Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
It sends out a signal that once the firearm is no longer receiving the signal it locks, kind of like some shopping carts.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
it's proximity-based, just like how you can hand your key fob to someone else and still start the car yourself.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
it's proximity-based, just like how you can hand your key fob to someone else and still start the car yourself.
I don't get the advantage, except for people who are worried about a gun being wrestled away from them.
0
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Sounds like it would also prevent criminals stealing guns for resale unless they were stolen together.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
it's proximity-based, just like how you can hand your key fob to someone else and still start the car yourself.
I don't get the advantage, except for people who are worried about a gun being wrestled away from them.
??? That's like, the one scenario where it wouldn't help. I'm not sure why you think that it would be for people who are worried about the gun being westled away? It would still work in that scenario.
The advantage is that if you're not home and your kid gets your gun, they won't shoot themselves.
If they are stored together, then yes, it wouldn't really help at all. But also, if you leave your keys in your car, they don't help at all.
If people were careful enough not to store them together, they'd also be careful enough to lock up their guns in a gun cabinet. An amazingly high amount of US gun owners just leave guns around anywhere, or on a wall rack.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
it's proximity-based, just like how you can hand your key fob to someone else and still start the car yourself.
I don't get the advantage, except for people who are worried about a gun being wrestled away from them.
??? That's like, the one scenario where it wouldn't help. I'm not sure why you think that it would be for people who are worried about the gun being westled away? It would still work in that scenario.
The advantage is that if you're not home and your kid gets your gun, they won't shoot themselves.
If they are stored together, then yes, it wouldn't really help at all. But also, if you leave your keys in your car, they don't help at all.
pretty sure the range is fairly short, so if someone took your gun and wasn't grappling with you, the gun wouldn't fire.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
+1
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Sounds like it would also prevent criminals stealing guns for resale unless they were stolen together.
Only if it were replacement bracelets were prohibitively expensive.
There are a number of other ways to mitigate this, the best one obviously being a registry so that replacements can involve checking your identity, while another would be to request proof of ownership (or have the seller log it). But even without either of those, running a background check would at least ensure that whoever is getting the replacement is permitted to buy guns, and if somebody accumulates a significant number of replacement requests that could be cause for scrutiny.
If people were careful enough not to store them together, they'd also be careful enough to lock up their guns in a gun cabinet. An amazingly high amount of US gun owners just leave guns around anywhere, or on a wall rack.
Buying and installing a cabinet or even trigger locks is way less convenient than dealing with the doodad you got with your gun and didn't have to purchase separately.
Plenty of people would duct tape it to their gun or something equally stupid, but plenty more would not.
Sounds like it would also prevent criminals stealing guns for resale unless they were stolen together.
Only if it were replacement bracelets were prohibitively expensive.
I'd assume bracelets would be locked to certain gun/s and only the manufacturer and licensed dealers could add a new bracelet, and for that you'd need a proof of purchase or have the gun registered to you.
Make the bracelet lightweight with a pin/password lock, and a battery that you need to recharge maybe once a month, and it adds little inconvenience to the user, while making stealing one fairly pointless.
This is a fairly simple technology that does make guns safer.
And assuming the owner is not a complete pants about gun security, would reduce accidental discharges from people not authorized to use the gun (like toddlers, and dogs) by a large margin.
Sure it's no panacea to all the worlds ills, or even all gun related ones, but it is a fairly simple improvement we can implement through technology.
Why is it always the opinion to increase costs "prohibitively". That is not a viable solution and only isolates those of us that would be open to gun reform that works. You logically go the other way for greater adoption rates. If there was a vote for universal background checks but it made them 1000 bucks with 100 buck a year renew costs I would vote no. Because that is dumb.
Gun owners are happy to spend thousands on multiple guns and doodads a year, so pleading poverty is a bit hollow. You could always waive the fee for those below the poverty line, who might need a single gun or something.
I find it very unlikely the smart guns would increase costs prohibitively.
The technology used is no different than found in car keys and cellphones.
It'd be, like, extra 100 dollars a gun early on, and go down from there as more guns were made as smart guns and in bigger production lines.
Gun owners are happy to spend thousands on multiple guns and doodads a year, so pleading poverty is a bit hollow. You could always waive the fee for those below the poverty line, who might need a single gun or something.
I am not pleading the poverty line. I am abjectly apposed to undue burden.
I find it very unlikely the smart guns would increase costs prohibitively.
The technology used is no different than found in car keys and cellphones.
It'd be, like, extra 100 dollars a gun early on, and go down from there as more guns were made as smart guns and in bigger production lines.
I would like to know how the smart safety works and if it couldn't be bypassed with like, a magnet
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
So they need to make better smart gun.
One that does not rely on a metal bar sliding one way or the other.
The article actually mentions some ways to do this.
So they need to make better smart gun.
One that does not rely on a metal bar sliding one way or the other.
The article actually mentions some ways to do this.
Ya, but now we need another price quote
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
Smart guns also do nothing to prevent that actual user from shooting someone or themselves.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
Smart guns also do nothing to prevent that actual user from shooting someone or themselves.
Smart guns sound like a shaky technology. We all know how well things like fingerprint scanners work on phones (i.e. only under good conditions.)
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
Smart guns also do nothing to prevent that actual user from shooting someone or themselves.
Gun control is more than one problem.
Yeah, but every time we start to talk about solving the problem that kills 30,000 people a year people seem to suddenly become very invested in solving a problem that kills a fraction of that instead, while doing nothing to address the much larger problem.
The traditional trajectory seems to be something like:
Gun control doesn't work -> Yes it does and the evidence is becoming a PR problem for you -> Fine we can do [small thing that will prevent some deaths but does not strike at central problem] -> Okay it's a start, let's do it -> Some deaths are prevented but central problem is not solved -> See, gun control doesn't work after all! Time to repeal [small thing]!
Where [small thing] is anything from the AWB to a bump stock ban to safe storage requirements to smart guns. It's hard not to see it as part of a pattern of deflection and misdirection.
Everything is dancing around that the use of guns is the problem. If someone uses a gun, they have either killed someone, tried to kill someone and/or potentially killed someone.
You can lock the gun up, if people are responsible and prevent the toddler from shooting the other toddler, but that requires people to be responsible (which they are not).
You can put a smart chip in the gun that requires the owner to be holding it, but then the owner is just as capable of shooting his wife and himself in a fit of rage, as the non-owner.
You can put restrictions on buying guns (on various categories of mental health, criminal records, and training for instance), but to do that you're basically judging who actually should have a privately owned gun and who shouldn't. And the population of those who fall in the former category is very very small compared to the population of gun owners.
That's because when you get down to it, guns are for killing and when you allow private ownership of guns with very little regulation or restrictions that's exactly what happens. People get killed by themselves and others, intentionally or not.
That's bad. If we were to become non-committal on every other metric of whether a phenomenon was good or bad, a bunch of extra unnecessarily dead people for essentially no benefit would be the very last one we could still take a stand on. It shouldn't be this hard.
The default should be prevent that from happening. If there's some other factor that can be accommodated without impeding the central goal of "less corpses", great. But those considerations should be very secondary standing, not given equal footing.
Everything is dancing around that the use of guns is the problem. If someone uses a gun, they have either killed someone, tried to kill someone and/or potentially killed someone.
Nope.
By volume, most bullets fired end up in a paper target causing no harm to anyone.
Everything is dancing around that the use of guns is the problem. If someone uses a gun, they have either killed someone, tried to kill someone and/or potentially killed someone.
You can lock the gun up, if people are responsible and prevent the toddler from shooting the other toddler, but that requires people to be responsible (which they are not).
You can put a smart chip in the gun that requires the owner to be holding it, but then the owner is just as capable of shooting his wife and himself in a fit of rage, as the non-owner.
You can put restrictions on buying guns (on various categories of mental health, criminal records, and training for instance), but to do that you're basically judging who actually should have a privately owned gun and who shouldn't. And the population of those who fall in the former category is very very small compared to the population of gun owners.
That's because when you get down to it, guns are for killing and when you allow private ownership of guns with very little regulation or restrictions that's exactly what happens. People get killed by themselves and others, intentionally or not.
That's bad. If we were to become non-committal on every other metric of whether a phenomenon was good or bad, a bunch of extra unnecessarily dead people for essentially no benefit would be the very last one we could still take a stand on. It shouldn't be this hard.
The default should be prevent that from happening. If there's some other factor that can be accommodated without impeding the central goal of "less corpses", great. But those considerations should be very secondary standing, not given equal footing.
So this, this is reading a lot like bullshit extremism. Anyone that's used a gun is either a murderer or a future murderer? Guess we should just gas me now then considering I've been shooting since childhood. For real some folks go their whole lives owning and carrying firearms without ever killing anything but some targets or dirt hills. People can be responsible.
So this, this is reading a lot like bullshit extremism. Anyone that's used a gun is either a murderer or a future murderer? Guess we should just gas me now then considering I've been shooting since childhood. For real some folks go their whole lives owning and carrying firearms without ever killing anything but some targets or dirt hills. People can be responsible.
Everything is dancing around that the use of guns is the problem. If someone uses a gun, they have either killed someone, tried to kill someone and/or potentially killed someone.
Nope.
By volume, most bullets fired end up in a paper target causing no harm to anyone.
So what?
Most of the time if you ran a red light no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if a doctor didn't check your medical allergies or history before treating/prescribing for a particular illness no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if you never went to a doctor you wouldn't die of cancer.
Most of the time if we had no air traffic control, planes wouldn't hit each other.
Most of the time if we didn't have metal detectors on planes, most of them wouldn't crash into skyscrapers.
The standard isn't "lots of fired bullets don't kill people" or "lots of gun owners don't kill people." Its not about use (or more realistically, non-use) that doesn't result in deaths, because statistically there's a lock solid case that considered in total they result in tens of thousands of extra preventable American deaths. With nothing else would we say "Yeah tens of thousands of deaths a year but look how many people didn't die! And 5% of the country likes them to kill wild animals for food or sport! And what about the false illusion of increased safety!"
The standard is lots of people get killed by guns. The statistics are undeniable. Approximately 500,000 Americans have died due to gun violence since 2001. We've had more US deaths due to guns since Penny Arcade started than Americans died in World War II, plus Korea, plus Vietnam, Plus the Gulf War, plus the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.
So this, this is reading a lot like bullshit extremism. Anyone that's used a gun is either a murderer or a future murderer? Guess we should just gas me now then considering I've been shooting since childhood. For real some folks go their whole lives owning and carrying firearms without ever killing anything but some targets or dirt hills. People can be responsible.
Everything is dancing around that the use of guns is the problem. If someone uses a gun, they have either killed someone, tried to kill someone and/or potentially killed someone.
Nope.
By volume, most bullets fired end up in a paper target causing no harm to anyone.
So what?
Most of the time if you ran a red light no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if a doctor didn't check your medical allergies or history before treating/prescribing for a particular illness no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if you never went to a doctor you wouldn't die of cancer.
Most of the time if we had no air traffic control, planes wouldn't hit each other.
Most of the time if we didn't have metal detectors on planes, most of them wouldn't crash into skyscrapers.
The standard isn't "lots of fired bullets don't kill people" or "lots of gun owners don't kill people." Its not about use (or more realistically, non-use) that doesn't result in deaths, because statistically there's a lock solid case that considered in total they result in tens of thousands of extra preventable American deaths. With nothing else would we say "Yeah tens of thousands of deaths a year but look how many people didn't die! And 5% of the country likes them to kill wild animals for food or sport! And what about the false illusion of increased safety!"
The standard is lots of people get killed by guns. The statistics are undeniable. Approximately 500,000 Americans have died due to gun violence since 2001. We've had more US deaths due to guns since Penny Arcade started than Americans died in World War II, plus Korea, plus Vietnam, Plus the Gulf War, plus the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.
Yes but that doesn't make all gun users murderers, saying things like that makes it easy as shit to just dismiss you out of hand as being completely useless to the conversation. You can go on screaming that you're right, but no one is going to listen to you except for extremists in your corner. It is thoroughly unproductive.
The argument you are reaching for is that guns only serve to cause destruction. That's all they can do, even if it is just targets or cans or a hill. The only thing you can do with a gun is cause destruction. That's its point. That's why they should be responsibly regulated. Because all they are capable of is various levels of destruction. That's not even a controversial statement, it's just an appt description of what a gun does. Some people however can be trusted with the responsibility to keep that destruction to paper targets and hills, or animals they plan on eating.
So they need to make better smart gun.
One that does not rely on a metal bar sliding one way or the other.
The article actually mentions some ways to do this.
In addition, building magnetic trigger unlockers and radio jamming fields are beyond the capacities of most criminals! If there is an additional charge of $20 of batteries and shipping, 2 hours of research time, and your gun ends up looking really stupid then less criminals will use the stolen gun or steal guns. also, children will not accidentally build radio rebroadcasters and install them on your key fobs.
The argument you are reaching for is that guns only serve to cause destruction. That's all they can do, even if it is just targets or cans or a hill. The only thing you can do with a gun is cause destruction. That's its point. That's why they should be responsibly regulated. Because all they are capable of is various levels of destruction. That's not even a controversial statement, it's just an appt description of what a gun does. Some people however can be trusted with the responsibility to keep that destruction to paper targets and hills, or animals they plan on eating.
But this presumes that those people can be identified, that they are able to appropriately deny access to their firearms from people who wouldn't qualify through the theoretical screening process. And no such process really exists. People become depressed after not being depressed. People develop addictions or mental illness in general after being mentally healthy. People get into bad relationships or fall on hard times. People get old.
I don't know how to screen people for those things. No one does. If we did, there'd be so many other societal ills we could prevent. We're effectively left with the choice between being fine with a 9/11 worth of deaths from firearms every month, and trying to stop it.
Hell, hobbies pale in comparison but if we really wanted to, if that was the sticking point its solvable. If people just want to perform target practice they could do so without personal ownership of a gun. Target ranges exist and could be much more readily and effectively regulated. Hell hunting centers could be established for people who want to use guns to hunt, with appointments to take out your gun for a limited time acting as de facto waiting lists to reduce the threat of suicides.
No one seriously is proposing those types of solutions because enough people value their guns over their fellow man. That's whats being danced around, with anecdote and special pleading vs hard empirical fact. We can be nice about it to try to sway people, but since there's been no sign of any compromise for decades its hard for me to think obfuscating that central point is worth it.
So, you knew the statement was clearly false, and now you're mad that someone pointed that out?
No I'm rolling my eyes that you think "People practice using guns and few people die" is some kind of counterargument. Since this thread started, approximately 1,400 Americans have died of gun violence in the US. There is a madness to thinking there's some kind of balance between the two arguments.
Personal ownership of a gun is irrelevant. You can require that handguns only be shot at ranges without requiring the gun to belong to the range. People like to own stuff.
Personal ownership of a gun is irrelevant. You can require that handguns only be shot at ranges without requiring the gun to belong to the range. People like to own stuff.
You can't require a gun to only be shot at ranges effectively without storage at the range. Firing a gun outside a range is already illegal in a vast majority of circumstances without addressing the issue. Ownership is beside the point but control over the gun isn't. If people want to own guns and have them stored where they can't get immediate uncontrolled access to it, that would satisfy me but wouldn't satisfy the opponents of gun control anyway. As a result its beside the point
Posts
But death threats for gun store owners experimenting with them are not on. They sound like a great option for people who want a gun but have reasons to fear others getting hold of them (e.g. a severely depressed family member.)
The radio bracelet thing is more like how my car only unlocks when the key fob is in range, and that works without fail.
How does the bracelet work? Sounds like it'd be useful for preventing assailants wrestling your gun off you (police should love it, since they genuinely can face that situation at work), but presumably most casual gun owners will store them together for convenience and not wear the bracelet all the time.
It sends out a signal that once the firearm is no longer receiving the signal it locks, kind of like some shopping carts.
it's proximity-based, just like how you can hand your key fob to someone else and still start the car yourself.
I don't get the advantage, except for people who are worried about a gun being wrestled away from them.
??? That's like, the one scenario where it wouldn't help. I'm not sure why you think that it would be for people who are worried about the gun being westled away? It would still work in that scenario.
The advantage is that if you're not home and your kid gets your gun, they won't shoot themselves.
If they are stored together, then yes, it wouldn't really help at all. But also, if you leave your keys in your car, they don't help at all.
Only if it were replacement bracelets were prohibitively expensive.
pretty sure the range is fairly short, so if someone took your gun and wasn't grappling with you, the gun wouldn't fire.
Buying and installing a cabinet or even trigger locks is way less convenient than dealing with the doodad you got with your gun and didn't have to purchase separately.
Plenty of people would duct tape it to their gun or something equally stupid, but plenty more would not.
Make the bracelet lightweight with a pin/password lock, and a battery that you need to recharge maybe once a month, and it adds little inconvenience to the user, while making stealing one fairly pointless.
This is a fairly simple technology that does make guns safer.
And assuming the owner is not a complete pants about gun security, would reduce accidental discharges from people not authorized to use the gun (like toddlers, and dogs) by a large margin.
Sure it's no panacea to all the worlds ills, or even all gun related ones, but it is a fairly simple improvement we can implement through technology.
The technology used is no different than found in car keys and cellphones.
It'd be, like, extra 100 dollars a gun early on, and go down from there as more guns were made as smart guns and in bigger production lines.
I am not pleading the poverty line. I am abjectly apposed to undue burden.
I am not opposed to smart gun technology at all.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I just googled it
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
One that does not rely on a metal bar sliding one way or the other.
The article actually mentions some ways to do this.
Ya, but now we need another price quote
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Smart guns also do nothing to prevent that actual user from shooting someone or themselves.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Gun control is more than one problem.
Yeah, but every time we start to talk about solving the problem that kills 30,000 people a year people seem to suddenly become very invested in solving a problem that kills a fraction of that instead, while doing nothing to address the much larger problem.
The traditional trajectory seems to be something like:
Gun control doesn't work -> Yes it does and the evidence is becoming a PR problem for you -> Fine we can do [small thing that will prevent some deaths but does not strike at central problem] -> Okay it's a start, let's do it -> Some deaths are prevented but central problem is not solved -> See, gun control doesn't work after all! Time to repeal [small thing]!
Where [small thing] is anything from the AWB to a bump stock ban to safe storage requirements to smart guns. It's hard not to see it as part of a pattern of deflection and misdirection.
You can lock the gun up, if people are responsible and prevent the toddler from shooting the other toddler, but that requires people to be responsible (which they are not).
You can put a smart chip in the gun that requires the owner to be holding it, but then the owner is just as capable of shooting his wife and himself in a fit of rage, as the non-owner.
You can put restrictions on buying guns (on various categories of mental health, criminal records, and training for instance), but to do that you're basically judging who actually should have a privately owned gun and who shouldn't. And the population of those who fall in the former category is very very small compared to the population of gun owners.
That's because when you get down to it, guns are for killing and when you allow private ownership of guns with very little regulation or restrictions that's exactly what happens. People get killed by themselves and others, intentionally or not.
That's bad. If we were to become non-committal on every other metric of whether a phenomenon was good or bad, a bunch of extra unnecessarily dead people for essentially no benefit would be the very last one we could still take a stand on. It shouldn't be this hard.
The default should be prevent that from happening. If there's some other factor that can be accommodated without impeding the central goal of "less corpses", great. But those considerations should be very secondary standing, not given equal footing.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Nope.
By volume, most bullets fired end up in a paper target causing no harm to anyone.
So this, this is reading a lot like bullshit extremism. Anyone that's used a gun is either a murderer or a future murderer? Guess we should just gas me now then considering I've been shooting since childhood. For real some folks go their whole lives owning and carrying firearms without ever killing anything but some targets or dirt hills. People can be responsible.
So what?
Most of the time if you ran a red light no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if a doctor didn't check your medical allergies or history before treating/prescribing for a particular illness no one would die or get hurt.
Most of the time if you never went to a doctor you wouldn't die of cancer.
Most of the time if we had no air traffic control, planes wouldn't hit each other.
Most of the time if we didn't have metal detectors on planes, most of them wouldn't crash into skyscrapers.
The standard isn't "lots of fired bullets don't kill people" or "lots of gun owners don't kill people." Its not about use (or more realistically, non-use) that doesn't result in deaths, because statistically there's a lock solid case that considered in total they result in tens of thousands of extra preventable American deaths. With nothing else would we say "Yeah tens of thousands of deaths a year but look how many people didn't die! And 5% of the country likes them to kill wild animals for food or sport! And what about the false illusion of increased safety!"
The standard is lots of people get killed by guns. The statistics are undeniable. Approximately 500,000 Americans have died due to gun violence since 2001. We've had more US deaths due to guns since Penny Arcade started than Americans died in World War II, plus Korea, plus Vietnam, Plus the Gulf War, plus the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yes but that doesn't make all gun users murderers, saying things like that makes it easy as shit to just dismiss you out of hand as being completely useless to the conversation. You can go on screaming that you're right, but no one is going to listen to you except for extremists in your corner. It is thoroughly unproductive.
In addition, building magnetic trigger unlockers and radio jamming fields are beyond the capacities of most criminals! If there is an additional charge of $20 of batteries and shipping, 2 hours of research time, and your gun ends up looking really stupid then less criminals will use the stolen gun or steal guns. also, children will not accidentally build radio rebroadcasters and install them on your key fobs.
But this presumes that those people can be identified, that they are able to appropriately deny access to their firearms from people who wouldn't qualify through the theoretical screening process. And no such process really exists. People become depressed after not being depressed. People develop addictions or mental illness in general after being mentally healthy. People get into bad relationships or fall on hard times. People get old.
I don't know how to screen people for those things. No one does. If we did, there'd be so many other societal ills we could prevent. We're effectively left with the choice between being fine with a 9/11 worth of deaths from firearms every month, and trying to stop it.
Hell, hobbies pale in comparison but if we really wanted to, if that was the sticking point its solvable. If people just want to perform target practice they could do so without personal ownership of a gun. Target ranges exist and could be much more readily and effectively regulated. Hell hunting centers could be established for people who want to use guns to hunt, with appointments to take out your gun for a limited time acting as de facto waiting lists to reduce the threat of suicides.
No one seriously is proposing those types of solutions because enough people value their guns over their fellow man. That's whats being danced around, with anecdote and special pleading vs hard empirical fact. We can be nice about it to try to sway people, but since there's been no sign of any compromise for decades its hard for me to think obfuscating that central point is worth it.
No I'm rolling my eyes that you think "People practice using guns and few people die" is some kind of counterargument. Since this thread started, approximately 1,400 Americans have died of gun violence in the US. There is a madness to thinking there's some kind of balance between the two arguments.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
You can't require a gun to only be shot at ranges effectively without storage at the range. Firing a gun outside a range is already illegal in a vast majority of circumstances without addressing the issue. Ownership is beside the point but control over the gun isn't. If people want to own guns and have them stored where they can't get immediate uncontrolled access to it, that would satisfy me but wouldn't satisfy the opponents of gun control anyway. As a result its beside the point
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+