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Can Technology Reduce Gun Violence?
WTIA Smart Gun Symposium Seeks Answers to Question:
“Can Technology Reduce Gun Violence?”
It wouldn’t be the first time that technology has solved an intractable societal issue. Automobile deaths over the past thirty years have been reduced by over 50 percent thanks in part to a variety of new technology from airbags, to rear end video cameras, to smart ignition switches that can detect alcohol. Technology may once again provide the answers in the quest to resolve one of our national’s most controversial societal issues: gun violence. In the past decade over one million Americans have been shot, and approximately 31,000 people are killed eacy year by firearms. That’s a rate nearly 20 times that of other industrialized countries. According to research published in the February 2014 Journal of Pediatrics, more than 10,000 children and teens go to the emergency room every year. Seventy-five percent of those under the age of ten go because of an accident. Some of those accidents, especially those involving guns, can be prevented.
In the last two months in Washington State alone, a 3-year-old Lake Stevens child was accidentally shot in the head after his 4-year-old friend found an unlocked gun, while a 14-year-old Marysville-Pilchuck freshman used his father’s gun to shoot five of his classmates leaving behind a lone survivor. Both of these incidents and thousands more could have been prevented by new smart gun technology that allows only the legal owner of a gun to successfully operate the firearm.
Smart guns operate in a variety of ways to prevent the trigger from being fully deployed when someone other than the owner tries to use them. Some utilize a four digit password similar to an iPhone, others employ a biometric palm fit, or a digital handshake requiring a digital chip to be no more than 18 inches apart. These techniques, considered sufficiently powerful by many existing gun owners and even law enforcement in limiting gun violence, are only now being applied to 9mm caliber guns.
But this being about guns, there are of course complicating factors. Most significantly the NRA has spoken out against smart guns as they believe their digital orientation could lead to a national registry of gun owners, and increase the likelihood of government confiscation. Other gun owners are concerned about reliability, even though extensive testing has shown these technologies offer a high degree of reliability.
Further complicating the issue is a 2003 New Jersey law mandating all firearms sold in the state be smart guns, which was passed just three years after commercial availability. In response, gun rights activists have successfully shifted the tides to convince the first two dealers of smart guns in the state to change their direction.
Still there appears to be an air of free market inevitability to something so promising. Indeed shortly after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, well known Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway, set up a dedicated million dollar fund to encourage further smart gun development. Smart guns have also captured the attention of the national press with major pieces in the NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today and MSNBC among others. Yet, despite all the promise, progress, and press, smart guns still haven’t reached the marketplace.
It is in the midst of this stall that the Washington Technology and Industry Association and Washington Ceasefire, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to reducing gun violence have come together to co-sponsor the Seattle Smart Gun Symposium on January 28th. It is the first event of its kind to bring together smart gun manufacturers, public health officials, gun lovers, law enforcement and technology leaders, to explore the future of this technology.
The Seattle Smart Gun Symposium has already attracted broad interest from national press and smart gun manufacturers in Europe and North America. Gun violence impacts every neighborhood and every sector. Many in the Seattle technology community know this first hand with the tragic fatal shooting a few years back of Justin Ferrari. And given the calcified politics on the issue, there is no better path to progress than smart gun technology.
Our goal is to take a neutral stance on the issue and to provide an open forum for experts to make their case, pro or con.
See official press release here: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/international-smart-gun-symposium-to-shine-spotlight-on-latest-political-and-technological-developments-300011385.html
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How will this make us safer? I594 won’t make us safer as noted by Ralph and many other anti-gun liberals. So how will a “SmartGun” make us safer? BTW – There is no such thing as a smart gun, just smart people which Washington Ceasefire has shown that they are not when it comes to gun safety.
I’m all in favor of guns being in the proper hands. Setting up a ‘smart gun’ to just respond to one person might not be the perfect way to do that. I’m still in favor of pushing for a better mental health system. Presenting and affirming alternatives to violence. And constant vigilance about bullying in schools. The MP incident was directly related to a bullying incident. As were a great number of incidents dating back to Columbine.
Mentally ‘off’ people who resort to violence will likely seek another method to inflict violence if firearms are denied them. How many of these shooters were off-meds at the time their attack? Why don’t we accept the need for mental health, sound judgment and unimpaired vision? Why is a tool blamed when the user errs?
No.
Being as I am in the IT industry. I know something about the technology these people are trying to push.
In a nutshell its all smoke and mirrors. I doesn’t work. Where it has been tried to get it to work it has been shown to be so inconsistent in the results its a useless technology.
On top of that it is easily spoofed and changed.
This is another proposal from a group of feel good make it look like we are doing something. When they know good and well what a piece of garbage they are trying to foster off on the public yet again. They have tried it before and have been embolden by getting passed the vague, poorly worded 594, now they continue to pursue there goal of making us all defenseless before the armed criminals and their authoritarian government.
Say no to this continued misguided technology. Don’t waste your time.
Not sure how to anyone can claim the technology is smoke and mirrors. I haven’t pulled my car keys from my pockets in six years – and my car has started every single time I have pressed its “on” button. Some of the same proximity-based tech is being employed here. To suggest that there are huge technology hurdles isn’t fair. It will take time to deliver reliable, precision instruments – but this isn’t a moon launch. If a smart gun saves the life of one kid because their clueless parent didn’t secure a weapon then it’s worth pursuing.
The person writing this blog could start by being factual. This statement; “2003 New Jersey law mandating all firearms sold in the state be smart guns…” is obviously false. The NJ law exempts the military and police from being required to obtain smart guns. If it isn’t good enough to be forced upon the police, then ordinary residents should not have to be required to buy them.
I’ve yet to see any lawmaker actually sponsor a bill that would encourage people to take advantage of personalized firearms. Require the police and military to use them and civilians will follow suit. Be smart and encourage smart guns prior to requiring them.f
How about never requiring them?
I want to address one of the questions you will be discussing at this symposium.
What are the political and commercial impediments?
YOU HAVE A CREDIBILITY PROBLEM
Any possible trust between gun rights community and the gun control community has been permanently and irreparably destroyed due to the collective actions of the gun control community. In both deed and action the gun control community has proven that the slippery slope argument has been proven irrefutably true and that your tactic of incremental-ism cannot any longer be denied.
The 1994 assault weapons ban is a perfect example of this. Consider the following statement by Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy Center which demonstrates the intent to take advantage of an ill-informed public.
“Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons…”
Another good example of this mindset is a quote by Nelson Shields of Handgun Control, Inc which was later renamed the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence. You can see for yourself why their original name shows their true intent.
“I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. Of course, it’s true that politicians will then go home and say, ‘This is a great law. The problem is solved.’ And it’s also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we’ll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal.”
In 2012, Diane Feinstein attempted to increase the number of banned weapons both by adding to the list of explicitly banned weapons as well as changing the restriction from a two feature test to a one feature test after she saw that the gun industry made a legitimate effort to change their designs to comply with the original ban. Her true goal became obvious to us. It is to ban some semi-automatics and slowly ban more as time goes on. We call this moving the goal post and we are not stupid.
The truth is that a gun like a Ruger Mini-14, a weapon which was not banned fires the exact same caliber round as the Bushmaster AR-15 used by Adam Lanza. The only difference is the way the guns look. The criteria were arbitrary and no matter how badly you would like to insist that this is not the case, it will never be true because it simply can’t be. It’s a losing argument and you should abandon it completely.
YOU HAVE A DEMAND PROBLEM
Gun buyers generally are not interested in buying smart guns. The law of supply and demand dictates what is available on the market. It isn’t what you want that matters. It is what gun consumers want that matters.
The tired talking point of claiming that the NRA and NSSF are impeding the sale of these guns will never work, because it isn’t true. The truth is that both organizations have openly stated that they were not opposed to the development and sale of these technologies. Senator Weinberg is stone dead liar when she claims that these organizations are standing in the way.
She helped pass a law that made the technology mandatory in New Jersey and then tried to act like she could make a deal with the NRA to repeal the mandate in exchange for changing their stance on a position they never actually took in the first place. To add insult to injury, she made it sound like she could wave a magic wand and make the mandate go away. The truth is that the repeal would have to go through the New Jersey legislature anyway, so her promise was clearly disingenuous. Since the NRA and NSSF have never impeded the development or sale of this technology in the first place, why doesn’t she fulfill her end of the deal and work to repeal the mandate? Why? Because her true intent is to eventually make it mandatory even if she can’t do it right now.
I’ll set aside any discussion of the fact that, to fire the weapon I must rely upon electronic circuitry which by its nature is prone to failure or interference. Assume I was in a situation where I was unable to fire my own gun and needed a stranger to fire on an attacker with my weapon. If the gun works as designed, that person would be unable to fire my gun. For that reason alone, I will never buy a gun with smart gun technology.
I also find it interesting that the mandate specifically exempts those who work in law enforcement. If the technology isn’t good enough to require it for law enforcement, why would I want it? This demonstrates the insulting notion that there are two classes of gun owners. Police are treated specially, while others are treated like mindless serfs. The fact that they are employed in law enforcement does not necessarily mean they are better qualified in firearms. Some police only shoot often enough to keep their jobs, while other gun owners shoot thousands of rounds a week.
Hello, without being insulting I wish to first point out the numbers you quote are incorrect and vastly inflated. I believe like most, you count suicide which accounts for almost 65% and then add another 15% for law enforcement. I am a safety conscious law abiding gun owner. We in the United States do not have a gun problem. We have a variety of behavior problems that would not change one bit with gun legislation or “smart gun” technology. Remove all guns and people will still kill each other in the same numbers using different tools. Proof ? They were doing it for thousands of years before guns were invented. And just look at today. People are killed by cars, knives, ladders, the flu. Did you know the rate of flu death in WA state is 10X the number of handgun deaths ? Heart disease is 100X the death rate. No matter what you legislate or try to fix, criminals will still find guns or ways to kill. As soon as you introduce smart gun technology, there will be a hack the next day. So if you do take the guns out of the hands of the law abiding, you turn them into helpless victims. You may as well ban fire extinguishers that may be related to toxic deaths. You would sacrifice the many for the few (and I mean very few). I wish so often anti-gun proponents would have a serious conversation with gun owners like myself. Instead, most of what you “feel” is based on project. I am available any time for dialog and I am really quite sensible..I promise…