that armed civillian forces struggle in a fight against even non-modern Middle Eastern governments without some sort of externally enforced no-fly zone. What do US civvies expect to be able to do against one of the biggest, the best funded and most technologically advanced army on the planet? It might have been different in the times of the revolution when government forces weren't disproportionately better equipped and took weeks to march from one end of the nation to the other, but that's not what the US armed forces are today.
Re:American Revolution (Score:5, Interesting)
A) The longer civilians can hold out without the military, the more likely it is the military will switch sides.
B) You ignore the trouble the US military has had dealing with insurgents over the past decade.
C) See the first American Revolution. Hunters and trappers fought side by side with trained military, and Washington was able to capitalizeon both of their strengths.
Re:American Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
B) The majority of the US armed forces side with the government. Civvies armed with handguns, shotguns and rifles with little to no training or experience take on professionally trained and armed troops, armoured vehicles, helicopters, jets and ships. Civvies most likely get massacred (good luck taking on that MBT or Apache gunship with your AR15): armed civillians ultimately pointless.
I'd like to point you at the difficulties out Armed Forces have had dominating unruly indigenous populations in the Middle East lately, when all the locals have are crappy beat decades-old AK-47 and home-made IEDs. With the weapons and training that a large fraction of the population has access to in the US, suppressing a rebellion here would be nearly impossible, even for the US Armed Forces. There's always the "glass parking lot" option, but they wouldn't mass-bomb the US any more than they do overseas, for the same reasons: the government loses all shreds of credibility on a number of fronts if it starts bombing citizens in mass numbers.
Stop Rewarding Mass Killings (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop giving them tons of media attention and "high scores".
Stop giving other crazy people incentives of guaranteed posthumous fame.
Two questions (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Can you develop a system in such a way that it can't be removed or bypassed?
The gun is a fairly simple machine. I can't think of a way to prevent the removal of such a complex system. And if the argument is going to be "it'll be legally mandated that all guns have this," you run into the same problem that gun control laws run into right now. Criminals - especially those who are planning on committing multiple murders and probably killing themselves in the process - really don't give a crap about following the law.
Re: (Score:3)
Liberals like to whine about "military hardware" but the obvious testing ground for this kind of tech is in fact the military. I would have fewer objections to any of these solutions if cops were the guinea pigs.
Even if you ban all civilian firearms you still have the big problem of well armed police forces. You have potential corruption plus an industry that still needs to remain around to supply the cops.
Start by supplying these "lawgivers" to cops and soldiers.
Re:Two questions (Score:5, Informative)
What about Dwarf criminals? (Score:5, Funny)
Sensory data can be used by built-in software to disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child
What do I do if I'm being assaulted by a dwarf?
Re:What about Dwarf criminals? (Score:4, Insightful)
doesn't go far enough (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're really going to solve this problem, guns should have captcha-like technology, determining that the wielder retains the capacity for empathy before he can fire it.
As soon as he removes the safety, the gun should pose a simple question, such as "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"
Government Must Fear Pissing Off Its Citizens (Score:3, Insightful)
The government must fear pissing off its citizens. Guns are power. Do you want only the military and the police to have power? Society works best when all types of power are distributed and not concentrated in just a few areas or restricted to just a few people or groups.
I sure wouldn't want the government or military to be able to turn off our weapons, and I sure don't support laws that say only the military and police can have the most powerful weapons. That puts the balance of power away from the people.
Re: (Score:3)
The only people that need to fear militias are their neighbors.
Re:Government Must Fear Pissing Off Its Citizens (Score:4, Insightful)
"We the People" the collective "we" the majority of the democratic electorate, rule. Individuals who do not want to be bound by that rule have a choice, they can leave. That's really your only option. What you are describing is not "resistance" it is murdering your neighbors to implement by force the policies they rejected at the ballot box.
Logistical Problems Over Political Problems (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Most gun deaths would be reduced by attacking the root of crime and the poverty that tends to drive it.
Most of the time, suburbanites are content to allow the poor to continue killing each other while living in squalor.
The purpose of the second amendment (Score:5, Informative)
No Worries (Score:3)
As soon as this idea runs up against gun-industry profits, it dies.
Stop the insanity! (Score:4, Insightful)
Every one of these psychos was mentally ill and on psychotropic drugs.
Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox – like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and many others, a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.
Patrick Purdy went on a schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, Calif., in 1989, which became the catalyst for the original legislative frenzy to ban “semiautomatic assault weapons” in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.
Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.
more here: http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-gaping-hole-in-sandy-hook-reporting/ [wnd.com]
"The public is growing increasingly confused by how we treat the mentally ill. More and more, the mentally ill are showing up in the streets, badly in need of help. Incidents of illness-driven violence are reported regularly, incidents which common sense tells us could easily have been avoided. And this is just the visible tip of the greater tragedy - of many more sufferers deteriorating in the shadows and, often, committing suicide." http://www.northshoreschizophrenia.org/Uncivil_Liberties.htm [northshore...hrenia.org]
The bottom line is we need to identify these people before they snap and get them off the streets and into treatment, not take guns away from law abiding citizens.
Simple (Score:3)
GPS spoofing has been done before.
Criminal spoofs GPS of local area with their own transmitters, making all the police guns think they're in the whitehouse or some other 'safe zone'.
Criminal has 'old fashioned' gun and shoots police who are powerless to fire back.
Unbelievable... (Score:5, Informative)
The anti-firearms hysteria needs to stop. This reminds me of when Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, so a bunch of dead stingrays started showing up everywhere because people suddenly thought of them as being too dangerous to have around. Yeah, firearms can kill people. So can a bunch of other things.
There are three times as many automobile related fatalities each year as firearms related fatalities:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/05/Federal-Gov-Annual-Auto-Related-Deaths-Three-Times-Higher-Than-Gun-Related-Deaths [breitbart.com]
Even better, there are more people killed with hammers and clubs than with firearms:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/03/FBI-More-People-Killed-With-Hammers-and-Clubs-Each-Year-Than-With-Rifles [breitbart.com]
So why the fuck are we going after people who own firearms?
First they came for the NRA,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an NRA member.
(Yeah, I invoked Godwin's Law, so what.)
Also, in Afghanistan it is not unheard of for "enemy combatants" (we can't call them terrorists anymore) to carry kids while they are on the battlefield, either for the purpose of preventing themselves from being shot at, or propaganda ("Look at these baby killers! They must die in the name of allah!") That goes to show you what people are capable of. If firearms were disabled in a similar manner in domestic situations, only it happened automatically, I imagine that would come home as well.
Smart bullets (Score:5, Funny)
Rather than having guns that ware smart, we should have smart bullets that will only kill bad people. After being fired the smart bullet will immediately ascertain the worst person within range using a sophisticated algorithm weighing criminal history, internet searches, and music preference, and impact that person right in the face, piercing any face armor up to 2 inches of hardened steel, and igniting it's incendiary and high explosive payloads.
It is logically impossible that there is not at least one bad person nearby, because a room full of only good people would never fire a gun. It's logic.
The fact that the most likely target of a smart bullet is yourself, this will greatly reduce the number of shootings. The only trick is to get people to abandon regular bullets. I know, we could make people with regular bullets at the top priority of the smart bullet hit list algorithm! There will a violent but short war between the "smarties" and the "norms", but *then* there will be reduced shootings.
There are technical solutions... (Score:4, Insightful)
The first is bullet IDs -- you pack the propellant with very small ID tagged glitter. Bullet fires, glitter covers the ground. Crime scene people carry equipment to find and trace the ID numbers. This has been proof-of-concepted years ago.
The second is tracking for ammo sales. You buy ammo? It gets logged, every damn bullet.
The third is liability for your ammo. If you own ammo, you are liable for the results. Regular gun owners get an ammo safe, which is cheap and sensible precaution in any case. If you're a trafficker? You now have a problem.
Important to note: ammo has a shelf life of a few years. Within a decade, culpability for gun crimes could be much more transparent.
Re:There are technical solutions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Important to note: ammo has a shelf life of a few years. Within a decade, culpability for gun crimes could be much more transparent.
Good quality ammo has a shelf life of a few decades, or more. I've personally fired commercial 9mm ammo that was 25+ years old; it worked just like brand new ammo.
the really scary thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really care about guns. I don't ever want to own one, but it doesn't bother me if other people own one either because I don't assume that people around me are all potential mass murderers.
What worries me about gun control is the idea that the government wants to control ownership of a piece of metal that anybody can fabricate in a day in their home and to which there are lots of lethal alternatives. I wonder what the principle there is supposed to be. Are we going to outlaw everything that person A can use to kill person B? Where are we going to stop? Are we going to make files and drills illegal because they could be used to manufacture guns? What's going to happen with 3D printers? And if government can throw people in jail for something as silly as merely carrying a piece of metal that's shaped a particular way, what are the arguments against government controlling how we have sex or whether women can have abortions? Control of what we see, record, eat and get high on already seems to be considered normal by everybody.
Let's try and turn this back. Liberals live up to their name and give in on gun control and taxation, and conservatives realize the small non-intrusive government they keep talking about and give in on abortion and restrictive marriage, and both agree to loosen up drugs and copyrights.
Some additional ideas (Score:5, Funny)
1) Guns should also be fitted with an electronic device which reads minds to ascertain whether the carrier intends to fire it for good or bad reasons. "Good" and "bad" can be decided by a live, crowdsourced twitter feed of the gun-carrier's thoughts. If bad intent is identified, a speaker on the gun's handle will begin reading responsive tweets, attempting to persuade the carrier not to fire (these responses will also be crowdsourced for appropriateness and effectiveness). At the same time, a special wireless network will alert emergency personnel of the carrier's location and mental state.
2) All guns should be fitted with miniaturized versions of TSA body scanners which will scan all passersby to determine whether they are carrying guns whose safety features are disabled.
3) All guns should be fitted with a voice-recognition system which is able to analyze the screams of shooting victims and disable the gun if they are determined to be children.
4) Finally, guns should be fitted with an electronic device which can summon Jesus Christ and a his angels to heal the injured, resurrect the dead, and reverse time in the event of a shooting.
*facepalm* (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone, repeat after me: "Technological solutions to social problems are doomed to failure."
You want to stop school shootings, here's what you do:
1) Vastly improve the mental health system. The number of deranged gunmen slaughtering kids is directly proportional to the number of deranged psychopaths.
2) Fix the media's obsession with violent tragedies. Half of them are only doing it because they'll get fame (or at least infamy) for doing so. I'm not advocating a total Herostratus solution, but do we really need to have weeks of constant news coverage for every single one of these?
3) Fix the school system. A lot of the things that would improve education overall (less focus on rote learning, stop keeping everyone generalists until college, smaller schools with a lower teacher/student ratio, etc) would also reduce student stress immensely.
4) And yeah, we could probably stand to lower gun proliferation a bit. It wouldn't have affected any of the school shootings I can recall, but it would reduce general gun violence, which isn't a bad thing. I think the laws we have right now are fine, or even too restrictive, but certain cultural biases towards prolific gun ownership could stand a change.
Re:Non-lethal instead! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If you know a way to stop somebody with equal effectiveness in a way that is less likely to kill them, I'm all ears.
That seems to be the big hurtle. Most of the solutions in the whole non-deadly weapon scene look like jokes which might work in a very lucky circumstance. They range from guns that shoot sticky glue like substances to paintball guns that fire balls of pepper. No sane person is going to bet their life on something like that.
Taser is as close as we have come I think. They get a lot of grief from being over used, but as an alternative to a gun, they are pretty damn effective. I'd rather the officer tackle me t
Re:Non-lethal instead! (Score:4, Insightful)
So my thought is to go non-lethal or less-lethal or whatever the term is. With all the technology we have, why do we still need to kill someone to stop them.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing. It has been found that multiple bullets to the chest is the most reliable way of doing that. Whether that kills the person is not the point. If you know a way to stop somebody with equal effectiveness in a way that is less likely to kill them, I'm all ears.
When you point and shoot a gun you ALWAYS assume you will kill whatever your targeting. Never the other way around.
Intentionality (Score:4, Informative)
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing.
In cases like the recent mass shooting, what the school children were doing was living. The gun man decided he wanted to stop them from living.
Let's not pretend that the purpose of guns is not for killing. They are a tool and that is their purpose. You can kill a person or an animal to stop an action but that is the purpose of the person, not the tool. If you fire a gun at a person your expectation is that you will kill. There is an intentionality to firearms. Firearms are a weapon and the purpose of a weapon is to kill.
Re:if you want to stop mass killings (Score:5, Insightful)
I greatly enjoy target shooting with my PS90, AR15's and even my 10/22 and there is absolutely no reason to not have 50, 30 and 10 round magazines for these to appease someone like you is afraid of law abiding citizens and inanimate objects.
Re: (Score:3)
When was the last time any private individual actually used 10,000 bullets effectively to do damage?
The VAST majority of killings take place using cheap handguns, and if you're OK with home-made bullets, then you're OK will all the bullets any small-time (or even mass) killer will need.
Even the worst shootings have only actually used on the order of 100 bullets, I easily use triple that in a single trip to the range.
Re:Please... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://12160.info/page/gun-owning-mother-protects-kids-from-intruder-another-story-you-w [12160.info]
Note she fired 6 times, hit him 5, and he ran off when she bluffed about having more ammunition.
Re:Please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you need more than 3 bullets ?
Because it often takes way more than three bullets to disable even an unarmed attacker, never mind an armed one, or several of them. Most of the bullets will miss, especially when fired under stress. Most of those that hit will miss vital organs and fail to stop the attacker. Even some of those that hit vital organs still won't stop them immediately.