Saw THIS on the news today and was stunned. They showed an entrepreneur who has an internet connected gun you can shoot targets with. He plans on setting it up to shoot game on his ranch. I can’t imagine a production version of this technology on sale for the obvious terrorist reasons.
The debate, is it possible to stop the production of this technology?
What terroristic reasons? This technology mounts a weapon on a clumsy motorized platform that allows it to be turned remotely. The tactical and practical capabilities are extremely limited. Homemade mines or trip-wire controlled guns are much more practical. What specifically are you worried about?
I heard about this an NPR a couple of weeks ago.
It will never happen.
I just heard about this on the news tonight, too. Seems like it should be illegal to fire a weapon in a remote manner like this. There is no telling what it might REALLY be aimed at.
Also, there´s no telling who really might have been manning it.
Nothing clumsy about a stick driven version of it. Ever watched a kid play a computer game? What worries me is a Radio Shack kit for all the Lee Harvey Oswalds of the world. Not that anyone would buy software like that.
It seems like the owner of the gun should be able to ensure that the gun’s area of fire will be well defined, e.g., by requiring all trajectories to be in a certain direction at a slight downward angle so the bullets land somewhere in a well defined area.
Given appropriate safety measures, why should this be illegal?
FTR, I think this is stupid, but I don’t think it should be illegal…
What? Didn’t you ever see Bruce Willis blow the shit out of Jack Black with that remote controled gun in The Jackel?
That’s just such an irrelevant concern. The practical obstacles to proper implementation of remotely-fired small arms at any level are enough to render it a non-issue. I’d be far more worried about truck bombs than joystick controlled 30-30’s. Should we ban remote-control airplanes because terrorists could buy them, strap bombs to their fuselages and dive bomb people with them? Should we ban Class IV laser kits because terrorists might assemble them, hide them in the bushes and blind passing drivers with them? Compared to hijacking jillion-ton airplanes and flying them into buildings or filling Ryder vans with diesel fuel and fertilizer, it isn’t an economical or practical method of killing people.
“We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said ‘If you just had a gun for that.’ A little light bulb went off in my head,” he said.
Am I the only one to be struck by the tortology of this…?
I don´t have my dictionary at hand, so I´ll pass on the “tortology” thing, but it really struck me as something quite sick:
-Look a beautiful animal on the wildernes!, I wish I could kill it for fun!" :smack:
Seems like it would run afoul of a whole host of firearm and hunting laws. For example, don’t you need a license to hunt, I don’t think their would be any way to ensure that the people controling the gun are liscensed. Their also wouldn’t be anyway to stop them from blasting away at animals outside of season, underage, etc.
I seriously doubt that this will happen. It conflicts with too many laws.
Given that we routinely use the internet for a great deal of activities that require authentication (e.g., buying something on Amazon, doing financial transactions, etc.) I don’t think it would be a stretch (in fact, as a programmer, I know it wouldn’t :)) to set up a “We’ll give you carefully controlled RC Rifle time after you send us the following documentation and we provide you with an account …”. And there’s nothing to keep someone from doing any of those things in person–the person who did it online would be just as guilty.
Although I wonder what the repercussions of the shooter being in a different state would be?
All these rules would be very nice, but is there any possible way to stop one person getting approved and just handing the controller to his felon/underage/unlicensed buddy? I seriously doubt it. You cannot control access to the firearm, I think that makes this whole idea suspect.
At least in person, if you get stopped by law enforcement, they can check all licenses and enquire about whether or not the illegal person went hunting.
Because there aren’t enough safety measures that can ensure it isn’t too dangerous to the general public, and there is not “right” to remotely shoot a firearm.
The title is misleading. It’s not for shooting game animals. They are intending to shoot imported deer and feral hogs. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me. Though similar technology in a deer stand would be great for severely disabled hunters. Haters of guns and hunting would probably piss and moan over that too.
:rolleyes:
Some people worry about the wierdest crap. First, between X.10, webcams, and 802.11, the technology to do this has been out for quite some time. Hasn’t exactly been a rash of remote shootings, has there? Second, why would you think that a kid will become some sort of assassin if he put together his Mighty Morphin Power Assassins kit? The same kid access to the same stuff that was used to blow up the fed building in Oklahoma, but we don’t seem to have a rash of bombings.
Non issue.
I’m not a hunter, but it seems to me that this thing removes basically everything that HUNTING is about - getting up at 4:00 am, putting on some camo and an orange vest, getting your buddies and some beer and guns, stalking some animal - and basically turns it into killing something from your couch.
I’m with Msmith, the idea of just logging on and shooting takes away a lot of what hunting is about. Rather than requiring people to have respect for a firearm (which by even holding one you must, unless you immedietly look down the wrong end of it). Being able to take an animal’s life by logging in just as easy as you do to get on AIM or the SDMB just doesn’t fit right. If you hunt you have to know about what you’re doing, about your gun, about the place you’re hunting, about how the animal lives, about EVERYTHING or you won’t get your shot. Waking up in the mid-morning and sitting in front of the computer in my boxers while taking down deer isn’t hunting… its not even sport.