4147

I thought of another good early adopter for this technology: criminal gangs!

Think about it. What’s more miserable than your friends and family getting gunned down by a handgun that was stolen from a fellow gang member? If it was some sort of RFID solution, you could make compliance 100% by executing anyone that fails to wear his wristband. You could even have them keyed to gang affiliation so guns could be exchanged freely among like-minded individuals.

Although now that I think about it, it would be pretty straightforward to take the RFID tag from the corpse of a rival gang member. Perhaps instead it should be tied to an image processing solution by reading your tats. The new camera phones take less than a second to snap a picture.

Does Rahm Emanuel know anything about this? He’s always complaining about illegal guns in his city.

4148

Progress and new technology appear to be pretty scary in Timothyland.

4149

Does it work flawlessly if you have blood on your hands? Like the Philly cop who was recently shot 3 times by the Islamic extremist? Hang on guy, I’ve got to wipe my hands off.

Or what about gloves?

Or what about those times it didn’t work flawlessly the first time and you had to readjust your finger and wait for it to scan again, but didn’t really think about it because its not much of an inconvenience. Unless someone is shooting at you.

4150

I’d love a flawless smart gun. We’re discussing who gets to deal with all the flawed ones in the meantime.

$1800 is a lot of cash too. Gangs will need to really hustle. Watch out for armed convenience store owners!

4151

I didn’t suggest that the same technology would apply as is to a firearm. Merely that the technology in its current state works flawlessly in its current application, which is an improvement over previous iterations of fingerprint readers.

In terms of positioning, for a firearm it may actually be even easier, since the grip used to hold a firearm is going to be much more fixed than the way you hold a phone.

4152

I’m under the impression that gun fights really don’t happen all that often in the US. In fact, they are very very very rare, so I’m not so concerned. And if you are in a situation were your first thought is to pull out a gun, and it doesn’t work, I am pretty sure we’ll all be a hell of a lot better off. I don’t need ladies in Walmart trying to stop crime. If you are a cop, you probably have a department issued weapon that has been unlocked when you got on duty (much like you set up your phone not to automatically lock when you are at home), so your scenario won’t every happen.

Password protection and kill switches have reduce the theft of phones by double digits, and I can see this doing the same. Wouldn’t it be nice to get more guns off the street? If a criminal robs your house (most likely to occur in the middle of the day, while you are at work, where you gun won’t help you at all) and makes off with your gun, at least he won’t be able to use it himself.

If a person reports a gun stolen, it shouldn’t work for the criminal. If it does, well you’ll probably be able to tell that the gun was sold illegally instead.

If you have a gun in your house, and your teenager decides to kill a few of his/her class mates, you’ll be grateful when the gun doesn’t work.

Since the only real use for a gun is hunting and sports, I really don’t see how having a finger print reader will have an impact. You want to be calm and reserved when hunting dear, and there isn’t any reason to be scared of a target.

4153

You are a treasure, legowarrior.

4154

So my wife and child tell me.

Anyways, meet me in the future Tim, its nice over there!

4155

Hell, give it time. Evolution will naturally happen. This won’t work when any evolving Mutant/ hybrid is battered to death. Do you honestly believe guns are exempt from far-reaching change? By the way, I am pretty sure police forces are going to use this technology in the medium term as well as the US changing their rules regarding firearms. The day will come when its one mass murder too much.

4156

I’m afraid you live in another dimension, my friend.

Seriously though, it’s always a good reminder that when you dig deep enough, you end up at incontrovertible worldviews and values, which renders Internet political discussion ultimately pointless. I sometimes forget this.

In your case you lack internal consistency by layering flawed assumptions on your worldview, which lead to flawed conclusions. But I don’t really have that kind of time.

Keep your head down at Walmart.

4157

Okay.

Do you honestly believe guns are exempt from far-reaching change?

No.

By the way, I am pretty sure police forces are going to use this technology in the medium term as well as the US changing their rules regarding firearms.

Sweet. Better them than me!

The day will come when its one mass murder too much.

It will truly be a beautiful world when violence has been eradicated.

Also, there was something about X-Men, but I didn’t quote that part.

4158

It is not about ‘violence has been eradicated’ and you damn well know that. There are layers and levels. You know that too. How often did you have to use your gun. Do you think you will be the same person when you hypothetically kill an intruder?

Would’nt it be nice if you could live in any Part of your country knowing that you don’t need a firearm because you are not sourounded by those and live in a paranoid World where even wackos are allowed to ‘open-carry’ in Walmart. The weapon pointing at their child. Unsecured.

You know I personally fear widespread private gun ownership. Guns are scary. Guns can kill in an instant. Like a switch. Ther are a lot of dumb and crazy people. And the US let them bear firearms. Because of some stupid part in one of the greatest examples of human civilisatory Evolution.

I don’t get it. But then again I don’t really care. Because it is (mostly) save over here. No need for guns.

4159

My father in law is a gun owner, and avid hunter. So is my brother in law and almost all my wife’s cousins (its a large family in Rural PA). None carry a gun in there day to day lives. All are comfortable around guns but keep them locked away. All are in favor of stricter regulation.

I have no problem with them. Guns are foreign to me, but I trust those people and their families, and I know my father in law would teach my baby girl about proper gun maintenance and ownership when the time comes

Then you have people who pull out a gun in a Walmart parking lot to stop shop lifting (as talked about up thread) or high school kids shotting up malls, schools or whatever.

Treating guns like we treat cars is not a bad first step in making this a country where my child can grow up safe. Better safeties, more research and licensing would be great. Knowing that people with guns have some sort of training would be nice as well.

I would like to ban guns, but ultimately, making the safer would be great

4160

Personally, I think the full-out technology solutions are jumping ahead a bit too much, in hopes technology will save us from bad choices in behavior.

I think for the discussion to make sense, you have to divide gun owners into at least three groups:

  1. hunters and other “sport” based owners.

  2. self-defense owners, who focus on protecting their home

  3. self-defense owners who carry their guns around with them outside the home.

For the first group, a high tech solution does little more than a tried and true gun safe or trigger lock. Personally, I think a requirement to have a gun safe or trigger lock as mandatory is a good thing. I think even group 2 would be in support of this, for the most part, too. Penalties could include civil fines or a prima facie finding of negligence or recklessness in a civil suit where someone is harmed by the failure to secure, perhaps child negligence if you have a kid in the house. For group 2, the odds of needing your gun for home defense in situations where you can’t even get your trigger lock off are probably around the same as winning the lottery range.

It’s group #3 that really opposes almost any further restrictions. For that group, I’m in the camp that the benefits are substantially outweighed by the risks, since they’re trying to mitigate against a pretty rare event: the need for a gun at a moment’s notice. I think it’s this group that would only be addressable by a “perfect” technological solution.

I suspect group 3 is a very small percentage of gun owners in America, and yet, they drive most of the pro-gun discusison.

4161

You all have inspired me to throw around the words “probably the same odds as winning the lottery,” “pretty rare event,” and “very small percentage” into as many political discussions as possible.

The results should be hilarious.

4162

This is where the problem lies. When pressed, most gun control supporters would agree with you—civilian disarmament, either total or for all practical purposes, is the endgame. There are very, very few true moderates on the issue, who will go to bat now for further legislation, but would equally go to bat after they get X laws enacted. The reason that a lot of gun owners don’t have much trust for people who support more gun laws is that the people who support them, by and large, want a slippery slope.

4163

You’ve oversimplified. As an example, let’s look at # 3. It’s not “self-defense owners who carry their guns around with them outside the home” - that’s a small subset. It is:

“Owners who believe they should be able to carry their guns around with them outside the home”. Not that they do all the time, or much of the time, but that they should be able to without fear of government consequences.

You’ve also missed gun enthusiasts, who like guns and want to be able to buy just about any type of weapon. There is an allure to it, after all (just look at Hollywood).

4164

Yeah, if your goal is to ban guns, that’s really too bad for you. Our constitution clearly protects our rights to own firearms, and has been consistently upheld by the constitution.

For me, despite my recent support for the notion of smart guns, I do not at all support making guns illegal. Honestly, I don’t feel that most gun legistlation will actually have much of an impact. I strongly believe that people should be allowed to own firearms.

But at the same time, I just didn’t buy into some of the opposition to smart guns.

4165

To be fair, I want to ban poor people.

4166

Guaranteed basic income? Ok, I can be down with that.