Houngan
4127
Re: mechanical safeties. In roughly 200,000 rounds live and 1-2 million clicks of dryfire, I’ve never had a safety fail that wasn’t the product of me accidentally engaging it. The only failures of those were with a modified 1911 that was inexpertly gunsmithed by myself. It’s very reliable. The vast, vast majority of gun failures come from bad ammo or bad magazines.
Timex
4128
I understand the reality that people misuse things, but saying that a smart gun wouldn’t prevent a case like Sandy hook, based on the presumption that it would be misused? That’s kind of silly. It’d be like discounting the effectiveness of seatbelts by assuming that people wouldn’t wear them.
In a case like Sandy hook, that’s the ideal case for a smart gun, where you have a firearm and a mentally disturbed person in the house.
Are you sure you understand this reality?
Dude, what’s up! I feel bad that this is the conversation that brought you back.
Still shooting?
Timex
4131
I think so.
I’m not certain, so I’ll ask. Are you arguing that the effectiveness of things should be measured under the assumption of their misuse? It seems like that’s what you are trying to argue, but that doesn’t make much sense.
I’m not arguing anything at the moment. I’m observing your behavior in this thread. You create an ideal in your mind of how people ought to act, and then think it would be crazy for anyone to act any other way, and therefore dismiss that entire class of people (i.e., reality) as stupid and unimportant.
Some of your posts are so self-assured about things you don’t fully understand that I wonder if I’m being trolled. It’s bizarre.
Timex
4133
Tim, there isn’t anything in that post which called anyone crazy or stupid.
This topic sounded familiar, so I found this. It may help. Efficacy.
When talking in terms of efficacy vs. effectiveness, effectiveness relates to how well a treatment works in the practice of medicine, as opposed to efficacy, which measures how well treatment works in clinical trials or laboratory studies.
A distinction is made between ‘method’ effectiveness which describes the effect achievable if the drug was taken as prescribed and ‘use’ effectiveness which is the effect obtained under typical use circumstances when adherence is not 100%.
I just noticed you outright stated “a smart gun would have prevented Sandy Hook.” Why would you put that out there? It’s straightforward to challenge a statement like that by thinking of a plausible counterexample. Unless you’re talking about an imaginary ideal smart gun, which – while very cool and promising – seems incongruous next to the example of Sandy Hook.
Timex
4135
Well, the reason I said a smart gun would have prevented Sandy hook is because that is the type of thing a smart gun is designed to prevent. If the firearm could have only been fired by its owner, then her son couldn’t have used it to kill a bunch of kids.
Of course it presumes that it’s used correctly, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to do so.
Would it be better to say that a smart gun COULD have prevented Sandy hook, if used correctly? Certainly my statement made that implicit assumption.
Houngan
4136
My work blocks gaming sites, and I post 99% from work. Much love for qt3, but it gets caught by the firewall. I took a few years off, I’m starting to hear the loud song again, though.
Re: Sandy Hook, am I remembering incorrectly that his mother bought the gun and encouraged his shooting? Any smart gun tech will allow for multiple users, so I don’t think it would have helped.
Sure I guess. And it’s possible your mind is working faster than your typing.
Personally, I try my best to acknowledge assumptions and obvious counterexamples when I’m discussing contentious issues like politics. I always hope it feels less overwhelming to the flabbergasted person I’m trying to communicate with. I’m not that great at it, of course.
Time for a smartphone!
Timex
4138
Re: Sandy Hook, am I remembering incorrectly that his mother bought the gun and encouraged his shooting? Any smart gun tech will allow for multiple users, so I don’t think it would have helped.
Maybe, but I think she was well aware of his mental problems, and that they were diagnosed. Something like a smart gun could have helped in such a case, if she used it to restrict his access to when he was with her. Of course, it’s probably fair to say that she could have achieved the same ends by simply keeping the rifle in a gun safe, and keeping the key on her.
I’ll second the “welcome back,” Houngan. Good to see you around.
My recollection matches yours.
Do I understand correctly that the tech being marketed currently is based around things like RFID or similar “if you have the token, you can use the weapon,” sorts of possession based systems? Is there active work being done on more biometric type stuff?
Houngan
4140
The oldest stuff is based around wearables, which I assume are RFID. Rings, generally. There might be biometric options, but the lag time has to be considerable.
How precisely do you think smart guns work or should work? Every time I’ve gone shooting (which isn’t a lot maybe dozen times in my life) gun enthusiast brings a bunch of different firearms and I bring either zero or the one rifle I owned. Gun enthusiast gives me and the others several different weapons to shoot.
Smart guns have to allow for this type of functionality, and allow the son, or buddy who wants to borrow the weapon to go hunting or target shooting. Not to mention allow for a gun to be sold, or given away.
The right analogy is car keys or ATM cards, you can’t use the vehicle or take money from the bank account without physical possession. You can’t use a gun without possessing the RFID watch and probably a PIN number.
Adam, the Sandy Hook killer, killed his mother with a .22 rifle which I believe was his own weapon or certainly one he was allowed to use. Once he kills mom regardless if she has the key to the gun safe or, a bunch of RFID watches. He loots her body and gets access to the gun locker or the collection of smart guns. It is just like Fallout :-). The only way that smart guns would have helped in Sandy Hook is mom never let her son know her gun PIN numbers. This seems pretty unlikely cause she took him shooting.
Timex
4143
Your right, I had forgotten that he killed his mother prior to killing all the other folks. Sorry of a biometric weapon that we wasn’t able to fire, he likely would have been able to get control of it by killing his mother.
I am under the impression that those with Apple Phones, Samsung phones and the Nexus phones that have the newest finger print readers that there have been some leaps and bounds in terms of accuracy and quickness when it comes to finger print readers and I believe that technology will continue to improve at a time record pace, as it has already, so I don’t believe the argument about failures carries much water with me. Obviously, press might be an issue, but when one has a potential lethal hobby or sport, paying extra to protect the safety of yourself and those around you.
Timex
4145
Yes, the fingerprint reader on my Nexus 6p works flawlessly, and takes less than a second to recognize my finger and unlock my phone.
Likewise on the N5X. It’s awesome.
