I haven’t seen a lot of press about this in the U.S., so I’ll turn to our Canadian friends, including reader Diana MacPherson, who called this piece at the CBC to my attention.
The upshot is that it’s now technologically possible to make “smart guns” that can be fired only by their owner. This is accomplished through either fingerprint recognition, grip recognition, or wearing a special watch that synchs with the gun and arms it. Here’s a picture of a smart gun:
You’d think that would be a great thing. The gun could now be fired only by the owner, eliminating a lot of the unnecessary and tragic gun deaths that occur when, say, a kid gets hold of a loaded weapon, or someone else steals a gun to commit a crime.
But not to the right-wing gun lobby. No, they fear that this is the first step on the road to the government controlling all the guns, for, supposedly, smart-gun technology could enable the U.S. Gubbmint to stop ALL the guns from firing, eliminating our God-given right to have a lethal weapon. And so we have the weird situation in which the gun lobby not only opposes new kinds of guns, but also threatens those gun dealers who sell them. From the CBC piece, we get this:
One needs surf no further than the esteemed Forbes website to find this: “Smart guns may be susceptible to government tracking or jamming. How hard would it be for the government to require manufacturers to surreptitiously include in computer-enhanced weapons some circuitry that would allow law enforcement to track — or even to disable — the weapons?
Gun websites, which tend to take a more dire view than Forbes, are, well, up in arms.
According to Shotgun News: “There are people who won’t stop until we are disarmed. [Smart guns] are a danger to our rights, no more, no less.”
There is no end to this paranoid lunacy.
Take the case of Andy Raymond, who owns a gun shop called “Engage Armaments” in Maryland, where there is strict registration of guns, a mandatory training course, and a waiting period before you can pick up a gun you’ve bought. To me, Raymond seems rather extremist about guns, but he did want to sell smart guns in his shop:
So any new gun, to Raymond, is a good gun. Anything that can persuade cautious people to learn how to shoot is a good, American thing.
“I am pro-gun,” he told me at his shop this week, slapping together and dismantling weapons on the counter as he spoke. “I believe in the freedom to own a gun. Any gun. To me, you don’t have freedom unless you have freedom of choice. It’s like speech, or religion.”
But what happened? He and others were threatened for that!
The more militant wing of the gun-rights movement, though, has a different view. And when word got out that Raymond was going to offer the Armatix [see photo above] for sale, Engage Armament’s phone began to ring.
There were threats. Raymond, a massive, heavily muscled man, took some of the more menacing ones as death threats.
He quickly capitulated, and repudiated his plan to sell the Armatix.
He began sleeping in his store, frightened by an anonymous threat to burn it down.
In an attempt to appease his antagonists, he posted a video on his Facebook page justifying his decision, then apologizing, then suggesting in a fit of temper that the death threats should be leveled at anti-gun politicians, not him. The video has since been taken down.
Another merchant, the Oak Tree Gun Club in California, hastily renounced the Armatix a few weeks ago as well after a similarly ferocious reaction.
To use Randall McMurphy’s term, these people are bull-goose loonies. And they’re egged on by the good old National Rifle Association, the ultimate (and politically powerful) repository of gun lunacy in the U.S., which is against a New Jersey law that will require all guns to be smart guns within three years after the first one is sold:
The National Rifle Association, which is deeply suspicious of smart guns, opposes any such law, and its more radical allies are determined to keep the weapons out of America, period.
As the Shotgun News website put it: “Until the last anti-gunner gives up and goes to work on transgender rights … any retailers foolish enough to stock one should plan for bankruptcy.”
Note the clever comparison of gun control to emasculation.
Yes, very clever, and very scary.
Who are they to limit my rights to buy the type of gun that I want? Freedom Haters, that’s who!
Note: I’ve never actually fired a gun in my life.
This article is actually about the (denied by anonymous threats)freedom of a gun stone owner to sell any gun brand he likes without risking his life or business.
urm, I feel I may need to invoke Poe’s law…
I thought Andy Raymond’s guns were supposed be the guarantors of his freedom and safety. Seems that didn’t actually work out.
Now he’s in the odd position of being more afraid of gun toting morons than anything else. Too bad he hasn’t realized how completely that invalidates his world view.
Yeah, this story was a real irony-meter exploder.
I don’t think that the fears are that far-fetched. The US government has an extensive history of overreach.
On the other hand though, the technology is very promising. They should in fact start producing safer weapons. I’m just saying that their concerns are not pure paranoia, especially with what has come out about the NSA snooping.
For every new technology there will be people and governments that exploit them. This is just something we need to deal with.
Be sure to thank all those children who died this year so that your paranoia about safer guns could be assuaged.
Freedom isn’t free, but it’s a sweet deal when someone else has to pick up the check.
Of course they do.
Great. So now in addition to auto manufacturers lying about technological problems so they don’t have to recall their cars, we’re going to get gun manufacturers lying about technological problems so they don’t have to issue recalls either. [/snark]
Were I the sort of person to want to own a gun, I would not trust this technology. At least not yet; I’d basically let the consumer population be my ‘human testing group’ for a few years before I’d accept that it works as advertised. Of course, I’d have no problem with vendors selling such guns. Quite the opposite – I would want more of them sold and used (at ranges) so that any flaws in the technology had a greater chance of being discovered and fixed before I bought one myself.
As for sekret government signals turning off your gun, there’s a police standoff with some armed robber practically every year.
Seems to me that such a thing would come to light pretty damn quick. And I have no doubt that this supreme court would rule such technology unconstitutional if it did come to light.
If I wanted to carry a gun & could legally, this is the kind of gun I’d want because it couldn’t in theory be used against you or by accident. The fear of the government going against the people is just lunacy but sadly I think it is built into America given the history since the American Revolution – it’s just the lunatic fringe has taken it to extreme levels.
Actually, I’m not sure you would want one of these guns — maybe depending on your reasons for wanting any gun in the first place.
Among the technologies mentioned, I’d be very wary about trusting fingerprint recognition. The problem is that this technology is not universally reliable.
Firstly, even if the technology works for you in the first place (and my professional experience is that about 5% of users continuously struggle to use fingerprint-based user authentication reliably), sensor performance can be adversely affected by environmental conditions – grime, sweat, blood, and so on. I wouldn’t want to rely on a smart gun if I were trying to defend myself against an armed intruder. (Not that that’s necessarily a good strategy anyway.)
Secondly, the technology can be fooled by facsimile attacks — think of the “gummi bear” exploits several years ago and the recent successful exploits against the Apple iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5. So, it might be a defence against someone “accidentally” using your gun, but if someone was determined to, it would not be a foolproof measure.
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No safety measure is ever foolproof, but having a partially effective safety measure is better than no safety measure at all.
If these guns actually worked correctly then every police department in the country would use them.. So how many police departments are using them…. Zero, None, Nada. Ifhe police don’t like these guns why should New Jersey citizens be forced to buy them?
This is about limited people’s access to guns. because the guns cost thousands more to buy then regular guns. This is about gun control and not gun safety.
If you are a citizen living in NJ, the government forces you to buy these guns?
I think you need to rethink your response. No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. I’m sure there are plenty of NJ citizens that don’t buy guns at all and it is quite a leap to go from a gun that has certain safety features to “the government is taking our guns”.
Further, it is my understanding that these guns are new. Perhaps they have not been proven useful in the military so your citing that militaries do not use them does not automatically imply that they are no good or that they are the tool of a totalitarian hungry government wishing to control its citizens.
See, this is a problem… Diana, your response appears to me to be nothing more than an attempt at scoring points. You don’t seem really interested advancing the discussion at all. Here’s some advice: be charitable. Now, Freddy is more that free to correct me here but I implied that “…why should New Jersey citizens be forced to buy them?” meant “…why should New Jersey citizens [who are interested in buying a handgun] be forced to buy them? [That is, why should it be their only alternative.]”
Also, Freddy didn’t mention the military, he mentioned law enforcement…
It’s not about scoring points; I am being fair in assuming that the poster of those comments meant what his words say. I shouldn’t have to impose my own condescendingly “charitable” interpretations and if the poster did not mean those things, he is free to clarify.
Right, right – ok..because it’s totally reasonable to assume what he was really saying was that the government is going to force citizens to buy guns against their will. Thanks for clarifying that one for me.
Wow, that was really refreshing…
And tone trolling is so helpful to the conversation.
Well, clearly the ‘gun lobby’ are against this type of ‘smart’ weapon for one reason…
Guns will be smarter than their owners.
And we can’t have that can we?
You would think that the gun lobby would be all over this. If only one user could use the gun then this would generate more gun sales.
DRM for guns!
One of the many reasons I live in Europe are the more sensible laws regarding gun control. However, I don’t think one can accuse the NRA of paranoid fantasy here. Think about what Snowden unveiled about the NSA: a government agency which not only breaks into citizens’ computers, but uses them for botnets and so on and so forth. I don’t think anyone realized how extensive this was before Snowden. Think of the “clipper chip” and various backdoors in software for government access. So, it’s not a paranoid fantasy, it is probably a real possibility.
The NRA are crazy enough; one doesn’t have to caricature them!
Actually, I think the reason is that this would put the straw purchasers and black market gun dealers (who buy large quantities of guns in Florida and transport them to states like Maryland and sell them on the street) out of business. And since this counts for a substantial portion of the gun manufacturers’ market, that would never do.
If you’re a gun seller, I guess the plus side is that the sales of revolvers would likely go up. AIUI there’s not much electronic tinkering you could do there – they’re too simple.
They are simpler, but it wouldn’t take much more to do the same or similar to a revolver. A small “deadman” actuator that must be activated to enable the hammer to be moved back into the cocked position, or same to enable the trigger. A simple pin and spring with a few milimeters of movement in the proper place would do the trick.
Gun nuts will really go crazy when electrically activated ammo (no firing pin necesaary) is introduced to the market place. Much easier to directly control, all electronic, no mechanics.
Thanks for the info.
Re: electrically activated ammo. At that point the “sekret government control” argument against this particular safety technology kinda goes out the window. It makes a sort of sense to oppose any microchips in guns, if you think the government is going to hack or backdoor those microchips. But once there’s already a bunch of electronic chips in your gun doing other stuff, the argument that you can’t add a safety chip because OMG POTENTIAL GOV CONTROL goes right out the window. It’s kinda like arguing you shouldn’d by a second computer because the government might watch you through it’s camera.
If they are afraid the government will remotely take over their smart guns, don’t buy any.
Who’s to prevent the government from tracking us already. Is GPS in our ammo? Maybe even our ducks that we shoot are giving us away. After all some of those critters have been tagged by scientist!
Enemy of the State!
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Smart guns have been a hot topic recently at a Canadian online gun forum that I’m a member of. Most of the comments that I’ve read so far are on the “no thanks” side of the spectrum. The biggest reason? Skepticism that the technology will actually work as planned. I get that – I want the thing to go bang when I pull the trigger. You could say that sort of skepticism is unfounded because we don’t have the data yet to back it up but there’s a long history of failed gun-gadgets. Would I ever want something like this on one of my guns? I think if you could build something that was reliable and unobtrusive there comes a tipping point where it becomes really attractive. I’m thinking it would probably make your firearms less attractive to thieves as well (assuming that they couldn’t just remove it).
I have read the occasional “this is how the government is going to take our guns!” comment but they’ve been rare as far as I’ve seen. That said, I’m in Canada 🙂
Concur. See my response to Diana @ #5.
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Also concur. I don’t think we have anywhere near the technology to pull this off reliably.
The product that came out 10 years ago or so was in response to lawsuits against the gun manufacturers, so it might not have ever been a product that was intended to be successful.
Triple concur. At the rate at which Microsoft releases patches and car manufacturers issue recalls, you’d have to be naive to think first generation smart gun technology is going to be reliable. 21st century manufacturing really doesn’t operate on the “perfect out the gate” model, it’s more “release when it’ll make money and then patch” model. No reason to think this product would be different.
I’m not a gun person, but I’m highly skeptical of this product. You’ve got to have the freaking watch on to fire the gun? That’s absurd. This sort of product came out about 10 years ago (you had to wear a special ring on your finger) and didn’t seem to go anywhere.
…because a gun that won’t fire when the batteries run out isn’t much help when you need it
I think there are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of this technology – however, the gun nuts threats against the sale of proximity keyed guns are completely unacceptable.
Some of the legitimate concerns about this technology include reliability and the ability for the key to be remotely jammed. It is a fact that the increased complexity of “smart” guns increases their likelihood of failure. Normal guns have no electronics to fail, no need for batteries, and no susceptibility to radio frequency jamming. And smart guns aren’t perfect. A smart gun *can* still be used against the owner in some circumstances, including wrestling for control of the weapon.
However, I also strongly feel people should be able to choose smart weapons as a potentially safer weapon to own. They won’t prevent the majority of fire arms deaths in the US, most of which are suicides or killing a friend or family member mistakenly, thinking they are intruders. But, they could reduce the number of accidental discharges by children – though not necessarily more so than by having the weapons properly locked up in the first place.
If gun nuts are going to try to intimidate gun stores out of carrying smart weapons they could stunt the growth of the smart gun technology. I think the government needs to step in to prevent this technology from being thwarted by extremists. Perhaps by offering incentives and contracts to companies that pursue it. But, the government should definitely try to track down anyone who threatens gun store owners over carrying them. It is a bit ironic that gun store owners, surrounded by guns, don’t feel safe from their gun owning customers.
And while US has, unfortunately, freedom of guns, so you can choose between smart and dumb guns, it is of course “gunophobia [anti-gun]” to propose supporting smart guns because they are, well, smarter.
Sigh.
I think the one that relies on the way you hold and grip might work and the one with the watch would be interesting as well provided the connection was a secure one….I wonder what they use to make the connect (please don’t let it be bluetooth).
NFC?
I’m not sure about the grip technology – would you grip the gun in the normal way in stressful situations?
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I figured it would be NFC because of its security. Still, I’ve had my connection issues with that too.
It is really rather unfortunate that New Jersey passed a law back in 2002 requiring all guns sold in the state to be smart guns just three years after the first one is first marketed. That well-intentioned but poorly thought out law is preventing the acceptance and marketing of smart guns and thereby inhibiting future development of such guns.
New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg stated she would reverse that law provided the NRA would agree not to fetter smart-gun technology. She should repeal the law even if the NRA refuses to cooperate.
I believe in the freedom to own a gun. Any gun. To me, you don’t have freedom unless you have freedom of choice. It’s like speech, or religion.”
Or pedophilia, for that matter. You could argue that pedophilia restricts the freedom of the child victims; on the other hand, stupid, unstable people strutting around with high-tech assault weapons in order to intimidate other people sure does restrict the freedom of those other people.
So, if Andy Raymond really wants to be consistent in his views, I think he and his fellow gun-nuts should start defending the rights of pedophiles too. Heck, why not sell guns and child porn in the same stores?
Or would that make the parallels somewhat too awkwardly obvious?
I think their resistance is more about that loophole that allows “private” sellers to buy and sell guns without background checks and other requirements that are demanded from shops and businesses.
So according to these people, being allowed to buy any gun you want is a freedom everybody should have, but being allowed to sell safer guns isn’t. Got it.
Disclaimer: I only like Nerf guns.*
The tragic reasons for having this kind of product is all too common. At the DailyKos website there is a regular contributor, David Waldman, who publishes a weekly list of GunFail incidents in the US. He has been doing this since the Sandy Hook massacre, and last week was
GunFail-LXVIII
In his weekly list of the reported incidents are quite comprehensive, and include commentary at the beginning to summarize the week. One of those summaries is to list the ages of the victims who were kids. Last week, for example:
Having read these each week, and reading each case, just shows that allowing dangerous things around the house is usually a bad thing. With tragic consequences. I suggest anyone who doubts that guns should be regulated or banned, should read this list instead of just theorizing that only good, responsible people own and use guns for good and responsible outcomes.
* Not strictly true, but the real things are just too dangerous to have around the house for fun. Find another hobby.
“…guns should be regulated or banned…”
You’ll have a hard time convincing the Swiss, Fins, Swedes, Canadians, etc of this…
There are also websites now that list how the owners of guns used them to protect the lives of their families and property successfully.
Every child injured or killed by a gun is a tragedy, but the fact is that there are hundreds of millions of guns in the U.S., and almost none of them are involved in anything untoward over their entire lifespan. Statistically speaking, guns are very safe.
Statistically speaking, guns are very safe.
Statistically speaking, so is measles.
The fact that many people successfully protect themselves with guns only goes to show that a complete ban on guns would be unwise. In the United States, no one could even come close to describing a plausible way to implement this even if it were a good idea.
But, being statistically safe doesn’t say we shouldn’t do more to make them safer (and have less shootings) than it does to say cars are statistically safe so we shouldn’t make them safer or improve our infrastructure and increase driver training and licensing requirements to reduce the number of deaths.
I think there’s a very close parallel between driving and guns with regard to Government control, licensing and training; the fact that the United States is behind in deaths and injuries on both fronts (compared to other Western countries) should come as no surprise; we do very little to address either issue.
The fact that many people successfully protect themselves with guns only goes to show that a complete ban on guns would be unwise.
Frankly: yawn.
Not sure what you mean by quoting that snippet of what I wrote.
Bad analogy…
Bad analogy…
You think? Measles is avoidable if you can establish herd immunity. Same with guns . . .
Herd immunity!? My god…Hey, I’m not an American so, you know, maybe I just don’t get it…
Herd immunity!? My god…Hey, I’m not an American so, you know, maybe I just don’t get it…
Sorry: you do understand the immunological concept of herd immunity, don’t you?
“The National Rifle Association, which is deeply suspicious of smart…” would qualify as a succinct synopsis of this story.
We’re through the freaking looking glass when the NRA is saying “don’t sell these new guns!” and a gun-store owner is being threatened with death, and his store with arson, by gun-nuts.
The NRA barely even have to bother saying anything anymore. Their years of propaganda (all in the service of the gun manufacturers that underwrite them) have resulted in a sub-culture of gun-freaks who’ll actually threaten to kill their own in response to anything, however innocuous, intended to increase gun safety. This tech would prevent someone using their own weapon against them, yet there they are, threatening to kill a man who wants to sell it.
Ironically, the more insane the gun-nuts get about regulation the more drastic action may be required in the future to enforce any new regulations. The US govt’s missed its chance to enact meaningful gun control legislation time and again and each time that’s happened the gun lobby has capitalised and grown bolder and more extreme. It wouldn’t surprise me if successive administrations have just thrown up their hands and accepted the fact that people are just going to kill each other, and themselves, intentionally and by accident, and there’s nothing they can do about it because the NRA & wider gun lobby has fostered and nurtured a sub-culture of raving extremists who will literally do anything to prevent regulation of any kind.
At least the gun store owner has guns too so he can defend himself against the NRA, you know in the style of the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Hard to tell which is which here but then again there is that saying, shoot ’em all & let god sort it out. 🙂
Well, it wouldn’t be much of a worry if all the gun freaks just shot each other. But unfortunately they tend to shoot the rest of us too.
Ha! I do wonder if the store owner can appreciate the irony of the situation as he cowers in his sleeping bag, his fully-loaded SPAS-12/AR-15/BFG next to him, ready to defend himself against the very sort of armed maniac he sells guns to people to defend themselves against.
The image is pretty funny…esp the sleeping bag part.
I wonder if flak jackets are comfortable to sleep in?
No. There’s nothing you can do comfortably in a flak jacket. Maybe sleep in a kevlar vest…..or an armour-plated sleeping bag. But these crazies shoot at the head anyway (something they learned from zombie movies I think)
I suppose if you don’t kill with the first shot your target can still shoot back – why, I’m sure it’s what they themselves do in their awesome gun-dreams when they’re protecting their families from space-commies.
Godless, liberal, gay space commies! 🇨🇳
They must really hate Star Trek.
😀
Well said!
I find it hilarious that the hardcore gun cranks talk as though unrestricted ownership of handguns, rifles, shotguns, etc. would enable them to defend themselves against an unruly government. Really? A handgun-based rebellion against mechanized weapons, guided missiles, modern anti-personnel devices, jet fighters, helicopters, tanks, …
I saw Pierce Morgan make this point to a gun nit after Sandy Hook happened. He posed the question as to whether the intent of the 2nd Amendment was to let us own tanks.
The lady dodged the question relentlessly and finally admitted that yes, we should be permitted to own tanks if we desire.
Ironically, the Founding Fathers were dead set against a standing army in the first place, because they were terrified that it would be used against the people. Hence, the use of citizen militias, who’s ownership of their guns was Constitutionally protected.
That said, large ordinance was not kept by individuals, but was locked up in community armories.
That’s the thing – the US government overspends on war-tech so ridiculously that it’d be trivial for them to take out a homegrown rebellion. What’s more, with the years of illegal surveillance of literally everybody, they’d probably know a rebellion was going to happen before most of the rebels did.
The Iraqi insurgents were pretty effective at using low cost, off the shelf supplies to cause problems for a larger,better funded and better equiped government.
Well a *truly* smart gun would detect any movement in the vicinity by radar or something similar, assess by some smart technological means which was the biggest threat to life and public safety, and aim and fire itself, all without its owner needing to take any action. Of course that might result in a lot of smart guns immediately shooting their owners, especially if said owners were typical NRA members… what’s the downside? 😉
I think they covered that story line in Robocop. 😉
*Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!*
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I just realized the ironic contrast of the Terminator saying “come with me if you want to live”.
To be fair, I think Kyle Reese was the first to use that line in the franchise. I assumed it was programmed into Terminators used by the resistance as a kind of password.
But even still, you have a machine designed to be human with the purpose of killing humans actually saving or protecting people and you have a person designed to be a machine with the purpose of saving or protecting people becoming a killer of people (at least the more glitchy units).
It seems to appeal to our modern fear of identity loss and anxiety of not being able to trust our senses. Zombie fiction appeals to the same fears.
I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to the contrast between Robocop, designed to serve and protect, threatening to kill, and and the terminator, designed to kill, offering to save lives.
In the past year or so, there have been a lot of documented incidents where organized gun owners have been brandishing their weapons openly to intimidate public forums, voting precincts, etc.
We have Cliven Bundy and his thugs going around and threatening not just agents of the government but private citizens by brandishing weapons, pointing them at folks, setting up roadblocks, threatening violence and death, and then crowing about their patriotism.
We are witnessing a militarization of right-wing zealots, both political and religious. Meanwhile, we are witnessing a militarization of police departments and a ratcheting up of the violence of their responses and tactics.
Not a good time to be a gentle liberal in the U.S.
“safety-equipped guns” – I object to this part of the title. This “smart gun” is not safe and has no “safety equipment” the electronics are a
“turn off” switch and has nothing to do with making the gun safer. In fact this gun has no published data indicating that it has even passes the most basic drop safety test.
The gun is not suitable for any role where self defense or home defense is a component. So, this is probably the most un-safe gun ever imported into the US.
Reblogged this on The Road.
Obviously the death threats are wrong and disturbing, and the NRA’s opposition to a type of gun being sold is ironic. But the opposition makes sense: there are largely two opinions on this issue, people who would not buy these guns because of reliability concerns and think they’re a bad idea, and people who would not buy these guns because they don’t want to own guns and think they’re a good idea. Therefore, the only real issue is people in the second group trying to force legislation on people in the first group.
Chris Hayes, on his MSNBC show “All In”, discussed this extensively this past week. (http://www.msnbc.com/all)
It is difficult to watch gun discussions in the US, unfortunately, because they are so completely irrational & depressing.
Ok, I gave this a shot (no pun intended) and I’m even more depressed. This guy’s show is about as hard hitting as Oprah. Now, my sample size is small but if this is a good example of Liberal-America’s level of discussion then I think I understand a big part of the problem. It’s sort of like what I see on WEIT on this topic. We have charactures of gun owners as crazed lunatics…we have some genius equating the right to own guns with the right to rape kids or something like that…
I have to say it – It’s embarrassing. And I’m a Liberal! I’m a Canadian Liberal so that pretty much makes me pinko commie when viewed through an American lense…
If you haven’t seen it go to Sam Harris’ site and read his article The Riddle of the Gun. He was absolutely trashed for his views by the crowd who thinks a feasible solution is to simply rid the country of guns altogether.
I remember the article and I remember some of the reactions. I occupy a lot of the same territory as Sam with respect to the subject of gun ownership. Like him, I cringe when I hear some of the stuff that comes from both of the extreme ends on the debate.
There is a large amount of insanity on both sides, largely because it seems the positions are “No guns!” vs. “Any gun anyone wants!”
Sam Harris compares gun training to training to fly a plane. I’ve long questioned why the large majority of people have no problem being licensed to drive a car, but not to own a gun. Why would you want to own a device that can kill yourselves and others and not demonstrate competence in using it?
In terms of freedom, the Government could do a lot of damage restricting our ability to use vehicles too if we’re going to get into the hypothetical scenario where the Government is for some reason turning into some kind of totalitarian regime. People can have all the guns they want, if the military were to shut down oil ports and prevent people from traveling, that could quite possibly be just as detrimental as attempting to confiscate guns (and much easier to do).
We have charactures of gun owners as crazed lunatics
We have people who can spell “caricatures”!
The point of the ‘safety’ on a firearm is to give a tiny layer of protection against an accidental discharge. It is a simple mechanical interrupt but still has a chance to fail. These electronic systems are far more complicated, very few people know how reliable they are, and yet it is being pushed as the ‘next big thing.’ My concern about ‘smart guns’ is that people are going to treat it as a fancied up safety and be just as or even more reckless and irresponsible about storing their firearms. ‘It will only go off if its in my hand’ so they store it loaded, round in chamber, and hammer cocked. The number of ‘accidental discharges’ that happen and continuous loss of life should be testament to the fact that people are doing incredibly stupid things with their weapons.
As far as the NRA, I am a gun owner and those people scare the piss out of me. Death threats, waving guns about in public, and the appearance of wanting unrestrained gun use is insanity and criminal.
Canadian Conservatives are commies compared to American Democrats even ;). I’ve voted Green before. Imagine how look!
Oops, this was supposed to be in reply to Stuart A Milc above.