[neverdem]

What's this backfired? I know hangfire and misfire.

The Atlanta rampage began after rape suspect Brian Nichols, a 200-lb former college linebacker, allegedly overpowered an unarmed female deputy and took her gun out of a lockbox.

Can anyone verify this part about the lockbox? This is the first that I have heard about it. Is this the same as the lockbox for airline pilots or Social Security?

[G32]

Why in God's name would they exempt cops when that's where this is most likely to happen. I know why, and everyone else does too I imagine.

No smart guns until the cops have used them for 5 years. Make the cops use them mandatory. Make it optional for civilians.

[tortoise]

When "smart guns" have a failure rate of 1-in-10,000 rounds like a modern combat handgun under military test conditions, they can come talk to me. Until then, they can cram it. A defensive firearm is about reliability above all else.

[Travis McGee]

The gun has electronically computerized sensors embedded in the handle that can recognize the strength, size and pattern of the owner's grip - and anyone else programmed to operate the gun -- during the first second when the trigger is squeezed.

Uh, huh. Unless your hand is sweaty from fear or exerrtion and your grip is "off." Or your primary hand is injured and you have to fire off-hand. Or you have to use another cop's gun. Etcetcetc.

Let the police test it first, for ten years. Starting with the bodyguards of politicians.

[Smokin' Joe]

A "smart gun" might have saved the life of his partner, Deputy Toney Summey, and spared Hollingsworth's arm, which was badly broken by a bullet in the 2003 shoot-out -- sparked when the two deputies tried to serve a domestic assault warrant on a Franklinville, N.C. man. A smart gun also might have stopped the Atlanta courthouse suspect accused of killing a judge, a sheriff's deputy, a court reporter and a federal customs agent after stealing another deputy's weapon March 11.

Seems smart cops/supervisors would be more helpful.

Weapons retention training should be a basic. How would the 'smart' gun have worked with wounded cops and bloody hands? Would one cop be able to use his partner's gun? etc., etc., here we go again.....