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A truly safe gun must do two things: 1) always fire when the trigger is pulled, and 2) never fire when the trigger is not pulled. So called Smart Guns are defic

by gnu8 10y ago

A truly safe gun must do two things: 1) always fire when the trigger is pulled, and 2) never fire when the trigger is not pulled. So called Smart Guns are deficient on point 1 and probably always will be. How often does an iPhone decline to unlock with a fingerprint and require a passcode? That would never be acceptable in a life or death situation that requires a gun.

robert_tweed 10y ago
Without wishing to comment on what is or isn't feasible now or in the future, I'd approach the technical requirements similarly to self-driving cars. They simply need to crash less often than a human driver. They don't need to be completely infallible, though for emotional reasons they need to crash significantly less often than humans. Similarly, a gun would need to have a failure rate somewhere in the order of 1% of the typical misfire rate. E.g., if a particular gun & ammunition pairing misfires 1 time out of 1,000 then the security system must fail no more than 1 in 100,000 times or thereabouts. At that point, any misfire due to the security system would be indistinguishable from a misfire that would have happened anyway. A 1% increase in misfires would not equate to a 1% increase in unintentional deaths, but a viable safety system would significantly decrease them. In fact, it might be possible to mathematically derive a much higher break-even point, but I daresay that would not work out well politically.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  The failure rate of modern handguns is extremely low. I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old. I've fired that gun around 15,000 times without a single failure of any kind.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old. John Moses Browning was the Leonardo da Vinci of gun design. In addition to the M1911, several of his other designs are still in production, and indeed, in active duty use by various militaries.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      I agree, for what it's worth. I carry my SW1911 90% of the time these days. I occasionally switch out for a Hi-Power (another Browning design!) or a Glock 31. The Hi-Power is honestly a more practical gun, but the trigger is harder to make decent, since Browning was working around his own patent that he'd sold. My 1911's trigger is the best I've ever seen, bar none.

by gnu8 10y ago

robert_tweed 10y ago

Without wishing to comment on what is or isn't feasible now or in the future, I'd approach the technical requirements similarly to self-driving cars. They simply need to crash less often than a human driver. They don't need to be completely infallible, though for emotional reasons they need to crash significantly less often than humans. Similarly, a gun would need to have a failure rate somewhere in the order of 1% of the typical misfire rate. E.g., if a particular gun & ammunition pairing misfires 1 time out of 1,000 then the security system must fail no more than 1 in 100,000 times or thereabouts. At that point, any misfire due to the security system would be indistinguishable from a misfire that would have happened anyway. A 1% increase in misfires would not equate to a 1% increase in unintentional deaths, but a viable safety system would significantly decrease them. In fact, it might be possible to mathematically derive a much higher break-even point, but I daresay that would not work out well politically.

LyndsySimon 10y ago
The failure rate of modern handguns is extremely low. I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old. I've fired that gun around 15,000 times without a single failure of any kind.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  I carry a 1911, which is a design more than a century old. John Moses Browning was the Leonardo da Vinci of gun design. In addition to the M1911, several of his other designs are still in production, and indeed, in active duty use by various militaries.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    I agree, for what it's worth. I carry my SW1911 90% of the time these days. I occasionally switch out for a Hi-Power (another Browning design!) or a Glock 31. The Hi-Power is honestly a more practical gun, but the trigger is harder to make decent, since Browning was working around his own patent that he'd sold. My 1911's trigger is the best I've ever seen, bar none.