“Smart Gun” that uses biometrics to authenticate
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Not an issue if you're storing it properly. Even if you have biometrics it should still be stored properly to prevent theft.
"or an attacker overpowering you and shooting you with your own gun"
Gear is no replacement for training. Even if they can't shoot you with it, you have much larger problems if they can overpower and disarm you. It won't stop them from bludgeoning you to death with, etc.
"Also you don't have to worry about someone stealing the gun and committing crimes with it (maybe it can be hacked, but probably not by the typical home invader!)."
That's not really how criminal systems work. Usually your common criminals are selling the stuff they steal on the black market. You have specialized shops (organized crime) who buy stuff like this (guns, phones, computers, etc) and can hack it and resell it.
It's an interesting concept, but it will likely take a lot of testing. "Well-designed" is a matter of opinion, and not everyone shares that view.
Fun fact: you only get bludgeoned to death _because_ you own guns. In most of the civilized world, people do not get assaulted in their own home by thieves. Thieves see that you're awake, run away because handling the police is more trouble than it's worth, done.
Citations needed.
What distinguishes how intruders will react? When intruders are in your home, how do you know it is burglary versus home invasion, sexual assualt, kidnapping, etc. ?
>> In most of the civilized world, people do not get assaulted in their own home by thieves.
What defines "the civilized world"?
In many parts of South America and Central America criminals will kill victims and witnesses so that no one will be able to identify them or testify against them. How do you know what intruders will or will not do?
>> Thieves see that you're awake, run away because handling the police is more trouble than it's worth, done.
Depends on the intruders (how do you know they are thieves?), depends on the police, depends on the speed of police response.
If the intruders can stop you from calling the police and you are not a significant threat, why would they run away?
And soon enough, even your kids would learn how to hack it (if not before: kids really like figuring out stuff they are not supposed to do!).
I don't own a gun either (though I shot one in a shooting range twice), but if I was ever worried I'd need to defend myself with guns, I'd probably stockpile on live rounds instead of guns: in a case where people would need to rise to arms, I figure rounds will quickly become more valuable and could be easily exchanged for a gun with someone without any rounds.
If biometric-auth guns were pervasive yet hackable, petty criminals will likely have a way to easily sell them off to someone better equipped to hack them. I was mostly countering whether biometric auth would stop them feom being used for crimes after getting stolen.
How would a kid get the firearm? Are firearm owners/parents elsewhere so irresponsible that they leave firearms lying around unsecured?
Insane proposition IMO.
I know you're not arguing otherwise, but this never happens, and it's one of those annoying arguments that anti-gun people use to justify banning and confiscation.
"""Biofire is a Colorado company that has spent the last 5 years or so developing a biometrically authenticated pistol, using both fingerprint and facial recognition systems. The gun is currently in the prototype/pre-production phase, and they are planning to have production models available around the end of the year.
Obviously, there is a wide skepticism about this sort of technology in firearms, and I shared this skepticism when I first spoke with Biofire. The situations in which biometric ID systems could become a liability seem too numerous to count. What convinced me to give the pistol a closer look was Biofire's explicit focus on a particular target market where the technology fills a very real gap in current options: home defense for those with children or other people regularly in the household. For that situation, one must choose between an array of flawed options - trigger locks, rapid access (hopefully) safes, or keeping a gun separated from its ammunition. The idea of having a gun which can be left loaded and immediately accessible but only usable by a few specific individuals is an appealing one."""
"Complicated electronics" on a car are designed (usually) to make it safer. If those complicated electronics go wrong, it can cause injury or death.
"Complicated electronics" on this gun are designed to make it safer. If those complicated electronics go wrong, it can cause injury or death.
So if you won't use a gun because it has "complicated electronics" you shouldn't drive a modern car either.
Also, given my experience with fingerprint scanners on phones, where I'm not nearly as insistent that it actually do what I tell it to, WHEN I tell it to, this really doesn't seem like something that is likely ever to be particularly well done.
Seems the goal is "not shooting for other people," and if it happens to "shoot for the person its supposed to," icing on the cake.
He does note that a small portion of the gun enthusiasts population will hate it, but goes on to note why he thinks their fears are misplaced.
Also, its been stated a few times in this thread, but this platform isn't trying to be a gun for all things. Specifically it's a bedside gun, that stays loaded and out, that mitigates some of the risk of leaving it in that condition (kids, theft, etc.). It's competition is trigger locks, safes, lock boxes, and just hiding it somewhere.
I'm unconvinced the electronics are appropriately tamper proof, and will remain unconvinced until some real experts get their hands on it. Ian mentions that as well, and is looking forward to a real security audit by experts in that field.
All on all, seemed like a pretty reasonable take on everything.
There's also the concern that smart guns could be prohibitively expensive compared to regular guns for many people; especially if they already own a gun for concealed carry.
Residential homes with swimming pools have a higher mortality for children than residential homes with guns, and yet there does not exist the same sort of large scale highly funded push to ban residential swimming pools.
I mean, if the primary area of concern was safety, you'd save more children by banning swimming pools.
I don't see how.
There's no dichotomy that I am aware of; when responding to a "safety" argument, demonstrating the relative safety compared to activities considered "safe" is not a dichotomy.
I also don't see a strawman - I'm making no argument, which is a requirement for making a strawman argument. If I don't make an argument, I can't be attacking a strawman.
But in a discussion about swimming pool safety mechanisms I'm sure we would also see people giving their views on what they consider reasonable precaution for themselves.
We can worry about both things and give them both time is what I'm saying.
I've never seen a call to ban pools based on the mortality rate of children.
> We can worry about both things and give them both time is what I'm saying.
We can but we don't. We only see safety used as an argument for banning firearms, not as an argument for banning pools.
Now, I'm not making any argument one way or another regarding banning of firearms, what I am doing, and what I started this thread with, was to point out that everything is a trade-off.
We trade higher deaths for swimming pools that serve no purpose other than recreation. Trading fewer deaths for something that has non-recreational utility is not logically sound or consistent.
IOW, it only makes sense to someone already emotionall married to their argument.
It's not only the deaths we want to avoid but also the trauma.
I’m not even an enthusiast and I would never ever ever buy one of these as a self-defense firearm. It just doesn’t make any sense in terms of the risk you’re trying to mitigate by buying a gun.
Like if you need to use your gun, you probably need to in a hurry. What if you have grease or dirt on your hands when you need to scan your finger?
There's already bio-metric safes if one wants it, and you're almost always going to need a gun safe anyways if you own a firearm.
This is why a lot of people still use revolvers instead of automatics. Doesn't get much simpler.
"Homeowner stops break-in" is exceedingly rare as to be statistically insignificant, and it really needs to stop being cited by everyone as a reason for everything from permissive gun legislation to arguments against technologies like this.
Incorrect. You have any stats to back that up?
Like even in that scenario, you would still not want your child encountering the gun at all for fear of the other kind of malfunction (accidental “approval”), as well as child endangerment, as well as “gun == safe” association, etc etc.
So it will still have to be in a safe, and it will still have to be one you think is secure, so the biometric component is strictly more time & more points of failure.
Ie lets say the biometrics fail. Well if i want a safe with fast access, maybe i have biometrics on that and it also fails. A child looking for a gun has it in both scenarios, but there is a slight delay between auth failure and weapon access.
It's just a difficult slope of competing priorities. On one hand you want fast access. On the otherhand you want fail-proof child-proof safety. It's really difficult to get both, no matter what the solution.
I'm kinda glad i'm not having kids because i can imagine this is not a fun decision to make. I don't envy those who have to make it.
*safety is in quotes because certain mechanisms don't necessarily improve safety assuming proper handling. A holstered gun without a safety catch or grip safety isn't really any more dangerous. If you operate under the idea that you are only going to draw a gun if you need it to defend yourself from a deadly threat then the "safety" is redundant and makes it more likely you will make a mistake.
Think of something else that might save your life, say, an epi-pen when you're deathly allergic to something. Now, you obviously don't want your kids fooling around with it, possibly accidentally injecting themselves and coming to harm.
Some company builds a complicated piece of technology using "biometric scans" that requires a fully-charged battery in order to work at all. Are you going to buy one of these when you're basically going to die if you can't get to the epi-pen in a hurry, just gambling that you'll never forget to charge the battery, and never need it when your fingers and/or the sensor have schmutz on them?
No. You aren't.
Also a minor nit: The gun apparently uses an enrollment APP ! Like I want to be dependent on Google or Apple to let me download an app to enable my gun. Are you kidding?
How does the owner set it up (in my case, it's not a gun) without a nice user interface on the device?
Adding a UI quadruples the BOM cost and doubles the assembly cost.
Using the existing WiFi or BT module on chip and providing an app on phone to set it up, reconfigure, etc seems like the cheapest option with the most customer satisfaction.
A tiny crippled UI on the device is high friction for the user and removes all ability to provide orchestration for all the devices the user purchased from you.
What would you suggest?
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/32...
> Basically, the Childproof Handgun Law of 2002 says that once "personalized handguns are available" anywhere in the country, all handguns sold in New Jersey must be smart guns within 30 months.
> Guns coming to market could trigger a 2019 New Jersey law requiring all gun shops in the state to offer smart guns after they become available. The 2019 law replaced a 2002 law that would have banned the sale of any handgun except smart guns.
The mere threat of such legislation is enough, too. NJ - and other states - could easily make stricter regs after.
People who hate on it probably don't want to pay extra for something that could slow them down in a firefight while they're at church, theater, mall, school, bar, or college.
Plus unsecured gun charges happen rare to never in the U.S., so whatev, right?
"homeowner stops baddie in their home" is incredibly rare and almost never happens.
What does happen, however, is: homeowner commits suicide with their gun, or homeowner's children shoot themselves or a friend. Having a gun in the home is associated with a significantly higher suicide rate.
The facts don't bear out the necessity of protecting oneself against late-night home invasions.
Burglars prefer mid-day because there's less chance of finding someone home and penalties are lower; in many states a nighttime break-in pushes the seriousness of the charge up quite a bit, as does breaking into an occupied home.
Burglary rates have plunged over the last couple of decades, 75% since the 80's. The country-wide rate is 440 per 100,000 people, or a rate of 0.4% per person per year. The rate has little to do with gun laws or ownership rates; the rates are highest in southern states, lowest in northeast states like MA and NH. It's a function of poverty rates and how desperate people are, not how easy it is to own a gun.
What discourages home invasions: Locked doors/windows, landscaping that doesn't hide people while they're attempting to break in, motion lights, security cameras...and having government services that help people in poverty.
People have bought into the 'self-defense' mythology of gun ownership and it is just that -- a mythology.
The sad fact is that in the United States, the number one use of guns is for suicide (54%), followed by killing/being killed by someone you know. The whole self-defense/good-guy-with-a-gun scenario is rare, which is why it makes the news when it happens.
I grew up in a somewhat violent area, gunshots were a regular occurrence, and I still maintain that I would rather live my life free of fear than go to bed every night with last thing in my mind being the idea of taking someones life
Lawgiver: "Grenade"