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Why the NRA hates smart guns

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Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#11

Post by jboggan »

Good article, glad to see some knowledgable firearms writing in the general press.

This is how I've felt as a gun owner over the last two decades, translated into computing:

Imagine that someone in California hacked into a power station and caused a blackout. Police responded and found the hacker and their equipment. Shortly thereafter an "anti-hacking" bill appeared in the state legislature to prevent a repeat of such a disaster. The attacker used some strange system called Ubuntu which most computer users have little or no reason to have, so that was specifically outlawed in the state (while any other Linux distro is fine). They had a quad-core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, and a USB 2.0 keyboard for "faster hacking"; the bill mandated a limit of 9 gigs, 2 cores, and PS/2 connectors only. The attacker also used something called the "TCP protocol" (misnomer intended); the bill also mandated that the protocol include a 4th and 5th step transmitting "I am not a hacker" and acknowledging "You will be prosecuted with a felony under California SB1137 for improper use of this TCP protocol".

The bill passes and no more hacks occur. Other states don't want to be seen as soft on crime, so they draft copycat bills and randomly ban openSUSE, Gentoo, and trackballs with more than 6 buttons. Within a few years computer enthusiast sites pop up detailing which states are safe to travel to with your laptop. 1 gig RAM chips get unexpectedly expensive as everyone wants to get up to that 9 gig limit in restricted states. California legislators visit university computer labs disapprovingly and talk about closing the "Linux loophole". Activist groups lobby Congress, maintaining that the Founding Fathers never could have conceived of computers as an evolution of the printing press and therefore the 1st Amendment did not apply to electronic devices or communications. Programmers everywhere grumble about coding for two different communication protocols depending on whether or not your users are in California (but it's such a big market you can't ignore it). Your mother wonders why you can't just get your work done on an 8 year old laptop running Windows 7, it's good enough for her web browsing!

The contractor maintaining the power plant control system again leaves the web admin panel open and unsecured after testing from home and forgetting to unflip a poorly labeled feature flag on the production server.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#12

Post by fiatmoney »

ixtli wrote: post #6
sanj wrote: post #4

If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?

I think we all know why. In fact. This author implies it: the NRA actually represents the business interests of people who manufacture and sell firearms. They may mask these interests as a public service, defending your rights and hobbies and whatnot but it is always the case that they oppose anything that would reduce firearm sales and support anything that makes it easier for you to get a gun.

That's absolutely false. The NRA's membership drives their policy, not the other way around - manufacturers have historically been perfectly content to give into things like the assault weapons ban or magazine capacity limits (they make roughly the same amount of money if they sell their guns with a scary flash hider or a sanctified muzzle brake). In fact there are numerous groups, like the Gun Owners of America, who are even more membership-driven and essentially exist in order to keep pressure on the NRA to avoid making "deals" with gun control partisans.

This idea of the NRA as a manufacturer-driven astroturf organization seems to have been made up out of whole cloth over the last 5 years or so and is only sustainable to the extent that its proponents avoid actually talking to any gun owners.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#13

Post by crazy1van »

ixtli wrote: post #6
sanj wrote: post #4

If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?

I think we all know why. In fact. This author implies it: the NRA actually represents the business interests of people who manufacture and sell firearms. They may mask these interests as a public service, defending your rights and hobbies and whatnot but it is always the case that they oppose anything that would reduce firearm sales and support anything that makes it easier for you to get a gun.

> NRA actually represents the business interests of people who manufacture and sell firearms

But this is in no way mutually exclusive from representing the interests of citizens who want to buy and possess those firearms.

It makes total sense that an organization lobbying against outlawing a product would be supported by both the manufacturers and consumers of that product.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#14

Post by curun1r »

hga wrote: post #3
hirundo wrote: post #2

The article makes it sound theoretical, but New Jersey already has the Childproof Handgun Law that makes it illegal to sell a non-smart gun "three years after it is determined that personalized handguns are available for retail purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Childproof_Handgun_...

And that's been seriously proposed in California, which is pushing through another wave of gun control legislation, one bill of which would effectively shut down all gun stores in the state, and certainly favorably talked about elsewhere ... maybe Maryland? Just skimmed it (too much going on right now to look at it in depth), but I'm seriously impressed they did so much work to get in things like the classic "shoulde…

Part of the push for smart guns for law enforcement would come from law enforcement's negligent inability to keep track of their own weapons. A local news channel covered the story of one Bay Area city's police department releasing a report on an inventory of the weapons used by police officers. They were literally missing hundreds of them. Often, the weapon would be lost when an officer left it in an unlocked car, either a police car or their own and the thief simply opened the door/trunk and took it.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#15

Post by hga »

dpflan wrote: post #9

Smart guns have an interesting history. In the 90's Colt developed a smart gun, but the results "backfired." Anti-gun groups were against it because of the idea that safer guns meant that the barrier to entry to ownership was lower (now that guns are "safer", why not have one?); people who depended upon guns for their livelihood were skeptical: when you need to use one there needs to be no questions that it will func…

From the beginning of the first comment in the HN discussion you link to:

he explained that it was only supposed to fire if the shooter was wearing a special wristband with a little radio frequency transmitter inside. The CEO put on the wristband and went to pull the trigger. ... And it didn't shoot. Just silence.

An "oops" which is entirely unacceptable for any law enforcement/self defense use case.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#16

Post by jboggan »

ixtli wrote: post #6
sanj wrote: post #4

If the better approach is to focus on the "who", why does the NRA oppose background checks?

I think we all know why. In fact. This author implies it: the NRA actually represents the business interests of people who manufacture and sell firearms. They may mask these interests as a public service, defending your rights and hobbies and whatnot but it is always the case that they oppose anything that would reduce firearm sales and support anything that makes it easier for you to get a gun.

I disagree. The NRA has 4 million American members which I think makes it the largest lobby by membership. I doubt they're all pawns of the gun industry.

If the NRA wanted to solely juice sales and sell more guns they would give heavily to elect more Democratic candidates. The current presidency has been great for sales [0].

0 - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/nics_firearm_...

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#17

Post by hga »

curun1r wrote: post #14
hga wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's been seriously proposed in California, which is pushing through another wave of gun control legislation, one bill of which would effectively shut down all gun stores in the state, and certainly favorably talked about elsewhere ... maybe Maryland? Just skimmed it (too much going on right now to look at it in depth), but I'm seriously impressed they did so much work to get in things like the classic "shoulde…

Part of the push for smart guns for law enforcement would come from law enforcement's negligent inability to keep track of their own weapons. A local news channel covered the story of one Bay Area city's police department releasing a report on an inventory of the weapons used by police officers. They were literally missing hundreds of them. Often, the weapon would be lost when an officer left it in an unlocked car, e…

I suppose so, but it's not like that would make any difference in the number of illicit guns on the street, and I've never heard of smart guns being designed for that much harder use case, where an adversary had lots of time to modify them. The most common one is limiting who can fire it, e.g. preventing the all too common tragedy when a criminal snatches a cop's gun and kills him with it.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#19

Post by jonstokes »

fiatmoney wrote: post #12
ixtli wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all know why. In fact. This author implies it: the NRA actually represents the business interests of people who manufacture and sell firearms. They may mask these interests as a public service, defending your rights and hobbies and whatnot but it is always the case that they oppose anything that would reduce firearm sales and support anything that makes it easier for you to get a gun.

That's absolutely false. The NRA's membership drives their policy, not the other way around - manufacturers have historically been perfectly content to give into things like the assault weapons ban or magazine capacity limits (they make roughly the same amount of money if they sell their guns with a scary flash hider or a sanctified muzzle brake). In fact there are numerous groups, like the Gun Owners of America, who…

OP article author here: You are correct and the parent comment is incorrect. The NRA actually used to support background checks, but after decades of "compromises" where they basically gave up ground and got nothing in return, they went hard-line at the membership's insistence.

This cartoon does a great job of explaining the average NRA members view of what it means to meet the gun control lobby "halfway" on an issue:

http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-comprom...

I'll link another piece I wrote on this topic, which is way too long and incoherent and should have gotten edits but didn't:

http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/11/12/why-fake-moderate-gun-o...

For discussion of the evolution of the NRA into a hard-line, no-compromise lobbying group, see the last section, "NRA: The Original Moderate Pro-Gun Group".

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#20

Post by xorgar831 »

The irony being is that the gun community acts just as irrational and certainly impractical. Even as a non-gun owner, I know what gun I'd rather have for self defence than these guys. :)

Does a 50cal really seem like a sport rifle? The inventor goes on towards the end of this video to suggest it's useful for personal self-defence?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3usocws0E&t=0m42s

Here's an example of a guy who has 1.5M subscribers explaining how he'd protect himself answering the door in the middle of the night with a completely impractical close range weapon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiWhFTfUCg&t=3m33s

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