
Why Obama’s Smart Gun Push Will Misfire - OopsCriticality
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/why-obamas-smart-gun-push-will-misfire/
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extrapickles
As a gun owner, this article is pretty accurate account of why it should fail.
The most important thing for a gun is for it to fire when the user wants,
everything else is effectively worse than useless. Due to the wide range of
operating conditions in which a gun must work, only the most basic of safety
measures can be taken (generally a bar preventing the trigger or hammer from
moving) to meet this requirement.

As the article states, pretty much the only acceptable way to improve the
safety of a gun is to make sure its locked up correctly when not in use. This
also has the side benefit of working on all existing guns with a minimum of
extra cost to a gun owner. Smarts will add a few hundred dollars at a minimum
to a gun design, vs a few 10s of dollars it would be to keep it in a safe
along with the rest of the owners collection.

If they really wanted to make things better, they should introduce testing of
safes used for gun storage and a set of fines for people selling safes that
don't pass the test. A bunch of existing safe vendors attempts at security are
worse than useless. See this video of a toddler opening a bunch of gun safes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erGOJxQIf5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erGOJxQIf5c)
It doesn't matter if the toddler was coached to open them, the point is it
must be impossible for them to open the safe regardless of conditions. The FCC
tests radios (generally through certified third parties), why cant they
introduce something similar for gun safes and other gun safety measures?

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tracker1
I have to say that I do agree with many of the points in TFA... most of the
gun guys I know would rather have something reliable over extra features. I
have a friend who won't keep a gun that's misfired/jammed at the range. The
acceptance of glocks over other options comes down to the additional safety
features that tend to sometimes not work.

In the end the simpler device is the reliable device. Anything that increases
public safety will come down to education, training and citizen
responsiveness. In real life, bad things happen... it may be with a gun, or a
bomb, or a car, or any number of things that are legal to own. Civil defense
is a basic human right, I wish that people understood what that means better.

That said the concept of civics, and civic duty are no longer part of general
education in this country. If something is going wrong, and you have the
ability to intervene, you have the responsibility to intervene. Taking
firearms away from the general population hinders that ability.

I can't even get the biometric entryways at work to register the first time
more often than not... I'd rather not have that happen in a crisis.

