I was assuming a bracelet which the owner always wears on their shooting wrist, which contains an RFID tag, and a gun which requires that the tag be within X limited distance in order to fire. That could be made quite reliable, if used properly.
Yes.
But, some systems are touting fingerprint recognition, which is pretty iffy in my book.
The problem with bracelet (or ring) systems is that they are not necessarily ambidextrous, which is a big deal for police officers.
Bracelets or rings can be lost. It needs to be implanted, per the link in my OP. For ambidexterity, obviously, both hands need an implant.
IMO, it would not do enough good to justify the cost.
Get fire arms away from bad guys?
Keep kids from shooting your gun? Mine are grown & gone.
You can’t keep your weapons away from your kids?
You can’t keep your kids away from weapons?
Very old guns still use the same ammo and do not have this safety feature? Gonna collect them all and only allow the new ones to be sold?
I do not see any advantage for general public use.
If it will help the police, they need to find the funding to buy this safety feature for them.
I would think that if any one incident happens where this safety feature is the cause of an LEO’ death, the whole idea will have a hard time getting wide use from it.
I need this to keep a thief from getting hurt?
Right, I don’t know much (anything) about guns, but I know a bit about electronic and software reliability. So, to answer the OPs question – is it possible, I believe yes. Is it cheap? Hell no. Is it worth it – that’s a different question.
If there was a will to do so there would be a way to make a system that’s sufficiently reliable to pass the level mentioned up thread. It would still fail occasionally, and yes it’s entirely possible there’d be no good way to clear a fail in the field, but that level of failures could be made pretty small. Other electronic and software system have that level of failure proofing – i.e. health systems and rockets.
It would probably mean a redundant authentication system so maybe RFID falling back to fingerprint or keycode. It would mean a stupid amount of development and test. But it is possible.
Personally I’d avoid RFID – I’d be concerned about the distance limits and a lot of them are very easily spoofed. So you might be looking at something more complex running off your phone.
A different option would be a gun you could easily remotely disarm, easier to do and make reliable. But a much harder sell.
Either way, I just don’t think the market is there. If there’s a market, and people are prepared to pay the premium, then it’s possible.
I would love if there was a way that only I could fire my gun. Weapon retention is an important part of defense tactics training in law enforcement and it would be a great enhancer. But with that said everything I’ve seen so far is not reliable enough to bet my life on.
Also, I vehemently oppose laws that make such technology and/or implementation mandatory. It’s one thing for it to be reliable and available, it’s another to be forced to use it. Especially since the systems currently available are not reliable.
From the previously posted Wiki article:
***The Magna-Trigger system for K- through N-frame size Smith and Wesson revolvers prevents the trigger from returning far enough to fire. It was developed by Joe Davis in 1975, and has proven reliable. This system will work ambidextrously, provided the magnetic rings used are worn on both hands.[10]
The Magloc conversion kit for 1911A1 pistols works by preventing the handgun from firing unless a magnetic ring worn by the user repels the magnetic blocking device installed inside the grip.[11] Once the system is activated using the matching magnetic ring, the owner can switch the over-ride switch to the on position and allow anyone to fire the pistol.***
I remember these systems, but never knew anyone that had them. Were they reliable?
Wouldn’t it have to depend on the goals of the system?
There’s a big difference between making a handgun that only I can fire at the range, and a handgun that’s totally secure from any and all depredations.
How about a gun that I am the only one in the house that can fire (i.e - my kids can’t get hold of it and play). But that can still be (relatively) easy to override by replacement of a chip (ala car alarms that can be reprogrammed)
The idea of an RFID chip into a ring sounds easy and dooable - coupled to maybe a mobile GPS device inserted into the stock to track stolen guns?
Would it be perfect? Probably not - as mentioned above - would the cost / benefit be worth it? That would depend on the rate of deaths for failure compared to the accidental deaths from kids playing with guns.
And in the case of police - it would seem to be worthwhile - get overpowered during a scuffle, at least the gun can’t be used against you.
Reliability is quite feasible, but as noted costs. My usual example of reliability is car air bags. Everyday you drive with an explosive charge sitting right in front of you, one that is controlled by a complex electronic system. Worldwide there are hundreds of millions of these systems. The actual manufacturing cost is now tiny. (Which isn’t the same as the price they charge to replace.)
So, an almost totally reliable mass produced system of the nature needed to safe a weapon. Quite feasible. But the development costs and tooling to manufacture it, in quantity, with the needed reliability may be enormous. The investment in air bags is probably into the billions worldwide.
The 99.9% figure is really a straw man. It is picked out of the air to sound like a suggested reliability, and then dismissed as not good enough. If I were designing a system I would consider 99.9% as a proof of concept number - if I could get my first prototype to work that well I would consider the design worthy of continued development. Hardly a marketable design. One might not achieve airbag like reliability, but there no reason why it should not be in a similar ballpark.
As noted earlier - you need to be more clear about what reliability means as well. It is interesting that the objections to the idea seem to all be failures that prevent firing by the owner, and not failures that allow firing by someone not authorised. But you need to distinguish between one time failures and non-recoverable failures.
Consider the trade-off over recognition failures:
Chance of not firing for owner Chance of firing for non-owner
1. one in 10,000 one in 1,000,000
2. one in 100,000 one in 100,000
3. one in 1,000,000 one in 10,000
What would your choice be? How about if it were configurable?
Personally, if I were in the market for a gun, I would consider a personalised lock system as a major selling point and it would almost certainly sway my choice in favour of a gun with one.
I, on different occasions, carry pistols made by Ruger, Smith & Wesson and CZ. Would I have one bracelet, ring or implant that would work for my three specific pistols from three different brands, yet not work on any other handguns I might pick up? Just think of the logistic and cost considerations.
Others carry/use guns made by Kimber, Glock, Sig Sauer, Beretta, Taurus, etc., etc., made in more than a half dozen countries around the world. It is neither reasonable nor likely that a cost-effective and reliable system will be devised that works as envisioned by “smart gun” proponents.
What about passing on my possessions to my children? If it were a ring or bracelet, I would need to keep track of it and include appropriate ones matched to specific firearms. If it were an implantable device, just think of the difficulties.
Given that current guns have a 100% failure rate on allowing unauthorized firings, any significant decrease in that failure rate is clearly considered acceptable.
Respectively disagree.
That is, “At any cost thinking.”
And that may cost me more than I can afford so I will not …
I think that any “smart gun” devices need to be field tested by the Secret Service, FBI, and all other government agencies before becoming available to civilians.
Where’s the market for these smart guns? Will you buy one or more high-quality smart guns? I know several people who would never buy a firearm but insist that I buy some high-tech smart gun. If they want to support a smart firearm manufacture by purchasing one, I’m all for it.
However, I won’t buy a firearm that requires I wear a ring, bracelet, or chip. Especially a chip.
No market = no sales = no profit = no high-tech smart guns flooding the marketplace. IMHO, of course.
A simple mechanical system (e.g. luggage code, or maybe lock/key where key is a small protrusion from a ring worn by owner, or something) could prevent some number of unwanted shootings, although there are clearly drawbacks.
And yet, it hasn’t been done. That’s an indication that there is no market for it, or it’s not possible.
Here’s my criteria for *minimum *requirements:
[ul]
[li]Low failure rate: less than 1 failure in 100,000 attempts.[/li][li]No external devices to wear, carry, or implant[/li][li]No balance changes on the weapon[/li][li]No significantly added cost ~5% max.[/li][li]Support multiple users[/li][li]Non-mandatory[/li][li]Easy for user to fix if there is a failure[/li][li]Wide adoption by police[/li][/ul]
This may well be part of the problem -
It’s difficult for me to understand why, for self defence alone, you would need to carry so many different guns. For range or sport shooting I think its a big difference.
Some sort of interlock is, in my mind, a priority for “self defence” guns - why would it be so difficult that you keep one handgun accessible for self defence - with just such a device, and the rest are locked up?
As to multiple guns with one passcode - it doesn’t seem to be insurmountable - already I can have one bluetooth headset be used with two different phones - so while it might require co-operation, I think it can be done if the will is there.
It isn’t a bad list, although “non-mandatory” isn’t a technical specification, but rather a political one, so isn’t useful. “Wide adoption by the police” isn’t really technical, but is a useful test of success of the design.
There is little doubt that the existing solutions are not particularly good. Rings, bracelets and the like are a very poor way of doing things. Chip implants are not going to be well accepted, although they are currently about the only way of getting the other requirements with COTS technology.
5% price is hard to say, 5% of cheap junk is not 5% of a high quality model. You would be better off defining dollar amount. For initial marketing of a system that meets the specs, expect a pretty stiff price, but one that would, like most technology, drop significantly. Uptake by law enforcement would likely be the most useful driver here. I don’t know the stats for LEOs shot with their own weapon, but I suspect that it may be enough to make such a system popular in some forces. (I know that over here, where guns are a rarity, police patrolling some areas deliberately wear unloaded guns, as the risk to them from their own weapon is greater than all the other threats. Clearly this isn’t optimal.)
I haven’t used the Magloc, but the Magna-Trigger was an unreliable system that was tested by a handful of law enforcement agencies, none of which adopted it. It was only suited to S&W revolvers and required individual placement in order for the ring to reliably disengage the lock.
There are two different and competing measurements of reliability to be considered here; the reliability of the weapon functioning (positive ARM) when used by the legitimate operator, and the reliability of the weapon not functioning when used by a non-legitimate operator (positive SAFE). You would desire any significant improvement in the latter without impacting the former, especially since the former (in a combat scenario) is vital for defensive use, while the latter concern can be partially mitigated by training, retention holsters, and other methods to prevent loss of weapon.
There are plenty of safety mechanisms to prevent unintended discharge, and many states require including a trigger lock with a firearm.
It is important to understand that a firearm is an inherently hazardous device by design. In order for the device to not pose an unintentional hazard the operator must be trained and disciplined to use it in a controlled, deliberate fashion. No safety device or mechanism will replace good training and discipline on the part of the operator.
Stranger
probably already stated. The failure you need to worry about is the one where the gun can be fired without the owner firing it. A failure to fire when the owner is using it is only important when there is no choice but to use a gun to defend oneself. Usually, the fact that you are holding a gun is enough to convince an intruder to run away, even if they are carrying.
Since homes with usable guns are far less safe by statistical reports than ones with no weapon, having a gun that fails to fire 100% of the time would logically be far safer than having one that fires, reliably, whenever you, or your kid, or your spouse…aims it at you and pulls the trigger.
This. Supposedly there are a smaller number of actual incidents where an intruder was shot than incidents where an intruder or an unauthorized party got ahold of a firearm and used it against the owner. As I recall, the ratio is hugely skewed.