An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
newyorker.com
An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
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Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#2FWIW, I posted this story today because of the New Yorker's announcement of their redesign and temporary disabling of their paywall. I remembering reading the abstract of this article in 2009, and then became a subscriber because I wanted to read the full version...I'm not passionately against or for paywalls, but the New Yorker is probably the only single publication that could pull me like that.
That said, I did a cursory search for the gunmaker...didn't see any big update, I saw a mention that it's in rotation with the Marines...but no contemporary mention of what sounded like an impending revolution of shotgun-wielding-robots.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#3> propels the shell out of a gun barrel
What?
> his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12.
"Auto Assault-12 (AA-12), originally designed and known as the Atchisson Assault Shotgun, is a shotgun developed in 1972 by Maxwell Atchisson." [0]
What?
Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? Is this just my own ignorance or are these factual errors?
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#4> propels the shell out of a gun barrel What? > his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12. "Auto Assault-12 (AA-12), originally designed and known as the Atchisson Assault Shotgun, is a shotgun developed in 1972 by Maxwell Atchisson." [0] What? Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? Is this just my own ignorance or are these factual errors? [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchisson_A…
The article covers that. The original design was done by Atchisson, then sold to Baber, who improved on it.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#5> propels the shell out of a gun barrel What? > his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12. "Auto Assault-12 (AA-12), originally designed and known as the Atchisson Assault Shotgun, is a shotgun developed in 1972 by Maxwell Atchisson." [0] What? Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? Is this just my own ignorance or are these factual errors? [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchisson_A…
Read further in the Wikipedia article, the first sentence in the 'History' section is
> In 1987, Max Atchisson sold the rights of the AA-12 to Jerry Baber of Military Police Systems, Inc., Piney Flats, Tennessee
Quoting the New Yorker in full
>[...]he started producing, from start to finish, his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12.
it is obvious that he was the first to produce a mass market ready model. The article doesn't claim that he invented it.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#6See, this is the sort of thing that I hate reading about.
Like, yes, we have drones, and yes, we have firearms, and yes, we can add one to the other--but is it really a good idea?
The potential for abuse of such systems is absurd; I cannot believe that any engineer with a shred of morality would voluntarily work on such things without at least a solid explanation of why doing so is permissible.
Mark my words: these things will mostly be used against civilians and dissidents--not standing armies.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#7Baber decided that the gun was too powerful to sell outside the military. He donated one to his local county sheriff, but turned everyone else away. “I don’t want that on my conscience—something I created going out and killing people all over the damn place,” he said. “I’m not worried about what it does over in Iraq or Afghanistan. That’s fine.”
This doesn't sound as though he has really thought this through. Either that or he has a rather nasty definition of "people".
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#8> propels the shell out of a gun barrel What? > his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12. "Auto Assault-12 (AA-12), originally designed and known as the Atchisson Assault Shotgun, is a shotgun developed in 1972 by Maxwell Atchisson." [0] What? Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? Is this just my own ignorance or are these factual errors? [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchisson_A…
"In 1987, Max Atchisson sold the rights of the AA-12 to Jerry Baber of Military Police Systems, Inc., Piney Flats, Tennessee.[3] MPS in turn developed the successor simply known as Auto Assault-12, which was redesigned over a period of 18 years with 188 changes and improvements to the original blueprint, modifications included changing the AA-12 from blowback- to gas-operated with a locked breech." [0]
Looks like there was a bit of exaggeration going on, but not anything terribly out of line.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#9"On an LCD display behind Baber, I could see an image of my leg, transmitted by a camera under the robot’s gun barrel. The gun then pointed at my stomach. He assured me that it was not loaded."
Pointing a firearm an anyone, even unloaded, even (especially?) robot controlled, is a terrible idea. This bothers me to no end, and it's so strange that someone who works with very powerful weapons can act like this. Perhaps he feels that he's smart enough that no mistakes will happen? Perhaps he has confidence in the robot not to fire any rounds? He's a brilliant man, very good at what he does; certainly he's spent lots of time with these things, and understands them more than I ever will.
That said: mistakes happen, don't point guns at people you don't want holes in.
Re: An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army (2009)
#10FWIW, I posted this story today because of the New Yorker's announcement of their redesign and temporary disabling of their paywall. I remembering reading the abstract of this article in 2009, and then became a subscriber because I wanted to read the full version...I'm not passionately against or for paywalls, but the New Yorker is probably the only single publication that could pull me like that. That said, I did a…
This is a remarkable story, thanks for sharing it. As a former Shadow 200 UAV/Drone pilot, I had no idea that they had this type of tech, so it came as fascinating.