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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 o

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.
Jayschwa 14y ago
Guns need to be as simple as possible so that they are reliable in a self-defense situation. If it doesn't work because the batteries are low or because you're wearing a band-aid on the finger that gets scanned, that's no bueno.

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.

Jayschwa 14y ago

Guns need to be as simple as possible so that they are reliable in a self-defense situation. If it doesn't work because the batteries are low or because you're wearing a band-aid on the finger that gets scanned, that's no bueno.