19 ms·

Why the NRA hates smart guns

115 points by jonstokes 10y ago

hirundo 10y ago
The article makes it sound theoretical, but New Jersey already has the Childproof Handgun Law that makes it illegal to sell a non-smart gun "three years after it is determined that personalized handguns are available for retail purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_...
- hga 10y ago
  And that's been seriously proposed in California, which is pushing through another wave of gun control legislation, one bill of which would effectively shut down all gun stores in the state, and certainly favorably talked about elsewhere ... maybe Maryland? Just skimmed it (too much going on right now to look at it in depth), but I'm seriously impressed they did so much work to get in things like the classic "shoulder thing that goes up". In their defense, New Jersey's law is, as I recall, much older. I'll mention one other bottom line: we wouldn't even consider it prior to all law enforcement officers in the nation being required to use them, and only them.
  - curun1r 10y ago
    Part of the push for smart guns for law enforcement would come from law enforcement's negligent inability to keep track of their own weapons. A local news channel covered the story of one Bay Area city's police department releasing a report on an inventory of the weapons used by police officers. They were literally missing hundreds of them. Often, the weapon would be lost when an officer left it in an unlocked car, either a police car or their own and the thief simply opened the door/trunk and took it.
    - hga 10y ago
      I suppose so, but it's not like that would make any difference in the number of illicit guns on the street, and I've never heard of smart guns being designed for that much harder use case, where an adversary had lots of time to modify them. The most common one is limiting who can fire it, e.g. preventing the all too common tragedy when a criminal snatches a cop's gun and kills him with it.
      - woodman 10y ago
        > all too common tragedy Any murder is too much murder, but I certainly wouldn't describe it as common. Cops are nearly as likely to die of a car accident as they are of getting shot. A cop friend of mine was going on about how the recent media focus on them has made things so dangerous - officer murders were up by 15%! I asked him if that translated to an increase of 5 or 6 a year, and if that was actually above the noise floor - he responded with a blank stare - "15%."
        hga 10y ago
        Well, you're got a point, especially with modern retention holsters, but it's still a major issue, and those holsters also slow down the draw speed of officers (but one defeated the Boston bombers' after they murdered the MIT Campus Policeman, that murder was for naught).
        woodman 10y ago
        I stopped having to carry daily around the time that serpa holsters got popular. All the combat vets accurately predicted that the release mechanism would lead to a lot of negligent discharges - many training courses wouldn't let you on the range with one. I'm surprised to see that they are still being sold, I'd have thought they went the way of the lawn dart.
        hga 10y ago
        The Serpa holster is by no means the only retention holster out there! Nor would have one stopped the Boston bombers from what I understand of them, it's hard to expresses just how bad an idea they are in every way. For those who don't know, you have to press a button about over where the trigger is, inside the holster. If you keep pressing into your draw, you may as many have found out continue and press the trigger while it's pointed in a unfortunate direction.
    - jboggan 10y ago
      I used to shoot at an indoor range north of Atlanta. Once a sheepish customer came in asking the clerks what they knew about the rifle laying in the parking lot. Apparently the federal agent who had just left the range with his issued M4-style automatic carbine leaned it against his car while loading up his range bag. Then he forgot about it and drove off. I hated shooting next to law enforcement in general, they were bad shots and had poor gun handling skills. I think because they were paid to carry guns they thought they were "professionals" and didn't put the same effort into training and cultivating a mindfulness around firearms.
      - cortesoft 10y ago
        It makes sense... People who are into something for fun are more likely to out effor into getting good at that thing. Only some of the law enforcement community are also into guns for fun, whereas all of the people who are shooting at a gun range who AREN'T law enforcement are there for fun.
        Frompo 10y ago
        Indeed, another example of this is how NBA basketball players are worse than all the amateurs on the streets! And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you. Or maybe the argument magically only applies in the realm of gun use?
        hga 10y ago
        Police very seldom, and sometimes never have to use their guns, except maybe to threaten. They're paid to keep the peace and all that, the gun is merely one of many tools, although the one that all others ultimately rest on.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > Indeed, another example of this is how NBA basketball players are worse than all the amateurs on the streets! Hours of training are hours of training. The GP argued that "People who are into something for fun are more likely to out effor into getting good at that thing." (emphasis mine). > And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you. If you're in it just for the money then quite possibly. I can quite easily tell for whom programming is not just a job but also a hobby, and for whom it's just a way to make a living - coding skills tend to be much stronger in former.
- joesmo 10y ago
  All guns are illegal anywhere outside your home and place of work in New Jersey with very few, minor exceptions for certain types of guns which will be sorted out after your arrest. This is the model gun control advocates want for the whole nation. Our cities are perfect examples of gun free zones. No gun violence in years. No one is afraid in Camden, Trenton, Newark, AC, etc. because guns are illegal so there is no gun violence. Criminals respect all laws in New Jersey. Of course we are the first with smart gun legislation.
sanj 10y ago
If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?
- fdhj4094njdf 10y ago
  They don't oppose background checks. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/nra-supported-background-gun-check-john-cornyn-121035 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/nra-supported-backgrou...
  - ixtli 10y ago
    It says they do on the NRA-ILA website. https://www.nraila.org/issues/background-checksnics/ https://www.nraila.org/issues/background-checksnics/
  - lionsdan 10y ago
    Sometimes they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBvpxhsa_Y&feature=youtu.be&t=141 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBvpxhsa_Y&feature=youtu.be...
  - BookmarkSaver 10y ago
    I don't think so. They've opposed any background check legislation proposed before, and that bill seems more like it is about "augmenting" "background checks" rather than actually augmenting background checks in a useful manner.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The pertinent part of that bill is about listing mental health information in the background check system. It doesn't increase the number of transactions where a background check would be required. The NRA regularly opposes such expansions (for instance they oppose closing the so called gun show loophole).
    - msandford 10y ago
      The idea that mental health information should be a part of background checks is a pretty tough row to hoe. With crimes at least there's an ostensibly fair trial that determines the guilt or innocence of the person; with mental health there may or may not be any kind of trial but the resulting embargo on your gun rights will be just as real. Further that would incentivize people who might be struggling with mental illness NOT to seek help, lest they forever find themselves unable to own a gun. Is that what we want? Discouraging people from seeking help? Finally, there's absolutely NO incentive for the people actually executing the background check system to "be reasonable" such that if you had a nervous breakdown in college at 20 years old from trying to take 21 credits so you could graduate before your scholarship ran out (as a totally contrived example) should that really prevent 40 year old you from owning a shotgun to shoot clays? I might argue "no" but the bureaucracy has NO incentive to allow it and EVERY incentive not to allow it. There are no real repercussions for taking someone's rights in a nebulous and opaque manner but large repercussions if anyone, anywhere ever who has any kind of mental health history ever gets a gun and uses it murderously.
dpflan 10y ago
Smart guns have an interesting history. In the 90's Colt developed a smart gun, but the results "backfired." Anti-gun groups were against it because of the idea that safer guns meant that the barrier to entry to ownership was lower (now that guns are "safer", why not have one?); people who depended upon guns for their livelihood were skeptical: when you need to use one there needs to be no questions that it will function (barring all the traditional issues of "dumb" gun); if successful, other manufacturings would have to follow suit and there could be legal actions against "dumb" gun manufacturing and ownershpi...etc. I've linked some articles that touch upon this attempt by Colt. NRP Article: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-develop-a-safer-smart-gun-backfired http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-devel... Hacker News Discussion of Article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297
- hga 10y ago
  From the beginning of the first comment in the HN discussion you link to: he explained that it was only supposed to fire if the shooter was wearing a special wristband with a little radio frequency transmitter inside. The CEO put on the wristband and went to pull the trigger. ... And it didn't shoot. Just silence. An "oops" which is entirely unacceptable for any law enforcement/self defense use case.
- pbh101 10y ago
  Slightly redundant, but I also enjoyed the (apparently contemporary) Planet Money podcast episode on the same topic: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/08/473581490/episode-694-the-gun-that-wouldnt-shoot http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/08/473581490/episo...
jboggan 10y ago
Good article, glad to see some knowledgable firearms writing in the general press. This is how I've felt as a gun owner over the last two decades, translated into computing: Imagine that someone in California hacked into a power station and caused a blackout. Police responded and found the hacker and their equipment. Shortly thereafter an "anti-hacking" bill appeared in the state legislature to prevent a repeat of such a disaster. The attacker used some strange system called Ubuntu which most computer users have little or no reason to have, so that was specifically outlawed in the state (while any other Linux distro is fine). They had a quad-core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, and a USB 2.0 keyboard for "faster hacking"; the bill mandated a limit of 9 gigs, 2 cores, and PS/2 connectors only. The attacker also used something called the "TCP protocol" (misnomer intended); the bill also mandated that the protocol include a 4th and 5th step transmitting "I am not a hacker" and acknowledging "You will be prosecuted with a felony under California SB1137 for improper use of this TCP protocol". The bill passes and no more hacks occur. Other states don't want to be seen as soft on crime, so they draft copycat bills and randomly ban openSUSE, Gentoo, and trackballs with more than 6 buttons. Within a few years computer enthusiast sites pop up detailing which states are safe to travel to with your laptop. 1 gig RAM chips get unexpectedly expensive as everyone wants to get up to that 9 gig limit in restricted states. California legislators visit university computer labs disapprovingly and talk about closing the "Linux loophole". Activist groups lobby Congress, maintaining that the Founding Fathers never could have conceived of computers as an evolution of the printing press and therefore the 1st Amendment did not apply to electronic devices or communications. Programmers everywhere grumble about coding for two different communication protocols depending on whether or not your users are in California (but it's such a big market you can't ignore it). Your mother wonders why you can't just get your work done on an 8 year old laptop running Windows 7, it's good enough for her web browsing! The contractor maintaining the power plant control system again leaves the web admin panel open and unsecured after testing from home and forgetting to unflip a poorly labeled feature flag on the production server.
- cvwright 10y ago
  Unfortunately that's not too far from what they've been trying to do with the Wassenaar Arrangement lately, with export restrictions on "intrusion software". http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/us-to-renegotiate-rules-on-exporting-intrusion-software-under-wassenaar-arrangement/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/us-to-renegotiate...
bdowling 10y ago
Smart guns are to self-defense and the gun industry what the Clipper chip was to encryption and the communications industry, except the Clipper chip actually worked.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  Except that literally no one would die if clipper worked or didn't work. I lean toward the side of fewer restrictions on guns, although I don't own any - but I don't think that any comparison that removes the possibility of people dying will really hold up.
  - bdowling 10y ago
    The reason that the government wanted the Clipper chip was to make it possible for police agencies to listen in on the encrypted communications of suspected criminals, often ones whose activities would certainly involve the possibility of people dying. Both cases are examples of government attempting to interfere with a technology to further some legitimate public government interest (catching criminals, reducing accidents) while compromising the private interests of citizens (effective self-defense, privacy).
xorgar831 10y ago
The irony being is that the gun community acts just as irrational and certainly impractical. Even as a non-gun owner, I know what gun I'd rather have for self defence than these guys. :) Does a 50cal really seem like a sport rifle? The inventor goes on towards the end of this video to suggest it's useful for personal self-defence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s Here's an example of a guy who has 1.5M subscribers explaining how he'd protect himself answering the door in the middle of the night with a completely impractical close range weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s
- gnu8 10y ago
  Those youtubers are just jerking off. A .50 caliber rifle is just a big expensive dangerous toy. No one is going to commit a shooting spree with one. It's not practical. Regulating them only impacts people who like loud bangs and will never hurt anyone.
  - xorgar831 10y ago
    That's the point, that same impractical rational gets applied everywhere. Even in cases where people get hurt.
  - Scramblejams 10y ago
    My congresscritter a while back put out a statement supporting the 50 BMG ban in California, because she wanted "these dangerous weapons off our streets." I emailed her, asking how many of these weapons, exactly, she'd happened to find on our streets! I figure, they're so rare and expensive, if I could walk outside and trip over one, I might as well go out and pick one up that'd been left in the nearby hedges! She didn't respond. :-( Tangent: It made me wonder what the longest distance criminal shot in American history is. Anybody got any ideas?
    - rdl 10y ago
      Do you mean "criminal shot by police/civilians", or shooting-by-criminals? Pure negligent shootings which happen to damage property or injure/kill people happen at range all the time, and the shooter is by definition a criminal. Celebratory fire, particularly at a 30-45 degree angle, is going to have serious range, even if inaccurate, and is guaranteed to hit something. Most of the fear of .50 was anti-armor, not so much pure range. The "DC Beltway sniper" fucktards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks) were under 200m shots, but that's still solidly rifle distance. Famously, Charles Whitman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) had many shots resulting in injury or murder at 400-500m. He was firing from a tower, and high angle shooting rewards flat trajectory even more than the distance itself would indicate. JFK was 81m, also well outside handgun range. I suspect there are a reasonably large number of 50-200m range shootings with rifles (there are very few shootings with rifles overall, but when they do happen); that's easily house-to-driveway-end in a lot of places.
rdl 10y ago
I'd be a lot more interested in a smart gun SAFE than in smart guns. What I want most, specifically, is a bedside pistol safe, the size of a "gun vault", which is actually secure, but still rapid-access. (The problems with the "gun vault" style safes are numerous -- some of them can be simply dropped 6" and they pop open from inertia on the locking mechanism. Others can be defeated surreptitiously by peeling off a sticker and inserting a paperclip to hit the reset button inside. They're not suitable for leaving a loaded firearm inside when you have untrustworthy people about for extended periods. The only reasonable model right now is to take a carry gun and put it in the safe every night (which is great IFF you carry every day), or to transfer a weapon from a "real" safe to the bedside vault every night. The problem is at some point you might forget, and both false-positive and false-negative kind of suck there.) The tradeoff I'm willing to make is spending $1k for this vs. $100, and accepting two distinct entry modes: an slow-path "unattended/unprimed" mode which uses a UL group II electronic lock for access, with timeout-access, and a fast-path "day gate" (which would actually be night gate...) which opens quickly using (ideally) a chording keyboard mechanism, or biometric, or something else. What I absolutely want to defend against is surreptitious entry when unattended -- i.e. for someone with kids, capable of entering hundreds or thousands of combinations in a week, there should be very low risk of users brute forcing the combo or otherwise gaining access in a way which doesn't leave evidence/alarm. Ideally, tamper events would lock the safe down to full TL-15 mode; if your kids can defeat a TL-15 safe, particularly surreptitiously when it is monitored every day, they might deserve the firearm for their new life of crime. I'd be willing to have no override capability on the fast-path -- if it misreads, or is at all suspicious, if fails back to the slow-path. The mechanism for enabling fast-path might be unrelated to the slow-path entry mechanism (i.e. you don't need to open the door); what I was thinking of was some kind of presence-detect using bluetooth watch (Apple Watch) challenge-response, or something like that. I could accomplish this today by buying an actual UL TL-15 safe of some size and putting a gunvault inside it, but that takes up a lot of space, and would weigh half a ton. There has to be a better solution. I'd also like to have it tied into my alarm system and notifications -- if someone attempts to enter the safe, I want a notification on my phone. I'd also like to be able to force slow-path-only remotely. (I'd also like to have lighting, cameras, etc. controlled by alarm events, but that's a separate thing; I'd prefer NOT to have my bedroom recorded on video normally, but when the gun safe is opened, I'd like video logs to be streamed offsite in realtime.)
koolba 10y ago
Everybody[1] who's actually owned a gun (or plans to) hates smart guns. [1]: Okay maybe not everybody but based on my anecdata it's everybody.
- chillacy 10y ago
  That's the conclusion I came to when looking at the market for smart guns (I was interested in smart attachments for guns, think Fitbit for your gun). Smart guns drum up a bunch of press and buzz from people who will never buy them. It's a failure to understand the target market, who hates the concept for reasons mentioned elsewhere in this comment section.
Animats 10y ago
The vertical forward handgrip claim is a bit much. While not too useful for aimed fire, as the author points out, it makes un-aimed "spray and pray" shooting easier. So does a barrel shroud. Neither feature is needed on a hunting rifle.
- hga 10y ago
  Neither feature is needed on a hunting rifle. Which the 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with. I'm told that many prefer it for vertical pistol grip rifles and carbines in close quarters combat, the combination is more ergonomic (I'm too used to the classic horizontal grip, and that's what my Scout rifle has, so I'm very unlikely to even try it). Barrel shrouds are to keep yourself from getting burned if you have to fire a lot in a firefight, which again hits on the self-defense and offence purposes behind the 2nd Amendment.
- fiatmoney 10y ago
  You don't know what you're talking about and I'm guessing you may have never actually shot a semi automatic rifle before. This is a rifle with no scary barrel shroud, pistol grip, or vertical foregrip. If you google "bump fire" you might notice it is pretty easy to rapid fire just about anything as long as it's semi automatic and you don't much care if you hit anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hlzuAzvuJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hlzuAzvuJQ In fact I find pistol grips and vertical foregrips plenty ergonomic for aimed fire, especially because I have a bit of carpal tunnel going on and cocking my wrist is somewhat painful. That's why every olympic target rifle (eg the Anschutz) uses some version of a vertical grip.
  - Animats 10y ago
    The US Army once taught me to use an M-16.
    - schismsubv 10y ago
      Being trained in a device's use does not an expert on its design make.
exabrial 10y ago
Smart guns aren't going to hinder anyone but responsible people. We need a few things: 1) Funding alternatives to incarceration. People that go to jail tend to have a frequent flyer card. 2) Law enforcement sharing of critical data on offenders. 3) Funding treatment and therapy programs for drug abusers (ABUSERS, key word. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but ABUSE and USE are two different things) 4) Finally, we need to wake up and realize there ARE bad people in the world, and unless you live in a small community, you can't have 100% safety. You can react by protecting yourself (yes, carry concealed), or if you're not comfortable with that, take a professional classes on how to survive extreme situations. Your safety at the end of the day is your responsibility ultimately.
- larrywright 10y ago
  I've always thought that the arguments from the anti-gun crowd defied all logic. If access to guns was the root of the problem, then gun violence should be going down, rather than up. Far fewer people own guns now than did, say 150 or 200 years ago (when it was probably close to 100%). Solving the problem by focusing on guns is trying to treat the symptom rather than the disease.
  - hga 10y ago
    I don't think you're right about how pervasive gun ownership was, due to changes in costs and wealth, and the ability to maintain guns in the days of corrosive black gunpowder and corrosive percussion caps and primers (the WWII M1 Carbine was the first US weapon system to use non-corrosive primers). And of course blacks were largely disarmed post-Reconstruction, next up were post-Civil War immigrants starting around the last turn of the century, etc. See also Chicago post-McDonald and the nationwide sweep of shall issue laws has radically increased the utility of owning a handgun, now 43 states and ~72-3% of the population.
  - 8note 10y ago
    what's your evidence that gun violence is going up?
nxzero 10y ago
Interesting to me how many people feel so strongly about a topic, often to such a degree that they openly void having an understanding of views counter to their own and unable to express the reasoning behind their own beliefs in any meaningful way. To me, this is the real issue, not that there's a topic people disagree on. _______ Re: SmartGuns — People kill people, and if someone wants to harm someone, they will. To me, a more natural solution would be to have areas, much like schools, that're gun free, and others that are not. Clearly this won't fit the issues, but it might end the debates.
fhrjfjc 10y ago
I don't want backdoors in my guns just like I don't want backdoors in my encryption. It's really that simple. Also reminder that Marx was an advocate of widespread gun ownership by the working class, much for the same reasons that the founding fathers of the USA were. Solving the underlying economic issues causing suicide and violence would make far more sense than covering up the symptoms. At the end of the day it's all about poverty.
- 467568985476 10y ago
  I think that Marx comparison is pretty wrong. Marx expected a global workers' revolution that would result in a classless society. He was an advocate of armed revolution against the bourgeoisie. As far as I can tell, anything he wrote about gun ownership was in the context of this armed revolution. The second amendment reads, in full, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The notion of protecting a state lead by a capitalist, slave owning class (think about what "people" means in this context) is completely contradictory to Marx.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Marxists have enslaved far more people that were ever enslaved by the "capitalist, slave-owning class" in the early United States.
vaadu 10y ago
This article is an ignorant POS. The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people problem with technology. BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore.
- schismsubv 10y ago
  While I agree with (and just stopped writing a long response about) the unreliable and complex feature argument - consider adding the necessary components to a semiautomatic handgun - I wouldn't call the article ignorant. There are many reasons the NRA and gun owners in general dislike "smart" guns, some of which include the soft, social reasoning the article outlines. Hard technical arguments of feasibility and reliability tend to have little effect on those that espouse this form of gun control. They'd typically prefer the guns not be there in the first place, and don't particularly care how feasible or reliable the result is. Social arguments, however, tend to affect them more, or at least can put the argument in a place they find harder to dismiss. We need both parts to make the strongest argument.
- jonstokes 10y ago
  Author here. I covered all three points you raised on my previous piece for TC this topic, so I didn't see the need to repeat myself here. That piece is linked in the opener of this article.
- zardgiv 10y ago
  Please elaborate on what these "people problems" are. I'm interested in what you think is common amongst the cities you've cited.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    They are run by Democrats and have been for a long time.
venomsnake 10y ago
Reasons against smart guns - smart appliances don't work well, never have, never will. I prefer things simple, mechanical and working instead of praying that some Dilbert style company developed an usable software. I live in a country that has very restrictive gun ownership regime - and yet every person knows instinctively about the gun safety rules: 1. Always assume loaded, unless proven otherwise 2. Don't point it at something you don't want to kill. I am sure that people will appreciate when their gun starts firmware update or resets during a boar charging at you situation.
appleflaxen 10y ago
Washington regulates a million things over which is has no particular expertise. Including, but not limited, to medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, food production, law, agriculture, investment banks, the oil and gas industry, and on and on. The fact that the government is bad at regulating these things doesn't mean that any step they take will be bad. The details matter, and it doesn't mean you should terminate any regulatory effort before it is defined. In many (maybe all) of these areas, some regulation is needed.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  Most of those areas are regulated by boards and committees of dentists, pharmacists, food specialists, etc. For whatever reason, gun control is the one area where politicians refuse to consult specialists, thus resulting in bills as ridiculous as the AWB.
atemerev 10y ago
I wouldn't say "hate", as it is too strong a word. But smart guns have the same problem as self-driving cars: they take control from you and transfer it to unknown actors (a random computer programmer? Clueless legislators? Various three-letter government agencies?) Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say.
- yorwba 10y ago
  > Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say. That sums up my position nicely. I would not trust myself with either of these things.
  - hga 10y ago
    Are you willing to trust other people like myself with them?
  - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    Well, that's your self-confidence problem. It's not my problem, so don't try to impose it upon me.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > Those a better left in hands of experts, they say. Not sure about guns, but your average driver is definitely not an expert in operating their car. Hell, the widespread rejection of the opinion of experts is a part of the driving culture (speeding, ignoring traffic laws). When it comes to cars, I'm totally willing to trust that (not so) "random programmer" over an average person.
  - burfog 10y ago
    Speeding is not rejection of the opinion of experts. Speed limits are normally set low to appease the locals, who get to vote and who care most about one particular place, rather than those passing through. It's a NIMBY problem. Most of us want to go places quickly, but don't want fast/dense traffic through our own neighborhood. We also don't get bothered when the local cops earn a living from ticketing people from out of town. Those out-of-town people of course don't get a say in local policy, just as we don't get a say in the fact that we get ticketed in the other towns.
crikli 10y ago
I'm an engineer, gun owner, and former NRA member[1]. I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern. Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory will give you the best chance to respond appropriately. Just dealing with mechanical failures quickly and correctly takes very intentional practice. The last thing I want to have is another thing that can fail in a pressure situation that can't be resolved via trained response. E.g., for a bad primer or failure to eject I can do what's called a tap/rack/bang drill. But there's nothing I can do to train for some type of software failure or battery being dead or some other type of non-mechanical failure that bricks my firearm. [1]Former because the NRA"s lobbing efforts and powers are ridiculously overstated. Their entire entire existence as near as I can tell is to sell their member's names to third parties. I've never received as much crap snail mail and email as I did during the year I belonged to the NRA.
- Vexs 10y ago
  See, I actually like the idea of smart guns. The only thing it really does (or should do) is prevent you from getting shot with your own gun. If someone steals your gun out of your house, they could remove the smart part. If you're thinking about logging gun usage, you could probably edit the logs or corrupt them beyond usability. I think you could make the system work. It's not complicated, maybe just an RFID reader and a solenoid. The issue is that if politics try and stick a bunch of extra crap onto it. All that extra stuff is what can cause failures, and cause an otherwise good idea to become vilified.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    Where do I keep that RFID? An implant, a ring? What if it gets damaged in a scuffle and I'm SOL when I try to shoot? Technology fails.
  - schismsubv 10y ago
    If it's about politics, a lot of that extra stuff will be to make it non-bypassable. That said, just how many people are getting shot with their own gun as a component of overall firearm murders? Don't forget the power supply, and don't undercalculate antenna design needs (it probably won't work incorporated into the handle of a pistol). The electrical draw will probably need to be pretty beefy in order to be as reliable as the rest of the gun's mechanisms, and what happens when the gun is being carried or stored in -20C temperatures? What about off-hand shooting when your normal shooting hand is unusable or it's dangerous to shoot from your normal side? In order to be both universal and not introduce unreliability, the solenoid would likely have to be introduced as a secondary safety. How many firearm designs would even support a secondary safety?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anonbanker 10y ago
DC v. Heller means nothing will come from any of this.
- hga 10y ago
  Not clear. Prior to Scalia's death, on the ground if you don't count Illinois, which was not appealed to the Supremes, and California and Hawaii, where it looks like the appeals court will overturn the current shall issue decision en banc, on the ground there's been no changes, because the Supremes have denied cert to every case appealed to them aside from the Massachusetts stun gun case just decided. The bottom line is that Heller and McDonald mean we have a right to keep some types of arms, and bear them inside our homes, nothing more. And surely you've noticed how replacing Scalia is claimed by gun-grabbers as a necessary step towards reversing, de facto or de jure, both of those decisions, e.g. http://thehill.com/regulation/277248-chelsea-clinton-scotus-open-to-gun-control-after-scalia http://thehill.com/regulation/277248-chelsea-clinton-scotus-...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tomwilson 10y ago
These threads are always so weird to me - from a country where I have never known someone who owns a gun or ever seen one outside of police carrying them.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  Growing up, I can't think of anyone I knew that didn't have guns, or who professed to believe they should be restricted further.
aaroninsf 10y ago
...somewhere a tiny yellow light blinks at 20 bpm in a the NRA chapter tasked with online argument response, and three pagers subsequently buzz...

115 points by jonstokes 10y ago

The article makes it sound theoretical, but New Jersey already has the Childproof Handgun Law that makes it illegal to sell a non-smart gun "three years after it is determined that personalized handguns are available for retail purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_...

hga 10y ago
And that's been seriously proposed in California, which is pushing through another wave of gun control legislation, one bill of which would effectively shut down all gun stores in the state, and certainly favorably talked about elsewhere ... maybe Maryland? Just skimmed it (too much going on right now to look at it in depth), but I'm seriously impressed they did so much work to get in things like the classic "shoulder thing that goes up". In their defense, New Jersey's law is, as I recall, much older. I'll mention one other bottom line: we wouldn't even consider it prior to all law enforcement officers in the nation being required to use them, and only them.
- curun1r 10y ago
  Part of the push for smart guns for law enforcement would come from law enforcement's negligent inability to keep track of their own weapons. A local news channel covered the story of one Bay Area city's police department releasing a report on an inventory of the weapons used by police officers. They were literally missing hundreds of them. Often, the weapon would be lost when an officer left it in an unlocked car, either a police car or their own and the thief simply opened the door/trunk and took it.
  - hga 10y ago
    I suppose so, but it's not like that would make any difference in the number of illicit guns on the street, and I've never heard of smart guns being designed for that much harder use case, where an adversary had lots of time to modify them. The most common one is limiting who can fire it, e.g. preventing the all too common tragedy when a criminal snatches a cop's gun and kills him with it.
    - woodman 10y ago
      > all too common tragedy Any murder is too much murder, but I certainly wouldn't describe it as common. Cops are nearly as likely to die of a car accident as they are of getting shot. A cop friend of mine was going on about how the recent media focus on them has made things so dangerous - officer murders were up by 15%! I asked him if that translated to an increase of 5 or 6 a year, and if that was actually above the noise floor - he responded with a blank stare - "15%."
      - hga 10y ago
        Well, you're got a point, especially with modern retention holsters, but it's still a major issue, and those holsters also slow down the draw speed of officers (but one defeated the Boston bombers' after they murdered the MIT Campus Policeman, that murder was for naught).
        woodman 10y ago
        I stopped having to carry daily around the time that serpa holsters got popular. All the combat vets accurately predicted that the release mechanism would lead to a lot of negligent discharges - many training courses wouldn't let you on the range with one. I'm surprised to see that they are still being sold, I'd have thought they went the way of the lawn dart.
        hga 10y ago
        The Serpa holster is by no means the only retention holster out there! Nor would have one stopped the Boston bombers from what I understand of them, it's hard to expresses just how bad an idea they are in every way. For those who don't know, you have to press a button about over where the trigger is, inside the holster. If you keep pressing into your draw, you may as many have found out continue and press the trigger while it's pointed in a unfortunate direction.
  - jboggan 10y ago
    I used to shoot at an indoor range north of Atlanta. Once a sheepish customer came in asking the clerks what they knew about the rifle laying in the parking lot. Apparently the federal agent who had just left the range with his issued M4-style automatic carbine leaned it against his car while loading up his range bag. Then he forgot about it and drove off. I hated shooting next to law enforcement in general, they were bad shots and had poor gun handling skills. I think because they were paid to carry guns they thought they were "professionals" and didn't put the same effort into training and cultivating a mindfulness around firearms.
    - cortesoft 10y ago
      It makes sense... People who are into something for fun are more likely to out effor into getting good at that thing. Only some of the law enforcement community are also into guns for fun, whereas all of the people who are shooting at a gun range who AREN'T law enforcement are there for fun.
      - Frompo 10y ago
        Indeed, another example of this is how NBA basketball players are worse than all the amateurs on the streets! And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you. Or maybe the argument magically only applies in the realm of gun use?
        hga 10y ago
        Police very seldom, and sometimes never have to use their guns, except maybe to threaten. They're paid to keep the peace and all that, the gun is merely one of many tools, although the one that all others ultimately rest on.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > Indeed, another example of this is how NBA basketball players are worse than all the amateurs on the streets! Hours of training are hours of training. The GP argued that "People who are into something for fun are more likely to out effor into getting good at that thing." (emphasis mine). > And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you. If you're in it just for the money then quite possibly. I can quite easily tell for whom programming is not just a job but also a hobby, and for whom it's just a way to make a living - coding skills tend to be much stronger in former.
joesmo 10y ago
All guns are illegal anywhere outside your home and place of work in New Jersey with very few, minor exceptions for certain types of guns which will be sorted out after your arrest. This is the model gun control advocates want for the whole nation. Our cities are perfect examples of gun free zones. No gun violence in years. No one is afraid in Camden, Trenton, Newark, AC, etc. because guns are illegal so there is no gun violence. Criminals respect all laws in New Jersey. Of course we are the first with smart gun legislation.

sanj 10y ago

If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?

fdhj4094njdf 10y ago
They don't oppose background checks. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/nra-supported-background-gun-check-john-cornyn-121035 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/nra-supported-backgrou...
- ixtli 10y ago
  It says they do on the NRA-ILA website. https://www.nraila.org/issues/background-checksnics/ https://www.nraila.org/issues/background-checksnics/
- lionsdan 10y ago
  Sometimes they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBvpxhsa_Y&feature=youtu.be&t=141 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBvpxhsa_Y&feature=youtu.be...
- BookmarkSaver 10y ago
  I don't think so. They've opposed any background check legislation proposed before, and that bill seems more like it is about "augmenting" "background checks" rather than actually augmenting background checks in a useful manner.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The pertinent part of that bill is about listing mental health information in the background check system. It doesn't increase the number of transactions where a background check would be required. The NRA regularly opposes such expansions (for instance they oppose closing the so called gun show loophole).
  - msandford 10y ago
    The idea that mental health information should be a part of background checks is a pretty tough row to hoe. With crimes at least there's an ostensibly fair trial that determines the guilt or innocence of the person; with mental health there may or may not be any kind of trial but the resulting embargo on your gun rights will be just as real. Further that would incentivize people who might be struggling with mental illness NOT to seek help, lest they forever find themselves unable to own a gun. Is that what we want? Discouraging people from seeking help? Finally, there's absolutely NO incentive for the people actually executing the background check system to "be reasonable" such that if you had a nervous breakdown in college at 20 years old from trying to take 21 credits so you could graduate before your scholarship ran out (as a totally contrived example) should that really prevent 40 year old you from owning a shotgun to shoot clays? I might argue "no" but the bureaucracy has NO incentive to allow it and EVERY incentive not to allow it. There are no real repercussions for taking someone's rights in a nebulous and opaque manner but large repercussions if anyone, anywhere ever who has any kind of mental health history ever gets a gun and uses it murderously.

dpflan 10y ago

Smart guns have an interesting history. In the 90's Colt developed a smart gun, but the results "backfired." Anti-gun groups were against it because of the idea that safer guns meant that the barrier to entry to ownership was lower (now that guns are "safer", why not have one?); people who depended upon guns for their livelihood were skeptical: when you need to use one there needs to be no questions that it will function (barring all the traditional issues of "dumb" gun); if successful, other manufacturings would have to follow suit and there could be legal actions against "dumb" gun manufacturing and ownershpi...etc. I've linked some articles that touch upon this attempt by Colt. NRP Article: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-develop-a-safer-smart-gun-backfired http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-devel... Hacker News Discussion of Article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297

hga 10y ago
From the beginning of the first comment in the HN discussion you link to: he explained that it was only supposed to fire if the shooter was wearing a special wristband with a little radio frequency transmitter inside. The CEO put on the wristband and went to pull the trigger. ... And it didn't shoot. Just silence. An "oops" which is entirely unacceptable for any law enforcement/self defense use case.
pbh101 10y ago
Slightly redundant, but I also enjoyed the (apparently contemporary) Planet Money podcast episode on the same topic: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/08/473581490/episode-694-the-gun-that-wouldnt-shoot http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/08/473581490/episo...

jboggan 10y ago

Good article, glad to see some knowledgable firearms writing in the general press. This is how I've felt as a gun owner over the last two decades, translated into computing: Imagine that someone in California hacked into a power station and caused a blackout. Police responded and found the hacker and their equipment. Shortly thereafter an "anti-hacking" bill appeared in the state legislature to prevent a repeat of such a disaster. The attacker used some strange system called Ubuntu which most computer users have little or no reason to have, so that was specifically outlawed in the state (while any other Linux distro is fine). They had a quad-core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, and a USB 2.0 keyboard for "faster hacking"; the bill mandated a limit of 9 gigs, 2 cores, and PS/2 connectors only. The attacker also used something called the "TCP protocol" (misnomer intended); the bill also mandated that the protocol include a 4th and 5th step transmitting "I am not a hacker" and acknowledging "You will be prosecuted with a felony under California SB1137 for improper use of this TCP protocol". The bill passes and no more hacks occur. Other states don't want to be seen as soft on crime, so they draft copycat bills and randomly ban openSUSE, Gentoo, and trackballs with more than 6 buttons. Within a few years computer enthusiast sites pop up detailing which states are safe to travel to with your laptop. 1 gig RAM chips get unexpectedly expensive as everyone wants to get up to that 9 gig limit in restricted states. California legislators visit university computer labs disapprovingly and talk about closing the "Linux loophole". Activist groups lobby Congress, maintaining that the Founding Fathers never could have conceived of computers as an evolution of the printing press and therefore the 1st Amendment did not apply to electronic devices or communications. Programmers everywhere grumble about coding for two different communication protocols depending on whether or not your users are in California (but it's such a big market you can't ignore it). Your mother wonders why you can't just get your work done on an 8 year old laptop running Windows 7, it's good enough for her web browsing! The contractor maintaining the power plant control system again leaves the web admin panel open and unsecured after testing from home and forgetting to unflip a poorly labeled feature flag on the production server.

cvwright 10y ago
Unfortunately that's not too far from what they've been trying to do with the Wassenaar Arrangement lately, with export restrictions on "intrusion software". http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/us-to-renegotiate-rules-on-exporting-intrusion-software-under-wassenaar-arrangement/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/us-to-renegotiate...

bdowling 10y ago

Smart guns are to self-defense and the gun industry what the Clipper chip was to encryption and the communications industry, except the Clipper chip actually worked.

grahamburger 10y ago
Except that literally no one would die if clipper worked or didn't work. I lean toward the side of fewer restrictions on guns, although I don't own any - but I don't think that any comparison that removes the possibility of people dying will really hold up.
- bdowling 10y ago
  The reason that the government wanted the Clipper chip was to make it possible for police agencies to listen in on the encrypted communications of suspected criminals, often ones whose activities would certainly involve the possibility of people dying. Both cases are examples of government attempting to interfere with a technology to further some legitimate public government interest (catching criminals, reducing accidents) while compromising the private interests of citizens (effective self-defense, privacy).

xorgar831 10y ago

The irony being is that the gun community acts just as irrational and certainly impractical. Even as a non-gun owner, I know what gun I'd rather have for self defence than these guys. :) Does a 50cal really seem like a sport rifle? The inventor goes on towards the end of this video to suggest it's useful for personal self-defence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s Here's an example of a guy who has 1.5M subscribers explaining how he'd protect himself answering the door in the middle of the night with a completely impractical close range weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s

gnu8 10y ago
Those youtubers are just jerking off. A .50 caliber rifle is just a big expensive dangerous toy. No one is going to commit a shooting spree with one. It's not practical. Regulating them only impacts people who like loud bangs and will never hurt anyone.
- xorgar831 10y ago
  That's the point, that same impractical rational gets applied everywhere. Even in cases where people get hurt.
- Scramblejams 10y ago
  My congresscritter a while back put out a statement supporting the 50 BMG ban in California, because she wanted "these dangerous weapons off our streets." I emailed her, asking how many of these weapons, exactly, she'd happened to find on our streets! I figure, they're so rare and expensive, if I could walk outside and trip over one, I might as well go out and pick one up that'd been left in the nearby hedges! She didn't respond. :-( Tangent: It made me wonder what the longest distance criminal shot in American history is. Anybody got any ideas?
  - rdl 10y ago
    Do you mean "criminal shot by police/civilians", or shooting-by-criminals? Pure negligent shootings which happen to damage property or injure/kill people happen at range all the time, and the shooter is by definition a criminal. Celebratory fire, particularly at a 30-45 degree angle, is going to have serious range, even if inaccurate, and is guaranteed to hit something. Most of the fear of .50 was anti-armor, not so much pure range. The "DC Beltway sniper" fucktards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks) were under 200m shots, but that's still solidly rifle distance. Famously, Charles Whitman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) had many shots resulting in injury or murder at 400-500m. He was firing from a tower, and high angle shooting rewards flat trajectory even more than the distance itself would indicate. JFK was 81m, also well outside handgun range. I suspect there are a reasonably large number of 50-200m range shootings with rifles (there are very few shootings with rifles overall, but when they do happen); that's easily house-to-driveway-end in a lot of places.

rdl 10y ago

I'd be a lot more interested in a smart gun SAFE than in smart guns. What I want most, specifically, is a bedside pistol safe, the size of a "gun vault", which is actually secure, but still rapid-access. (The problems with the "gun vault" style safes are numerous -- some of them can be simply dropped 6" and they pop open from inertia on the locking mechanism. Others can be defeated surreptitiously by peeling off a sticker and inserting a paperclip to hit the reset button inside. They're not suitable for leaving a loaded firearm inside when you have untrustworthy people about for extended periods. The only reasonable model right now is to take a carry gun and put it in the safe every night (which is great IFF you carry every day), or to transfer a weapon from a "real" safe to the bedside vault every night. The problem is at some point you might forget, and both false-positive and false-negative kind of suck there.) The tradeoff I'm willing to make is spending $1k for this vs. $100, and accepting two distinct entry modes: an slow-path "unattended/unprimed" mode which uses a UL group II electronic lock for access, with timeout-access, and a fast-path "day gate" (which would actually be night gate...) which opens quickly using (ideally) a chording keyboard mechanism, or biometric, or something else. What I absolutely want to defend against is surreptitious entry when unattended -- i.e. for someone with kids, capable of entering hundreds or thousands of combinations in a week, there should be very low risk of users brute forcing the combo or otherwise gaining access in a way which doesn't leave evidence/alarm. Ideally, tamper events would lock the safe down to full TL-15 mode; if your kids can defeat a TL-15 safe, particularly surreptitiously when it is monitored every day, they might deserve the firearm for their new life of crime. I'd be willing to have no override capability on the fast-path -- if it misreads, or is at all suspicious, if fails back to the slow-path. The mechanism for enabling fast-path might be unrelated to the slow-path entry mechanism (i.e. you don't need to open the door); what I was thinking of was some kind of presence-detect using bluetooth watch (Apple Watch) challenge-response, or something like that. I could accomplish this today by buying an actual UL TL-15 safe of some size and putting a gunvault inside it, but that takes up a lot of space, and would weigh half a ton. There has to be a better solution. I'd also like to have it tied into my alarm system and notifications -- if someone attempts to enter the safe, I want a notification on my phone. I'd also like to be able to force slow-path-only remotely. (I'd also like to have lighting, cameras, etc. controlled by alarm events, but that's a separate thing; I'd prefer NOT to have my bedroom recorded on video normally, but when the gun safe is opened, I'd like video logs to be streamed offsite in realtime.)

koolba 10y ago

Everybody[1] who's actually owned a gun (or plans to) hates smart guns. [1]: Okay maybe not everybody but based on my anecdata it's everybody.

chillacy 10y ago
That's the conclusion I came to when looking at the market for smart guns (I was interested in smart attachments for guns, think Fitbit for your gun). Smart guns drum up a bunch of press and buzz from people who will never buy them. It's a failure to understand the target market, who hates the concept for reasons mentioned elsewhere in this comment section.

Animats 10y ago

The vertical forward handgrip claim is a bit much. While not too useful for aimed fire, as the author points out, it makes un-aimed "spray and pray" shooting easier. So does a barrel shroud. Neither feature is needed on a hunting rifle.

hga 10y ago
Neither feature is needed on a hunting rifle. Which the 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with. I'm told that many prefer it for vertical pistol grip rifles and carbines in close quarters combat, the combination is more ergonomic (I'm too used to the classic horizontal grip, and that's what my Scout rifle has, so I'm very unlikely to even try it). Barrel shrouds are to keep yourself from getting burned if you have to fire a lot in a firefight, which again hits on the self-defense and offence purposes behind the 2nd Amendment.
fiatmoney 10y ago
You don't know what you're talking about and I'm guessing you may have never actually shot a semi automatic rifle before. This is a rifle with no scary barrel shroud, pistol grip, or vertical foregrip. If you google "bump fire" you might notice it is pretty easy to rapid fire just about anything as long as it's semi automatic and you don't much care if you hit anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hlzuAzvuJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hlzuAzvuJQ In fact I find pistol grips and vertical foregrips plenty ergonomic for aimed fire, especially because I have a bit of carpal tunnel going on and cocking my wrist is somewhat painful. That's why every olympic target rifle (eg the Anschutz) uses some version of a vertical grip.
- Animats 10y ago
  The US Army once taught me to use an M-16.
  - schismsubv 10y ago
    Being trained in a device's use does not an expert on its design make.

exabrial 10y ago

Smart guns aren't going to hinder anyone but responsible people. We need a few things: 1) Funding alternatives to incarceration. People that go to jail tend to have a frequent flyer card. 2) Law enforcement sharing of critical data on offenders. 3) Funding treatment and therapy programs for drug abusers (ABUSERS, key word. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but ABUSE and USE are two different things) 4) Finally, we need to wake up and realize there ARE bad people in the world, and unless you live in a small community, you can't have 100% safety. You can react by protecting yourself (yes, carry concealed), or if you're not comfortable with that, take a professional classes on how to survive extreme situations. Your safety at the end of the day is your responsibility ultimately.

larrywright 10y ago
I've always thought that the arguments from the anti-gun crowd defied all logic. If access to guns was the root of the problem, then gun violence should be going down, rather than up. Far fewer people own guns now than did, say 150 or 200 years ago (when it was probably close to 100%). Solving the problem by focusing on guns is trying to treat the symptom rather than the disease.
- hga 10y ago
  I don't think you're right about how pervasive gun ownership was, due to changes in costs and wealth, and the ability to maintain guns in the days of corrosive black gunpowder and corrosive percussion caps and primers (the WWII M1 Carbine was the first US weapon system to use non-corrosive primers). And of course blacks were largely disarmed post-Reconstruction, next up were post-Civil War immigrants starting around the last turn of the century, etc. See also Chicago post-McDonald and the nationwide sweep of shall issue laws has radically increased the utility of owning a handgun, now 43 states and ~72-3% of the population.
- 8note 10y ago
  what's your evidence that gun violence is going up?

nxzero 10y ago

Interesting to me how many people feel so strongly about a topic, often to such a degree that they openly void having an understanding of views counter to their own and unable to express the reasoning behind their own beliefs in any meaningful way. To me, this is the real issue, not that there's a topic people disagree on. _______ Re: SmartGuns — People kill people, and if someone wants to harm someone, they will. To me, a more natural solution would be to have areas, much like schools, that're gun free, and others that are not. Clearly this won't fit the issues, but it might end the debates.

fhrjfjc 10y ago

I don't want backdoors in my guns just like I don't want backdoors in my encryption. It's really that simple. Also reminder that Marx was an advocate of widespread gun ownership by the working class, much for the same reasons that the founding fathers of the USA were. Solving the underlying economic issues causing suicide and violence would make far more sense than covering up the symptoms. At the end of the day it's all about poverty.

467568985476 10y ago
I think that Marx comparison is pretty wrong. Marx expected a global workers' revolution that would result in a classless society. He was an advocate of armed revolution against the bourgeoisie. As far as I can tell, anything he wrote about gun ownership was in the context of this armed revolution. The second amendment reads, in full, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The notion of protecting a state lead by a capitalist, slave owning class (think about what "people" means in this context) is completely contradictory to Marx.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Marxists have enslaved far more people that were ever enslaved by the "capitalist, slave-owning class" in the early United States.

vaadu 10y ago

This article is an ignorant POS. The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people problem with technology. BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore.

schismsubv 10y ago
While I agree with (and just stopped writing a long response about) the unreliable and complex feature argument - consider adding the necessary components to a semiautomatic handgun - I wouldn't call the article ignorant. There are many reasons the NRA and gun owners in general dislike "smart" guns, some of which include the soft, social reasoning the article outlines. Hard technical arguments of feasibility and reliability tend to have little effect on those that espouse this form of gun control. They'd typically prefer the guns not be there in the first place, and don't particularly care how feasible or reliable the result is. Social arguments, however, tend to affect them more, or at least can put the argument in a place they find harder to dismiss. We need both parts to make the strongest argument.
jonstokes 10y ago
Author here. I covered all three points you raised on my previous piece for TC this topic, so I didn't see the need to repeat myself here. That piece is linked in the opener of this article.
zardgiv 10y ago
Please elaborate on what these "people problems" are. I'm interested in what you think is common amongst the cities you've cited.
- ams6110 10y ago
  They are run by Democrats and have been for a long time.

venomsnake 10y ago

Reasons against smart guns - smart appliances don't work well, never have, never will. I prefer things simple, mechanical and working instead of praying that some Dilbert style company developed an usable software. I live in a country that has very restrictive gun ownership regime - and yet every person knows instinctively about the gun safety rules: 1. Always assume loaded, unless proven otherwise 2. Don't point it at something you don't want to kill. I am sure that people will appreciate when their gun starts firmware update or resets during a boar charging at you situation.

appleflaxen 10y ago

Washington regulates a million things over which is has no particular expertise. Including, but not limited, to medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, food production, law, agriculture, investment banks, the oil and gas industry, and on and on. The fact that the government is bad at regulating these things doesn't mean that any step they take will be bad. The details matter, and it doesn't mean you should terminate any regulatory effort before it is defined. In many (maybe all) of these areas, some regulation is needed.

cloakandswagger 10y ago
Most of those areas are regulated by boards and committees of dentists, pharmacists, food specialists, etc. For whatever reason, gun control is the one area where politicians refuse to consult specialists, thus resulting in bills as ridiculous as the AWB.

atemerev 10y ago

I wouldn't say "hate", as it is too strong a word. But smart guns have the same problem as self-driving cars: they take control from you and transfer it to unknown actors (a random computer programmer? Clueless legislators? Various three-letter government agencies?) Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say.

yorwba 10y ago
> Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say. That sums up my position nicely. I would not trust myself with either of these things.
- hga 10y ago
  Are you willing to trust other people like myself with them?
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  Well, that's your self-confidence problem. It's not my problem, so don't try to impose it upon me.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> Those a better left in hands of experts, they say. Not sure about guns, but your average driver is definitely not an expert in operating their car. Hell, the widespread rejection of the opinion of experts is a part of the driving culture (speeding, ignoring traffic laws). When it comes to cars, I'm totally willing to trust that (not so) "random programmer" over an average person.
- burfog 10y ago
  Speeding is not rejection of the opinion of experts. Speed limits are normally set low to appease the locals, who get to vote and who care most about one particular place, rather than those passing through. It's a NIMBY problem. Most of us want to go places quickly, but don't want fast/dense traffic through our own neighborhood. We also don't get bothered when the local cops earn a living from ticketing people from out of town. Those out-of-town people of course don't get a say in local policy, just as we don't get a say in the fact that we get ticketed in the other towns.

crikli 10y ago

I'm an engineer, gun owner, and former NRA member[1]. I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern. Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory will give you the best chance to respond appropriately. Just dealing with mechanical failures quickly and correctly takes very intentional practice. The last thing I want to have is another thing that can fail in a pressure situation that can't be resolved via trained response. E.g., for a bad primer or failure to eject I can do what's called a tap/rack/bang drill. But there's nothing I can do to train for some type of software failure or battery being dead or some other type of non-mechanical failure that bricks my firearm. [1]Former because the NRA"s lobbing efforts and powers are ridiculously overstated. Their entire entire existence as near as I can tell is to sell their member's names to third parties. I've never received as much crap snail mail and email as I did during the year I belonged to the NRA.

Vexs 10y ago
See, I actually like the idea of smart guns. The only thing it really does (or should do) is prevent you from getting shot with your own gun. If someone steals your gun out of your house, they could remove the smart part. If you're thinking about logging gun usage, you could probably edit the logs or corrupt them beyond usability. I think you could make the system work. It's not complicated, maybe just an RFID reader and a solenoid. The issue is that if politics try and stick a bunch of extra crap onto it. All that extra stuff is what can cause failures, and cause an otherwise good idea to become vilified.
- 67726e 10y ago
  Where do I keep that RFID? An implant, a ring? What if it gets damaged in a scuffle and I'm SOL when I try to shoot? Technology fails.
- schismsubv 10y ago
  If it's about politics, a lot of that extra stuff will be to make it non-bypassable. That said, just how many people are getting shot with their own gun as a component of overall firearm murders? Don't forget the power supply, and don't undercalculate antenna design needs (it probably won't work incorporated into the handle of a pistol). The electrical draw will probably need to be pretty beefy in order to be as reliable as the rest of the gun's mechanisms, and what happens when the gun is being carried or stored in -20C temperatures? What about off-hand shooting when your normal shooting hand is unusable or it's dangerous to shoot from your normal side? In order to be both universal and not introduce unreliability, the solenoid would likely have to be introduced as a secondary safety. How many firearm designs would even support a secondary safety?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

anonbanker 10y ago

DC v. Heller means nothing will come from any of this.

hga 10y ago
Not clear. Prior to Scalia's death, on the ground if you don't count Illinois, which was not appealed to the Supremes, and California and Hawaii, where it looks like the appeals court will overturn the current shall issue decision en banc, on the ground there's been no changes, because the Supremes have denied cert to every case appealed to them aside from the Massachusetts stun gun case just decided. The bottom line is that Heller and McDonald mean we have a right to keep some types of arms, and bear them inside our homes, nothing more. And surely you've noticed how replacing Scalia is claimed by gun-grabbers as a necessary step towards reversing, de facto or de jure, both of those decisions, e.g. http://thehill.com/regulation/277248-chelsea-clinton-scotus-open-to-gun-control-after-scalia http://thehill.com/regulation/277248-chelsea-clinton-scotus-...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tomwilson 10y ago

These threads are always so weird to me - from a country where I have never known someone who owns a gun or ever seen one outside of police carrying them.

LyndsySimon 10y ago
Growing up, I can't think of anyone I knew that didn't have guns, or who professed to believe they should be restricted further.

aaroninsf 10y ago

...somewhere a tiny yellow light blinks at 20 bpm in a the NRA chapter tasked with online argument response, and three pagers subsequently buzz...