And we'll probably have many years of non-Smart-Gun type accidents...eg, Drunk guy at party put gun to his head and blew his own brains out, assuming it was a smart gun, or, trailer park momma gives gun to toddler assuming its a "safe" smart gun. -TD

From: "Trei, Peter" To: "John Kelsey" , "R.A. Hettinga" , , Subject: RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:04:21 -0500

John Kelsey

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Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG

I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a gun that has a 1% chance of refusing to fire when you *really need it* might not be worth all that much. Similarly, one that you can't get to work if you've got a band-aid on your finger, or a cut on your hand, or whatever, loses a lot of its value. On the other hand, a gun that can't be made to go off by your toddler is a pretty huge win, assuming you're willing to trust the technology, but a 90% accuracy level sounds to me like 10% of the time, your three year old can, in fact, cause the thing to go off. That's not worth much, but maybe they'll get it better. And the "suspect struggles with cop, gets gun, and shoots cop" problem would definitely be helped by a guy that wouldn't go off for 90% of attackers.

--John

A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable.

In New Jersey, there is some kind of legislation in place to restrict sales to 'smart guns', once they exist. Other types would be banned. (Actually, getting a carry permit in NJ is already almost impossible, unless you're politically connected.)

This particular model seems to rely on pressure sensors on the grip. This bothers me - under the stress of a gunfight, you're likely to have a somewhat different pattern than during the enrollment process.

Many 'smart guns' also have big problems with issues which arise in real life gun fights - shooting from awkward positions behind cover, one-handed vs two-handed, weak hand (righthander using left hand, and vice versa, which can happen if dictated by cover or injury), point vs sighted shooting, and passing a gun to a disarmed partner.

There are other systems which have been proposed; magnetic or RFID rings, fingerprint sensors, etc.

The one thing that seems to be common to all of the 'smart gun' designs is that they are conceived by people with little experience in how guns are actually used.

To look at a particularly ludicrous example, try http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm

For a gun to work, it is just as important that it fires when it should, as that it does not fire when it shouldn't. A safety system which delays firing by even half a second, or which introduces a significant false rejection rate (and 1% is way over the line), is a positive hazard.

When the police switch to smart guns, and have used them successfully for some time (say, a year at least) without problems, I'll beleive them ready for prime time.

Peter Trei

On 2005-01-10T15:42:47-0500, Tyler Durden wrote:

And we'll probably have many years of non-Smart-Gun type accidents...eg, Drunk guy at party put gun to his head and blew his own brains out, assuming it was a smart gun, or, trailer park momma gives gun to toddler assuming its a "safe" smart gun.

Some gun "accidents" are suicides reported as such to avoid embarrassment to the family. Similarly, I think a few of the gun "accidents" involving real "children", which are extremely rare to begin with, go like this... "Son, why don't you take this gun and pretend to go shoot daddy? It's not loaded." Or, "Son, why don't you take the gun, put it to your head, and pull the trigger? It's not loaded." I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? -- "War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free." -Heraclitus 53