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Why the NRA hates smart guns

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Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#151

Post by cloakandswagger »

hga wrote: post #144
cloakandswagger wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saddened to hear your feelings on the NRA and its effectiveness. While they, thankfully, haven't had to fight any big national gun control initiatives for some time, they are still very active at the state and city level. See their recent lawsuit against the City of Seattle and its new gun tax.

Well, if you want to fund lawsuits, the Washington state based Second Amendment Foundation is a better bet, and I'll bet they're a party to that lawsuit as well. They are the only other effective one as I count them, but you have to donate money to them, a simple membership will just line the pockets of whomever is mailing out their stuff.

The value, as I see it, of the NRA is more its ability to efficiently mobilize 5 million members around key issues. I liken relying only on smaller, fractious orgs to when we had small state militias and no formal army.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#152

Post by hga »

ubernostrum wrote: post #134
hga wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would they get in return? The right to own new machine guns made after 1986, and aren't additions before that that are not already in the pool of 200,000 forbidden? Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, like with drivers licenses. Related to the above, enforcing shall issue concealed carry on the entire nation. Removing the many state restrictions on magazine size, and against "assault weapons", which the Cong…

But... your points all come from the stance I was talking about. You don't seem interested in reasonable compromises, you seem interested in just getting everything you want and everyone else having to deal with it.

Hello? That's a laundry list of possible items. Pick one, and then we can start talking about your "reasonable compromise". As noted previously, up to now all we've done is give things away in these so called compromises.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#153

Post by schismsubv »

ubernostrum wrote: post #134
hga wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would they get in return? The right to own new machine guns made after 1986, and aren't additions before that that are not already in the pool of 200,000 forbidden? Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, like with drivers licenses. Related to the above, enforcing shall issue concealed carry on the entire nation. Removing the many state restrictions on magazine size, and against "assault weapons", which the Cong…

But... your points all come from the stance I was talking about. You don't seem interested in reasonable compromises, you seem interested in just getting everything you want and everyone else having to deal with it.

You seem to have missed the GP's point - go scan through the admittedly silly but illustrative cartoon linked. Gun rights have been repeatedly nibbled, sliced, and cut away over the past century, all in the name of "reasonable compromises". Said "reasonable" "compromises" have progressively eliminated a large swath of gun ownership rights and put the average owner in constant risk of felony.

Example: an individual may own an AR-15 lower receiver, or even machine one themselves. If, however, they drill one 5/32" hole too many in that receiver, they are guilty of a felony. If they own a pistol based on the AR-15 platform and disassemble it at the same time and in the same space that they're disassembling and cleaning an AR-15 rifle, they are committing a felony. These examples are thanks to complex rules based on "compromises".

Gun owners have given up rights time and again, to zero gain of their own. That's not a compromise. A compromise is your asking me to give you half of my cake in return for half of your pie.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#154

Post by Shivetya »

superuser2 wrote: post #130
jboggan wrote: post #11

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 su…

Computers have uses beyond hacking. Guns are for killing. Killing in self-defense, honing your killing skills as a sport/recreation activity, deterring bad behavior by threat of killing, killing things that are socially acceptable to kill (i.e. game animals), sure, but the theme is killing. Lockpicks might be a better example. Many similar arguments apply: their use is to open doors without the correct keys, which on…

well I am all for keeping them around for the self defense aspect alone though I did for a long time love target shooting; boy it gets expensive fast. The police aren't there to save you, they prevent crime by penalizing it but mostly when it comes to violent crime all they can do is figure out what happened and hope to find the perp

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#155

Post by minimax »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #135
minimax wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore. I don't know about the other three cities, but you can concealed carry in Chicago and that has been the case for almost three years now.

Have you tried obtaining a CCW in Chicago? In order to get one you have to: -Take a 16 hour course. There are only a handful of companies that can offer the course and they're fully booked year-round -Pay $150, one of the highest CCW permit fees in the nation -Hope that you aren't one of the 800 applicants/year that are inexplicably denied ( http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-07-04/news/ct-concea... ) So yes, yo…

I haven't tried obtaining a CCW in Chicago because the idea of wandering around Chicago carrying a gun seems totally ridiculous to me.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#156

Post by woodman »

hga wrote: post #121
woodman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to have to disagree with you, I think thumb break retention holsters (that have been the standard forever) are just fine. The usability problem for holsters comes from the loss of fine motor control following an adrenaline dump, you go all thumbs. Of course nothing beats boring old training - where even very complex behavior can be ingrained. I blacked out my first fire fight, but I was later told that I ef…

I'm actually not sure we're disagreeing, but I'll defer to you, seeing as how I've avoided firefights up to now, and probably will in the future, and carry concealed with a Summer Special, friction the only retention besides, of course, having it covered. Ah, also a Safepacker in winter weather, which is not even clearly a hostler: http://www.thewilderness.com/safepacker-concealment-holster/

Oh yeah, we are talking about different use cases. I'd never advocate anything that would make an IWB draw any slower than it already is :) For the more block inclined, MIC trigger guards are nice for winter jackets.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#157

Post by schismsubv »

tbirdz wrote: post #147
superuser2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers have uses beyond hacking. Guns are for killing. Killing in self-defense, honing your killing skills as a sport/recreation activity, deterring bad behavior by threat of killing, killing things that are socially acceptable to kill (i.e. game animals), sure, but the theme is killing. Lockpicks might be a better example. Many similar arguments apply: their use is to open doors without the correct keys, which on…

Don't forget about starter pistols for telling runners when a race starts. Also flare guns for signalling, although that might not count as a "real gun"?

Flare guns fall under the same air transport rules that full-blown firearms do. They must be transported in a case without ammunition that is locked and openable only by the owner.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#158

Post by RUG3Y »

xorgar831 wrote: post #20

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…

It's seriously fun to shoot at a target a mile away and hit it with one of this rifles. The people that I know who own these types of guns also own many, many other guns. The .50 cal is more like a sports car, it's really fun to shoot, very expensive to own, etc.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#159

Post by lumberjack »

hga wrote: post #70
space_fountain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument I have heard is that a universal background checks system would require the government to keep a registry of gun owners to be at all useful. You have to be able to go back and prove whether a seller performed the proper background check before selling a gun to a particular person. A possible alternative I thought and have always wondered why it doesn't get used would be some sort of private public key cr…

The argument I have heard is that a universal background checks system would require the government to keep a registry of gun owners to be at all useful. Bingo, and the imposition of a registry would inevitably spark our next hot civil war. Best to avoid that.... where the seller would get a signed certificate proving they ran a background check and it's result, but the government wouldn't store anything Unfortunatel…

Serious question: do NRA members leave their smartphone at home when they go to a gun range? What about buying ammo? Do they use cash? What about their internet browsing activity? Do they go through a proxy?

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#160

Post by fouric »

vaadu wrote: post #66

This article is an ignorant POS. The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people…

"...trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time."

This. This is my biggest problem with smart-gun tech. We still haven't managed to figure out how to write software for hundred-million-dollar space projects that doesn't crash (the Japanese Hitomi satellite[2] being the latest of many); how on Earth are we going to implement smart gun technology correctly?

(actually, I would argue that we still can't write durable software in general, and as such we should avoid integrating it into important things such as guns and cars until we can improve our development skills)

[1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086422-japanese-satell...

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