Technology may be the answer to gun control
By Michele Richinick, MSNBC
Smart guns similar to James Bond’s pistol are marching closer to reality as manufacturers expect to continue testing prototypes throughout 2014 and a few politicians push for new technology to make firearms safer.
Manufacturers design “smart” guns, also referred to as “personalized” or “owner-authorized” firearms, to prevent intentional and unintentional shootings by children and other unauthorized users. The idea of incorporating technology into guns took hold during the early 1990s when the National Institute of Justice commissioned a study to find a solution to prevent law enforcement officials from being killed by their own weapons, both in the home and by assailants, said Donald Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. A report published in 1995 recommended radio-frequency identification as the viable approach for placing an electronic system into a firearm.
The U.S. government became attentive to the issue in the late 1990s by providing federal funding to accelerate the development of a safe and more secure personalized handgun, Sebastian said. Manufacturing companies worked with biometrics – using features of an individual to identify the user of a gun – in an attempt to implement firearms technology. But there wasn’t a commercial outcome.
So the gun manufacturers are trying to figure out ways to make guns that won’t offend the unwashed? Of course, they’ll ultimately fail, but those of us who’ve owned guns all our lives, and intend to continue to protect ourselves with them, have a right to be cynical about our friends, the manufacturers, when they try to create some sort of politically correct replacement for the firearms we’ve owned all our lives.
Long term, of course, it’s not going to work. Long term, everyone eventually discovers, by personal experience or observation, that security and law enforcement only protect by trying to take dangerous folks off the street. If you’re attacked in your own home, you’re on your own. As it always was, and always will be.
Lilly Tomlin once pointed out: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” Until folks realize that the people advocating strict gun control are living in an imaginary utopia that will never exist as long as humans remain human, there will always be those who try to take financial advantage of the controversy. Including the folks who make guns.
Really, Lilly Tomlin said that? She’s got a good head on her shoulders. The car manufacturers have continually been improving safety standards of cars too. The trouble with this kind of technology is that it is very expensive. Eventually you wind up with a great product, that most people can’t afford to buy.
@Pizza Eater: That’s the idea.
Dogula : Yes, we know, we know. But we, are in the minority.
So Copper, we just doom a section of our population, 1 in 25,000 to be precise, to death by gun homicide? That’s your answer. While in England it is 1 in 100,000 and Japan is 1 in a Million? No solution is not an answer for families affected by gun violence in America.
#rock4
Let’s be fair, the 1/25000 is greatly impacted by suicide not homocide.
less guns in england and japan also mean less suicides by guns in england and japan,
those folks find another way.
Dan. No 1/25000 is Gun Homicide; not suicide.
Hey Rock : That’s twice today you’ve put words into peoples mouths. All you do is come onto this sight looking to start an argument with anyone you disagree with. I’m not going to respond to your garbage, and I suggest that no one else respond either.
Hey Pizza. I ask questions. You want to go back to cars with no seat belts, safety glass and airbags? The only “garbage” is your logic.
1 in 25000 men will develop prostrate cancer, yet, people are working on solutions for that. 1 in 25000 women will develop uterine cancer, yet people are working on solutions for that too. America is ranked 35th in life expectancy, partial do to all gun violence. Your ok with that… some Americans are not.
Pizza Eater! I remember you. You tried to compare Barton’s billing practices to the guy convicted of mail fraud and money laundering over a Golf Course Investment. BTY, I disagreed with that comparison too.