Well, that didn't take long

[Mulay El Raisuli]

From Slate.com comes a bit of stupidity that I saw coming when I saw the first TV ad;

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/11/skyfall_someone_should_make_james_bond_s_biometric_walther_ppk_s_gun.html

with the completely expected claim that biometric guns will save "thousands" of live every year.

Mr. Guston and Mr. Finn advocate this waste of effort & money whilst simultaneously undercutting their own idea.



The first problem here is that Guston and Finn clearly did NOT understand (or even quote correctly) the paper written by Sarewitz and Nelson (which addressed the value of vaccines). If they had, they would not have deleted the part where Sarewitz and Nelson include the words, "The benefits of the fix, that is, must be obvious to all." This is not the case with biometric guns. If nothing else, grafting 21st century tech to 19th century tech hardly rates as merely "extending" any body of knowledge.

The second problem is that Guston and Finn state WHY this idea won't work even if the technology can work in the first place:



So, even if a 'solution' to the 300 MILLION guns already out there could be found, the proposed fix can be bypassed by a tech savvy teenager. Do you think gangs have some of those in their ranks?

Stupid people will always see Sci-Fi movies & think they see real world applications to real world problems. The problem is that if Slate can post such drivel with a straight face, you can be sure that DiFi (or someone equally dumb) will see this 'ball' & try to run with it.

I could go on, but the presence of this much nonsense has weakened me.


The Raisuli

[packnrat]

i bet any computer geek could run circles around this computer gizmo.

as in there is a way to allow more than one person to shoot said gun. (as in the stock program in the gun from the factory). or even "clear" the memory or just set it were anybody can pick up the gun and shoot it.
even i can see this.


.

[TimRB]

Stupid people will always see Sci-Fi movies & think they see real world applications to real world problems. The problem is that if Slate can post such drivel with a straight face, you can be sure that DiFi (or someone equally dumb) will see this 'ball' & try to run with it.

In Feinstein's case it doesn't matter if the technology is flawed--she doesn't care. She simply hates guns and wants to make life as difficult as possible for honest gun owners. If she or her ilk actually cared about reducing crime, she would look at the body of statistical data showing gun control to be completely ineffective and think of something else to go after.

Tim

[speedrrracer]

I like the idea. I especially like the idea that it can't be applied across all guns.

It's called choice. We the consumers deserve as much of it as we can get.

Since there are 300 million non-biometric guns, we'll always be able to choose to have non-biometric guns. If; however, they did magically invent this Bond gun, and it was reliable and affordable and blah blah blah, then I would have the choice about buying such a weapon.

Choice is a Good Thing. Imagine you are an old lady, and you live alone in a sketchy part of town. You get your CCW (obviously this town isn't in CA), and you get a biometric Glock. Now you have no fear that your gun can be used against you. That's pretty sweet. Since you live alone, there's no concern that someone else in your family can't use the gun (assuming the gun is limited to one user, which is a stupid assumption), and now you're also free from the worry of theft / re-use.

So it's a very valid choice for some. And the market should enable that choice, just as it should preserve our choice not to have that tech.

And no, to the poster who thinks "any computer geek" can bypass any tech, it doesn't work that way. If it did, Russian and Chinese hackers would have transferred all the money from Switzerland into their own banks a long time ago.

[lilro]

I like the idea. I especially like the idea that it can't be applied across all guns.

It's called choice. We the consumers deserve as much of it as we can get.

Since there are 300 million non-biometric guns, we'll always be able to choose to have non-biometric guns. If; however, they did magically invent this Bond gun, and it was reliable and affordable and blah blah blah, then I would have the choice about buying such a weapon.

Choice is a Good Thing. Imagine you are an old lady, and you live alone in a sketchy part of town. You get your CCW (obviously this town isn't in CA), and you get a biometric Glock. Now you have no fear that your gun can be used against you. That's pretty sweet. Since you live alone, there's no concern that someone else in your family can't use the gun (assuming the gun is limited to one user, which is a stupid assumption), and now you're also free from the worry of theft / re-use.

So it's a very valid choice for some. And the market should enable that choice, just as it should preserve our choice not to have that tech.

And no, to the poster who thinks "any computer geek" can bypass any tech, it doesn't work that way. If it did, Russian and Chinese hackers would have transferred all the money from Switzerland into their own banks a long time ago.

Until grandma's heart rate increases, and she doesn't grip the Glock properly, and it doesn't go bang when she needs it to.

[hvengel]

"Guns are simple machines that are well understood..." This is really the crux of the issue. Guns are very simple machines and simple machines tend to be very reliable since there are a limited and well defined set of things that can go wrong with a simple machine. Why would I consider replacing my simple, very reliable, easy to fix if it breaks, proven old technology gun that was designed in the 1920s (or 1905/1907 for you 1911 guys) with a modern very complex design that has many potential and probably not well understood reliability issues?

Batteries, operating system issues, software bugs, palm reader issues, setup errors, sensitivity to shock, temperature sensitivity, RF interference.... The list of failure points/modes is a mile long. Being a technologist I work with complex software and hardware systems on a daily basis and compared to any gun I have looked at or used these systems, even the simplest ones, are orders of magnitude more complex and also orders of magnitude less reliable. When I grab my gun snick the safety off and pull the trigger it should go boom every time with out fail. In an emergency failure is NOT an option and anything the can increase the probability of failure is totally unacceptable.

One other thing to point out. Guns are VERY SIMPLE and the type of system proposed can be defeated by simply removing it and installing a very simple mechanical lock (trigger/sear system). This is something that can be done with some simple hand tools (hack saw, file and drill) and some steel and hardware store items since most trigger/sear systems consist of perhaps 4 or 5 parts none of which are hard to make and some of these parts will already be part of the gun or can be purchased at the corner hardware store (pins and springs for example). We have been building guns for hundreds of years at this point and until a little over a century ago all of these mechanisms were made by hand using very simple tools. So the idea that the bad guys will be too stupid to figure this out is ridiculous. But this was apparently lost on the authors which does not reflect well on what they wrote.

Besides with 300 million guns already out there and with guns lasting hundreds of years it will be centuries before most guns will have this technology installed unless the government forces us to do so. What is the probability of that happening any time soon or even in any of our life times?

[speedrrracer]

Until grandma's heart rate increases, and she doesn't grip the Glock properly, and it doesn't go bang when she needs it to.

That's part of the beauty. In order for this magic tech to be accepted in the marketplace, it's going to have to be as reliable as a "normal" gun. A missed grip which fails to activate the weapon won't be acceptable, and the tech will fail in the marketplace. Grandma will never buy such unreliable tech, and Glock will never sully their good rep with unreliable tech.

Back to the drawing board.

That's part of the reason why we don't have to sweat some politard trying to force this on us. They'll never get past the piles of lawsuits / injunctions / etc claiming it's unreliable until it really is reliable (which may never happen, so no need for the drama queens on this issue, imo).

[SilverTauron]

Biometric technology is the anti-gunners next cause celebre.

The opposition understands that the 2nd Amendment will remain an obstacle for outright banning guns openly in America. As such, they try to find ways to either make guns too expensive to sell to civilians ( observe CA's roster and NY's microstamping bill) or too complex to be effectively used by the same. So far, microstamping's a dead issue and mag disconnects don't increase the cost of a gun enough to limit civil distribution.

OH! BIOMETRICS! By mandating gun companies incorporate untried, flawed, and expensive technology to civilian owned guns they effectively disarm people without confiscating a single weapon. With citizens forced to use flawed biometric weapons, criminals and cops can kick in doors with virtual impunity. No longer will home invaders or SWAT teams fear a citizen defending his home.

[Uxi]

I think they'll take a page from Barrycare for "reasonable" regulation. They can't ban it just because of the 2nd Amendment in the same way they couldn't use the commerce clause to force private individuals to enter into commerce. Unfortunately they have effective carte blanche to use the powers of taxation. As long as we have a Republican House, that should be mostly safe, though wouldn't surprise me to see the ATF expand a bit by executive order... Gives the Dem congressional representation some political cover and Barry can appease the base.

[donw]

SWAT teams don't fear citizens any way...they operate with, almost, perfect immunity...

[nick]

I like the idea. I especially like the idea that it can't be applied across all guns.

It's called choice. We the consumers deserve as much of it as we can get.

Since there are 300 million non-biometric guns, we'll always be able to choose to have non-biometric guns. If; however, they did magically invent this Bond gun, and it was reliable and affordable and blah blah blah, then I would have the choice about buying such a weapon.

Choice is a Good Thing. Imagine you are an old lady, and you live alone in a sketchy part of town. You get your CCW (obviously this town isn't in CA), and you get a biometric Glock. Now you have no fear that your gun can be used against you. That's pretty sweet. Since you live alone, there's no concern that someone else in your family can't use the gun (assuming the gun is limited to one user, which is a stupid assumption), and now you're also free from the worry of theft / re-use.

So it's a very valid choice for some. And the market should enable that choice, just as it should preserve our choice not to have that tech.

And no, to the poster who thinks "any computer geek" can bypass any tech, it doesn't work that way. If it did, Russian and Chinese hackers would have transferred all the money from Switzerland into their own banks a long time ago.

Choice is a good thing. Now let's get back to our world, and check how such technologies have been pushed (as in removing the OTHER choices) in the past. Microstamping laws have been passed. Can you have a car wthout catalytic converter? I can continue on with the examples, of course.

Also, as choices go, this one is deeply flawed, as it takes a (normally) reliable device with 15-20 variables that can potentially go wrong, and introduces an "enhancement" to it that adds nothing to the device's functionality, but does add another 20,000 variables that can go wrong (yes, I am in IT, and yes, I deal with these variables daily). Add to it the potential for making this choice the only one, and there you have a bad solution that would not survive on its own merits, without a government push. That's not my definition of a good choice.

On top of that, aside from being an impediment to the reliable use of a firearm (thus being a problem), which problem does it solve exactly? It runs on software/firmware, an thus is hackable. Moreover, since it plays no significant role in a firearm (which had existed without such devices for their entire history), it can be removed. Firearms are simple devices, and the parts it replaces aren't hard to make/find. Sure, it can be made illegal to remove it. Then again, it's also illegal for criminals to commit crimes. Oh, and there you go LIMITING the choices again... And I won't even mention the hundreds of millions of guns already in the US.

Now, what was that problem this technology is purported to solve again? Criminal being criminals? Law-abiding citizens being able to own guns without extra impediments? Or what?

[OleCuss]

I'd really, really like to buy one or more biometric firearms. I like the idea a lot.

If they make them they won't have to mandate their use - I'll buy it voluntarily.

Of course, I'll need to be able to reliably use my firearms even if my hands are filthy. I'll need to be able to use them if I've got gloves on. The firearms will need to be able to be used by family and by friends of my choosing at the time of my choosing - but still mustn't be easily rooted/hacked/whatever by bad guys. It mustn't operate on battery power so that it will actually be reliable if I'm somewhere without batteries. It had better work in all forms of inclement weather and there must be absolutely no "boot up" or recognition time which is detectable. It must not have a switch that must be turned on and thus delay use of the firearm. Along with reliability, I must be able to upgrade the firearm at times and in manners which please me. It needs to be EMP-proof as well.

Design that biometric firearm and keep it reasonably affordable - and I will go way out of my way to get that firearm.

I'm not going to hold my breath. . .

[speedrrracer]

^^ This OleCuss's (and all of our) high reliability expectations and reasonable use cases will prevent this tech from ever being mandated unless they really work some magic.

If they actually work such magic, we win again.

For those fearing this unicorn, take a page from OleCuss, and don't hold your breath.

Comparing the kind of biometric tech it would take to meet OleCuss's requirements to the kind of biometric tech that actually exists today is like comparing a caveman with a rock to Chris Kyle and his .338.

Lastly, we should encourage the antis in this quest. It will prevent them from focusing on reality (where the rest of us live) and consume their finite resources. Set the expectations (per OleCuss, etc) now, and tell the antis once they can clear that bar we're GTG.

[NoJoke]

Seen the new James Bond movie yet?

Yep - James is saved in one scene due to his palm print activated handgun (badguy got ahold of his gun).

[loki26]

Don't forget the remote deactivate options
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