Gun Safety - A Technology Solution that Everyone can be Happy With
Oh boy oh boy, I sure love hot potatoes. I'm here to discuss a possible gun safety solution that I believe is highly feasible and could potentially satisfy everyone. I hope this thread sparks thoughtful conversation and maybe even get people to think outside the box a little more.
Of course, feel free to disagree. But please don't get emotional or tout around some radical views unsubstantiated by sound logic. Even if you think it makes sense, please double check and make sure it's not backed only by your feelings or logical fallacies.
Here it goes...
It seems to me that gun safety technology isn't mainstream. Perhaps it's not yet scalable or marketable. But to me, it is a rational choice - it can satisfy everyone, doesn't damage the gun industry, and actually grows the entire gun safety tech industry, which is just nascent at this point in time. Either through the law or by the power of free market, gun safety tech should be the new norm in my opinion. Gun safety tech isn't rocket science, they can easily become commoditized. Gun safety tech will negligibly impact the price of guns. I believe we should foster/create an environment where gun manufacturers want to put gun safety tech in all their guns and the consumers want that as well.
With poorly-designed gun control laws, many people who work in the "gun" industry and many people whose livelihoods involve guns (As in it's part of their lifestyle to hunt and what not) will be effected. On the other hand, with the US having unusually high amount of gun violence, unchecked spread of guns is a serious issue. Now, there is an issue of illegally obtained guns that are attributed to gun violence but certainly there are many legally obtained guns that are attributed to gun violence as well. At least for legally obtained guns, I believe widespread use of gun safety tech will make everyone safe without encroaching on the 2nd Amendment.
I'm talking about the so-called "Smart Guns". There are several ways to make guns smart of course.
Biometrics
An example would be fingerprint scans like your smart phones. I'm sure you don't want some stranger using your gun. You got a friend or a kid to lend your gun, why not put their fingerprints in there as well. Fingerprint tech or other biometric tech aren't that expensive in my understanding. It probably won't spike up the price of gun by much that people won't be able to afford guns...
Radio-Frequency Identification
There are various sorts of mechanisms that you can install on your gun to disable or enable guns using remote sensors. If your gun detects a sensor nearby, then it could be enabled/disabled. Gun owners can use them, turning their guns only when they're in close proximity to their guns. Up til here, are ideas that people are already working on.
The below is really my own idea.
Various public places like schools, parks, theaters, school buses, etc.. and literally any building can install sensors. These sensors would disable any gun in proximity. Many buildings already have to follow safety regulations that requires them to have smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc... Despite being a free-market supporter, safety regulations are obviously required and Milton Friedman would surely agree (if you don't believe me, watch any of his videos that explains his views on regulations. Don't forget: free-market does not mean 0 regulation. It means limited regulations).
Not that big of a deal to require buildings, public transportation, etc... to install bunch of tiny little sensor that are dirt cheap.
Just found more links for Gun safety Tech companies.
BioFire - Smart Gun Start-Up
GunGuardian
Identilock
Biofire kids knows what he's doing - Good, ergonomic design, and a good story. Idk who the GunGuardian product person is, but shame on you. Indentilock - who the f*** will ever use that.
I think it’s a neat idea but I’m not sure it would work in practice. For one thing, the basis of many gun owners opposition to gun control measures isn’t related to the specifics of the proposed laws but a general distrust of the government and opposition to the idea of anyone infringing on their right to bear arms in any way.
I do think the technology, especially the fingerprint one, could see some success in the free market but there are already fingerprint trigger locks out there so the would be competition.
The last point you mentioned about some kind of transmitter that would disable firearms in an area around would be a great way of stopping mass shootings but the logistics of implementing it would be difficult.
Unfortunately I think the “gun issue” is unlikely to be resolved in a way that is satisfactory for anyone. There’s just too much misinformation and emotion involved in the discussion and the conflict is largely divided along class/cultural lines.
Neat ideas, but I see some faults. There’s is a home invasion and only my wife/daughter is home. Their prints aren’t programmed into my home defense nor hunting guns. They can’t call me to know the gun safe code, or to simply learn where I keep my gun. Fine if I live alone, but some restrictions.
I am picking up/dropping off my son at school. Some quack starts shooting the place up. As the good guy with a gun I can’t stop him. Same with restaurants/stores/theaters. There will always be illegal guns and bad guys with guns. I don’t think those will ever be off the streets, look at Chicago. I don’t see the point of limiting good guys who are trying to help.
A gun free zone sticker means easy targets. Same with tech.
Good points.
These are all edge cases that I believe the individual companies developing Gun Safety Tech to consider. To me that just takes a good product manager/designer who can change the paradigm of the whole industry.
I guess the real problem is then, can we create a business climate where the gun industry wants to invest on gun safety and figure out on resolving all the edge cases? Or if this is an area that is just more effective with a government regulation (given that it's a well-designed one and not a dumb one, which considering the lack of brainpower among politicians would be impossible as of now)?
As someone who has grown up around guns, but also thinks we can (and should) do more regarding gun safety, I think you make some good points, but I am also not sure how much they will do in practice.
Assuming large gun manufacturers decide to go forward with something like Biometric locks (which is a big if -- see Smith & Wesson almost going bankrupt for employing the technology), I am not sure how much it would do to curtail mass shootings. If you are anything like me and have spent a lot of time on the range or out hunting as a kid, those biometrics would need to work for, my dad, my brother, and I (we tend to share guns, especially at the range). So that would mean that all of us would have the same access to guns now, and the criminals couldn't use our guns for mass shootings. Now feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I think its general consensus that most guns used in mass shootings (>75%) are legally purchased firearms being used by the owner or someone close to them (ie, the people who would be able to use a gun even with a biometric). This means that the biometric locks, which we would all have access to, would do very little to curtail most would-be mass shooters. Examples: The Vegas mass shooting, Stoneman Douglas, Texas Church, Orlando Night Club etc... all would have gone on in very much the same fashion. This isn't to say that biometrics are a bad idea, but their impact on mass shootings would seem to be pretty negligible.
The next aspect of gun violence that they would hopefully curtail would be guns that are purchased illegally or stolen. (This is much more my own speculation, but I think it is still reasonable). The same way that people can steal and iPhone and do a factory reset, I'd imagine people could do the same thing with guns. Sure it is not a 1:1 compression, but if it's using similar tech, we already know there is a pretty easy way around it, and I'm not sure why we would expect for guns to be any different. At the end of the day, I'm all for creating a safer world as long as it doesn't infringe on my rights to enjoy an afternoon at the range or weekend hunting at our cabin, but I'm not sure that this technology (or any technology) is the silver bullet for stopping gun crime.
From my perspective, if we are serious about stopping gun crimes, people need to learn to treat guns with the respect that they deserve. I can't tell you how many times I was at the range with my dad, and he made me stop shooting and sit down for 30 minutes because my barrel was not directly down range or I finished and clip and didn't immediately put my safety on. Did this annoy me? Absolutely, but it also taught me impeccable barrel control and made me extremely cautious when using any firearm. I think that mandated training would go a long way to preventing gun deaths from people being idiotic with how they treat their guns.
From a criminal perspective or mass shooting perspective, we need to be more proactive with how we address mental illness in this country and the way we enter data into federal databases. For example, the ex-airforce guy who shot up the church in Texas passed background checks for all of his guns because the airforce didn't update his profile to include his assault (or domestic violence) charges into the database. The FBI failing to act regarding that kid who shot up the Stoneman Douglas is absolutely despicable (On a side note: from what I remember reading about the shooting, the kid acted like the gun was a toy and bragged about it. I am not saying that the could totally be prevented by mandatory gun training, but I honestly think if it was implemented anything like the way my dad taught me, it would be damn near impossible to think of a gun as a toy). Both of these tragedies and probably many more could be prevented not by some new technology, but by people doing their jobs. As I mentioned above, I also think we have a mental illness problem that needs to be addressed, and I am really not totally sure how best to do that. Feel free to drop a reply with your suggestions.
Hopefully, I didn't come off as too much of a gun nut (though I certainly enjoy them), and this is at least a semi-constructive bit of feedback.
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