In short, such a device is designed for civilian use, not police use?
I have no idea who or what it’s designed for. I only know that a civilian insisting on only having features that cops would use doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. For example, do Kearsen and **artemis **refuse to buy any car that isn’t a Crown Vic?
There are two types of undesired shootings that a smart gun addresses:
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Someone other than the gun owner picks up the gun and shoots it.
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During a violent encounter, the bad guy manages to wrest the gun away from the good guy and shoots the good guy with his own gun.
Shooting #1 can be all but prevented by storing the firearm in a decent gun safe when it is not in use, which is why cops and responsible gun owners aren’t that concerned about it. Shooting #2, on the other hand, is of EXTREME importance to cops, as it’s one of the biggest risks they face in their job. Gun owners who plan on using their firearms for protection care about that just as much as the cops do, and for the same reason. Gun owners who just shoot recreationally, on the other hand, don’t need to care about Shooting #2 at all.
When the system is ready to deal with both shooting scenarios, I’ll be interested in it. I’ll know it has reached that level of reliability when the cops, who are far more threatened by Shooting #2 than I am, adopt it. But I’m not willing to decrease the reliability of my gun in an emergency in order to protect Mr. McStupid GunOwner, any more than I’d be willing to have a breathalyzer installed in my car that occasionally malfunctions and prevents the vehicle from being started just to decrease the frequency of drunk driving by Mr. LoveMyBooze. I don’t drink, and I’m not careless with firearms, and there are limits to how much I’m willing to bend to accommodate those who are irresponsible with either.
People who need safety systems to prevent firearms accidents shouldn’t be owning guns. Safety systems fail. Good habits instilled by proper training don’t.
Your misimpression is that it’s a feature only cops would use. Actually, it’s a feature anyone who uses guns defensively (instead of rereationally) would use.
There are no features found on police firearms that are not useful to civilians as well.
I know that I would want what cops use based on the fact that if they are satisfied with the performance of the smart gun, and its reliability under pressure, I would be too. I’m not sure what additional “features” specific to cops that you are speaking of.
I agree with the rest of your post, but not this part.
I’m a computer programmer by trade. I know that an automated process is going to do the exact same thing every time, as long as there is not an error. Humans will, (not can or might, will) make errors, even on systems they are very experienced with. ‘Good Habits’ sounds nice until the one time you forget, or get distracted, or whatever, and then it’s just another human mistake.
I don’t think the above is a good argument for a shoddy smart-gun situation, btw. I just take issue with the idea that ‘good habits’ is enough to prevent all accidents.
Please actually read and understand my posts before responding.
There are no features “specific” to cops. I never mentioned features specific to cops. I did mention a feature on guns–biometric safety–that cops would not use. And I did mention some folks, yourself included, have argued that they would not use biometric safeties because cops will not use them. Only police-approved technologies are good enough for them.
But that standard doesn’t make sense. Cops have a completely different set of considerations when choosing weapons and equipment. They are far, far more likely to ever need to fire their weapon in self-defense than is a civilian–and that means that the 1% failure rate presumed by this thread has a far, far more dangerous impact on police than on civilians. Simultaneously, cops have far different training than civilians; they are less likely to leave their weapon in a place where it could be accidentally fired. These different standards mean that a device, such as biometric safety, could be lifesaving when introduced to the civilian population, yet extremely costly when implemented across a police force.
That’s true, but when you look at a lot of gun “accidents” you discover the person never had any good habits to forget/break in the first place. Their “accident” was pretty much destined to happen, because they were habitually sloppy. That’s a big part of the problem.
No, they actually do not. Anyone who thinks they may one day need to use their gun defensively has the same interest: that gun, on that day, needs to be 100% reliable. And cops would be VERY interested in a reliable smart gun technology, as they face a risk no civilian does: the risk that a perp they are subduing will manage to get the gun out of the cop’s holster and shoot him with it. If smart gun technology ever gets good, cops will be all over it.
Would you accept a new safety feature on your car that introduced a 1% chance of your brakes suddenly failing? You’re not a professional driver, so why does you car need to meet the same standard as theirs?
Bullshit analogy, because I use my breaks every day and a civilian will need to defend themselves from violent crime once or twice in a lifetime (if at all). And I have no idea what 1% means. 1% per brake use? Per year? Per the lifetime of the car?
But that’s not the biggest problem with your analogy. See, you haven’t told me what the safety feature does. It’s hard to imagine a safety feature so revolutionary that it could make up for the risks of spontaneous brake failure. But if this safety feature were miraculous in its ability to protect me and my passengers, to the point where the statistical life expectancy of my and my family is increased by purchasing it, then I would purchase it–and I wouldn’t let a 1% worst-case scenario scare me off.
No, not a bullshit analogy at all. We look at catastrophic failures rather differently than non-catastrophic ones. My car’s air conditioner not starting is frustrating, but a brake failure is potentially lethal. Likewise, my gun not firing when I pull the trigger is potentially lethal. It’s one thing to put up with that in a toy, another to have that happen with a gun you may someday trust your life to.
1% per brake use, same as for firing the gun. With the current smart gun technology, the gun fails to fire about one time out of a hundred.
And that’s what’s going to trip up your attempts to force smart gun technology onto defensive gun owners. You’re going to have a hard time coming up with that statistic. Incidents of guns being defensively are rare. Incidents of guns turned onto their owners are also rare. So are incidents of guns being used by unauthorized users - and those can already largely be stopped by use of gun safes and trigger locks. Good luck showing that a smart gun (current technology version) adds enough increased safety to an already responsible gun owner’s life to offset that big failure rate.
Me, I’ll stick with what I have until the failure rate for the technology gets much, much lower. The risk of an unauthorized user accessing my gun are much easier to manage than the risk that it jams on me just when I need it most.
Okay. So 1% per brake use means my brakes will fail multiple times/day. 1% failure rate of your gun means you will fail to defend yourself once every few centuries.
See why this is a bad comparison?
If you read the stats from earlier in the thread, you’d see 850 accidental shooting deaths/year. If biometrics can prevent even 25% of those, then we save 200+ lives/year.
At 1% failure rate, we therefore need 20,000 shootings that prevented deaths every year. This statistic is hard to come by; most DGU statistics don’t differentiate between muggins and murder, nor do they distinguish between brandishing and firing. but we DO know that the number of shoot deaths classified as “self-defense” is in the low hundreds every year, which strongly suggests that we’ll end up WAY short of the 20,000 we need.
I think opposition to virtually any kind of research is foolish – “security by obscurity.”
Better to know, and then decide based on the best available information.
But I formed the impression that the boycott mentioned above was the result of many factors, not simply smart gun research.
No, it doesn’t. You acknowledge those numbers don’t purport to capture a brandishing that prevents a death – on what basis do you then try to quantify the number?
I said if cops use smart gun technology I would use it too. That is my standard. I really don’t care how you want to explain that my standards are not acceptable.
Brandishing to prevent a death is irrelevant because it doesn’t matter if the biometrics succeed or fail–you will be safe regardless of the 1% failure rate. Unless the guns are designed with an LED that only turns on when the safety is disabled or something equally asinine, how would the person looking down your barrel know that the scanner failed to recognize the wielder?
If you’re not interested in making rational decisions, and you’re not interested in having a rational debate, why are you on these forums at all?
You are arguing that my standards, or my beliefs are wrong. Do you really expect to change my mind by attempting to tell me why I am wrong? My Gun safety begins and ends with me. The best way to avoid accidental shootings is to insure my guns are not accessible by the wrong people and when in use, follow the common rules of gun safety.
I was asked what it would take for me to implement smart gun technology into my own collection. I stated my standards for same. You are now trying to tell me that I am wrong. I can assure you that I am not. I’m doing just fine without it today.
Yes. That’s what debate IS.
I didn’t realize that was what we were doing around here when in comes to gun control. It’s closer to shouting from a mountain top and then plugging one’s ears so as not to hear the response.
My bad.