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From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by

From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come across as cartoon villains, senselessly evil for no apparent purpose. Why can car companies be persuaded to invest in safety features but somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible? I feel like I must be missing some side of the story, because from the stuff I read, they're literally twirling their mustachios while cackling right now.

vor_ 12y ago
Guns are a political issue for American conservatives. Attempts to regulate guns are seen as an attack on their freedoms. The more extreme members maintain a fantasy of government overthrow (see the Cliven Bundy standoff).
TheDong 12y ago
the NRA is also in part defined by its members. These members are, for the most part, highly conservative and see technology like that as making guns worse. They don't worry about safety; after-all, the point of the gun is power and something that is dangerous feels more powerful. The other reason people oppose them is because it would reduce the gun-owner's ability to re-sell the gun to criminals with no difficulty or government intervention. It would remove some control from the gun owners. One man's safety feature is another man's oppressive inconvenience.
- symfoniq 12y ago
  Most gun owners I know are like Unix programmers, in that they favor the simplest solution that could possibly work. A safety feature that makes a gun significantly more complicated—and therefore possibly less likely to work when needed—is a non-starter for most gun owners. Furthermore, most gun owners have firearms at least in part because of the criminal element. I find the argument that a significant number of gun owners want to be able to resell their firearms to criminals to be patently absurd.
  - TheDong 12y ago
    The criminal bit was tongue in cheek. The "government control" bit right afterwards was the real point. I disagree with your comparison. If a gun owner wanted the simplest thing that would work, then their guns would not be so fancy / complicated. There would not be a market for non-restrictive but non-essential gun enhancements. Sorry my joke wasn't clear to you and that you missed the point that it's conservatives that fear government control over ownership/reselling who have issue here.
rjbwork 12y ago
Why couldn't me and my buddies go to the range and all shoot the new gun I just got? DRM for software is bad enough, lets not extend it to the physical world. I guess unlimited "Gun Admins" would be an okay compromise.
tobtoh 12y ago
As I understand it, the NRA oppose these safety features as it provides a stepping stone to the full control/ban of guns. ie once you have a mechanism to restrict guns to an individual, it's easier to extend that (technically/politically) to a wider restriction or total ban.
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
There are good reasons to oppose expensive ineffective gimmicks. Gun lobbyist sometimes look like 'cartoon villains' because people draw them that way.
GuiA 12y ago
This is going to be unpopular, but the NRA is really just a bunch of conservative rednecks who throw tantrums when they don't get things their way. It's the kind of people who post pictures of their $20k arsenal on Facebook, like to shoot at empty bottles in their backyards with semiautomatic weapons just because they think it's fun, and somehow they have it in their heads that blowing things up every Sunday afternoon is their God given right- any form of additional regulation gets in the way of their fun. It's hard to imagine when you're a well educated, well spoken rational person living in a large city: if you want to understand, go spend some time in the rural southern states, where you will meet many such people. I get that it's not good mental hygiene to say things bluntly and generically like I am in this post, but coming from a country where guns are treated with much more circumspection than they are in the US, having lived in the south and met many of the aforementioned types, I just have to call a spade a spade. I tried for a long time to develop a better understanding of it than "just dumb dudes who like seeing things blow up", but I have failed.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Sure its unpopular when you throw slurs at people you disagree with. Its mean, petty and drives the conversation to a shouting match.
- existencebox 12y ago
  I think there are far more reasonable (Occams razor) explanations than just "redneck crazies". I'd go so far as to say that most truly rural people I knew didn't give a single damn about the NRA one way or the other. Perhaps these are outliers; but I'm much more inclined to see a financial explanation: If gun safety studies come out, guns look BAD. Regulation goes up and sales go down. If special safety mechanisms are allowed, and show positive impact, they may be more forcefully imposed, raise costs and decrease margins. It may just be a sign of how jaded the last few years of news have made me, but I'm far more likely to expect malfeasance from those who hold the reins and have significant amounts of money on the line than those who just want to 'blow stuff up.'
- refurb 12y ago
  This kind of comment adds nothing to the discussion. Whether or not it comes from the left or the right.
acomjean 12y ago
There was a documentary on them just a few days ago. I didn't watch it, but heard the producers talking on the radio. In the 60s NRA was basically a sports/ gun safety organization. At some point they pivoted to be a gun rights organization. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/gunned-down/the-evolution-of-wayne-lapierre/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections... Politicians fear them, because they have money and get out the vote power. There is some thought that the NRA cost Al Gore his presidential run. Its complex, because a lot of the US (The more rural parts mostly) have a much stronger gun culture. There is some distrust of government and any regulations. Within 50 years quality 3-d printed guns will make a lot of regulations moot anyway.
- GabrielF00 12y ago
  Didn't see the Frontline episode, but the NRA's history is quite interesting. The organization was quasi-governmental in that it administered the government's civilian marksmanship program (this was a war preparation thing) and it ran shooting tournaments and did other educational programs. It's interesting to read about the gun control debates of the 60s (leading to the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968) because people at the time thought that the debates were very heated but, compared to today, the NRA's position was pretty moderate. The organization was supportive of certain elements of the '68 act, including banning mail-order guns (one of which killed JFK) and Saturday Evening Specials. After '68 there was a huge split in the organization between hardline types who wanted to focus on politics and lobbying and traditionalists who wanted to focus on shooting sports. At one point the NRA was even going to move from the DC area to Colorado and essentially give up politics altogether. In 1977, the political types took over the organization and purged the organization of sportsmen types. Interestingly, the new head of the NRA was a former chief of the US Border Patrol who had shot and killed someone when he was a teenager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter The organization grew exponentially in membership, budget and political influence. Interestingly, they went through a few cycles of purging people who were even more hardline than their leadership.
- Torgo 12y ago
  It makes sense, they became political when guns came under political threat. As a side note, it's funny to see that parts of the media still mechanically repeat LaPierre calling the ATF "jack booted government thugs" in 1995 like it was a bad thing, after the full-on liberal awakening over police militarization via the Boston Marathon Bombing and Ferguson, MO. The NRA was 20 years ahead of the curve on that.
jerf 12y ago
Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each. It is also not generally the case that guns are always "bad"; guns are also significantly used in self-defense, usually without even being fired. Those who present "oh, just remove the guns" as a cost-free move are being disingenuous; again, people can reasonably disagree about the relative nature of the costs and benefits but those who present this as a zero-cost transaction are trying to pull one over on people. It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down, and crime has significantly dropped in the past couple of decades. This is not exactly a set of circumstances that leads a rational person to leap to the conclusion that the presence and ownership of guns is an obvious root cause... and, yes, again, there may be confounding variables at play, but it still provides a bound on what you could even hope for if guns were entirely removed. When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
- apetresc 12y ago
  > Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each. Sure. Advanced safety features in cars probably cost a lot to develop, too, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who think seatbelts are lame and cars would be cooler without them. But car companies actively work to promote safety while the NRA seems to actively undermine it. > It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down That's actually the direct opposite of what the article says. The very first paragraph states: "Deaths by guns, though—the great majority suicides, accidents or domestic violence—have been trending slightly upwards." > When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda. I agree. That was the premise of my question. Unfortunately, I haven't seen too much clarification yet :(
mseebach 12y ago
Accepting the premise that it's a good thing that the population at large can own guns, their argument is that they're thinking a few steps ahead: If smartguns become popular, the government can then outlaw non-smartguns without too many people caring (they can still own and fire guns). Then the smart-stuff is leveraged to "enhance" security - transferring ownership, for an example, could be made subject to a government permit, which can then be used, explicitly or implicitly - imagine a "no fly list" for guns, with the same opacity - to prevent large groups of people to own guns (well, specifically, to fire them). Further not-very-fantastical "enhancements" could include remote-disabling of guns, initially for law enforcement use, but quickly extended to much broader use. All this, of course, while the criminals (who are already obtaining guns illegally) keep using "dumb" guns and aren't affected by this. These are the simple, practical reasons - there's also the ideological reason founded on the historical reason for the 2nd amendment: A government can't turn on it's own people if said people is armed. If the government can effectively control the guns of the people, that stops being a factor.
- arenaninja 12y ago
  Honestly, these arguments make sense, and I don't own a gun. I wish the public at large could understand these are largely parallel to the arguments FSF makes (at least to me, they are)
  - grayclhn 12y ago
    I won't hold my breath waiting for the followup news report, "GNU software is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S." edit: to make this comment more than just a dumb throw-away joke, I'll add that sometimes the consequences of an argument are as important as its assumptions/logical soundness.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      If smartguns run Linux, maybe we could make that article!
- apetresc 12y ago
philwelch 12y ago
These "safety" features make guns less deadly, in the sense that they make guns less reliable in the first place. If you're using one to defend yourself, your family, or your home, that might actually make the gun less safe in the sense that it won't work when you need it. This defeats the entire purpose of having a gun. Guns also have safety features that protect against accidental discharge, namely the trigger safety. Some guns have an additional trigger safety that triggers if the gun is pressed against something (or someone). Since these features don't reduce the reliability of a gun when it is intended to be used, the NRA doesn't have any problem with them, and at least the trigger safety is standard on all guns. The NRA also does a lot of work to teach firearms safety to children (which basically boils down to "don't touch it and tell an adult if you find an unexpected gun somewhere"). For those who do shoot, the NRA is also good with basic safety principles.
tomp 12y ago
The main reason, IMO, is because "smart guns" are actually very stupid. Unlocked by owner's thumbprint? Tough luck, police officer wearing gloves. Unlucky, dear soldier with muddy hands. Unlocked by radio-frequency? Rob a bank after installing a radio-frequency jammer.
sliverstorm 12y ago
Not a one of the NRA's members/funders wants smartguns. Just another thing to go wrong with it, in their eyes. Traditionally a good gun was about as complicated as a shovel or pickaxe.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 12y ago
As for the safety features, I think the opposition is because some of the states have mandated that if a safety feature become available then all guns in the state are required to have it. Given that the technology would no be 100% reliable there is obvious opposition. If the laws were not there then I think the NRA membership would be more open.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
> somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible? In an ideal world, cars are designed to be as safe as possible, as they are transports and getting people home safely is their most important aspect. In an ideal world, guns are designed to be a dangerous and murderous as possible, as they are killing devices and efficiently turning people into corpses is their most important aspect. The NRA does exactly what it should: advocate for murder device efficiency and access. Of course, whether easy access to highly efficient murder devices should be allowed is a public policy question, but in the US, the answer is yes, and the NRA's strategies are a rational move based on that policy. The problem here is that advocating for easy access and efficiency of murder machines kinda looks bad.
underbluewaters 12y ago
Easy. Each weapon is a tool that will likely never be used, but if it is must be 100% reliable and quickly deployable while under extreme stress. "Smart" guns introduce a new feature that would impact both speed and reliability. No implementation of a TouchID-like system for guns would be perfect and so the gun owner must weigh the potential benefits and risks. I don't think the NRA's members want to take that choice away from the gun owner, but even having a commercial solution come to market means some states will require it's use. IIRC one state has laws on the books to mandate the use of the technology once it's commercially available.
refurb 12y ago
What the NRA is really against is the legislating of these safety devices. They certainly don't care if a manufacturer wants to sell a gun like this. The other argument is that technologies like this (microstamping is another) aren't effective, thus why force them on people? Also keep in mind that a lot of NRA folks are rural. They have almost no local gun crime and have (what they feel) are legitimate reasons for owning a gun (self-defense, hunting, etc). Their opinion is why should they give up their guns because the city folks have a problem?
- danielweber 12y ago
  Actually, the NRA really is against any manufacturer creating them, because a few states have passed laws saying (in a lot more words) "once smart guns are on the market, you can only buy smart guns." They view the creation of this technology the way some people on HN feel about porn-filtering technology: if it exists, a corrupt government will use it. (I don't count myself in either of those camps but I listen to them enough to be able to explain their arguments.)
tstrimple 12y ago
In this case, they would be opposed to "smart" guns due to laws like New Jersey has. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178305/a-new-jersey-law-thats-kept-smart-guns-off-shelves-nationwide http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178... Essentially, once a smart gun becomes available for sale in the US, all guns sold in New Jersey must be "smart" within 30 months. I wouldn't be surprised if other jurisdictions had similar laws in place. This dramatically increases the cost of legal firearms while doing very little to impact firearm murder or suicide rates.
MrMember 12y ago
The NRA is not opposed to the development of smart guns. They are opposed to legislation that bans the sale of non-smart guns once smart guns are available on the market. Such a law already exists in New Jersey and was proposed at the federal level by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
danielweber 12y ago
You know the way HN makes fun of legislators who pass laws about computers without knowing anything about how computers work?
Torgo 12y ago
There was a law in New Jersey that basically said as soon as smart gun technology was for retail sale in any part of the country, a general ban on non-smart guns would go into effect: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178305/a-new-jersey-law-thats-kept-smart-guns-off-shelves-nationwide http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178... Effectively, allowing smart gun technology would cause a bunch of other guns to get banned, so based on their values system it was logical for the NRA to oppose the tech. There have also been complaints that the tech is not reliable. I looked into this myself and frankly, I would not trust my life with it. Also, in most cases it's using passive RFID technology which is a joke for "security" (there is one company that's using a challenge response system though.) I can think of half a dozen ways to disable or clone most of these systems, but they are sold like they are a panacea.
asocial 12y ago
The NRA is against anything which gets in the way of a patriot and their duty. RFID and similiar 'safety' features can be used by the government to identify gun owners, confiscate weapons and suppress the public's right to revolt against their tyranny. Americans have a sacred right enshrined into the Constutition to be able to bear arms in order to respond to the presence of government with deadly force. It's no different the the argument people here sometimes make that black markets and TOR are necessary for freedom of speech and civil liberties, even if having them means enabling criminal activity - because the greater threat is always the threat of a government which can't be spoken up against. In the case of guns, the greater threat is always a government which can't be put down.
ta75757 12y ago
Thing many people are missing, I think, is that the position of the NRA is not necessarily based on the merits of that particular issue. It is based on the STRATEGIC view of the political battle to restrict and eliminate firearm ownership. The gun control side claims they "don't want to take away your guns" or they "don't want to take away all guns" but when you look at DC and Chicago, where they have the most power, they completely banned private ownership of handguns. This demonstrates their goal, and this is what the NRA is fighting against. It is much harder to repeal a gun control law than to pass it (if you look at things on the scale of decades and/or centuries), partly because this is a demographic issue and the pro-gun demographic is smaller and shrinking. So the NRA has absolutely no incentive to concede ground in the battle for private gun ownership. I've never heard a gun control proponent suggest "OK if you give us background checks, registration and capacity limits, we will loosen gun laws in states where they are more strict and promise never ever to go further." That would be compromise. I've never heard it, neither has the NRA. That is why they are absolutists, because ultimately so is the other side. (Their leadership anyway, which is what counts, not the moderate "let's split the difference" voter who only cares about the issue when its a major news item.)
glenra 12y ago
The notion of "smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption" is a recipe for making guns - an inherently quite simple tool - into something vastly more complicated, expensive, and failure-prone. The NRA doesn't actually oppose the development of "safety features on firearms", but they do oppose the legal requirement that guns should all include features that don't yet exist and haven't been proven to work. Imagine that people were regularly being killed by hammers. Or better yet, baseball bats. Now somebody comes along and claims that if we spent an extra $500 per baseball bat to bolt some complicated new mechanism onto the side of the bat, that would prevent some deaths. Said mechanism hasn't been invented yet, hasn't been proven to work, hasn't been proven to prevent any deaths, and is guaranteed to inconvenience every normal law-abiding user of baseball bats - from now on people would have to spend extra money for a feature they don't want or need. Congress proposes legally mandating this mechanism. Shouldn't the bat-making equivalent of the NRA oppose it? Do you have an iPhone that unlocks via thumbprint? Have you noticed that the (otherwise quite impressive) sensor doesn't work when your hands are wet, or sticky, or greasy, or you're wearing gloves? If you thought you might need a gun for self defense, would you rather have one where pulling the trigger simply fires the gun, or one where you have to have clean bare hands to work and occasionally it stops working reliably and you need to spend a few minutes figuring out how to retrain it? As for that "public-health research that might show...", our public health organizations have already supported a large number of truly terrible politically-motivated studies on the subject. Do we really need to fund more people like Kellerman to give us more nonsense stats supporting positions they already had going in?

vor_ 12y ago

Guns are a political issue for American conservatives. Attempts to regulate guns are seen as an attack on their freedoms. The more extreme members maintain a fantasy of government overthrow (see the Cliven Bundy standoff).

TheDong 12y ago

the NRA is also in part defined by its members. These members are, for the most part, highly conservative and see technology like that as making guns worse. They don't worry about safety; after-all, the point of the gun is power and something that is dangerous feels more powerful. The other reason people oppose them is because it would reduce the gun-owner's ability to re-sell the gun to criminals with no difficulty or government intervention. It would remove some control from the gun owners. One man's safety feature is another man's oppressive inconvenience.

symfoniq 12y ago
Most gun owners I know are like Unix programmers, in that they favor the simplest solution that could possibly work. A safety feature that makes a gun significantly more complicated—and therefore possibly less likely to work when needed—is a non-starter for most gun owners. Furthermore, most gun owners have firearms at least in part because of the criminal element. I find the argument that a significant number of gun owners want to be able to resell their firearms to criminals to be patently absurd.
- TheDong 12y ago
  The criminal bit was tongue in cheek. The "government control" bit right afterwards was the real point. I disagree with your comparison. If a gun owner wanted the simplest thing that would work, then their guns would not be so fancy / complicated. There would not be a market for non-restrictive but non-essential gun enhancements. Sorry my joke wasn't clear to you and that you missed the point that it's conservatives that fear government control over ownership/reselling who have issue here.

rjbwork 12y ago

Why couldn't me and my buddies go to the range and all shoot the new gun I just got? DRM for software is bad enough, lets not extend it to the physical world. I guess unlimited "Gun Admins" would be an okay compromise.

tobtoh 12y ago

As I understand it, the NRA oppose these safety features as it provides a stepping stone to the full control/ban of guns. ie once you have a mechanism to restrict guns to an individual, it's easier to extend that (technically/politically) to a wider restriction or total ban.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

There are good reasons to oppose expensive ineffective gimmicks. Gun lobbyist sometimes look like 'cartoon villains' because people draw them that way.

GuiA 12y ago

This is going to be unpopular, but the NRA is really just a bunch of conservative rednecks who throw tantrums when they don't get things their way. It's the kind of people who post pictures of their $20k arsenal on Facebook, like to shoot at empty bottles in their backyards with semiautomatic weapons just because they think it's fun, and somehow they have it in their heads that blowing things up every Sunday afternoon is their God given right- any form of additional regulation gets in the way of their fun. It's hard to imagine when you're a well educated, well spoken rational person living in a large city: if you want to understand, go spend some time in the rural southern states, where you will meet many such people. I get that it's not good mental hygiene to say things bluntly and generically like I am in this post, but coming from a country where guns are treated with much more circumspection than they are in the US, having lived in the south and met many of the aforementioned types, I just have to call a spade a spade. I tried for a long time to develop a better understanding of it than "just dumb dudes who like seeing things blow up", but I have failed.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Sure its unpopular when you throw slurs at people you disagree with. Its mean, petty and drives the conversation to a shouting match.
existencebox 12y ago
I think there are far more reasonable (Occams razor) explanations than just "redneck crazies". I'd go so far as to say that most truly rural people I knew didn't give a single damn about the NRA one way or the other. Perhaps these are outliers; but I'm much more inclined to see a financial explanation: If gun safety studies come out, guns look BAD. Regulation goes up and sales go down. If special safety mechanisms are allowed, and show positive impact, they may be more forcefully imposed, raise costs and decrease margins. It may just be a sign of how jaded the last few years of news have made me, but I'm far more likely to expect malfeasance from those who hold the reins and have significant amounts of money on the line than those who just want to 'blow stuff up.'
refurb 12y ago
This kind of comment adds nothing to the discussion. Whether or not it comes from the left or the right.

acomjean 12y ago

There was a documentary on them just a few days ago. I didn't watch it, but heard the producers talking on the radio. In the 60s NRA was basically a sports/ gun safety organization. At some point they pivoted to be a gun rights organization. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/gunned-down/the-evolution-of-wayne-lapierre/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections... Politicians fear them, because they have money and get out the vote power. There is some thought that the NRA cost Al Gore his presidential run. Its complex, because a lot of the US (The more rural parts mostly) have a much stronger gun culture. There is some distrust of government and any regulations. Within 50 years quality 3-d printed guns will make a lot of regulations moot anyway.

GabrielF00 12y ago
Didn't see the Frontline episode, but the NRA's history is quite interesting. The organization was quasi-governmental in that it administered the government's civilian marksmanship program (this was a war preparation thing) and it ran shooting tournaments and did other educational programs. It's interesting to read about the gun control debates of the 60s (leading to the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968) because people at the time thought that the debates were very heated but, compared to today, the NRA's position was pretty moderate. The organization was supportive of certain elements of the '68 act, including banning mail-order guns (one of which killed JFK) and Saturday Evening Specials. After '68 there was a huge split in the organization between hardline types who wanted to focus on politics and lobbying and traditionalists who wanted to focus on shooting sports. At one point the NRA was even going to move from the DC area to Colorado and essentially give up politics altogether. In 1977, the political types took over the organization and purged the organization of sportsmen types. Interestingly, the new head of the NRA was a former chief of the US Border Patrol who had shot and killed someone when he was a teenager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter The organization grew exponentially in membership, budget and political influence. Interestingly, they went through a few cycles of purging people who were even more hardline than their leadership.
Torgo 12y ago
It makes sense, they became political when guns came under political threat. As a side note, it's funny to see that parts of the media still mechanically repeat LaPierre calling the ATF "jack booted government thugs" in 1995 like it was a bad thing, after the full-on liberal awakening over police militarization via the Boston Marathon Bombing and Ferguson, MO. The NRA was 20 years ahead of the curve on that.

jerf 12y ago

Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each. It is also not generally the case that guns are always "bad"; guns are also significantly used in self-defense, usually without even being fired. Those who present "oh, just remove the guns" as a cost-free move are being disingenuous; again, people can reasonably disagree about the relative nature of the costs and benefits but those who present this as a zero-cost transaction are trying to pull one over on people. It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down, and crime has significantly dropped in the past couple of decades. This is not exactly a set of circumstances that leads a rational person to leap to the conclusion that the presence and ownership of guns is an obvious root cause... and, yes, again, there may be confounding variables at play, but it still provides a bound on what you could even hope for if guns were entirely removed. When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.

apetresc 12y ago
> Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each. Sure. Advanced safety features in cars probably cost a lot to develop, too, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who think seatbelts are lame and cars would be cooler without them. But car companies actively work to promote safety while the NRA seems to actively undermine it. > It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down That's actually the direct opposite of what the article says. The very first paragraph states: "Deaths by guns, though—the great majority suicides, accidents or domestic violence—have been trending slightly upwards." > When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda. I agree. That was the premise of my question. Unfortunately, I haven't seen too much clarification yet :(

mseebach 12y ago

Accepting the premise that it's a good thing that the population at large can own guns, their argument is that they're thinking a few steps ahead: If smartguns become popular, the government can then outlaw non-smartguns without too many people caring (they can still own and fire guns). Then the smart-stuff is leveraged to "enhance" security - transferring ownership, for an example, could be made subject to a government permit, which can then be used, explicitly or implicitly - imagine a "no fly list" for guns, with the same opacity - to prevent large groups of people to own guns (well, specifically, to fire them). Further not-very-fantastical "enhancements" could include remote-disabling of guns, initially for law enforcement use, but quickly extended to much broader use. All this, of course, while the criminals (who are already obtaining guns illegally) keep using "dumb" guns and aren't affected by this. These are the simple, practical reasons - there's also the ideological reason founded on the historical reason for the 2nd amendment: A government can't turn on it's own people if said people is armed. If the government can effectively control the guns of the people, that stops being a factor.

arenaninja 12y ago
Honestly, these arguments make sense, and I don't own a gun. I wish the public at large could understand these are largely parallel to the arguments FSF makes (at least to me, they are)
- grayclhn 12y ago
  I won't hold my breath waiting for the followup news report, "GNU software is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S." edit: to make this comment more than just a dumb throw-away joke, I'll add that sometimes the consequences of an argument are as important as its assumptions/logical soundness.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    If smartguns run Linux, maybe we could make that article!
apetresc 12y ago

philwelch 12y ago

These "safety" features make guns less deadly, in the sense that they make guns less reliable in the first place. If you're using one to defend yourself, your family, or your home, that might actually make the gun less safe in the sense that it won't work when you need it. This defeats the entire purpose of having a gun. Guns also have safety features that protect against accidental discharge, namely the trigger safety. Some guns have an additional trigger safety that triggers if the gun is pressed against something (or someone). Since these features don't reduce the reliability of a gun when it is intended to be used, the NRA doesn't have any problem with them, and at least the trigger safety is standard on all guns. The NRA also does a lot of work to teach firearms safety to children (which basically boils down to "don't touch it and tell an adult if you find an unexpected gun somewhere"). For those who do shoot, the NRA is also good with basic safety principles.

tomp 12y ago

The main reason, IMO, is because "smart guns" are actually very stupid. Unlocked by owner's thumbprint? Tough luck, police officer wearing gloves. Unlucky, dear soldier with muddy hands. Unlocked by radio-frequency? Rob a bank after installing a radio-frequency jammer.

sliverstorm 12y ago

Not a one of the NRA's members/funders wants smartguns. Just another thing to go wrong with it, in their eyes. Traditionally a good gun was about as complicated as a shovel or pickaxe.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 12y ago

As for the safety features, I think the opposition is because some of the states have mandated that if a safety feature become available then all guns in the state are required to have it. Given that the technology would no be 100% reliable there is obvious opposition. If the laws were not there then I think the NRA membership would be more open.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

> somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible? In an ideal world, cars are designed to be as safe as possible, as they are transports and getting people home safely is their most important aspect. In an ideal world, guns are designed to be a dangerous and murderous as possible, as they are killing devices and efficiently turning people into corpses is their most important aspect. The NRA does exactly what it should: advocate for murder device efficiency and access. Of course, whether easy access to highly efficient murder devices should be allowed is a public policy question, but in the US, the answer is yes, and the NRA's strategies are a rational move based on that policy. The problem here is that advocating for easy access and efficiency of murder machines kinda looks bad.

underbluewaters 12y ago

Easy. Each weapon is a tool that will likely never be used, but if it is must be 100% reliable and quickly deployable while under extreme stress. "Smart" guns introduce a new feature that would impact both speed and reliability. No implementation of a TouchID-like system for guns would be perfect and so the gun owner must weigh the potential benefits and risks. I don't think the NRA's members want to take that choice away from the gun owner, but even having a commercial solution come to market means some states will require it's use. IIRC one state has laws on the books to mandate the use of the technology once it's commercially available.

refurb 12y ago

What the NRA is really against is the legislating of these safety devices. They certainly don't care if a manufacturer wants to sell a gun like this. The other argument is that technologies like this (microstamping is another) aren't effective, thus why force them on people? Also keep in mind that a lot of NRA folks are rural. They have almost no local gun crime and have (what they feel) are legitimate reasons for owning a gun (self-defense, hunting, etc). Their opinion is why should they give up their guns because the city folks have a problem?

danielweber 12y ago
Actually, the NRA really is against any manufacturer creating them, because a few states have passed laws saying (in a lot more words) "once smart guns are on the market, you can only buy smart guns." They view the creation of this technology the way some people on HN feel about porn-filtering technology: if it exists, a corrupt government will use it. (I don't count myself in either of those camps but I listen to them enough to be able to explain their arguments.)

tstrimple 12y ago

In this case, they would be opposed to "smart" guns due to laws like New Jersey has. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178305/a-new-jersey-law-thats-kept-smart-guns-off-shelves-nationwide http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178... Essentially, once a smart gun becomes available for sale in the US, all guns sold in New Jersey must be "smart" within 30 months. I wouldn't be surprised if other jurisdictions had similar laws in place. This dramatically increases the cost of legal firearms while doing very little to impact firearm murder or suicide rates.

MrMember 12y ago

The NRA is not opposed to the development of smart guns. They are opposed to legislation that bans the sale of non-smart guns once smart guns are available on the market. Such a law already exists in New Jersey and was proposed at the federal level by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

danielweber 12y ago

You know the way HN makes fun of legislators who pass laws about computers without knowing anything about how computers work?

Torgo 12y ago

There was a law in New Jersey that basically said as soon as smart gun technology was for retail sale in any part of the country, a general ban on non-smart guns would go into effect: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178305/a-new-jersey-law-thats-kept-smart-guns-off-shelves-nationwide http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178... Effectively, allowing smart gun technology would cause a bunch of other guns to get banned, so based on their values system it was logical for the NRA to oppose the tech. There have also been complaints that the tech is not reliable. I looked into this myself and frankly, I would not trust my life with it. Also, in most cases it's using passive RFID technology which is a joke for "security" (there is one company that's using a challenge response system though.) I can think of half a dozen ways to disable or clone most of these systems, but they are sold like they are a panacea.

asocial 12y ago

The NRA is against anything which gets in the way of a patriot and their duty. RFID and similiar 'safety' features can be used by the government to identify gun owners, confiscate weapons and suppress the public's right to revolt against their tyranny. Americans have a sacred right enshrined into the Constutition to be able to bear arms in order to respond to the presence of government with deadly force. It's no different the the argument people here sometimes make that black markets and TOR are necessary for freedom of speech and civil liberties, even if having them means enabling criminal activity - because the greater threat is always the threat of a government which can't be spoken up against. In the case of guns, the greater threat is always a government which can't be put down.

ta75757 12y ago

Thing many people are missing, I think, is that the position of the NRA is not necessarily based on the merits of that particular issue. It is based on the STRATEGIC view of the political battle to restrict and eliminate firearm ownership. The gun control side claims they "don't want to take away your guns" or they "don't want to take away all guns" but when you look at DC and Chicago, where they have the most power, they completely banned private ownership of handguns. This demonstrates their goal, and this is what the NRA is fighting against. It is much harder to repeal a gun control law than to pass it (if you look at things on the scale of decades and/or centuries), partly because this is a demographic issue and the pro-gun demographic is smaller and shrinking. So the NRA has absolutely no incentive to concede ground in the battle for private gun ownership. I've never heard a gun control proponent suggest "OK if you give us background checks, registration and capacity limits, we will loosen gun laws in states where they are more strict and promise never ever to go further." That would be compromise. I've never heard it, neither has the NRA. That is why they are absolutists, because ultimately so is the other side. (Their leadership anyway, which is what counts, not the moderate "let's split the difference" voter who only cares about the issue when its a major news item.)

glenra 12y ago

The notion of "smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption" is a recipe for making guns - an inherently quite simple tool - into something vastly more complicated, expensive, and failure-prone. The NRA doesn't actually oppose the development of "safety features on firearms", but they do oppose the legal requirement that guns should all include features that don't yet exist and haven't been proven to work. Imagine that people were regularly being killed by hammers. Or better yet, baseball bats. Now somebody comes along and claims that if we spent an extra $500 per baseball bat to bolt some complicated new mechanism onto the side of the bat, that would prevent some deaths. Said mechanism hasn't been invented yet, hasn't been proven to work, hasn't been proven to prevent any deaths, and is guaranteed to inconvenience every normal law-abiding user of baseball bats - from now on people would have to spend extra money for a feature they don't want or need. Congress proposes legally mandating this mechanism. Shouldn't the bat-making equivalent of the NRA oppose it? Do you have an iPhone that unlocks via thumbprint? Have you noticed that the (otherwise quite impressive) sensor doesn't work when your hands are wet, or sticky, or greasy, or you're wearing gloves? If you thought you might need a gun for self defense, would you rather have one where pulling the trigger simply fires the gun, or one where you have to have clean bare hands to work and occasionally it stops working reliably and you need to spend a few minutes figuring out how to retrain it? As for that "public-health research that might show...", our public health organizations have already supported a large number of truly terrible politically-motivated studies on the subject. Do we really need to fund more people like Kellerman to give us more nonsense stats supporting positions they already had going in?