At 12:04 PM 1/10/2005, Trei, Peter wrote:

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.

I'd rather not have to rely on a gun that's acting like typical Artificial Intelligence software - "Out of Virtual Memory - Garbage-Collecting - Back in a minute" - "Tea? You mean Leaves, boiled in water? That's a tough one!" - "Low on Entropy - please wave the gun around and pull the trigger a few times" Police have enough problems with situations where guns are too slow, such as a guy with a knife ten feet away, and ostensibly smart guns that aren't reliable are really bad. And slowly-responding guns just encourage cops to pull them out early and start shooting early just in case, which is the kind of thing most gun-grabbing liberals want to avoid. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart@pobox.com