Interest 1
I wish I could say this conversation is solely based in fiction, but it’s not.
Great weekend, great times with good people. Back to reality.
Good on this decision, and fuck the idea of “smart guns.” I know, a bunch of the moderate/more left wing types will say “BUT THIS IS A GOOD THING!”
There are so many technical problems with this device, I don’t even know where to begin. What if you need to use your gun, in an emergency, and you aren’t wearing your Unlock The Gun wrist-thingy? What if it malfunctions? (And don’t hit me with some weak-assed shit for an argument – my day job is working in I.T. Technology breaks.) What if a burglar steals the gun AND the accompanying wristband? This is no more a solution for current problems than requiring a breath tube in a car keeps a convicted DUI driver from starting his car. It’s bullshit, and it’s bad for ya.
Found this band recently, and this song keeps rocking my ass.
I’ve always enjoyed reading Massad Ayoob’s case files when they showed up in the various gun mags. I recall at least one case where some poor cop who hadn’t trained with his magnetic ring safety and/or a super-secure holster meant to prevent some felon from taking his sidearm was not able to draw and/or fire his gun.
Bisexuality: sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
That song is ricockulously catchy.
Bisexuality doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
Regarding smart guns…since the beginning of the ‘smart noun’ thing I’ve wondered why we don’t put as much effort into developing smarter humans as we put into developing smart inanimate objects!
Smart objects don’t vote, it’s better to keep the peons ignorant if you want to stay in the ruling class.
Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen die Götter selbst vergebens. (Against stupidity, even the gods themselves struggle in vain.)
–Nietzsche
I had a thought on guns®ulation that would actually work.
A very simple proficiency test/licensing system. Different levels for different types (e.g. Rifle, Shotgun, Handgun) with the lowest testing being the rifle and the highest being the handgun. Nobody loses their gun unless they cant pass the test inside of a year of it being implemented. Why are handguns the highest? Because, as stated before on here, theyre the ones most often used in crime. Obviously this idea isnt perfect, but its a lot better than just the background check and 3 day wait.
I got a better idea: Eliminate the 3-day wait you’re talking about, and disregard your entire licensing/testing system. I can see background checks for commercial sales as a reasonable infringement, but what you’re talking about is a registry of lawful gun owners.
When a gun regulation impacts lawful gun owners more than it does criminals, it’s a bad regulation.
No licenses. Licenses mean registration and by proxy mean the state knows what you’re packing. Registration leads to confiscation. Fuck that.
Make marksmanship and proficiency a cultural thing instead. Bring shooting contests for kids back in schools. Bring gun safety classes back in schools. Take your kids to the range. Be the parent who educates instead of expecting the state to do it for you.
I agree that much better training and proficiency would be ideal. I completely disagree that .gov should be involved in any fashion. I’d much rather see something like free training provided by NRA, GOA, JPFO, whatever (believe it or not, NRA used to not be involved in politics, and their training is top-notch), funded by membership fees, which provides a card to be presented as evidence of non-cluelessness when buying a gun.
I’ve made a similar suggestion on here before. I like the idea of a voluntary, non-government licensing system. Gun shops would adhere to it, and if I were selling personally, I would too. There’s money in it for the gun shops (in the form of training), as well as a bit of legal CYA. It would also be beneficial from a pro-gun-rights standpoint, since the line “oh noes, anybody can walk in off the street and buy a gun!” is readily countered by “only if they’ve been trained and certified.”
As soon as you get government involved, my support goes right out the window, for the reasons mentioned above.
And then of course there are those who skip “walk in off” and buy their guns on the street. Being that they’re the ones we still worry about, no amount of paperwork or licensing is going to deter a person who’s already set on breaking a law against murder.
Riiiight… the only way I would agree to something like that is a 50 state carry permit, and the right to carry even in places that say “No Guns Allowed.”
I had a thought on guns®ulation that would actually work…
Stop criminalizing objects, start punishing crimes regardless of tool used to commit the crime. What you describe is how a gov’t granted privilege is managed, not how rights are treated. Everybody that wants a gun should be allowed to train their own way to suit their own individual needs, without having to suffer through some gov’t mandated course.
suuuure what could go wrong?
I have a better system: No, fuck you.
I walk in with my cash, i walk out with my gun. thats the way america is supposed to work.
God, I love living in Texas.
A town I lived in for a few years in Arizona was a combination liquor store/gun shop.
With a drive through window.
I tried and tried to buy some Colt 45 and .45 for my Colt at the window, but they wouldn’t go for it.
‘Murica at it’s finest.
Gun-toting leftist here: I don’t personally know anyone – gun owner or left-leaner – who thinks these things are a good idea. They seem to be pretty much universally despised by everyone who is even casually familiar with defensive firearms.
The only people who seem to actually like them are anti-gunners.
The logic behind smart guns is a good idea if you believe that firearms should only be given to certain groups of people. I can understand it might be appealing to give law enforcement smart guns, which only their assigned LEOs can use. The logic of a gun that can’t be turned against its owner has a lot more logical appeal when your reasoning is “LEO = Mr. Pick Up That Can”.
Smart guns aren’t a bad idea per se, they are a statist’s good idea. It’s not good for -us-.
Also, I’ll bet you anything you want that if smart guns end up on the market, we’ll see what was done with iPhones: “jailbreaking” services. And I wonder if it’s not just possible to plain remove the locking systems by field stripping our ‘smart gun’ and removing or replacing relevant components. Or are they suggesting that either such parts are integral to mechanical aspects (which means they can fail) or that the gun is impossible to field strip or tamper (which means it’s probably going to be unreliable)? So much for safety.
I’ll point out that LEOs have typically been against smart guns. They’re fully aware that technology can break, and that the last thing they want to have happen is to be in a situation where use of a firearm is warranted and then have it fail to fire.
I also feel compelled to point out that “safety” is never the actual concern when it comes to gun regulation. Guns are, to my knowledge, the only item that has had a law passed in the last 25 years to make them less safe. (’93 AWB, which restricted guns which were more ergonomic as well as those less likely to burn your hand.)
Oh yes, actual LEOs are typically against smart guns, I don’t deny that. My point what that they seem like a good idea… only for the liberal politician – whom we already know is typically patently ignorant of firearms, self-defense, or even real life at all.
I’d also like to point out the 1934 NFA and 1968 GCA laws which made what would ordinarily be a $200 muffler into a $600+, six month ordeal. We are required to have mufflers on our cars, why the hassle with having a muffler on our firearms?
I thought about mentioning that one, since it’s probably the most significant, but I feel it’s a slightly weaker point for people who know little about guns. For people who associate suppressors/silencers with Hollywood assassins, it takes a little bit to explain why they’re a good thing. Most people (other than Carolyn McCarthy) don’t have preconceived ideas of what a barrel shroud is, and it takes very little effort to explain why something that keeps you from burning your hand is good; good ergonomics, of course, are generally considered to be a positive thing. (Despite the best efforts of some “ergonomic” keyboards.)
Wow, that song is awesome. Thanks for introducing me to such a rockin’ band!
Tru fax: Mel linked me to that song, and I bought the album two minutes in. Excellent release. Reminds me of a bluesier version of The Black Keys, another band I love.
The watch is sold separately. But you NEED it to use the gun.
What if the battery in the watch dies? What if the battery in the gun dies? Is the watch to gun a 1-to-1 pairing? Would you need more than one watch, and what it you are wearing the wrong watch. I’m right handed, so I wear watches on my left hand. What if i draw and shoot one handed like most people under stress? Isn’t the watch now just a new way of telling people you have a concealed weapon.
There are so many things wrong here.
When someone tells me that a “Smart” gun is a great idea, I ask if their computer has ever locked up. Now imagine that lock up means you lose your life.
Gives a whole new meaning to “blue screen of death.”
I was thinking “Fatal Error”
I kind of want “Fatal System Error” on my tombstone. (Hopefully a long time from now.)
Before I decided on creation, I had the thought of making my tombstone look like a BSOD, or being set up as a wifi hotspot called “Interned-webz.” Now I just want em to cook-and-book.
This is why I haven’t even considered buying a Ford since I heard the onboard computers are powered by Microsoft.
How often a personal computer crashes, how often a car crashes… Those two numbers should never be the same.
Are you talking about the ECM, or the infotainment/navigation (which does carry Microsoft Automotive branding, and is based on Windows CE)? The latter is rather peripheral to automotive reliability. For the ECM, they really should be using FreeBSD. You can hack FreeBSD down to the point that it’ll run on anything. And if these “smart gun” guys have any wits, they’ll use FreeBSD also.
There’s a name for “FreeBSD hacked down to the point that it’ll run on anything”. It’s called NetBSD. (For those interested but unaware, FreeBSD and NetBSD are both derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution version of UNIX from 1977. FreeBSD concentrated on speed and stability, while NetBSD concentrated on supporting a broad range of hardware. NetBSD currently supports 57 platforms across 15 processor architectures.)
whoa, wait, cars have electronic countermeasures now?
In this context, ECM = Engine Control Module.
The computers that run the powertrain and safety systems are separate from the one powered by Microsoft. If the Microsoft computer crashes, all that’ll happen is you’ll lose your radio, navigation, etc.
Not saying that you should or shouldn’t buy a Ford–just saying that the computer isn’t what should make your decision. (Also, note that the same system is in use in other manufacturers’ cars; Hyundai is the other one I know of in particular.)
Remember, the “smart” guns that Oaktree was offering are, according to the manufacturer (who has no motivation to “exaggerate” to make their product sound better, no not at all), going to fail ten percent of the time.
That’s one round per magazine.
IF the manufacturer’s claim is true and the failure rate isn’t actually higher.
Can you imagine trying to defend yourself with a weapon that is GUARANTEED to fail once per magazine?
There’s a reason law enforcement and military groups always ensure that there are exemptions built in to any of these “smart” gun laws for themselves… even the laws that are enacted to “protect” law enforcement…
A 10% failure rate as a mfg claim isn’t an absolute value. It’s an average. In a given situation, you could have zero failures, or 100% failure rate at every shot. Their testing just returned 10%.
Which, in hindsight, is even worse.
According to the testing they had, it was 89.7% passing… Yeah, I wouldn’t put up with that for my home computer. If my game computer failed to work 1 in 10 times, I would be replacing it.
And my life doesn’t depend on that.
I wonder how hard they are to hack…
/not a hacker, just learned to code recently
I’m guessing that criminals will simply bypass the radio and have the thing “always on” instead of actually trying to hack the weapon. Or they’ll get “unlocked” chips for the mechanism, and only the law abiding will use it. I might get one to show how brain-dead simple it would be to bypass the lockout on it.
This comic made me gigle to no end
“Smart guns” are one of those ideas that should continue to be pursued but never required.
Work on the idea, develop it, expand the general base of human knowledge and technology, so on and so forth. Progress is good. R&D is never bad.
But don’t expect anyone to willingly trust their life to it. Don’t try to require it. Don’t convince yourself that this tech will be some sort of magic bullet that makes crime impossible. Don’t for a second believe that an electronic device can’t be hacked or will always work on demand.
I cringed when I saw the most recent James Bond movie and saw that they had made Bond’s trademark Walther PPK a “smart gun”. Doubly so because it seems that most liberals get their ideas about firearms from what they see in movies.
It doesn’t help Daniel Craig has an actual, completely irrational distaste of handguns. Google “Daniel Craig handgun phobia”, the man even admits it. He is easily the worst James Bond for me.
That’s not really unusually in Hollyweird. Most actors, directors, etc dislike them (if they don’t outright hate them). Doesn’t stop them from using guns in their make-believe, of course.
Yeah. One of the strange exceptions though, from what i hear, is Sigourny Weaver. Read this article waaaaay back about when they were doing Aliens and she didn´t want to do gunplay. So the director takes her out to a range and lets her unlaod a couple of mags. From the story, she realised how much fun it was and then did the rest of the movie no sweat.
Then again, it´s Hollyweird we are talking about, so she might have changed her mind. :/
And then there’s Jeri Ryan (a.k.a. 7 of 9). She’s a real-life skeet shooter, but not a Fudd. Heard a story once that she was simulating recoil with a laser/phaser/maser/graser/whateverthefuck energy weapon, the director stopped her and reminded her that there’s no recoil with a strictly energy-based weapon, and her reaction was “Oh FUCK THAT.”
I know someone who started a campaign to smack Hollywood around a little by pointing out that nobody could be SURE, since the BATF never sent a representative to check, that the convicted felon Mark Wahlberg was ONLY using fake prop-guns, and never held a real one, which would entail TONS of liability for all involved. The ATF blanket-denied that it was possible. Must be nice having the “special people rules”, and not the ones the rest of us have to live with.
All animals are equal, etc.
Huh! Turns out he posts on here. Henry Bowman posted it maybe a year and a half ago. I had to go digging.
Great song! And – oh yeah – bisexuality FTW!
Smart guns “shudder”
as a data security professional, specifically network engineering, I say that idea gets a FUCK THAT out of 10.
That whole idea about smart guns might sound nifty to some. But a couple of months down the line when the first police officer is murdered because someone with a bit of techheadedness figured out a way to jam the transmission between the gun and the security transmission so he can´t fire his gun…. Yeah.
Now if they make me a Smartgun alá Aliens, then i wouldn´t be so upset. 😉
I don’t always agree with you on music, but I do like this. btw, great site, great strip.
My tastes run a gamut. Everything from blues to hip hop to grind metal to rivethead to jazz and blah blah. All I need in a band is for them to rock, regardless of genre.
These guys blew me away immediately. The whole album is worth the buy – $7 at Amazon, and you get a WHOLE SLEW of killer tracks. They have a gritty blues rock feeling, like the Black Keys, with shades of Lennon and Zepplin in there.
my tastes don’t go anywhere near as hard as yours, I have to admit. Maybe it is being an old fart. These guys just got added to my list behind Roseanne Cash’s new album. A bit ahead of Abney Park… Then there is Loreena Mckennitt. I am such an old nerd. oddball music, oddball guns ftw.
Abney Park was my first actual concert… Woo!
Someone hinted at frequency jamming by bad buys towards the end. What about frequency jamming by law enforcement or gov’t agents? Not that criminals would use this crap. But what about a law abiding citizen who does have the POS registered and follows the law to the letter, and finds themselves suddenly in possession of a newly banned firearm? The gov’t just turns it off then raids the owner’s house.
These smart guns are so that the government can control you. In a situation where the second amendment needs to be used, the government will just turn off all the guns, then a lot of patriots will die.