Why the NRA hates smart guns(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Why the NRA hates smart guns
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/30/why-the-nra-hates-smart-guns/
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I'm an engineer, gun owner, and former NRA member[1].
I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern.
Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory will give you the best chance to respond appropriately.
Just dealing with mechanical failures quickly and correctly takes very intentional practice.
The last thing I want to have is another thing that can fail in a pressure situation that can't be resolved via trained response. E.g., for a bad primer or failure to eject I can do what's called a tap/rack/bang drill. But there's nothing I can do to train for some type of software failure or battery being dead or some other type of non-mechanical failure that bricks my firearm.
[1]Former because the NRA"s lobbing efforts and powers are ridiculously overstated. Their entire entire existence as near as I can tell is to sell their member's names to third parties. I've never received as much crap snail mail and email as I did during the year I belonged to the NRA.
I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern.
Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory will give you the best chance to respond appropriately.
Just dealing with mechanical failures quickly and correctly takes very intentional practice.
The last thing I want to have is another thing that can fail in a pressure situation that can't be resolved via trained response. E.g., for a bad primer or failure to eject I can do what's called a tap/rack/bang drill. But there's nothing I can do to train for some type of software failure or battery being dead or some other type of non-mechanical failure that bricks my firearm.
[1]Former because the NRA"s lobbing efforts and powers are ridiculously overstated. Their entire entire existence as near as I can tell is to sell their member's names to third parties. I've never received as much crap snail mail and email as I did during the year I belonged to the NRA.
This article is an ignorant POS.
The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people problem with technology. BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore.
The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people problem with technology. BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore.
The article makes it sound theoretical, but New Jersey already has the Childproof Handgun Law that makes it illegal to sell a non-smart gun "three years after it is determined that personalized handguns are available for retail purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_...
Smart guns aren't going to hinder anyone but responsible people.
We need a few things:
1) Funding alternatives to incarceration. People that go to jail tend to have a frequent flyer card.
2) Law enforcement sharing of critical data on offenders.
3) Funding treatment and therapy programs for drug abusers (ABUSERS, key word. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but ABUSE and USE are two different things)
4) Finally, we need to wake up and realize there ARE bad people in the world, and unless you live in a small community, you can't have 100% safety. You can react by protecting yourself (yes, carry concealed), or if you're not comfortable with that, take a professional classes on how to survive extreme situations. Your safety at the end of the day is your responsibility ultimately.
We need a few things:
1) Funding alternatives to incarceration. People that go to jail tend to have a frequent flyer card.
2) Law enforcement sharing of critical data on offenders.
3) Funding treatment and therapy programs for drug abusers (ABUSERS, key word. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but ABUSE and USE are two different things)
4) Finally, we need to wake up and realize there ARE bad people in the world, and unless you live in a small community, you can't have 100% safety. You can react by protecting yourself (yes, carry concealed), or if you're not comfortable with that, take a professional classes on how to survive extreme situations. Your safety at the end of the day is your responsibility ultimately.
Smart guns have an interesting history. In the 90's Colt developed a smart gun, but the results "backfired." Anti-gun groups were against it because of the idea that safer guns meant that the barrier to entry to ownership was lower (now that guns are "safer", why not have one?); people who depended upon guns for their livelihood were skeptical: when you need to use one there needs to be no questions that it will function (barring all the traditional issues of "dumb" gun); if successful, other manufacturings would have to follow suit and there could be legal actions against "dumb" gun manufacturing and ownershpi...etc.
I've linked some articles that touch upon this attempt by Colt.
NRP Article: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-devel...
Hacker News Discussion of Article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297
I've linked some articles that touch upon this attempt by Colt.
NRP Article: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-devel...
Hacker News Discussion of Article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297
Smart guns are to self-defense and the gun industry what the Clipper chip was to encryption and the communications industry, except the Clipper chip actually worked.
Everybody[1] who's actually owned a gun (or plans to) hates smart guns.
[1]: Okay maybe not everybody but based on my anecdata it's everybody.
[1]: Okay maybe not everybody but based on my anecdata it's everybody.
Washington regulates a million things over which is has no particular expertise. Including, but not limited, to medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, food production, law, agriculture, investment banks, the oil and gas industry, and on and on.
The fact that the government is bad at regulating these things doesn't mean that any step they take will be bad. The details matter, and it doesn't mean you should terminate any regulatory effort before it is defined.
In many (maybe all) of these areas, some regulation is needed.
The fact that the government is bad at regulating these things doesn't mean that any step they take will be bad. The details matter, and it doesn't mean you should terminate any regulatory effort before it is defined.
In many (maybe all) of these areas, some regulation is needed.
If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?
I wouldn't say "hate", as it is too strong a word. But smart guns have the same problem as self-driving cars: they take control from you and transfer it to unknown actors (a random computer programmer? Clueless legislators? Various three-letter government agencies?)
Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say.
Conversely, anti-gun folks and self-driving car proponents consider guns and cars too dangerous to be left in hands of _those people_. Those a better left in hands of experts, they say.
I'd be a lot more interested in a smart gun SAFE than in smart guns.
What I want most, specifically, is a bedside pistol safe, the size of a "gun vault", which is actually secure, but still rapid-access.
(The problems with the "gun vault" style safes are numerous -- some of them can be simply dropped 6" and they pop open from inertia on the locking mechanism. Others can be defeated surreptitiously by peeling off a sticker and inserting a paperclip to hit the reset button inside. They're not suitable for leaving a loaded firearm inside when you have untrustworthy people about for extended periods. The only reasonable model right now is to take a carry gun and put it in the safe every night (which is great IFF you carry every day), or to transfer a weapon from a "real" safe to the bedside vault every night. The problem is at some point you might forget, and both false-positive and false-negative kind of suck there.)
The tradeoff I'm willing to make is spending $1k for this vs. $100, and accepting two distinct entry modes: an slow-path "unattended/unprimed" mode which uses a UL group II electronic lock for access, with timeout-access, and a fast-path "day gate" (which would actually be night gate...) which opens quickly using (ideally) a chording keyboard mechanism, or biometric, or something else.
What I absolutely want to defend against is surreptitious entry when unattended -- i.e. for someone with kids, capable of entering hundreds or thousands of combinations in a week, there should be very low risk of users brute forcing the combo or otherwise gaining access in a way which doesn't leave evidence/alarm. Ideally, tamper events would lock the safe down to full TL-15 mode; if your kids can defeat a TL-15 safe, particularly surreptitiously when it is monitored every day, they might deserve the firearm for their new life of crime.
I'd be willing to have no override capability on the fast-path -- if it misreads, or is at all suspicious, if fails back to the slow-path. The mechanism for enabling fast-path might be unrelated to the slow-path entry mechanism (i.e. you don't need to open the door); what I was thinking of was some kind of presence-detect using bluetooth watch (Apple Watch) challenge-response, or something like that.
I could accomplish this today by buying an actual UL TL-15 safe of some size and putting a gunvault inside it, but that takes up a lot of space, and would weigh half a ton. There has to be a better solution.
I'd also like to have it tied into my alarm system and notifications -- if someone attempts to enter the safe, I want a notification on my phone. I'd also like to be able to force slow-path-only remotely. (I'd also like to have lighting, cameras, etc. controlled by alarm events, but that's a separate thing; I'd prefer NOT to have my bedroom recorded on video normally, but when the gun safe is opened, I'd like video logs to be streamed offsite in realtime.)
What I want most, specifically, is a bedside pistol safe, the size of a "gun vault", which is actually secure, but still rapid-access.
(The problems with the "gun vault" style safes are numerous -- some of them can be simply dropped 6" and they pop open from inertia on the locking mechanism. Others can be defeated surreptitiously by peeling off a sticker and inserting a paperclip to hit the reset button inside. They're not suitable for leaving a loaded firearm inside when you have untrustworthy people about for extended periods. The only reasonable model right now is to take a carry gun and put it in the safe every night (which is great IFF you carry every day), or to transfer a weapon from a "real" safe to the bedside vault every night. The problem is at some point you might forget, and both false-positive and false-negative kind of suck there.)
The tradeoff I'm willing to make is spending $1k for this vs. $100, and accepting two distinct entry modes: an slow-path "unattended/unprimed" mode which uses a UL group II electronic lock for access, with timeout-access, and a fast-path "day gate" (which would actually be night gate...) which opens quickly using (ideally) a chording keyboard mechanism, or biometric, or something else.
What I absolutely want to defend against is surreptitious entry when unattended -- i.e. for someone with kids, capable of entering hundreds or thousands of combinations in a week, there should be very low risk of users brute forcing the combo or otherwise gaining access in a way which doesn't leave evidence/alarm. Ideally, tamper events would lock the safe down to full TL-15 mode; if your kids can defeat a TL-15 safe, particularly surreptitiously when it is monitored every day, they might deserve the firearm for their new life of crime.
I'd be willing to have no override capability on the fast-path -- if it misreads, or is at all suspicious, if fails back to the slow-path. The mechanism for enabling fast-path might be unrelated to the slow-path entry mechanism (i.e. you don't need to open the door); what I was thinking of was some kind of presence-detect using bluetooth watch (Apple Watch) challenge-response, or something like that.
I could accomplish this today by buying an actual UL TL-15 safe of some size and putting a gunvault inside it, but that takes up a lot of space, and would weigh half a ton. There has to be a better solution.
I'd also like to have it tied into my alarm system and notifications -- if someone attempts to enter the safe, I want a notification on my phone. I'd also like to be able to force slow-path-only remotely. (I'd also like to have lighting, cameras, etc. controlled by alarm events, but that's a separate thing; I'd prefer NOT to have my bedroom recorded on video normally, but when the gun safe is opened, I'd like video logs to be streamed offsite in realtime.)
These threads are always so weird to me - from a country where I have never known someone who owns a gun or ever seen one outside of police carrying them.
Interesting to me how many people feel so strongly about a topic, often to such a degree that they openly void having an understanding of views counter to their own and unable to express the reasoning behind their own beliefs in any meaningful way.
To me, this is the real issue, not that there's a topic people disagree on.
_______
Re: SmartGuns — People kill people, and if someone wants to harm someone, they will. To me, a more natural solution would be to have areas, much like schools, that're gun free, and others that are not. Clearly this won't fit the issues, but it might end the debates.
To me, this is the real issue, not that there's a topic people disagree on.
_______
Re: SmartGuns — People kill people, and if someone wants to harm someone, they will. To me, a more natural solution would be to have areas, much like schools, that're gun free, and others that are not. Clearly this won't fit the issues, but it might end the debates.
...somewhere a tiny yellow light blinks at 20 bpm in a the NRA chapter tasked with online argument response, and three pagers subsequently buzz...
[deleted]
DC v. Heller means nothing will come from any of this.
[deleted]
I don't want backdoors in my guns just like I don't want backdoors in my encryption. It's really that simple.
Also reminder that Marx was an advocate of widespread gun ownership by the working class, much for the same reasons that the founding fathers of the USA were. Solving the underlying economic issues causing suicide and violence would make far more sense than covering up the symptoms. At the end of the day it's all about poverty.
Also reminder that Marx was an advocate of widespread gun ownership by the working class, much for the same reasons that the founding fathers of the USA were. Solving the underlying economic issues causing suicide and violence would make far more sense than covering up the symptoms. At the end of the day it's all about poverty.
Reasons against smart guns - smart appliances don't work well, never have, never will. I prefer things simple, mechanical and working instead of praying that some Dilbert style company developed an usable software.
I live in a country that has very restrictive gun ownership regime - and yet every person knows instinctively about the gun safety rules:
1. Always assume loaded, unless proven otherwise 2. Don't point it at something you don't want to kill.
I am sure that people will appreciate when their gun starts firmware update or resets during a boar charging at you situation.
I live in a country that has very restrictive gun ownership regime - and yet every person knows instinctively about the gun safety rules:
1. Always assume loaded, unless proven otherwise 2. Don't point it at something you don't want to kill.
I am sure that people will appreciate when their gun starts firmware update or resets during a boar charging at you situation.
The vertical forward handgrip claim is a bit much. While not too useful for aimed fire, as the author points out, it makes un-aimed "spray and pray" shooting easier. So does a barrel shroud. Neither feature is needed on a hunting rifle.
The irony being is that the gun community acts just as irrational and certainly impractical. Even as a non-gun owner, I know what gun I'd rather have for self defence than these guys. :)
Does a 50cal really seem like a sport rifle? The inventor goes on towards the end of this video to suggest it's useful for personal self-defence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s
Here's an example of a guy who has 1.5M subscribers explaining how he'd protect himself answering the door in the middle of the night with a completely impractical close range weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s
Does a 50cal really seem like a sport rifle? The inventor goes on towards the end of this video to suggest it's useful for personal self-defence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s
Here's an example of a guy who has 1.5M subscribers explaining how he'd protect himself answering the door in the middle of the night with a completely impractical close range weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s
This is how I've felt as a gun owner over the last two decades, translated into computing:
Imagine that someone in California hacked into a power station and caused a blackout. Police responded and found the hacker and their equipment. Shortly thereafter an "anti-hacking" bill appeared in the state legislature to prevent a repeat of such a disaster. The attacker used some strange system called Ubuntu which most computer users have little or no reason to have, so that was specifically outlawed in the state (while any other Linux distro is fine). They had a quad-core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, and a USB 2.0 keyboard for "faster hacking"; the bill mandated a limit of 9 gigs, 2 cores, and PS/2 connectors only. The attacker also used something called the "TCP protocol" (misnomer intended); the bill also mandated that the protocol include a 4th and 5th step transmitting "I am not a hacker" and acknowledging "You will be prosecuted with a felony under California SB1137 for improper use of this TCP protocol".
The bill passes and no more hacks occur. Other states don't want to be seen as soft on crime, so they draft copycat bills and randomly ban openSUSE, Gentoo, and trackballs with more than 6 buttons. Within a few years computer enthusiast sites pop up detailing which states are safe to travel to with your laptop. 1 gig RAM chips get unexpectedly expensive as everyone wants to get up to that 9 gig limit in restricted states. California legislators visit university computer labs disapprovingly and talk about closing the "Linux loophole". Activist groups lobby Congress, maintaining that the Founding Fathers never could have conceived of computers as an evolution of the printing press and therefore the 1st Amendment did not apply to electronic devices or communications. Programmers everywhere grumble about coding for two different communication protocols depending on whether or not your users are in California (but it's such a big market you can't ignore it). Your mother wonders why you can't just get your work done on an 8 year old laptop running Windows 7, it's good enough for her web browsing!
The contractor maintaining the power plant control system again leaves the web admin panel open and unsecured after testing from home and forgetting to unflip a poorly labeled feature flag on the production server.