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Frontline - Gunned Down (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter tommyGunZ
- Start date
Fat Nick
Footballguy
Hey, get your own thread!
I think somebody said earlier in this thread, "You can't stop crazy." Pretty relevant...
Clifford
Footballguy
Nah I am thinking it probably take 9-11 years to get to the gun-swap out period. And you never erase non-smart guns: that's an impossible goal and one that shouldn't be focused on.
What you focus on is
- Defeating the NRA machine that will shout this proposal down as gun control no matter how workable it is. This by itself probably takes 5 years if this was introduced into Congress this quarter
- Providing safer guns for people who want them. You don't focus on the "Don't Tread on Me" crowd at the Bundy ranch, they'll hate anything you do no matter what. You focus on the paranoid Moms who think they have to pack heat to survive a day in Boise, Idaho. And your advertisement is easy: you just run a picture of every victim of an accidental shooting and say "are you going to let this happen to your kid?"
- Establishing reasonable standards for what "works" means and get consensus on that. Right now RFID tech and fingerprint tech have a success rate of 999 times out of 1000. As long as the morons are allowed to say that even a .1% chance of my gun not firing every time I want it to means no way, then you're ####ed. You have to establish reasonable norms and achieve them.
Bottom-line, if you can achieve a 25-30% trade in rate and achieve a state where only smart-guns could be legally sold in the US going forward, and then just apply some common-sense strengthening of regulation most Americans support, then you have achieved a HUGE victory in a relatively short amount of time.
Columbine happened in 1999. Sandy Hook happened 15 years later.
tommyGunZ
Footballguy
Not surprisingly, I'm 100% on board with Clifford's proposed solutions. Unlike Clifford, I have zero interest in discussing specifics with folks like you.
Short Corner
Footballguy
How many is tons? Go ahead and ball park it. It doesn't have to be exact. A couple thousand? Five?
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Joe T
Footballguy
Short Corner
Footballguy
Dickies
Footballguy
Pretty much all of Clifford's suggestions sit well with me.
Prior to this thread, I had never even heard of smart gun technology, but it makes a lot of sense to me to make this the standard in guns moving forward once the technology is perfected. I've always thought more thorough background checks combined with a fairly long waiting period before the gun purchase can be finalized to be a no-brainer.
I also like the idea of penalties for gun owners whose guns are used in a shooting. I'm by no means anti-gun, but I strongly feel that gun owners need to be responsible with their guns.
Long Ball Larry
Footballguy
Spanky267
Footballguy
No he probably wouldnt have been able to get an AR in Canada. He could have just bought or stolen a Norinco M14 like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvttosUXokI
Readily available in Canada and not a single shot hunting rifle. If you look in the background of the video youll also notice a couple of AR-15s.
Spanky267
Footballguy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/josephsteinberg/2014/05/04/smartguns/
Interesting read on the inherent issues with the current generation of "smart" guns.
Interesting read on the inherent issues with the current generation of "smart" guns.
Clifford
Footballguy
It is childs play to sit there and create "what if" scenarios for failure of new tech. And just from the first one I doubt this guys self-professed "expertise."
1st point (Summary: Smart guns require batteries, batteries can go dead, therefore smart guns are unsafe)
Full Text:
Electronic devices require a power source, and smart guns are no exception. Without electricity they cannot be fired. Someone intent on using a firearm for home defense could find herself in serious danger if she drew a weapon on an armed intruder only to find that its batteries are drained. In general, it is not ideal to add a requirement for power to devices utilized in cases of emergency that did not need electricity previously. How many fire codes allow fire extinguishers that require a battery to operate? Before smartguns can be deemed reliable, therefore, they must incorporate countermeasures to address this issue. Simply warning users of low batteries may be insufficient, as many gun owners who do not carry their weapons with them keep their guns locked up, do not check them regularly, and might not see such warnings until it is too late.
The complaint here is that we can't trust gun owners to check their batteries and exchange them. Solution is checking your gun batteries or have a weapon that might not fire. Pretty dumb complaint.
2. Computers malfunction, and authentication technology is not perfect. Lawfully armed citizens protecting themselves and/or their families could be killed if their weapons malfunction during a home invasion or attempted rape. While some have argued that conventional semi-automatic handguns also periodically jam, smartguns add a whole new dimension of failure possibilities. Furthermore, technical problems typically take far longer to correct than firearm failures: trained users can often unjam a semi-automatic in a matter of seconds, but even experts cannot normally hard-reboot a malfunctioning piece of electronics that fast. One shudders to consider the possible tragedy if a policeman had to reboot his handgun, or had problems authenticating, during an altercation with an active shooter.
He doesn't have any data or offer any data regarding failure rates of different technologies, which is odd because this info is easily available to anyone who cares to look. Most tech as of a few years ago has a failure rate of 1 in 1000, or .1%. If he were an expert as he claims he would know the failure rate, talk about it, and contrast it with current failure rates (which he does at least grudgingly admit exist), and let us know if there is an actual delta here. But he doesn't. Because he clearly isn't an expert and clearly is not interested in actually learning anything about the technology. Instead he offers the incredibly lame defense that a jam can be fixed in seconds? Really, while the robbers/rapers are storming into your house and aiming a gun at you, you are going to undo the jam, re-aim, and plug them before they trek the 15 feet from the door to you? Instead of cross-referencing any actual data, he just continues to create "what if" failure scenarios.
3. At least one smartgun that has entered the marketplace requires the owner to wear a special watch; the gun will only fire if it is within a short distance of the watch. While such a scheme may afford some level of protection in certain scenarios, it might do little in others; the “watch approach” would seemingly not prevent a criminal from grabbing someone’s weapon and shooting him at point blank range (as long as the gun was always near the watch), or stop a crook from stealing both the watch and the gun. Requiring a user to possess two items instead of just one is generally, not on its own, considered a major improvement to authentication. Requiring a PIN number to be entered on the watch in order to fire the gun addresses that issue – but, also introduces a risk that the legitimate user will be unable to quickly use the weapon in case of an emergency. How well do people enter PIN numbers when they are under the extreme stress of fearing for their lives? What happens if during an emergency situation a policewoman needs to use another officer’s gun?
No one would ever have to enter a PIN to fire a gun. Another straw man. Also two-factor authentication is only one method, and only one proposed technology necessitates it.
4. Some upcoming smartgun models use biometrics to authenticate users, but biometrics take time to process and are often inaccurate – especially when a user is under duress – as is likely going to be the case in any situation in which he needs to brandish a gun. Furthermore, fingerprint readers and other forms of biometric analyzers are prone to error when people sweat profusely, shake, or are bloodied. Failures to authenticate legitimate users could lead to innocent people being killed when defending their families. Of course, there is also concern that if a crook stole a gun that relied on fingerprint authentication he might be able to lift the necessary fingerprints from all over the weapon, a problem that I described in an earlier article with regard to fingerprint-based smartphone authentication.
Really? Any scrap of proof here? Cause that information is easily available as well, and considering biometric authentication is now at least a decade-old technology there should be more than enough data to make this point, yet he references none. I won't even touch the crook lifting the fingerprints off the gun, using them to construct a mold accurate enough to fool a fingerprint authenticater.
5. As I described in another previous article, smartguns may be susceptible to government tracking or jamming. How hard would it be for the government to require manufacturers to surreptitiously include in computer-enhanced weapons some circuitry that would allow law enforcement to track – or even to disable – the weapons? Before dismissing such a fear as silly paranoia, consider that the US government is alleged to have secretly installed malware onto thousands of networks and placed spy chips into computers, it has admitted to spying on its own citizens, is believed to have prohibited technology companies from divulging its spying on US citizens, and is known to have lost track of weapons whose locations it intended to monitor. Should private citizens really be confident that such a government will not want to keep tabs on their guns? Are firearms really less worthy of being tracked than telephone records? (While tracking devices could theoretically be placed in non-smart weapons for short term tracking or for tracking at specific locations, the power source included on smart weapons enables much more robust tracking.)
Yet another paranoid what-if scenario with no relevance to the actual viability of the technology itself. What if they implanted tracking chips in pacemakers! Stop making pacemakers everyone! Idiot.
Not wasting my time with the rest, more of the same. Instead I will leave the author to his own words:
For the record – I credited Chris Hayes, Senator Loretta Weinberg, and the NRA for helping draw attention to my article.
1st point (Summary: Smart guns require batteries, batteries can go dead, therefore smart guns are unsafe)
Full Text:
Electronic devices require a power source, and smart guns are no exception. Without electricity they cannot be fired. Someone intent on using a firearm for home defense could find herself in serious danger if she drew a weapon on an armed intruder only to find that its batteries are drained. In general, it is not ideal to add a requirement for power to devices utilized in cases of emergency that did not need electricity previously. How many fire codes allow fire extinguishers that require a battery to operate? Before smartguns can be deemed reliable, therefore, they must incorporate countermeasures to address this issue. Simply warning users of low batteries may be insufficient, as many gun owners who do not carry their weapons with them keep their guns locked up, do not check them regularly, and might not see such warnings until it is too late.
The complaint here is that we can't trust gun owners to check their batteries and exchange them. Solution is checking your gun batteries or have a weapon that might not fire. Pretty dumb complaint.
2. Computers malfunction, and authentication technology is not perfect. Lawfully armed citizens protecting themselves and/or their families could be killed if their weapons malfunction during a home invasion or attempted rape. While some have argued that conventional semi-automatic handguns also periodically jam, smartguns add a whole new dimension of failure possibilities. Furthermore, technical problems typically take far longer to correct than firearm failures: trained users can often unjam a semi-automatic in a matter of seconds, but even experts cannot normally hard-reboot a malfunctioning piece of electronics that fast. One shudders to consider the possible tragedy if a policeman had to reboot his handgun, or had problems authenticating, during an altercation with an active shooter.
He doesn't have any data or offer any data regarding failure rates of different technologies, which is odd because this info is easily available to anyone who cares to look. Most tech as of a few years ago has a failure rate of 1 in 1000, or .1%. If he were an expert as he claims he would know the failure rate, talk about it, and contrast it with current failure rates (which he does at least grudgingly admit exist), and let us know if there is an actual delta here. But he doesn't. Because he clearly isn't an expert and clearly is not interested in actually learning anything about the technology. Instead he offers the incredibly lame defense that a jam can be fixed in seconds? Really, while the robbers/rapers are storming into your house and aiming a gun at you, you are going to undo the jam, re-aim, and plug them before they trek the 15 feet from the door to you? Instead of cross-referencing any actual data, he just continues to create "what if" failure scenarios.
3. At least one smartgun that has entered the marketplace requires the owner to wear a special watch; the gun will only fire if it is within a short distance of the watch. While such a scheme may afford some level of protection in certain scenarios, it might do little in others; the “watch approach” would seemingly not prevent a criminal from grabbing someone’s weapon and shooting him at point blank range (as long as the gun was always near the watch), or stop a crook from stealing both the watch and the gun. Requiring a user to possess two items instead of just one is generally, not on its own, considered a major improvement to authentication. Requiring a PIN number to be entered on the watch in order to fire the gun addresses that issue – but, also introduces a risk that the legitimate user will be unable to quickly use the weapon in case of an emergency. How well do people enter PIN numbers when they are under the extreme stress of fearing for their lives? What happens if during an emergency situation a policewoman needs to use another officer’s gun?
No one would ever have to enter a PIN to fire a gun. Another straw man. Also two-factor authentication is only one method, and only one proposed technology necessitates it.
4. Some upcoming smartgun models use biometrics to authenticate users, but biometrics take time to process and are often inaccurate – especially when a user is under duress – as is likely going to be the case in any situation in which he needs to brandish a gun. Furthermore, fingerprint readers and other forms of biometric analyzers are prone to error when people sweat profusely, shake, or are bloodied. Failures to authenticate legitimate users could lead to innocent people being killed when defending their families. Of course, there is also concern that if a crook stole a gun that relied on fingerprint authentication he might be able to lift the necessary fingerprints from all over the weapon, a problem that I described in an earlier article with regard to fingerprint-based smartphone authentication.
Really? Any scrap of proof here? Cause that information is easily available as well, and considering biometric authentication is now at least a decade-old technology there should be more than enough data to make this point, yet he references none. I won't even touch the crook lifting the fingerprints off the gun, using them to construct a mold accurate enough to fool a fingerprint authenticater.
5. As I described in another previous article, smartguns may be susceptible to government tracking or jamming. How hard would it be for the government to require manufacturers to surreptitiously include in computer-enhanced weapons some circuitry that would allow law enforcement to track – or even to disable – the weapons? Before dismissing such a fear as silly paranoia, consider that the US government is alleged to have secretly installed malware onto thousands of networks and placed spy chips into computers, it has admitted to spying on its own citizens, is believed to have prohibited technology companies from divulging its spying on US citizens, and is known to have lost track of weapons whose locations it intended to monitor. Should private citizens really be confident that such a government will not want to keep tabs on their guns? Are firearms really less worthy of being tracked than telephone records? (While tracking devices could theoretically be placed in non-smart weapons for short term tracking or for tracking at specific locations, the power source included on smart weapons enables much more robust tracking.)
Yet another paranoid what-if scenario with no relevance to the actual viability of the technology itself. What if they implanted tracking chips in pacemakers! Stop making pacemakers everyone! Idiot.
Not wasting my time with the rest, more of the same. Instead I will leave the author to his own words:
For the record – I credited Chris Hayes, Senator Loretta Weinberg, and the NRA for helping draw attention to my article.
Spanky267
Footballguy
Clifford, so none of those are legitimate concerns?
Never had a battery fail in a device prematurely? I have smoke detectors and I check the batteries regularly. They are supposed to last a year, mind you these batteries dont run the system, they serve as a back up in the case of a power failure and yet I have a failure rate prior to the 1 year expected life of 30 to 40% of my batteries. I trust the life of my family to these smoke detectors and check the batteries regularly. I am diligent. But not everyone is so diligent. You could have the same issues with firearms and then you could be dealing with a real tragedy. Currently guns dont need a battery or power source to fire. Adopting certain smart systems would require the introduction of electronics to firearms. You and I have been round and round on this in the past. You know I dont outright oppose the development of this technology but I am skeptical of its status of "ready for prime time." If cops dont want to use it and have exclusions carved out for them in existing smart gun legislation why should I want it?
Never had a battery fail in a device prematurely? I have smoke detectors and I check the batteries regularly. They are supposed to last a year, mind you these batteries dont run the system, they serve as a back up in the case of a power failure and yet I have a failure rate prior to the 1 year expected life of 30 to 40% of my batteries. I trust the life of my family to these smoke detectors and check the batteries regularly. I am diligent. But not everyone is so diligent. You could have the same issues with firearms and then you could be dealing with a real tragedy. Currently guns dont need a battery or power source to fire. Adopting certain smart systems would require the introduction of electronics to firearms. You and I have been round and round on this in the past. You know I dont outright oppose the development of this technology but I am skeptical of its status of "ready for prime time." If cops dont want to use it and have exclusions carved out for them in existing smart gun legislation why should I want it?
Clifford
Footballguy
First off, I think if you are not responsible enough to handle changing a battery you should not own a gun.
But I do acknowledge there is a bit of a trade off here: One the one hand, you have to change a battery. On the other, doing so could make it extremely less likely your gun is ever accidentally fired by a child, used against you by a home invader, or used against someone else. So to me this is a non-issue: if you care at all about your family (if you have one) you just suck it up and change the battery.
Currently companies are decentivized to develop this technology precisely because the NRA, which is very powerful and rich, is doing everything they can to turn the tide of public opinion against the technology before it can even be tested as "ready for prime time."
If you owned a company with an R&D budget, would you spend millions perfecting a technology that already has a negative campaign against it financed by one of the most powerful lobby in the nation?
The NRA is doing everything it can to ensure this technology fails. That is why dismantling the NRA machine and aggressively prosecuting its lobbyists and politicians is one of the central things that must happen to ensure gun safety. The NRA has opposed every gun safety proposal it has ever seen.
My problem is this guy is not using any available data for this article. If it was impartial it would use and examine available data. Instead it's a smear piece with nothing but imagined scenarios.
As to the cops question, they should be much more responsible than your average gun owner and hopefully keep their police-issued weapons at the precinct when not on duty, thus these guns would not represent danger to their families. Civilian guns do.
But I do acknowledge there is a bit of a trade off here: One the one hand, you have to change a battery. On the other, doing so could make it extremely less likely your gun is ever accidentally fired by a child, used against you by a home invader, or used against someone else. So to me this is a non-issue: if you care at all about your family (if you have one) you just suck it up and change the battery.
Currently companies are decentivized to develop this technology precisely because the NRA, which is very powerful and rich, is doing everything they can to turn the tide of public opinion against the technology before it can even be tested as "ready for prime time."
If you owned a company with an R&D budget, would you spend millions perfecting a technology that already has a negative campaign against it financed by one of the most powerful lobby in the nation?
The NRA is doing everything it can to ensure this technology fails. That is why dismantling the NRA machine and aggressively prosecuting its lobbyists and politicians is one of the central things that must happen to ensure gun safety. The NRA has opposed every gun safety proposal it has ever seen.
My problem is this guy is not using any available data for this article. If it was impartial it would use and examine available data. Instead it's a smear piece with nothing but imagined scenarios.
As to the cops question, they should be much more responsible than your average gun owner and hopefully keep their police-issued weapons at the precinct when not on duty, thus these guns would not represent danger to their families. Civilian guns do.
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Spanky267
Footballguy
I thought you said the tech was ready to go? Companies have developed smart guns and Universities have researched and tested the systems.
The issue is that while I applaud you for being willing to propose something. Which Tgunz wouldnt, this tech isnt ready and if people who depend on a firearm as part of the tools of their job arent eager to adopt it why should the general public. I can bet you dollar to doughnuts that not all LEOs are card carrying NRA members who oppose any gun legislation. Why are cops not jumping on this bandwagon?
Here is another article discussing the technology and the concerns the law enforcement community has with the technology. I think the last paragraph of the story sums up the real issue.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/03/19/Smart-gun-technology-has-promise-but-needs-to-be-reliable-police-say/5001395178358/
Though they help prevent some fatalities, Johnson doesn’t think smart guns will change the problem at large.
“Whether it’s gun violence, knife violence, domestic violence, drunken bar fight violence, it’s … a behavioral problem, it goes beyond technology to solve or to fix,” Johnson said. “For some reason there’s always a certain number of people who will resort to violence, whether it makes sense to anybody else or not.”
Clifford
Footballguy
Smart Guns are intended to stop accidental fatalities primarily, and flashpoint situations where a gun falls into the hands of an attacker.
The fact that they do not change human mentality or prevent all forms of violence doesn't even rank as a point in this debate. Brooms don't prevent forest fires. Doesn't mean they are not good at sweeping. The argument is so nonsensical it's hard to even respond to.
The fact that they do not change human mentality or prevent all forms of violence doesn't even rank as a point in this debate. Brooms don't prevent forest fires. Doesn't mean they are not good at sweeping. The argument is so nonsensical it's hard to even respond to.
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