Comment Re:Good idea (Score 1) 1748
If your going to allowed to carry guns, at least
they should be made so someone else can't use them against you.
As is my norm, let's take the scientific approach to this comment: How about doing a PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE comparison to fatal errors made with and without this kind of gun control, and see if it is really a benefit, or just another "appease the masses" type of "personal security" enhancement that sounds great for the pundits, but has no grounds for approval:
Step 1, as this previous Slashdot commentary showed, will be very difficult, if not impossible, but let's lay out the requirement anyway: we need to understand the PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE rating of accidental deaths caused by accidental shootings (part of my assumptions include that the criminals will have little difficulty breaking the control device, despite the risk they take of violating the DMCA in doing so).
-Step 2: then, is to determine the PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE rating for software glitches, electronic failures (usually some mathematical combination of the failure rate for each sub-component of such a device, plus the failure rate of the interfaces between each sub-component) and operator skill level (let's face it: this may be simple, but will it be any simpler than, say, a VCR to set up correctly?). This, in turn, will need to be broken down into the probabilities of POSITIVES (actual occurances of the above) leading to a death.
Because I do NOT have the numbers, I find it irresponsible and very, very biased against the U.S. constitution that such a law has been enacted without direct evidence showing the real benefit. The gun-makers are not criminals, why are they (and their buyers) being forced to pay for technology that has not even had a basic analysis of the benefits completed?
I realize not everyone will accept statistical analysis as justification for gun control laws, but I would expect it to be a bare minimum for limiting U.S. Constitutional rights (this does limit ones ability to bear arms, based on cost alone). I would hold the DMCA and any other controversial law under the same light: show definitive, factual information on why you have the right to take MY RIGHTS away, otherwise you are just trading laws for votes, and your ass needs to be impeached / removed from office. Enough.
YOUR SECOND (acceptable amount of flame-bait like wording) was: And yeah it probably won't be secure at first, and they'll be underground gangs rechiping the guns. But it makes it harder for criminals to get guns and that has to be good.
See the comments above, but I'm not sure what has been done here to criminals that stop them. I cannot imagine any technology today that is not easily defeatable within a week of it's release. More importantly, who are the criminals, and what happens if they're even smarter than you think. What if they have a "trigger disabling device" that works against allowing legal gun owners to use their guns? Imagine the scene in Urban Chicago (where guns can be worn openly or concealed with a permit, and many citizens do so): A criminal walks into a populated area, cops and people alike, and activates his "jamming device" (what's it take, a strong EMC signal at a specific frequency), and then he effectively becomes the only armed individual within 100 yards. Far fetched? I don't know, I don't have the statistics, but I bet there a few people right here on Slashdot who could create exactly that kind of device, and release the technology under an "open source" license. Then we could have some really interesting discussions on how the government and the corporations are trying to suppress our constitutional rights to communicate, as they sick the lawyers on everyone distributing the code (see here, here, and here for great examples of how the discussion might look). Funny how people think, isn't it?
Regards,
Ron
As is my norm, let's take the scientific approach to this comment: How about doing a PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE comparison to fatal errors made with and without this kind of gun control, and see if it is really a benefit, or just another "appease the masses" type of "personal security" enhancement that sounds great for the pundits, but has no grounds for approval:
Step 1, as this previous Slashdot commentary showed, will be very difficult, if not impossible, but let's lay out the requirement anyway: we need to understand the PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE rating of accidental deaths caused by accidental shootings (part of my assumptions include that the criminals will have little difficulty breaking the control device, despite the risk they take of violating the DMCA in doing so).
-Step 2: then, is to determine the PROBABILITY OF OCCURANCE rating for software glitches, electronic failures (usually some mathematical combination of the failure rate for each sub-component of such a device, plus the failure rate of the interfaces between each sub-component) and operator skill level (let's face it: this may be simple, but will it be any simpler than, say, a VCR to set up correctly?). This, in turn, will need to be broken down into the probabilities of POSITIVES (actual occurances of the above) leading to a death.
Because I do NOT have the numbers, I find it irresponsible and very, very biased against the U.S. constitution that such a law has been enacted without direct evidence showing the real benefit. The gun-makers are not criminals, why are they (and their buyers) being forced to pay for technology that has not even had a basic analysis of the benefits completed?
I realize not everyone will accept statistical analysis as justification for gun control laws, but I would expect it to be a bare minimum for limiting U.S. Constitutional rights (this does limit ones ability to bear arms, based on cost alone). I would hold the DMCA and any other controversial law under the same light: show definitive, factual information on why you have the right to take MY RIGHTS away, otherwise you are just trading laws for votes, and your ass needs to be impeached / removed from office. Enough.
YOUR SECOND (acceptable amount of flame-bait like wording) was: And yeah it probably won't be secure at first, and they'll be underground gangs rechiping the guns. But it makes it harder for criminals to get guns and that has to be good.
See the comments above, but I'm not sure what has been done here to criminals that stop them. I cannot imagine any technology today that is not easily defeatable within a week of it's release. More importantly, who are the criminals, and what happens if they're even smarter than you think. What if they have a "trigger disabling device" that works against allowing legal gun owners to use their guns? Imagine the scene in Urban Chicago (where guns can be worn openly or concealed with a permit, and many citizens do so): A criminal walks into a populated area, cops and people alike, and activates his "jamming device" (what's it take, a strong EMC signal at a specific frequency), and then he effectively becomes the only armed individual within 100 yards. Far fetched? I don't know, I don't have the statistics, but I bet there a few people right here on Slashdot who could create exactly that kind of device, and release the technology under an "open source" license. Then we could have some really interesting discussions on how the government and the corporations are trying to suppress our constitutional rights to communicate, as they sick the lawyers on everyone distributing the code (see here, here, and here for great examples of how the discussion might look). Funny how people think, isn't it?
Regards,
Ron
