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

[Bill Stewart]

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 at pobox.com