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Any HN readers have ideas for improving gun safety?

• powatom 14y ago
  I for one would be interested in seeing what would happen if guns were marketed as 'sissy' weapons. Take the power out of the thing - make people think that you have to be some kind of wuss to rely on a gun to fight your battles for you.
• maxharris 14y ago
  What about better ways to recognize those people that are mentally ill and violent before they strike again? Unfortunately, this isn't really a tech problem. We're in this mess now because Thomas Szasz began a movement to destroy the profession of psychiatry. This led to the massive deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill thirty years ago, swelling the ranks of the homeless. That, in turn, played a major role in these recent killings, because of the impact the movement had on civil commitment laws: it is now very difficult (if not impossible) to commit those in dire need of effective, full-time treatment before people get killed.
  • roguecoder 14y ago
    Only 75% of adult spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis and the most common diagnosis is "depression". Less than 20% of teenage spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis. Tiller wasn't mentally ill at all, just racist and power-obsessed. As convenient as blaming mental illness may be, it is also short-sighted.
    • Zak 14y ago
      Going on a killing spree is prima facie evidence of mental illness. The fact that it wasn't diagnosed beforehand is part of the problem.
      • rdl 14y ago
        Spree killers are ~100/killings/yr. "rational" criminal murders with guns, domestic violence, etc. are more like 10k/yr. I'm also not sure how many of the ~15k gun suicides (or, say, all suicides) are mental illness/depression/etc. It may be unpopular, but I don't consider a 50-80 year old guy who is diagnosed with cancer which will painfully kill him over the next 3 months, killing himself, to be particularly wrong. (it's sad that he dies, but fuck cancer, in that case, vs. suicide being the problem)
        • Zak 14y ago
          I agree. I was just responding to roguecoder's point. Spree killings are so rare as to be irrational to give much consideration to when making public policy decisions.
• samstave 14y ago
  I am just going to think out loud here - please let me know if any sound plausible. Note: these are NOT taking cost into consideration. Additionally, anything that increases 'safety' in certain ways (like the ones I describe below, also decrease the immediate availability of the weapon to some legitimate urgent needs (unexpected intrusions, etc) (I'd like to get RDL's opinion on this as well) First, I am sure it goes without saying, that guns are mechanically very simple devices, so any attempt to make them more technologically advanced/complex in an effort to make them 'safer' is an uphill and easily circumvented road (i.e. - making simple guns is not difficult) 1. Ammunition: Develop a system for (signed|registered|tracked|authorized) ammunition validation in the (civilian version) of the weapon. Create a method and apparatus for the weapon t read the ID of the ammunition loaded into it (via barcode scanner/RFID/smart-chip/whatever) where the weapon will get a list of authorized ammunition it will fire via an external app. Basically you would have a cataloging system where you purchase ammunition, log it into your app then authorize the ammunition to a particular weapon with some form of two factor auth. A ring + plus a list of the valid ammo. When you load the ammo into the weapon, it is scanned as it is chambered, the gun receives either a list of the ammo that can be used, or it checks it at time of chambering and only fires if BOTH the ring and the list are green. This means that if your weapon and ring are stolen/picked up by a child - without pre-auth of a list of ammo the gun wont fire. 2. Add RTLS + camera systems to weapons. Add wifi beacons throughout a space that talk to a tag built into the grip of the gun. It tracks the location of the weapon and must be deactivated via a smart app in the same manner as the ammo scenario above. If the weapon moves around/leaves the geo-fence/whatever other rules get violated - it will remain in a locked state. 3. add a physical combo device with a pin which locks the action/slide of the weapon physically. 4. Decouple the actual trigger from the weapon and turn the authorization ring into the physical trigger. Meaning that even fully loaded and accessible - one could not just pick up the weapon and fire it. 5. (more about accountability) - Require ALL LEO weapons to be tied to a go-pro style cam either on chest or on the weapons themselves - and every trigger pull shoots a burst of video/pics - bonus - have any unholstered weapon begin filming and streaming of the down-sights images. Stream to either the soldiers pack, the LEOs vehicle or a 4g network. 6. 'Gunalytics' - in relation to #5 - we need a 'fit-bit for guns. A sensor heavy device (even if only used in a temporary, data gathering duration) which can be mounted to a weapon (grips/rail/whatever) which will capture all manner of use data. This device could have environmental parameters entered into it to track variance against. It could use the accelerometer to detect certain events (and sound - like the shot counters do) - but this device could be used to gather data for better gun safety training. E.G.: you could have these at ranges - you mount the device to the weapons of all users and it can determine any variance in the aim of the gun, so as to determine if a weapon was pointed in any direction other than down range. Gather the average duration between trigger pulls on all weapons - use anon user data as well (male, 38, 200#s, claims proficiency level X) etc... get big data on how people are self-training/using firearms at ranges. Gamify this - have competitions around this data. Make some weapons specific for this purpose etc... This can go in a lot of different directions. The goal being that better training, based on better, actual and actionable data is the best thing we can do for gun safety. --- So, with that said - this is looking forward and pretty much only at the weapons themselves. The millions upon millions of existing weapons that will never have any Smart features will always be an issue - thus item (6) seems a good approach to making gun safety/education an increased focus... I'd love to see real data behind the claims that communities that require all houses to have a firearm have reduced crime. You'll never have any of the above address the crazies.
• mark_l_watson 14y ago
  I think gun safety is more of a political problem that anything that new technologies will much improve. I have a few guns and enjoy the shooting range and from my perspective the safety situation would be improved by: stricter background checks, making assault rifle (type) weapons illegal, and the toughest problem: "de-fanging" the NRA.
  • fnfs2000 14y ago
    You may own guns, but your statement is ignorant of the facts. Assault Rifles are machine guns, civilians in the US have been prohibited from buying any newly manufactured ones since 1986.
    • wmeredith 14y ago
      Careful with that ignorant word. "Assault rifles" != machine guns.
      • rdl 14y ago
        Not all machine guns are assault rifles, but assault rifles are by definition select-fire machine guns (burst or full auto), firing an intermediate cartridge, and of rifle-like design. True machine guns like the M2, M240, M249 aren't assault rifles, nor are machine pistols. We do need a new term for "military-style semi-automatic intermediate caliber rifles", but assault rifle is already used. I'd suggest "black rifle" or "military-style rifle".
        • samstave 14y ago
          Maybe "Civilian Class" "Law enforcement class" and "Military class" buckets. And require various licensure for each category? (Its going to piss a lot of people off though...)
          • rdl 14y ago
            I'm in general in favor of the non-technical policy changes: 1) 100% transfer-time identity/legal status/mental health/etc. checks (NICS++) 2) Progressive licensing for possession (various classes of weapons); license the owner, not the gun. A gangster with a .25acp pistol is a lot more of a problem than my .338 Lapua Magnum rifle. 3) Streamlining all existing regulations, which is a combination of eliminating ineffective/irrational stuff (SBR/SBS being more regulated than pistols, 922(r) parts counts, etc.) and strengthening other parts (licensing, treating handguns and semi-auto mag-fed rifles more strictly, etc.) Deregulate suppressors, deal with SBS/SBR, and raise the full-auto tax to $2500-5000 indexed to inflation, but also allow post-1986 automatics under that restrictive regulation.
• impendia 14y ago
  Require guns sold in the US to be outfitted with some kind of biometric scanner, so that they can only be fired by their legal, registered owner. Sounds kind of like sci-fi to me, except that I read in the newspapers after Newtown that this kind of technology is being developed and is close to becoming feasible.
  • nate_martin 14y ago
    007 had this exact weapon in Skyfall.
    • rdl 14y ago
      In practice the state of the art for that is a ring with RFID/NFC and a weapon with a reader. Actual biometric tends to fail at the wrong time due to gloves, weather, sweat, etc. There are a few problems, though -- you want to be able to fire in your off-hand, police officers and especially military need to be able to exchange weapons on the battlefield with other friendly personnel, etc.
  • dmix 14y ago
    The USA is surrounded by massive borders. Illegal firearms can't be stopped nearly as much as drugs can't. Combined with the fact that the vast majority of gun crime doesn't happen with legal weapons. One quote I was able to find: > "More than 95 percent of all gun related crimes in the Rochester area are committed with illegal guns. That’s what District Attorney Mike Green told NEWS 10NBC Tuesday. Is this really worth the capital investment? Not even factoring in the fact that we can hardly keep banks or voting machines free from security flaws... let alone the lack of real-world research on the effectiveness of biometric scanners in wide scale deployments.
    • dangero 14y ago
      Ignoring the biometric accuracy conversation for a second... I think the benefit of a gun like this would be that responsible people could own them for self defense. Statistics say that guns in the home increase the chance of violent death. I live in Los Angeles where home invasion robberies are pretty common and I would like to be able to defend myself and my family against an armed intruder, but playing the odds says that I would be putting my family in more danger by bringing the gun into my home than I would be protecting them. This creates a catch-22 and the outcome is that a responsible party does not have a weapon while the criminals all do. I highly doubt a criminal would want to use an advanced biometric gun to commit a crime because it would ID the shooter and create evidence against them while I would prefer that knowing that nobody else could use the gun to cause a violent act in my home.
• rdl 14y ago
  I know enough about firearms and mechanical reliability that I don't put much faith in anything which modifies the critical firing path of a weapon. I don't even like S&W revolvers with an integrated trigger lock. However, there are lots of other areas for improvement. 1. Figure out a way to make firearms registration easy to compute owner from a given recovered weapon, but not to enumerate a list of all guns owned by a specific person based on his identity only. There are a variety of cryptographic ways to do this -- if we had a way to do write-only storage on guns (say, with a 2d barcode or something which couldn't be removed, and which included a cryptographic signature and timestamp), it would make tracing guns recovered in crime easier (and thus catch/prosecute straw man purchasers for gangs and such), but would prevent the "nazis seize all guns before implementing the ovens" irrational fear. 2. A way to do NCIC NICS checks without a huge amount of trust. A private party should be able to run one (with consent of a purchaser), using a smartphone and ID provided by the buyer. Something like a Square reader. Maybe something which uses both the buyer's phone and the seller's phone and an online server. It's unreasonable to require all buyers/sellers have smartphones (a lot of gun owners are old, and there's a constitutional argument to allow poor people to buy guns, too), but at a gun show, you could loan iPod Touch to various sellers for the day. This would be supplemental to normal at-dealer-premises FFL checks. You could possibly also just require all FFLs to purchase a reasonable terminal, too. 3. Safes suck. We can do so much on locking mechanisms to rapidly open safes. For non-self-defense weapons, having safes which do periodic "I haven't been broken into yet!" liveness reporting to the owner (and maybe law enforcement, insurance) remotely, and then which alarm on tamper events, would be great. I'd love these since my safes each contain >$50k. 4. Third-party custody. I'm more than willing to lower the bar for temporarily prohibiting someone from possessing firearms. Yet, turning them over to the police isn't really fair. There should be some kind of self-storage facility optimized for storing firearms where control can be temporarily ceded to a trustworthy third party, on a bailment basis. If you are suspected of mental illness/etc., they'd be safe, and you'd be prohibited from access for a period of time; access would be restored at some point. This would make it easier to lower the bar for removal of access to weapons. Someone like Mrs. Lanza may have considered placing her weapons in such a facility while trying to get rid of her son.
  • samstave 14y ago
• femto 14y ago
  Are there any constraints? If not, the obvious (low) tech idea is a steamroller.
• Harkins 14y ago
  It seems to me that one of the major drivers of hostility to NICS is the fear that the government having a complete and accurate listing of gun purchases will enable a future fascistic government to neuter resistance by confiscating guns. So one way to reduce political opposition to NICS would be to make it useless as a database of gun ownership. Run it in such a public fashion that everyone can trust it's not keeping track of all guns, or constantly run fake queries against it for all citizens so that gun owners cannot be identified. I unsure if what I've read about this belief is fringey or common among gun owners, so maybe this is not necessary to gain enough political support to require background checks for all firearm sales.
  • rdl 14y ago
    There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry, so that should influence NICS design. We saw in California and NY that registration -> confiscation. I actually trust the federal government more than the California government, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. Borderline guns (say, .50bmg) which are 100% registered would be at risk to confiscation in the future if possession is banned. It would be much easier legally to ban possession of the .50bmg, particularly in semiauto, than anything else, since those are so expensive and rare, and so destructive that they look great on TV.
    • jberryman 14y ago
      what are you referring to with "registration -> confiscation"?
      • philwelch 14y ago
        If you register all the guns, or all the gun owners, then you have a list of people so you can go knock on their doors and take their guns away from them. Gangsters exempt, naturally--they didn't bother registering in the first place.
        • dmix 14y ago
• dr_doom 14y ago
  I don't think gun safety is the major issue, gun violence is the big killer. Biometric scanners and high tech safes may help save a few people but there are more murders during a Chicago summer than all school shootings in the last 10 years combined.
  • rdl 14y ago
    The question is, are the possessors of those (mostly handguns) in Chicago lawfully able to purchase them? If there were a 100% effective (no false positive or negatives) gun to legal owner biometric ID thing, then that should reduce Chicago gang violence as well. The problem is I don't believe it's technically possible to build even a 90% effective system like that (a trigger and firing mechanism is mechanically simple; I could just open the gun and replace the advanced biometric system with a traditional one, perhaps 3d printed), and the are the 200 million existing weapons. Biometrics are potentially good for preventing someone from taking your gun and shooting you with it (which mainly applies to police who open-carry in close proximity to felons), or potentially for keeping children from getting access (although a traditional safe or lockbox works fine for that).
    • dr_doom 14y ago
      All fair points. I guess I was looking at it from a criminal perspective. These same Chicago gangs are able to import cocaine from Colombia, ecstasy from Amsterdam, heroin from Afghanistan, hell even knock off purses and electronics from China, I don't see why they wouldn't just expand and sell Romanian AK-47's or bootleg Chinese glocks. Personally I wouldn't mind biometrics on my guns but would HATE any kind of registry.
    • koenigdavidmj 14y ago
      Until a Supreme Court ruling a couple years ago, all handguns were illegal in Chicago.
• rokhayakebe 14y ago
  "Increase bullet cost." Significantly.
  • Firehed 14y ago
    Works great for cigarettes.
  • caw 14y ago
    I thought ammo cost was already going up because of demand. Wouldn't that just transition people to making their own bullets? It's my understanding that it isn't super difficult if you have the tools, and can significantly reduce the cost of shooting.
    • rdl 14y ago
      I assume OP means the Chris Rock argument for 10000x increase, not the 2-3x increase we've seen. After all, a "good" gun owner who goes to the range and uses ~1000 rounds in practice in a week isn't as much of a problem as a "bad" guy who has 7 rounds in his crappy Hi Point pistol and ends up killing 2 people and throwing away the gun. Primers are ultimately the hardest to produce part (although power/propellant is also hard); brass can be recycled, and bullets can be milled (at the high end) or cast.
  • Zak 14y ago
    Ammunition isn't an especially difficult thing to manufacture. Cartridges developed over 100 years ago are still in use today, relatively unchanged. In particular, the 9mm Parabellum and .45 ACP remain among the most popular cartridges for new handguns today in civilian, military and police applications. Hobbyists load their own ammunition using simple tools and commercially available components. More enthusiastic hobbyists cast their own bullets from various forms of scrap lead. Cases, powder and primers are a bit harder and don't make sense to do at home given commercial availability. Increase the price a significant amount and the sort of people who have the skills and resources to manufacture illegal drugs in quantity will manufacture ammunition in quantity for sale on the black market instead. Guns, too are fairly simple to make - see http://improguns.blogspot.com http://improguns.blogspot.com. Restricting guns and ammunition is not a viable way to keep them out of the hands of street criminals where there is an established black market economy and a culture that says one needs a gun to be a man.
• niggler 14y ago
  In almost all major gun incidents, the weapon in question isn't registered to the shooter. Prima facie, something as simple as a fingerprint trigger lock could be acceptable to the gun enthusiasts (much less use for a stolen weapon).
• halis 14y ago
  An electronic gun that's operated purely through software.
• quasque 14y ago
  Discouraging or banning ownership seems to work well in many countries. It's a shame that so many citizens of the US feel intimately tied to these violent objects, and for such archaic reasons.
  • Jayschwa 14y ago
    Having the ability to defend yourself is not "archaic".
• philwelch 14y ago
  So here's a crazy little idea. Most gun violence is directly linked to gang activity. Gang activity is directly linked to the money involved in the drug trade. So the best technological approach to reducing gun violence would be one that took all the money out of the drug trade, giving the gangsters less to shoot at each other over. There is precedent for this. The fact that crime, including violent crime and violent crime committed with firearms, is so low now compared to the 80's and early 90's is directly linked to the collapse in the price of cocaine. We've made it almost impossible to stop everyday copyright infringement, why not make it almost impossible to stop physical smuggling or fabrication of narcotics? Commoditize the gangsters straight out of business. Part of what made the bottom fall out of cocaine was crystal meth. So there's one direction: freely distribute the information and materials necessary to manufacture competing drugs. Then there's the distribution: Silk Road is a start, but find a better way of doing it that will pull in more producers, consumers, and distributors. If you work all the angles, you can engineer an end run against the war on drugs the same way we engineered an end run against copyright. Too far out? ;)
  • rdl 14y ago
    Heh. I do agree that ending the drug war is the single best thing that can be done to reduce violence, poverty, racism, hopelessness-among-minorities, etc. Guns and gun violence are a very minor issue by comparison. I'd rather not have a widespread "everyone a tweaker" program, though. Crystal meth is actually pretty bad. Decriminalizing existing drugs and production of drugs would probably be a lot better than replacing illegal pot/coke/etc. use with illegal meth use.
    • philwelch 14y ago
      Sure, I was not being entirely serious. I'll just say that we're probably better off in the current heyday of meth than we were in the heyday of cocaine. Any reasonable approach to the drug problem is not about growing demand for drugs, just better meeting the existent demand with fewer externalities.
      • lancewiggs 14y ago
• noknockers 14y ago
  I've always thought guns need keys, just like an automobile. You have to turn them on before use. The gun is useless without it.
• kephra 14y ago
  Require people who want to buy a gun to have a gun license. You can own a gun in US without license, but drive a car without. The license should require a short theoretical, practical and legal test. License owners should be 21 (legal for drinking age), must not have a criminal record, must show that they are able to handle and clean a gun without shooting them self in their foot or eye, and must file a simple theoretical test, to check that they know the basic safety requirements like "always store the ammunition in a safe".
  • jauer 14y ago
    That's politically and historically a non-starter. Guns are protected in the same category as free speech. Driving, drinking, etc are not.
  • nthj 14y ago
    > You can own a gun in US without license, but drive a car without. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard this argument. I can park an Aston Martin in my back yard and not have a license for anything. I can be 3 years old or have 25 DUIs or be as mentally ill as all get out. I might have to pay property taxes in some states. But other than that I'm home free. I need a license to DRIVE the car on PUBLICLY owned roads. You're suggesting a license to park a gun in my backyard. I don't really want to argue over whether or not we should do what you suggested. I just want people to stop using drivers licences as examples. It's not a 1-1.
    • fooooobar 14y ago
      Is it 1-1 with a pilot's license?
• newman314 14y ago
  I'm sorry but I don't think this is something to be solved (primarily) with technology. Until as a society, we stop utilizing guns as a cultural norm (by this I mean the use of arms for all purposes not just ownership by private citizens), all tech is going to do is at best slow down the use of weapons, to the point where they are effectively useless or make it such that only criminals have easy access to weapons. I strongly believe in guns don't kill people, bad people with guns kill people.
• mindslight 14y ago
  I've got a modest proposal - the second simplest idea of them all. Instead of beating around the bush with restrictions that should be ruled unconstitutional but won't be, simply ban all firearms. The building-a-better-world folks would be happy to finally get their wet dream. The constitutionalists could stop deluding themselves as to its applicability, and thus choose to secede or revolt. And everybody who wants personal freedom would be free of a red herring and could better concentrate on functional ways of neutering the modern governments' ability to do things like ban personal tools in the first place.
  • nthj 14y ago
    > The constitutionalists could stop deluding themselves as to its applicability, and thus choose to secede or revolt Or revolt over seceding? The Civil War would not have taken place had Lincoln allowed the South to go on their merry way.
  • rdl 14y ago
    If someone passes an unconstitutional law, the reasonable response isn't to secede (which is itself unconstitutional), but to challenge it in the courts (as well as to vote out of office the legislators/executives who pushed those laws). "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" would be the cliche here.
    • mindslight 14y ago
      The courts actually ruling it unconstitutional would be a decent outcome as well. And maybe they even would with such a blatant contradiction. But if not, hopefully the incongruence would finally be explicit enough to dispel the wishful belief that the government is bound by a piece of paper.
• Zak 14y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "gun safety"? I don't think you're talking about accidental or negligent discharges resulting in injury or death. Firearm enthusiast groups, firearms manufacturers and dealers have put significant effort in to educating the public about safe handling which has reduced unintended shootings by a large amount over the past 50 years or so. This would be a strange problem for someone not involved in the firearms industry directly to tackle. If you were to include suicide, which accounts for the majority of fatal gunshots, I submit that there doesn't appear to be much if any correlation between suicide rates and access to firearms internationally. I'd certainly try to keep a suicidal friend away from firearms, but it's just not that hard to find a quick and reliably way to end one's life. Suicide prevention probably shouldn't focus on methods of suicide. If you're talking about reducing gun crime, I actually do have an idea. Right now, very few people who fail NICS background checks are prosecuted, yet many of them have committed a felony by lying on the background check form they're required to fill out when buying a gun from a dealer. If it's due to criminal history, the police should show up to deliver the news about the failure in person - and arrest the buyer. If it's for mental health reasons, the person should be involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation. Obviously, the false-positive rate needs to be low for this to work.
• strlen 14y ago
  This may be off-topic, but I thought I'd bring it up: in a nut shell, defensive "use once" less than lethal weapons for public areas. They would be strictly licensed and regulated by first responders, much like public defibrillators are. While I found NRA's idea of arming teachers to be (let's be honest here, and I say this a strong second amendment supporter) absolutely nuts -- several people have circulated the idea of providing less than lethal weapons to teachers and administrators. I think most teachers (or most people in general) are not keen in owning a firearm, do not have the time to go through the training to use a firearm effectively in a high-stress scenario. However (and this idea isn't original to me, I've seen it suggested elsewhere online) provide a modified than lethal weapon (e.g., a carbine length taser) in each classroom -- hidden behind glass door much like a fire extinguisher or a defibrillator would be. They would be given training in using this weapon to stop (or slow down) an opponent and there would be strict rules to ensure it cannot be used for any other purpose (e.g., it would have "drive-stun" capability removed and be limited to only a few rounds). Shattering the glass in any classroom would immediately set of alarms in all classrooms (giving other teachers time guide children to safety) and cause first responders to come (irrespective of time or day). While mass shootings do not represent most of gun violence, they are especially unnerving. Generally, however: 1) Mass shootings are usually murder-suicide. Suicide here is either a primary (with murder being secondary) goal or a way of escaping retribution. If, on the other hand, the perpetrator knows they are more likely to be simply disabled and then arrested and thrown in prison, this creates further deterrence: it now makes more sense not to go through with the plan, to surrender right away before committing any violence. Sentencing guidelines could reflect it: attempted school shooters who surrendered without firing a shot would receiving more lenient sentencing (but the case itself would be sealed, put on a gag order to prevent those seeking notoriety from making attempts), those are arrested by force would receive far stricter sentencing than those surrender voluntarily (idea being surrender voluntarily/commit no further crime crime < captured by force/commit no further crime < surrender voluntarily/commit further crimes < surrender by force/commit further crime). Essentially the goal would be to sent two messages: I) If you are suicidal, you're far more likely to fail, be captured, and have your life made much worse (on top of what ever is ailing you) if you try to "take others with you" II) It is very difficult to escape retribution in a mass shooting, so the best strategy would be to either not attempt a mass shooting or to peacefully surrender without firing a shot. 2) Contrary to popular belief, mass shootings are not always in explici "gun free" zones (Giffords shooting, Portland Mall shooting, possibly the Aurora shooting) -- and usually a single armed guard or a CCW license holder might be there but wasn't be able to do much. However, several shootings have been ended early by multiple unarmed individuals tackling a disoriented perpetrator. Obviously it is not expected for elementary school teachers to be able to tackle an assailant, yet this approach has the advantage that now there are multiple individuals (teachers in different classrooms) armed with less than lethal (which by no means means "non-lethal") tools that significant amplify their own physical ability and can disorient the assailant even without directly hitting the assailant (i.e., one volunteer using the weapon now makes the assailant more susceptible to additional uses of the weapon). 3) The less than lethal weapon should be designed with the purpose of making an otherwise untrained individual (with no firearms experience) not only able to incapacitate an assailant, but to also make them feel confident that they are able to. That is why I think a "carbine/shotgun-length taser" might be better approach here than a hand-held tool: it would be easier to aim, look like a more menacing weapon, and fit a wider variety of individuals. 4) (Added this later) Teachers, guards, other volunteers have a "homeground advantage here" vis. an intruder. This would be more effective than a passer-by CCW holder in a mall. 5) (Also added later) Less than lethal weapon have less chance of causing serious damage to bystanders or those using the weapons.
• dmix 14y ago
  Penn Jillette made an excellent observation when confronted with a question of how can we solve a problem together as a species? He said, the best question to ask is how can we solve this problem with more freedom rather than less? So my only point is that we should be looking for ways to use technology for freedom, such as spreading information about safety or getting help for mental health issues. And not trying to restrict the average normal healthy citizens with technology. Which has been proven again and again throughout history that technological restrictions are rendered ineffective against clever hackers or criminals.
  • roguecoder 14y ago
    In that case we should be considering technology that allows me to disable guns in my vicinity, since I want to be free from having high speed projectiles discharged around me.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  • cookingrobot 14y ago
    Philwelch has a clever suggestion for this above: end the war on drugs, which would remove the drug gang economy and related gun violence.
• codex 14y ago
  In this age of smartphones, it would be possible to mandate that all guns radio 911 with the current location whenever all the following events occur: - they are withdrawn from the holster - the safety is disabled - there is ammunition loaded - they are not at a shooting range or hunting area This could help reduce the carnage from mass shootings and draw police to legitimate threats sooner. It is compatible with gun owner's rights. Heck, it could even take a picture and record audio whenever a shot is fired to aid in the legal nightmare that is sure to follow any gun discharge. Another technological solution: RFID rings that must be on the shooting hand in order to discharge the gun. This keeps guns away from kids, prevents theft, and prevents guns from being used against their owners.
  • fooooobar 14y ago
    That sounds like a lot for effort for little to no benefit, considering how little time it takes to draw and load a weapon.
  • Jayschwa 14y ago
    Any proposal that requires a battery pack probably isn't very reasonable.
    • rdl 14y ago
      Putting the battery/comms/etc. on the holster and not the weapon would make sense. If I unholster my self defense handgun, I want a 911 call placed (ideally, with an open mic, and GPS, and open video) as soon as the gun leaves the holster, and continue for as long as possible. You'd have to be careful how to disable it when you took the gun out at the end of the day, or whatever, but the fundamental idea would be useful for self defense guns)
      • Jayschwa 14y ago
        A "smart" holster is an interesting idea. I wouldn't want such a thing mandated by law though.
    • codex 14y ago
• roguecoder 14y ago
  * Require gun insurance and make gun purchasers criminally responsible if the guns they buy are later used to commit a crime. * Provide incentives to encourage people to rent guns if they are going to shoot recreationally at a gun range. This could be accomplished through a flat tax on guns owned by individuals, combined with storage and tracking requirements for guns at ranges. * Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons. * Repeal the second amendment. Any gun ownership should be based on efficacy and maximize safety. Currently gun ownership can not be optimized because it does not have a defined aim.
  • Zak 14y ago
    Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons. How do you prevent people from disabling the GPS when the gun is stolen or "stolen"? It seems like it would be pretty difficult to make a GPS tracking unit that couldn't have its power source disconnected. If you managed that, it's fairly easy to destroy electronics. A few seconds in the microwave usually does the trick.
    • rundmc 14y ago
      The point is that if you introduce legislation that makes it manadatory for weapons to be location aware then this allows certain other features such as de-activation of "hunting" rifles etc. within urban environments and so forth.
      • Zak 14y ago
        Aside from the technical difficulty of designing such a system and making it difficult to bypass, that sounds like a solution in search of a problem. People firing rifles of any kind in urban environments, whether by accident, for self defense or to commit a crime is quite rare. Handguns are the weapon of choice for both criminal use and lawful self defense in cities. I suppose you could disable those too, but the effect on crime would be similar to banning them: criminals would still have working guns and non-criminals wouldn't.
• jellicle 14y ago
  This is a naive request. There is plenty of tech that could create new, innovative weapons. Personal tasers for everyone, charged with USB. Peppersprayers with chemical encoding to identify assailants uniquely. Weapons that can only be used by one person. The problem is these are NEW weapons and they do not in any way reduce the current supply of weapons. The current supply of weaponry is deadly, cheap, easily available, and apparently, no law can be created to reduce or inhibit the current supply. Under those circumstances, adoption of any new tech will be tiny and unimportant. Gun violence is a political problem, not a technological one. Once the groundwork is laid for political action to occur, then and only then can it move into the realm of a technological problem.
  • monochromatic 14y ago
    Gun violence is a political problem? Really??
• wedtm 14y ago
  Require mental health screenings for gun owners which are required to be renewed at some medically relevant and adequate frequency. If we require basic health checks to operate heavy machinery, or drive a car. Why don't we require them for owning a gun?
• johncarpinelli 14y ago
  An automatic gun defense device like a smoke detector that is cheap and ubiquitous. The device should cost $100-$200 and could be installed in schools, shopping malls, cinemas and street lamps. If the device detects a gun-shot, it locates the shooter through triangulation of the sound and image recognition. Non-lethal defenses would be deployed automatically to prevent continued shooting: e.g. stun grenade/flashbang, tear gas, electric shock. After detecting a gun-shot, the device would record audio/video and call 911 automatically. The shooter's escape could be tracked through a network of the devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_long-range_electric_shock_weapon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_lo...
  • jauer 14y ago
    Shot spotter (http://www.shotspotter.com/ http://www.shotspotter.com/) does the detection aspect of this. A low-cost clone might not be feasible due to patents: http://www.shotspotter.com/patents http://www.shotspotter.com/patents
    • johncarpinelli 14y ago
      A low-cost clone could be mounted on the ceiling in a room. Some stun grenades and tear gas would disable the shooter anywhere in the room. This would be a cheap solution. Include a wireless mesh network connecting the devices, and they could disable the shooter even as he flees the first room.
      • jauer 14y ago
        I think the detection and logging aspect has a lot of promise as a cheap and widely deployed system. I'd worry about the liability from false positives with a active response system. Even something as limited as locking the doors to a room to contain the shooter could lead to liability from someone being trapped with the shooter. If you assume a large indoor setting, something like a mall or school, maybe combine the detection network with a evacuation guidance system that leads people away from the incident. Mass shootings are pretty rare so maybe you could use it as a general "smart evacuation" system. OTOH there's probably a crowd psychology problem in there that makes that unfeasible.
• kunle 14y ago
  What if guns were treated like cars. Every single gun has a unique signature (like a VIN #), and you had to buy insurance on your gun in order to own it, transfer title anytime its sold, and be held liable for any violence damage caused by a gun you own. Insurance companies would have to vet you in order to give you a price, and any mishaps that occurred from guns you own, would make your insurance rates increase. As such you would take as much care who has access to your guns as you do with who has access to your car, and you'd only own guns you need. Gun owners who are responsible would see the cost of owning guns go up a bit, but more careless folks would feel the economic effects, which would prod them to behave more responsibly. This way, we can worry less about loopholes around what kinds of weapons people should own, or deal with bans or gun buybacks (which would secretly just be a boon for gun manufacturers). The people so adamant about owning weapons would now have a mechanism to compensate society for the damage they caused (if any). Good policy because it's a market driven mechanism for gun safety, and good politics because it's functionally the government setting the rules, and getting out of the way (which the right wants) and reducing the societal cost/damange of gun ownership by pricing in externalities (which the left once).
  • rdl 14y ago
    Guns already have to have serial numbers (equivalent to VIN, but less structured, and managed by manufacturer, and no central registry). The issue is that car accidents are accidents (often involving negligence), whereas gun crime is generally willful (sometimes involving crazy people, but generally just criminals). There's the issue that a lawful collector or random hunter or whatever with lots of guns is a lower risk than a gangster with one gun, and the risk per gun is vastly lower for a law abiding person with lots of guns vs. a bad guy with one or a few. In fact, I'd bet that gun crime goes down as the number of guns possessed goes up. Obviously 0 is the least, but 1 is the most, and it's probably close to exponential after that. The guy with 31 guns is way less likely to kill someone than the guy with 3. The only risk when someone has lots of guns is that they'll get distributed to others -- either through theft or through willful straw-man purchase or other distribution. A person who holds ~30 guns for a gang, then distributes them as needed for crime, is a problem, yes.
    • 14y ago
• alid 14y ago
  Microchip all guns? Or utilize nanotechnology to hook them up with a scannable barcode that can be scanned with a smartphone app? If it's not chipped, it's not legal. All police nationally should be equipped with necessary devices to scan guns on the spot. Why would this help? There are currently millions of guns that have been subject to very little character checking or cross-checking. A gun census, of sorts, is needed. So I would suggest a harmonized shooter's license scheme and weapon registration scheme. Similar to a buyback - all gun owners have within a defined period to re-license (read: microchip) every one of their guns, after which time any unlicensed weapons (under the new universal license scheme) are illegal and confiscated. Part of this new licensing includes universal registration - so police nationally have records of all gun ownership and licenses - providing a uniform standard of safety across the country. Bias: I'm Aussie, and in 1996 laws were introduced banning semi-automatic weapons in Australia (via a buyback scheme). In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings - but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. Firearm homicides and suicides reduced dramatically. Life is safer without guns.
  • alid 14y ago
    Edit: I'm thinking we could use nanotubes, with a strength-to-weight ratio 117 times greater than steel.
• JungleGymSam 14y ago
  "You can't solve an administrative problem with a technical solution." (Or something like that.) The premise of this post is very misguided and ignorant.
• jyf1987 14y ago
  1, freedom is not free 2, you might pay in cash or human life 3, if you like gun control, why not went to china?
• varunkho 14y ago
  I have this thought recently that firearms should be replaced with faintarms for general public. Guns for public should be designed to cause faint to the aponent if discharged rather than killing. This way individual claim to 'right to defend/protect' him/her is maintained while at the same time, his ability to kill somebody is also curtailed with the use of that gun. Just a thought.
  • rdl 14y ago
    Non-lethal weapons are something which have gotten a lot of research. Unfortunately, there's no technology yet which works like a Star Trek phaser on stun -- instant incapacitation without serious risk of death. So, "faintarms" don't exist. If you can develop them, they should go to every police officer, military unit, etc., as well as for self defense. Pepper spray (OC) is essentially irrelevant once you're in close. If someone wants to kill you, and you pepper spray him, not only will it also affect you, but he can continue the attack. (I've been pepper sprayed during classes a few times, and it really sucks, and continues to suck for a long time, but I was able to unholster and fire into a body-sized target at 3 meters with all shots on target). Tasers are ineffective if someone is wearing heavy clothing. They're also single-shot -- if someone runs at you, and you miss with the taser, you're kind of screwed. They're probably the closest, though. Contact stun guns are pretty horrible because they require you to be in close. Essentially, if I can win a fight with someone to the point where I can use a stun gun on him, I'd just skip the stun gun and stomp him. They're really useful in psych wards or other environments like that to control people who you could actually control otherwise, while doing less damage to them. Pretty irrelevant for self defense. Knives and sticks are potentially quite lethal, and are ineffective unless you're highly trained or substantially overmatch your opponent in strength/skill/size. Flashlights (the 100+ lumen combat type) are probably the best in that they have low downsides, and are fairly effective in defense, and can be used to identify threats. I'd never carry a pistol without a flashlight in my pocket, and all my home-defense guns have mounted lights. Sound is an interesting idea (infrasound, in the sub 10hz range). There's stuff like the LRAD. Unfortunately it is the size of a truck.
    • GFischer 14y ago
• adrr 14y ago
  Technology isn't there yet to do much. In the future the gun could be smart, sensors could figure out the situation and make "judgements". Examples: Accelerometers could determine if user was charging or attempting to flee, they could also detect if your shooting from a moving car. Image recognition could determine if your shooting a fleeing person or an actual threat. Gyros sensors along with proximity sensors could determine if you are attempting to shoot yourself. Enough sensors and cpu power, guns could make decisions much like a human being. These won't help much because the bad guys will just have non smart guns but thats another issue.
• radley 14y ago
  Mandatory electronics. Outlaw mechanical pins, only electric pins can be used. Similarly a battery is required. - Safety light: red armed / green safe. - 5 second delay w/ blinking red after switching between safe and armed.
  • rdl 14y ago
    I'm not sure what the benefit is here, and there's substantial cost. Most legal self defense shootings are probably over within 5 seconds from touching the holster to firing the weapon. Depending on clothing, a trained shooter is at 1-2 seconds (in crazy competition, it can be as low as 0.5 seconds). An attacker can close 21 feet in a second or two. Then either stab or grapple the weapon. If someone is >21 feet from you, he's probably not a threat in the first place.
    • radley 14y ago
      Cost - whatever. Safety delay time can also be worked out. Maybe there can be a Rambo setting for people who need it to work instantly. It could include a "black box" chip to keep track of when Rambo is turned on and when Rambo is turned off (to keep track if the user is diligent about safety or not).
• markessien 14y ago
  Have an electronic device in the gun locker on the clip that holds the gun. Whenever the gun is taken out of this locker, an email/push notification is sent to the owner and other responsible family members indicating that the gun is out of rack. It repeats every 10 minutes till the gun is returned.
• littlegiantcap 14y ago
  The best thing the tech industry can do for gun safety is to provide better education through the internet.
• frm1001xplrr 14y ago
  If all guns were fired before sale... (http://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/175ibg/if_all_guns_were_fired_before_sale_and_the_shell/ http://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/175ibg/if_all_guns_...)
• Fizzadar 14y ago
  Remove/ban them entirely from public use in-line with most of the civilised world. Regular people don't need guns.
• thomasd 14y ago
  I have only an idea for gun owners of a certain type. Some gun owners reason for owning a gun is for hunting. For owners like that, location detection can be implemented. Outside of hunting locations, the guns will be "locked" and will only be enabled once they're within the hunting location.
• ctoth 14y ago
  I often have discussions with pro-gun friends of mine about reasonable solutions that would allow them to retain their weapons, which they evidently greatly favor, and would still increase overall safety. It seems to me that the argument that a gun provides protection is a valid one. What other device gives us the ability to point and click and stop someone literally dead in their tracks? This is the problem, and as I see it one that is asking for a technical solution. Consider a device with the following attributes: - It is extremely quick to deploy. Just as quick as drawing and firing a gun. - It can be used multiple times in succession - It renders a potential threat (say a hostile person with a gun) inert or otherwise incapacitated - It is affordable, $99 or less. - It is difficult if not impossible to block (no Faraday cage armor) Now, how might this be done? Can we induce paralysis remotely without deactivating critical muscles like the heart? I know about TASERS (TM), and from what I understand the primary drawback with those is that they are only one-time use weapons, once deployed they aren't easily reusable (I.E. if you miss you're out of luck) and their range is not equivalent to a handgun. Can one of you smart hackers find a link to a scientific paper about some sort of field that makes rats fall over? As a blind person, I would love it if the device could simply be pointed in the general direction of a threat and cover a wider area, say a shotgun stun device. This has interesting second order implications which I haven't thought about -- what happens when you can easily go up to someone, shoot them, paralyze them for 30 minutes and steal their stuff? But all things considered, if someone is going to steal my stuff, I'd rather live through the experience. Thoughts? Am I completely off base? Or is this a reasonable way to approach the protection part of the problem?
• JensRantil 14y ago
  So, I have this great technical solution to make all guns safe. It's kind of a hacker solution, actually. Also, it will also prevent anyone that hasn't been fiddling with their gun to shoot other people. The solution is simple. Put an infrared camera on the front of the gun. If there's anything warm in front of the gun it simply wont fire. That will make it impossible to shoot other people and only limitting it to cans etc. Possibly you could also use a real camera and do some image analysis to keep the gun from shooting other sensitive objects, such as gas containers etc. Obviously, the firing of the gun will be locked if you take the camera(s) off. Okay, I admit it. I'm not being serious. A gun is a weapon. The fact that guns are weapons is the problem. There's no technical solution for that. The only technical solution that will make a gun safe is one that destroys that weapon.
• nspattak 14y ago
  Guns are absolutely safe. When was the last time one of them went of by accident? Your question has no grounds. I guess you are asking how to improve safety in the US and the answer is easy but not acceptable by Americans. hint the days of the far west are gone, no one should walk around with a gun in his pocket.
• marcuspovey 14y ago
  I'm sure it must have been remarked that "gun safety" is somewhat a contradiction in terms. Also, that gun crime is by and large an economic problem rather than a technical one; remove the incentive and the vast majority of it (should) go away. Also/Alternatively this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Fc9ONu8yU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Fc9ONu8yU
• strlen 14y ago
  Certain numbers of accidents happen during firearms training with military, police, and civilians. It is very common for flight simulators to be used as training tools for those about to pilot an airplane, so perhaps building very realistic non-violent shooting simulator (complete with felt recoil) would be a good approach: experiment with using them in several police academies or military training centers -- require recruits to gain a certain proficiency before live firearm training, then observe if there's perceptible change in accidents during live round training afterwards. To pre-empt an obvious question, blanks aren't very useful: they will not cycle a semi-automatic, don't provide realistic recoil, but they're still capable of causing very serious injury (or death) to someone on the other end.
  • cullenking 14y ago
    This already exists. You can even rent time in them as a civilian, and they are pretty interesting. Not only do you get to work on mechanics, but they put you in situations (there's a live operator determining outcome) where you have to think "should I fire or not", rather than just working on the movements.
• gadders 14y ago
  I think they'd be better off focussing on (in addition) better mental health care.
• tmsh 14y ago
  How about pulse sonar of some sort that is so detail-oriented it can detect gun shapes and alert authorities. So in a school, every half hour -- or even based on motion detection -- some sort of pulse goes out to detect gun shapes. Could technology for that be developed? Is that even possible? Just an idea.. If I were to guess, SONAR is currently very imprecise for something as small as a gun. But what if you had hundreds of SONAR pulses from different locations? Or what if you had many thousands of different analyses run on it?
  • Cyranix 14y ago
    I think airport body scanners and abuse of webcams by school personnel are memories too fresh in the public's mind for this idea to gain traction.