Posted on 05/03/2016 8:22:58 AM PDT by Rio
by Karl Stephan, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Last Friday, President Obama announced a series of actions aimed at making smart guns a reality, rather than a lab curiosity that has never gotten beyond the demonstration stage. A smart gun is one that in principle can be used only by its authorized owner.
If we had a magic smart-gun-making wand that we could wave and thereby grant the beneficences of intelligence and the moral judgment of St. Thomas Aquinas to every gun in the U. S., well, I suppose we would no longer have to worry about any gun being wrongly used ever again. But that would require that guns have more smarts and judgment than the owners, and nobody's expecting the technology to go that far.
Even if the technology worked perfectly, it's easy to see that smart guns would eliminate only a fraction of the accidental and intentional shootings that gun regulations are intended to reduce, because no gun can tell whether its owner is using it for good or bad purposes. And you can rest assured that if the only kinds of guns available were smart guns, that's the kind that criminals would use.
Admittedly, accidental shootings such as the ones involving small children are the most tragic and unnecessary ones. And almost any kind of smart-gun technology would go far to prevent gun accidents involving children who gain access to guns.
But this kind of accident is a small proportion of the annual gun-fatality roll in the United States, making up less than 5% of the 12,000 or so gun-related deaths in 2014.
The President has stopped short of measures that would put the purchasing power of the federal government in play. Without any enabling legislation, for example, he could have mandated that all future gun purchases by the U. S. government would be smart guns only.
He probably realized that such a mandate would seriously handicap the FBI and other federal domestic law-enforcement personnel, because right now, there is no generally available smart-gun technology, because basically, nobody wants to buy one.
Anytime U. S. gun laws are discussed, the National Rifle Association has to be considered. The NRA's official position is that they do not oppose smart-gun technology per se, but do not want it mandated by legal fiat. Instead, the NRA prefers to let market forces lead the technological development.
This is a little bit like saying, "Let the market decide how many Ferraris we should make with speed-control governors keeping them from exceeding a speed of 60 miles an hour (100 km/hr)." The whole point of buying a Ferrari is to be able to go fast, and the NRA knows very well that if the matter is left to the market, the market will go on rejecting the idea of smart guns, as it has for the last twenty-five years or more.
There are two main reasons that smart guns and smart-gun laws have not proved popular: one pertaining to the technology itself, and the other having to do with the legislators who would have to make the smart-gun laws.
The technological reason is that none of the dozen or more different approaches to making smart guns seems to work very well. Some of them use biometric sensors—these are not yet advanced enough to be used for routine computer-ID purposes. And a law-enforcement officer wants a gun that's at least as reliable as getting money out of an ATM.
Others depend on the user wearing some kind of wireless ID bracelet or RFID chip. Well, gosh, what if you leave it at home with your other pair of trousers? Or what if the crooks figure out a way to jam the RFID chip (that's not hard, incidentally)? And so on.
Every single smart-gun technology idea has some potential for failure, which adds to the chances that a gun won't be usable when it's most needed.
To most potential gun purchasers, the incremental value added of knowing that unauthorized users can't fire the gun is not worth the complications of carrying around an RFID bracelet or hoping that your gun will recognize you despite your recent haircut, or whatever means it uses.
The second reason that most gun owners (and in reality, the NRA) detest the idea of smart-gun legislation is pointed out ably by Jon Stokes, a blogger at TechCrunch.com.
It turns out that the legislators who are most enthusiastic about gun regulation tend to know the least about guns. He cites the example of the 1994 Federal legislation banning "assault weapons." Now in order to ban something, you have to have at least a vague idea of what it is you're banning. So the law had a kind of laundry list of features that made a gun an assault weapon, including such things as a vertical foregrip.
This is a kind of stick-like doohickey that extends down from the middle or so of the barrel and gives you something to do with your non-trigger hand. The presence of that one little optional feature made the gun an assault weapon, and ipso facto illegal.
The 1994 law has been superseded since then, but Stokes points out that any smart-gun law will face the same problem: what makes a gun smart? What design features specifically qualify it to be a smart gun? And inevitably, the lawmakers will be forced into the nitty-gritty of gun design, for which activity they are dubiously qualified at best.
Guns have a special place in the American psyche. Here in Texas, they are part of the culture to a degree that is unimaginable in San Francisco or Boston, and while I do not personally have any truck with guns, I have several friends who do own and use them responsibly.
Maybe the fact that President Obama is directing more federal R&D funds to the problem will uncover a single technology that will make smart guns as easy and reliable to use as the "safety" that keeps a gun from going off when set that way by the user, and which has been a standard feature of many firearms since at least 1911.
And maybe state or federal legislators will educate themselves enough on how guns really work and are used to pick the best smart-gun technology to require gunmakers to install. But right now, I'm not seeing a lot of speed-controlled Ferraris on the road, and I would not risk a bet on smart-gun legislation getting very far any time soon.
How about a portal that allows the government to turn off your gun remotely, so you can’t mis-use it? That would be great!
The downside of most any “smart gun” technology is readily apparent to the typical gun owner and shooter.
My position in this is to DEMAND those working for any of this is to establish their right to keep me from my Second Amendment Rights. I don’t give a damn about their fake and distorted and cherry picked statistics, their ‘good intentions’ or any of that. Prove it comporting to the Second Amendment or shut the f@ck up. If you persist in forcing the issue, do it at your own peril.
[General comment, not to author or OP]
Funny, I want the same thing! But for any and all ‘government guns’...
the effete legislators DO NOT CARE how guns work.
Their ONLY GOAL is to prohibit anything that threatens their power.
(see voters and super delegates, at large delegates vs voters, bureacrats vs elected officials)
One easy to make jammer and poof citizens are powerless. One emp and poof citizens are slaves.
Considering that all these devices do is block the firing mechanism, i.e.,the firing pin or hammer mechanism in a pistil, defeating them is trivial for anyone versed in “smart” tools.
How about a “find me” app that allows the authorities to locate any gun?
I think smart guns are awesome. And I’ll use one as soon as I see the technology demonstrated in the following manner.
Air Force one and the Bizjet of the creator, and airliners all install a device. If the pilot is wearing a ring, the fuel pumps work normally. This prevents theft of the aircraft because it cannot be used by anyone but the correct pilot.
Of course if the ring fails the fuel pumps stop and the plane goes down. When it’s good enough to use on air force one, i’ll listen.
But anyway, I love the lockwork of a traditional revolver, so there’s that also.
Once you had smart gun technology it would be easy to pass a low requiring government permission to modify the gun to work with an individual other than the purchaser. This would enable the government to control all personal firearm sales or transfers from one individual to another. It’s a Trojan horse.
Will the Army and the FBI be carrying these fun smart guns?
Very simple, Mr. President. The Secret Service and Federal Law Enforcement FIRST. When ALL their weapons: pistols, shotguns, rifles all are “smart guns”, and have been shown to be effective and reliable for 5+ years. . . we can consider it.
OR: Obama, put your money where your mouth is. . .
My favorite gun safety is on my Glock, so it’s obvious what I think of the safety on a gun. If legislators mandate SmartGuns, I will bypass the “Smart” feature so it becomes a ReliableGun. If that is banned, I will weld/superglue/strap the ID bracelet to the SmartGun to make it as close to a ReliableGun as possible. Also, I will forever boycott the gun manufacturer that comes out with the first SmartGun on the market.
Anti-freedom crooks will use the first SmartGun as an excuse to ban all other guns. The company that does that to America deserves to go bankrupt. I hope President Trump and his Congress will stop all funding for SmartGun research.
Fun how the same people who say the 2nd Ad. only allows for flintlock rifles and pistols now say a technology that is not now fully operational must now by mandated on, I assume, our flintlock rifles.
If the 2nd Amendment applies only to flintlocks, then the 1st Amendment applies only to hand-operated printing presses, speeches given in public squares without amplification or broadcast equipment, and religions in this country at the time of its founding.
It’s all a moot point. Liquid metal 3D printing is going to render most firearms regulations an exercise in futility shortly, as short as 12 months.
Flowers have hammer mechanisms in their pistils? I thought they might be in the stamens.
It is a whole herd of Trojan horsies.
If he'd put that in the first paragraph, I could have skipped the whole article.
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