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Why the NRA hates smart guns

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Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#281

Post by 8note »

nv-vn wrote: post #199
TeMPOraL wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is really stretched. The racing sport equivalent to target shooting would be running over paper targets.

That's not an analogy, that's trying to directly apply the sport to another device. That would be like saying an analogy to soccer is kicking basketballs into hoops. The most natural thing to do with a car is to drive it and the most natural thing to do with a gun is to fire it. And running over paper targets instead of racing would probably be an improvement in motorsport safety ;)

the most natural thing to do with a car isn't to run people down though, it's to travel from one place to another.

target practice is to racing, as shooting people (or hunting) is to a road trip.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#282

Post by JoeAltmaier »

8note wrote: post #281
nv-vn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an analogy, that's trying to directly apply the sport to another device. That would be like saying an analogy to soccer is kicking basketballs into hoops. The most natural thing to do with a car is to drive it and the most natural thing to do with a gun is to fire it. And running over paper targets instead of racing would probably be an improvement in motorsport safety ;)

the most natural thing to do with a car isn't to run people down though, it's to travel from one place to another. target practice is to racing, as shooting people (or hunting) is to a road trip.

Appeals to nature are labored. What's the most natural thing to do with a knife then? A plastic bag? It breaks down pretty fast. In the end, a gun propels a lead slug at high speed and good accuracy over a distance of scores of yards.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#283

Post by 8note »

schismsubv wrote: post #234
ap22213 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you put designed in quotes? Look - if you like guns, just say you like guns. People are allowed to like guns. But, throwing around an illogical argument as a logical one isn't going to help in persuading people - well, at least not people who follow logic.

Ostensibly because they're arguing about the weight and intent of the word, "designed". People saying guns are "designed to kill" are attempting to elicit an emotional response that mirrors their own in a fallacious appeal to emotion. No matter their design, guns have use beyond killing humans, and even beyond hunting. Take a knife, for example - designed to kill. Small knives, big knives, single-purpose knives, cera…

how often does a todler accidentally slice and stab their parent to death with a knife, versus shooting them to death with a gun?

a knife isn't designed to kill because it's difficult to kill somebody with a knife by accident. A knife is designed to maim, explaining the large number of injuries, but much smaller number of deaths.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#284

Post by crikli »

chillacy wrote: post #244
crikli wrote: post #83

I'm an engineer, gun owner, and former NRA member[1]. I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern. Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory…

Another aspect I suspect is that gun owners already have the fundamental gun safety rules that are respected like gospel. All gun owners I've met are extremely serious about safety, and treat safety with great reverence. I saw a reddit post of a guy who accidentally shot his foot: known as a Negligent Discharge. In the comments the general conclusion was not to blame the gun maker, but rather to blame the poster for…

You're close on the four rules. :)

1. Every firearm is loaded. 2. Don't point it at anything you don't want to destroy. 3. Trigger finger stays indexed until sights are engaged with target. 4. Know your backstop.

I can't say as I've thought that these guns (I just cannot bring myself to use the adjective "smart" in reference to this idea) would cheapen these rules.

It's more that it's yet another idea proposed by people that don't have enough experience with firearms to present an educated opinion coming up with a scheme that to other ignorant parties thing sounds like, to quote amother commenter "a gimme."

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#285

Post by Frompo »

khedoros wrote: post #196
Frompo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, is it the Stockton schoolyard or 101 California Street shooting that you liken to a blackout? I guess its a pretty dramatic blackout since at least 5 people dies... You also neglect the detail that the police response was of little consequence as the hacker had committed suicide before they police was at the scene. I'm unsure what the web panel remark can mean concretely, exactly what did the children at Sandy Ho…

Why not all of them as a category, or shootings in general? They all fit the concept of "negatives that legislation would attempt to prevent" in the analogy. That's the great thing about analogies: They compare concepts, but the scale of the concepts doesn't necessarily have to match. But I'm sure that you understand that already.

The point of an analogy is to illuminate some point of an issue by drawing parallels with an aspect of a more easily understood, unrelated issue.

For an analogy to be helpful it crucial that the two aspects being related share characteristics, and school shootings don't share many aspects with blackouts. A school shooting is highly localised, even if the location my vary; blackouts need to happen over a very wide area over an extended period of time to be of importance. A school shooting is an active act of killing, a blackout only increases the lethality of already present dangers.

Also, the concept of "negatives that legislation would attempt to prevent" describes things like racial discrimination, poor quality control of seatbelt manufacturers, improper handling of meat and chemical weapon sales to dictatorships as per your "the scale of the concepts doesn't necessarily have to match". Good luck getting much out of the analogy between the Northeast blackout of 2003 and selling weapons to Saddam Hussein.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#286

Post by hga »

crikli wrote: post #284
chillacy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect I suspect is that gun owners already have the fundamental gun safety rules that are respected like gospel. All gun owners I've met are extremely serious about safety, and treat safety with great reverence. I saw a reddit post of a guy who accidentally shot his foot: known as a Negligent Discharge. In the comments the general conclusion was not to blame the gun maker, but rather to blame the poster for…

You're close on the four rules. :) 1. Every firearm is loaded. 2. Don't point it at anything you don't want to destroy. 3. Trigger finger stays indexed until sights are engaged with target. 4. Know your backstop. I can't say as I've thought that these guns (I just cannot bring myself to use the adjective "smart" in reference to this idea) would cheapen these rules. It's more that it's yet another idea proposed by peo…

4: Be certain of your target and what's behind it.

The former is critical for all sorts of things like hunting and self-defense, although a few of the "accidents" I've read about sure smelled like murders to me.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#287

Post by Frompo »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #180
Frompo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, is it the Stockton schoolyard or 101 California Street shooting that you liken to a blackout? I guess its a pretty dramatic blackout since at least 5 people dies... You also neglect the detail that the police response was of little consequence as the hacker had committed suicide before they police was at the scene. I'm unsure what the web panel remark can mean concretely, exactly what did the children at Sandy Ho…

While we're on this wild and irrelevant tangent, people frequently die from blackouts. See the Northeast blackout in 2003 where a dozen people died.

Look, all I want is that you clearly state if you think the sandy hook school shooting is kind of like the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Also, of the 12 deaths wikipedia reports as "contributed to" by the blackout, one is someone falling off a roof while trying to break into a store, and another is some guy taking the stairs and dying of a hearth attack.

No other US blackout listed on wikipedia mentions any deaths, including the article about the 1977 blackout with widespread looting, but I'm sure you have a good reason to say deaths are frequent.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#288

Post by LyndsySimon »

ubernostrum wrote: post #269
schismsubv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I'm a silly backwards hick from Lawrence that warrants only mockery and spite. That said, whatever you insist I'm not an absolutist. I don't think that all weapons-limiting laws should be repealed (e.g. explosive devices), but you continue to insist on your own absolutist approach, that we have zero gun ownership rights and insist we work from your side of the equation. Do you see the duality here? I do…

zero gun ownership rights Well, I think that's true. But you jumped straight from that to universal disarming, which doesn't follow. Not having a right to a thing does not automatically ban the thing; it simply means the thing becomes a privilege to be granted or withheld/revoked. A driver's license works the same way: you don't have an automatic inherent right to a driver's license, but that doesn't in any way imply…

> First: giving up on the idea of militias rising against the federal government. If it ever became necessary, and if the military stayed on the government side, well, we're getting really good at taking out resistance from the safety and comfort of a control room hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the action. Some dudes with camo and rifles aren't gonna cut it. And if the military doesn't stay on the government side, well, the arms are gonna be available. So that one's right out, and I'd argue for repealing the Second Amendment entirely to make it crystal-clear. > Then: registered and tracked ownership of firearms, sale and possession heavily taxed along with tax on ammunition, no sales permitted without full strict documented background check, immediate confiscation after any incident indicating unfitness to own, mandatory requirements for secure unloaded storage at all times the gun is not in use, ownership limited to well-defined types of firearms, ownership solely for the purpose of collectibility/historical value or for sport, use restricted to areas explicitly designated for such purposes. No open carry, no concealed carry, and anyone who wants a gun for the purpose of shooting other people (and self-defense is "for the purpose of shooting other people") automatically forbidden to ever have one.

... and you have the unmitigated gall to claim that those of us on the other side of this issue are "all or nothing".

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#289

Post by LyndsySimon »

tomwilson wrote: post #209

These threads are always so weird to me - from a country where I have never known someone who owns a gun or ever seen one outside of police carrying them.

Growing up, I can't think of anyone I knew that didn't have guns, or who professed to believe they should be restricted further.

Re: Why the NRA hates smart guns

#290

Post by dang »

hga wrote: post #261
powera wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I was too subtle. If gun owners are threatening to shoot people over regulations, isn't that a sign that guns do kill people, and maybe we do need some type of regulations? And we're talking about a registry, not a conspiracy to secretly make all gun-owners criminals. If you insist they're the same, that's your problem.

No, I insist, based on 20th Century history, that pretty much all confiscations in developed, and in most undeveloped countries, have been preceded by registries, and this includes multiple states in the US (where, I grant, you can move the weapon out of state). And since they serve no good purpose, and are promoted by people who are not shy about signaling their ill will towards us, we're allowed to take the imposit…

I can only believe you're making a rhetorical point, but even in the abstract, threatening mass murder is beyond the pale here. Please respect the site rules and the community and don't post like this here.
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