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Comment by oakhaven | Hacker News Reader

IMO it's more important to make sure that a firearm is shot by whoever's authorized to do so, rather than making it convenient to shoot them per se.

It might not apply for an average american shopping guns in Walmart, but hopefully it will be important for defense forces, police, etc.

edit - typo

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Reliability is a huge, huge concern with guns. That's why a weapon like an AK-47 is so popular. It shoots if it's muddy, sandy, you name it.

A failed fingerprint recognition (even due to the conditions listed above) when you intend to use a gun means you're probably dead.

Edit: I listed wet as a condition an AK would fire under, but I don't believe that's accurate. The original point is still true though, the AK is touted for it's reliability.

Ultimately, when it comes to firearms, you really don't want a lot of failure modes. This piece of technology adds way to many. Something I didn't see in the article, but how is this device getting power? What happens if my battery dies?

Most people manage to keep their phones/laptops charged. A smart gun should have less ongoing drain and surely you could hook it up to charge in your gun safe. Never going to happen if people start issuing death threats to anyone trying to market one, though.

Meanwhile, more attention to the "shoots curious kids" failure mode seems appropriate.

> more attention to the "shoots curious kids" failure mode seems appropriate

This is a solved problem. The negligent parents who store guns in the open without securing them (and who don't teach their kids to be safe with guns) are abhorrent. But they're also not likely to be buying "smart guns."

The laws that charge adults with negligence for kids having access to their guns are almost never enforced.

When those start being enforced, then we can examine whether it's a solved problem.

I don't mean it's solved in that it never happens. I mean it's solved in that a solution is available to those willing to bother.

> : I listed wet as a condition an AK would fire under

An AK-type will actually fire whilst a metre or so underwater... and cycle too.

It's less a matter of convenience than reliability. Inserting electronics into the cycle of operations adds additional points of failure, and purely mechanical devices are not vulnerable to firmware bugs or electromagnetic interference.

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