New Smart Gun Company Hopes To Begin Production This Summer 632
Lucas123 writes Safe Gun Technology (SGTi) is hoping it can begin production on its version of a smart gun within the next two months. The Columbus, Ga.-based company uses relatively simple fingerprint recognition through a flat, infrared reader positioned on the weapon's grip. The biometrics reader enables three other physical mechanisms that control the trigger, the firing pin and the gun hammer. The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible. A single gun owner could also temporarily program a friend or family member's print into the gun to go target shooting and then remove it upon returning home."
I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. If there is any chance at all that my gun will simply refuse to fire when I pull the trigger, I don't want anything to do with it.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'd also want to compare, if possible, the chances of you needing to shoot someone with the chances of someone shooting you with your own gun, before concluding you're worse off with this. Whether or not you're safer with a gun in the home is controversial and heavily written about, the risks of being shot by your gun vs the likelihood of you shooting a would-be-attacker. I don't have an opinion on the subject as I'm not prepared to wade into the literature, but it seems like this tech would avoid the chance of the former while still giving you the chance at the latter. That could be a net benefit even given the chance of the gun refusing to fire when you needed it.
Either way, these are just hypotheses, we'd need hard data. I know its fun to not use data when discussing public policy and especially gun control, I certainly don't have any.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
Tale of two guns I own, both purchased with the goal of being conceal carry pieces: Walther PPS #1 - 2300 rounds fired. Error: failure to eject last round properly: 1. No other jams and I've fed good ammo and cheap ammo through it. Had so much success a year ago I bought another as a spare. 1400 rounds through it, no failures to fire or eject. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I'll trust my life with either of those weapons. I am confident that if/when I need them to go boom they will.
Also last year I bought a Ruger SR40c because I wanted something in .40S&W. Excellent sights, great trigger, very accurate and manageable recoil for me. But it had problems with double feeds, failure to eject, and light strikes. Put 600 rounds through it to "break it in" and still had problems through the 1000 round mark. Sent the gun back to Ruger and they replaced some parts and replaced the barrel. 500 rounds through the gun since I've got it back and other than it still hates winchester ammo (hard primer) seems to be okay if I'm shooting Hornaday Critical Duty or Defense ammo. I still refuse to carry it. It will probably take another 1000 rounds before I will even consider it again.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing you mean any increased chance, since we live in the real world where everything always has a non-zero chance of not working as advertised. How much of an increased chance do these things have of failing? I'd be interested to see real data rather than conjecture. If this thing fails one out of every, I dunno, one thousand trigger pulls, that could be more reliable than your average Saturday night special.
I agree that actual statistics would be better, but this is a different type of failure. If a pistol fails to fire then you just pull the trigger again; you might have to cycle a round. If a fingerprint gun fails to fire, then it will probably fail to fire in all subsequent attempts.
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Whether or not you're safer with a gun in the home is controversial and heavily written about, the risks of being shot by your gun vs the likelihood of you shooting a would-be-attacker. I don't have an opinion on the subject as I'm not prepared to wade into the literature, but it seems like this tech would avoid the chance of the former while still giving you the chance at the latter.
I'm not disagreeing with your post, quite the opposite. I just want to point out that the Kellerman study (which you allude to) that claimed a gun was 2.7 times more likely to be used against a resident of the house than against a non resident was horribly flawed.
The claim of the paper was that people who have a firearm in the home are more likely to die from their own guns. Don Kates proved that most of the victims in the study were shot by guns from outside the home, which makes the presence of the hom
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Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
a spring and a lever have a MTBF measured in millions of cycles. RoHS-compliant electronics made with commodity parts do not.
And I buy guns with as few extraneous safeties as possible.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Interesting)
a spring and a lever have a MTBF measured in millions of cycles. RoHS-compliant electronics made with commodity parts do not.
And I buy guns with as few extraneous safeties as possible.
Of course they do. Billions of cycles even. However, with a clock frequency measured in in megahertz, a billion cycles is only 17 minutes.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
a spring and a lever have a MTBF measured in millions of cycles
You fire "millions" of rounds from a single weapon?
No, he doesn't, that's the point, the MTBF of a spring and lever is far higher than normal use making failure very unlikely which is not the case with consumer grade electronic components. They say there are no stupid questions but I think you've come pretty close. Do you have an emotional response to firearms that makes thinking difficult for you?
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have an emotional response to firearms that makes thinking difficult for you?
Nope, but the statistic is misleading. My consumer SCSI HD has a MTBF of 5 years (and my last drive lasted 10 years of 24/7 use before the drive started to even whine a bit). How many times does the read/write arm - which is basically a lever and spring - move during that time? Probably hundreds of millions.
Guns are just simple mechanical machines. There's nothing magical about their parts, which will function in relation to the quality of their design and maintenance as well as their usage situations - like most things.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have an emotional response to firearms that makes thinking difficult for you?
Nope, but the statistic is misleading. My consumer SCSI HD has a MTBF of 5 years (and my last drive lasted 10 years of 24/7 use before the drive started to even whine a bit). How many times does the read/write arm - which is basically a lever and spring - move during that time? Probably hundreds of millions.
Guns are just simple mechanical machines. There's nothing magical about their parts, which will function in relation to the quality of their design and maintenance as well as their usage situations - like most things.
So how is your quote "You fire "millions" of rounds from a single weapon?" any more relevant. An electronic finger print reader will not verify a print with something as simple as a smudge over the sensor or the shooter wearing gloves. It would fail any military acceptance test which requires the weapon to be burred in sand, drug through water and mud and fired immediately after that.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Funny)
I've got wood. Anybody else?
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
Will some poor firearm be the range beater? Ayep. Also, you have to take life shortening factors into account. Firearms should be built to tolerate environmental concerns (heat, water, etc), abrasion, etc.
I don't trust many electronics to handle that. I've seen plenty of vehicle electronics fail under those circumstances, despite being generally covered or theoretically sealed. Make police carry it for two decades, and I'll start to consider testing it. That's not unusual. M16 is near 50 years old. M1911 is over a century and very popular.
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Something like 1/4 of all police officer homicides are shot by their own firearms. I don't know that it needs to handle hundreds of thousands of rounds. How many times does a police officer shoot and kill someone to save his life while in service? Even if this trigger control had a 1% failure I still imagine the risk of it being used against them is higher than the risk of it failing to stop an assailant. Especially if there are two police officers in which case you're looking at a fraction of a % for
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
Why, out of curiosity, would you worry about lead solder in a thing that fires lead bullets?
I wouldn't. You probably wouldn't. But politicians and regulatorycrats in some parts of the world do. RoHS is big in the EU. If you manufacture something, it has to be RoHS, even if you are making it out of lead.
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An expensive firearm locked inside of a safe has zero value. The intruder can come in, shoot you in the back while you're attempting to open the safe, then walk out with the safe, to open it up at his leisure at the auto wrecking yard.
Re:So ? (Score:4, Insightful)
A safe and a lock to put the gun has a much lower MTBF than above. Going by this you would rather leave your gun outside a safe than secure ?
Are you saying that a gun on his hip (or my hip) is not secure? Or one on my computer desk (no kids in the house) within arm's reach? And no intelligent gun owner uses gun locks. All they do is force a thief to take the gun home to break the lock. And trigger locks are dangerous, because the possibility of a negligent discharge goes up dramatically when you stick things in the trigger guard.
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Yes
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A mechanical failure is not the same as refusing to fire "for my own safety" because it doesn't think it's me.
Besides, a rare mechanical failure is what my BUG is for.
With all of that said, I've never had a FTF due to mechanical failure of my firearm - only due to defective ammunition.
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Many popular firearms don't have safeties, at least not manually operated safeties when the shooter needs to do something other than grip the firearm normally and pull the trigger. Glock, Springfield XD/HS2000, Sig Sauer, revolvers in general, etc. do not have such manual safeties. Some of the have a grip safety (XD) which must be depressed by gripping the pistol, or a multipart trigger safety (XD, Glock), but Sig Sauer and revolvers generally rely on a heavy trigger pull (at least for the first shot) as
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Additionally, with some designs it is actually fairly common to remove safety features. For example, it's pretty common to remove the magazine disconnect (a safety which requires a magazine be inserted to fire) on the Browning Hi-Power to improve the trigger pull.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only safeties on most revolvers is between the ears of the person holding the gun and a heavy-ish double action trigger pull.
Some gun makers have included an internal lock on their revolvers (S&W and some Taurus) which has been controversial, although I've never had a problem with it (I don't use it, either and have never put it in the lock position).
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Not having a round chambered..
I know a guy who carries his fully loaded with a round chambered and doesn't use a holster. I would prefer he didn't chamber that final round or had it in a holster, but I don't see a problem if he wants to carry that way.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
As long as he only accidentally shoots himself. That's fine. However, he can't gurantee that.
But it's irresponsible behavior like that that gives fuel to the anti-gun crowd.
I agree with the concern about the biometric identification though, in TFS. It's too easy for it to fail, even if it's merely the battery going dead, though if it's low enough charge, the trigger action may be able to charge it up, enough so that firing actually doesn't need a battery. I can see cases where someone would want this on their guns, and it's a responsible thing in those cases. People shouldn't force their desire for irresponsibility onto others - if you don't want this, don't buy it. I know I won't. However, I don't have a situation where this would be relevant (my guns are only loaded at the range and when camping). Just because I wouldn't want this, and it doesn't add any safety benefit in my situation... doesn't mean it shouldn't be around, because it sure as hell isn't hard to think of reasons why people would want this and it would provide safety to themselves and/or others.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Informative)
As long as he only accidentally shoots himself. That's fine. However, he can't gurantee that.
But it's irresponsible behavior like that that gives fuel to the anti-gun crowd.
I don't see it as dangerous enough to arm the Anti Gun crowd. Personally, I'd be willing to sacrifice the one extra round for that extra measure of safety and I just don't sit near him. If it went off the way he carries it, he's only going to hit his backside and the floor behind him (or somebodies foot in the worst case). :)
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or ricochet into spots higher than the person's foot? Or does he avoid walking on surfaces that would cause a ricochet?
If you are carrying a gun in a way that it can go off without you intending it to, then you are being irresponsible, and the concerns of the anti-gun crowd are quite warranted.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a problem if he wants to carry that way.
I do. I think a case could be made for reckless endangerment, and if it goes off and hurts someone I would definitely support criminal negligence charges.
He should just get a holster. There's really no reason not to use a holster. If nothing else one of those ultra-minimalist holsters [glocktech.com] that covers nothing but the trigger guard.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for all the accidental trigger pulls that have gotten Glock wielders shot. Like DEA agents. ;-)
Sorry, a Glock is designed to be utilized in a holster. I do believe it is unprofessional and irresponsible to carry a Glock without using some sort of holster/trigger protection.
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There is never enough safety to stop an idiot from doing something dumb... source? history.
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Clearly you know very little of firearms, or you wouldn't have used the terms "bullets" (ammunition) or "mechanism" (action). Also you'd know that the vast majority of those of us who have self-defense firearms keep them loaded and would never put a lock on a gun, becau
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Pistols and most other firearms are made to function for tens of thousands rounds with out parts wearing out. Here is an example of a pistol being fired 50,000 times with cleanings at every 7,000 rounds and a few springs at each 10,000 proactively. Nothing was broken during that time. This an extreme case but he has done this with a number of other models and has gotten similar (but not quite as good) results.
http://pistol-training.com/archives/4027 [pistol-training.com]
Firearms that have been used for generations and that ar
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Informative)
"When I pull the trigger, I want the gun to fire. I doubt this will be reliable enough to depend upon."
More to the point: if you want it to be reliable, then the fingerprint technology has to be loose enough to be UNreliable. We already know this. With today's technology, if you want to allow access with fingerprints reliably, you have to make your parameters loose enough that false positives slip in too easily.
Which means that in order to be near 100% reliable for an "authorized" shooter, this thing provably can't do what it's intended to do: reliably block the UNauthorized.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I say "near 100% reliable", I'm not joking. 99.9% just isn't good enough for something I'd trust my life to. But if it approached 99.99%, then it's getting near the reliability of the gun itself, and may be good enough. That's approximately 1 error in 1000 rounds. Even that is pushing what I view as acceptable limits.
And even just given that it's battery-powered, it probably will never reach that goal in the foreseeable future.
As for its intended purpose (blocking unauthorized users), I have no doubt that it would work some of the time. But how often, given that it has to be that accurate for the authorized? I'm not confident that it would be that good at its job. It's a very difficult balancing act, and I would need a lot of convincing.
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false positive are not a problem (Score:3)
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More reasonable (if they really want to insist on this foolishness) would be an RFID or p
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
And if it fails, the first lawsuit will put the manufacturer out of business.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it gives even a 50% chance that a kid who steals dad's gun won't be able to shoot up their school, or that a young child won't be able to accidentally shoot themselves, then surely that's worth something.
If there's a 50% chance that parents think "It doesn't matter if I leave this on the table, the kids can't fire it..." then it's worth nothing.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Funny)
Me neither. If a kid finds that gun on the piano, they should pay the price...
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Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Funny)
If a kid finds that gun on the piano, they should pay the price...
Exactly the kind of situation I want to avoid, which is why I don't have any pianos in my house.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We've dedicated well over 10 years to come up with this solution. We have a lot of people in this company who've put a lot of blood sweat and tears into it and never gotten a penny out of it. If we were in it for the money, we would have been out of it a long time ago. "Our motto is ... if we save the life of one child, it's a miracle to that child and everyone that child touches."
If they were true to their motto they should have dropped the project and donated their funding to a children's hospital 10 years ago.
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Agreed, that's the dumbest motto I've ever seen, from a weapons company. They must think people are idiots if they think anybody will buy that bleeding heart line of bullshit.
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"Our motto is ... if we save the life of one child, it's a miracle to that child and everyone that child touches."
If they were true to their motto they should have dropped the project and donated their funding to a children's hospital 10 years ago.
To be fair, prevention is better than treatment in any medical situation.
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Sure it'll be reliable. Just make sure to lift the gun owner's fingerprints and transfer to a gummy bear before trying to shoot this weapon.
I doubt that the fingerprint reader will be able to recognize gummy fingerprints...
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Informative)
Why does it have to be so reliable?
Because yelling "Excuse me, armed thugs who just broke down my door, I need you to hold up for a minute while my gun registers my fingerprint so I can shoot you" is a good way to get yourself killed.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably because people buy guns for security, not just for entertainment at a range.
If you're about to be attacked/killed by a burglar and you reach for your gun and pull the trigger you want to make sure as hell that the gun works. If it doesn't work, for whatever reason, you're in a worse position than you started because now the burglar has reason to incapacitate/kill you.
I cant see this being useful for a security gun. If you reach for your gun you'll have to very consciously "unlock" it with your fingerprint. If your nervous, it's dark, or whatever, it might not recognize you. Even in the best case scenario, this unlocking will take time. Couple that with requiring a battery, and it could be trouble.
However, if this is just being used to secure less crucial weapons such as hunting rifles, or the kind that you might only ever use at a range, I could see the fingerprint being scanner being useful. It would help to prevent children or thieves from using your weapon and when you're hunting or at the range, you presumably have the time to check the batteries and swipe your finger a second time if it fails to register you the first go.
Re:I won't be buying one... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, if this is just being used to secure less crucial weapons such as hunting rifles
Fuck no I don't want that on my hunting guns. Most of the time when I am out hunting I am wearing gloves so it wouldn't work and coupled with the inevitably higher failure rate I wouldn't want to trust it especially with the number of large predators that are in the area I hunt.
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Even though you are really pushing an agenda with that wording, this tech is dangerous at a firing range as well.
1. You will have people who get complacent about safety. They will leave loaded firearms on the bench with the expectation that it won't fire without 'authorization'.
2. In the event of a misfire (the best way to describe a trigger pull without a discharge), you will have a moment of confusion, and the person is likely to try and diagnose the error. This may be adjusting their grip, pushing a
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1. You will have people who get complacent about safety. They will leave loaded firearms on the bench with the expectation that it won't fire without 'authorization'.
No. You won't. Because anyone who does that will be ejected from the range the same as they do now.
And besides, putting seat belts and airbags in cars hasn't prompted people to drive more recklessly.
2. In the event of a misfire (the best way to describe a trigger pull without a discharge), you will have a moment of confusion, and the person is
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I agree...
And I think it'd be "excellent" technology for non-defense weapons.
How about gloves? (Score:4, Insightful)
People often wear gloves when shooting pistols. And in combat situations, fingers may get dirty, or even partially damaged or burnt. This strikes me as a REALLY bad idea. Lives will be lost to this.
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People often wear gloves when shooting pistols. And in combat situations, fingers may get dirty, or even partially damaged or burnt. This strikes me as a REALLY bad idea. Lives will be lost to this.
colt&etc have been down this road for over a decade now, with wearable tags and other means. 100% accuracy is what they're worried about.
technically it's a good idea if you're napping with the gun in a bad neighborhood and someone else might take it and use it against you. but that's not a good idea in the first place. it's not a bad idea as such, for a target shooting gun it's a great idea actually, so your wife doesn't shoot you in a moment of anger. it's just not a good idea to have in a versatile we
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Probably not.
Unless a person is willing to become a Darwin Contestant, they won't use it. I sure as hell won't. Fingerprint biometrics are barely reliable in a lab situation. I can't imagine anyone putting up for this sort of crap going out to do some work. It's just more feel-good bullshit from someone who's never pulled the trigger for real.
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I think the real issue in the combat situation is that the WRONG lives will be lost. You generally want some lives to be lost in a combat situation.
Re:How about gloves? (Score:5, Insightful)
You generally want some lives to be lost in a combat situation.
No... you want to get your way. You don't WANT some lives to be lost.
Even for a home invasion situation you don't WANT a life to be lost. You WANT that creep OUT and you will do whatever it takes INCLUDING ending a life, but killing is not what you WANT to do. In an ideal situation you could just spot the invader and say "go away" and they'd turn and leave. But since that's highly unlikely and since there's a good chance there will be a struggle then the safest bet for you is to end the conflict as immediately as possible and in such a way that minimizes your own chances of being harmed. Therefore, you shoot 'em with an intent to kill (so they don't shoot back).
For general political WARS, your statement still goes too far. In a combat situation the goal is almost never "to end lives". The goal is to end a dispute (in neutralize the opponent) and to get your way. Lives being taken is more of a by product of the process than the goal itself. Total annihilation / beating them to nothing is often the simplest route to achieving the end of the war, but make no mistake. It's not that you WANT lives to be lost or resources to be destroyed... you just want break your opponent and get your way.
Then there's the extremist viewpoint. It's the viewpoint that anyone who disagrees must be the devil and should be killed. That attitude certainly breeds a type of combat, but it's not combat in general. And really, the defender (the "not extreme party") still only wants to stay alive through the combat... they're not necessarily interested in killing.
Re:How about gloves? (Score:5, Funny)
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In 2011, 32,163 people were shot to death in the United States.
You seem to have the ability to break that number down, separating out 260 justifiable homicides. Did you happen to see that almost 20,000 of those deaths were suicides? This system would not have prevented those. How many of those 32,000 deaths were justified non-private citizen shootings, e.g. cops shooting criminals? This systems would not have prevented those either. Can you even find out how many of those shootings were committed with a stolen firearm that this system would have prevented?
Is this thing battery powered? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Those that would deign to create a fool-proof $anything, underestimate the creativity and ingenuity of fools.
Access management nightmare? (Score:2, Insightful)
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I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
Slashdot has hit a new low, you did not even bother reading the summary. I quote:
"The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible."
Even so, would you really want to have each gun accessible by every person in the unit? What if there was a friendly fire incident? Wouldn't you want to know that the only person capable of firing a weapon was the person it was allocated to? If it could only be fired by one person then an investigation into a friendly fire or non-combatant death could be investigated rather quickly.
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Even so, would you really want to have each gun accessible by every person in the unit? What if there was a friendly fire incident? Wouldn't you want to know that the only person capable of firing a weapon was the person it was allocated to? If it could only be fired by one person then an investigation into a friendly fire or non-combatant death could be investigated rather quickly.
That's a good point, but there is a fairly simple solution. You could have the gun record which finger print was approved when it was fired. if storage is a concern, then you could have it only store the newest 1000 rounds or something to that effect.
That way, you can approve the gun for many finger prints, but still know which individual fired recently if there is an incident which requires investigation.
I suppose the major caveat with that, is that you need to store the information properly encrypted to a
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So when your one assigned gun breaks, you want to be totally disarmed during combat?
Sounds risky.
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you've never been on a battlefield before, have you?
or had to think about:
being overrun
swapping weapons when they break
manning the most casualty-producing weapon when the crew became casualties
or any of the other stuff you have no business pontificating about.
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Re:Access management nightmare? (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
Nowhere near the nightmare caused by all the soldiers that would die when their weapons refuse to fire. Or when an enemy figures out that a relatively cheap EMP generator will disarm an entire unit.
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That's not a failure. That's a negative match.
Failing to match the authorized user is a failure. Failing to match an unauthorized user is success. Both cases of "failing to match" are indistinguishable.
Failure means the CPU isn't responding.
That's another kind of failure.
In the case of an EMP, the CPU won't function and therefore it has "no lock at all."
An EMP is a minor consideration when talking about failure modes and how the weapon deals with them. ESD or EMP may cause the memory to fail and create a "failure to match" kind of failure, as well.
But, let's assume the only failure we care about is an EMP that takes the CPU out. If this failure results in function, th
Speed/accuracy/reliability: pick two (Score:5, Funny)
If this fingerprint scanner works as poorly and as slowly as the fingerprint scanner on my Thinkpad, there's no way in hell anyone would want this on a gun.
If on the other hand you want to make sure no one can ever fire the gun, this sounds great.
I would have serious reservations... (Score:5, Insightful)
..about buying this equipment for my guns.
I don't care much about the false positive rate, because I keep my guns locked up. What I need to know before I buy is, what's the false negative rate and the response time? I own some guns for sporting purposes, and a couple of big clunky rifles for hunting. A false negative or a laggy response time on those isn't necessarily a big deal. OTOH my wife and I also have guns for self defense and home defense. A false negative or laggy response time on those could get us killed.
"Fire gun!" (Score:4, Funny)
"You do not have permission to fire this gun."
"sudo Fire gun!"
*BLAM*
Allow a friend to fire? (Score:3)
That's called 'transfer of firearm' and is illegal in many places thanks to our politicians. Creating technology to circumvent the law sounds like a sticky place to go.
For clarification sake (Score:2)
Blue Screen of Death (Score:2, Funny)
is now real.
This tech worked really well at Butcher Bay (Score:2)
... NOT!!
Safety loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
It may also lead to the assumption that a gun is safe when it can still accidentally fire for other reasons inherent in a firearms mechanism.
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This technology could cause accidents by people assuming the safety function is operational, similar to when electric carving knives were introduced they had a pressure activated on switch on the blade. It may also lead to the assumption that a gun is safe when it can still accidentally fire for other reasons inherent in a firearms mechanism.
Not to mention that a gun "keyed" to it's owner and used (or fired) in a crime will be used to lock up the owner because "only he" could fire it. What's the software platform anyway, Java?
Untrustworthy when most needed (Score:3)
If I really need my pistol to function, and I have blood on my hands, I don't think I'd trust one of these.
Have the police and military use it first. (Score:2)
Given that most firearms technology starts with the military and then spreads out to the civilan market Congress should require this technology for the military. Also since the police are becoming most militarized they should also use. When it is good enough for the Special Forces and the Secret Service protective details I might consider it.
I suggest a better feature. (Score:3)
Upon pushing the trigger a display on the gun prompts:
Are you sure you wish to fire this gun?
[ok][cancel]
If the gun does not fire ... (Score:2)
But it is not going to be popular. The thief will simply take the gun from you, and know the cheat code trig-trig-up-down-up-down-A-B-A-B and presto, all the levels would be unlocked.
Smart enough? (Score:2, Flamebait)
*sound of crickets*
Didn't think so.
Single digit encryption (Score:2)
"A single gun owner could also temporarily program a friend or family member's print into the gun to go target shooting and then remove it upon returning home."
Either that or the guy who takes your gun will also take your finger
This is not how SMART is supposed to work. (Score:3)
You select the target with your iris and eye gestures, recognized by cybereye or goggles. Target gets a highlight/targetting frame.
You move the gun so that the reticle (based on gun-mounted camera) on your HUD enters the defined targetting frame.
The moment the gun detects the match (reticle enters the frame = the gun is aimed at the target), it fires, hitting the highlit target.
This is how a smart gun is supposed to work. Not some shmancy safety feature.
whaat? no comment on brutal finger theft?? (Score:2)
Updates are available (Score:5, Funny)
Pulls trigger. Nothing. Notices blinking LED by trigger. Looks at six character LCD display scrolling past. "15 updates are available, would you like to download now? Please tap once for yes, twice for no."
Re:Updates are available (Score:5, Insightful)
more like: Pulls trigger. Nothing. Turns gun sideways to get a closer look at a why it failed. Pulls trigger again. BAM.
Smarter guns not the answer (Score:3)
A smarter society would be a much better solution.
Probability (Score:3)
According to Miller, had smart gun technology been available to Nancy Lanza, she could have programmed her guns so that only her fingerprint could have activated them; she could have enabled her son to shoot them at a firing range and disabled them upon returning home, or she could have enabled them for her son to use all the time, Miller said.
"So without the technology, we went from zero percent chance of preventing the shootings to having the technology and a 66% chance of preventing it," Miller said. "Those are much better odds."
Wow. How...what...really? "There's three scenarios related to this event I can think of in my head right now and two of them would be better ergo 66% chance of improvement?"
When I walk outside I can either be hit by lightning or not be hit by lightning, so 50% chance right? What the fuck?
What does this accomplish? (Score:3)
Someone picking up a dropped gun in a fight and using it against its owner? Probably. But someone like Lanza from stealing his mom's guns, opening them up and jamming the solenoid in the 'enabled' position? I doubt it.
Guns are remarkably simple mechanical devices. Stolen guns will have their interlock mechanisms filed down or superglued and placed on the black market.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's cold where I live for most of the year. I wear gloves a lot.
Re: (Score:3)
Then why exactly cars haven't been banned yet?
Even worse, breathing air causes millions of deaths every year, let's ban air!
Re:How ironic.... (Score:4, Insightful)