Last week the Department of Justice released guidelines for smart-gun manufacturers.
ARE there any 'smart-gun manufacturers'? Not people doing some research, but actual manufacturers?
The new guidelines are voluntary, so they are useless. “This project was designed to spur the growth of enhanced gun safety technology – and not to mandate that any particular individual or law enforcement agency adopt the technology once developed,” the Department of Justice wrote in a blog post.
Whatever Trump may be, say "Thank you" for Clinton not being elected, because she and DoJ would be trying to make this crap mandatory.
If there was a demand for smart guns, we wouldn't' need a government
agency to study the topic and issue guidelines. What other commodity
with market demand needs the government to step in and help it out?
None.
Gee, I wonder why...
There are several problems with "smart" guns. Most
importantly, the technology can fail as even the DOJ admits. I expect
the smart gun to fade away once the new administration takes power -- or
at least we'll see if there is an actual demand for the product without
the government intervening.
IF there was an actual demand, there'd already be people actually selling the things, as opposed to 'We have made this, and we need the .gov to push people to buy our unreliable crap.'
5 comments:
This is just step one in the plan. First it's voluntary, then comes mandatory, after that retroactive (turn in all non compliant devices). Finally the standards become so stringent they are essentially a ban on guns.... Which is the entire reason behind these efforts. It's just another back handed attempt at gun control...disarming society so they can RULE US.
Well, once upon a time, before the government got involved in this, there was research going on that wasn't politically motivated.
An engineer named Devoid over 40 years ago came up with a system he called the Mag-na-Trigger. The user wore a special magnetic ring and used a S&W revolver that had a spring-loaded safety block inside it that the magnet in the ring moved out of the way. No one could fire the gun who wasn't wearing one of the rings on that hand. He created it for law enforcement use.
It seems to me that this was a pretty clever idea and did pretty much everything the "smart gun" advocates wanted. I would also note that it never took off in the marketplace, because it was very expensive. It required a lot of machine work and hand fitting to modify the revolver.
Then Mr. Devoid died, and his family began fighting over who would own the patents. When it all finally shook out, back in the 1990s, you could get a Mag-na-Trigger setup installed again. It hasn't gotten any less expensive, nor has it gotten any more popular. It was only ever compatible with S&W revolvers, and we live in a world where most people regard the full-size, full-frame revolver as the missing link between wheellock muzzleloaders and modern firearms.
Maybe if someone comes up with a magnetic ring safety design that works reliably and can be retrofitted to a modern polymer-frame striker-fired service pistol it might become popular and the idea might sell to the public as an option without requiring the government to force people to buy it. Do we have any mechanical engineers reading this blog?
I remember reading about the Mag-na-Trigger back when, I'd forgotten about it.
Don't remember a thing about reliability, or if it would work with both hands if you had a ring on each.
The Mag-na-Trigger failed under a lot of circumstances, even if you wore rings on both hands.
It was one of several solutions reviewed in the late 80s by law enforcement groups who were actively seeking technology to solve the issue of firearms retention in a struggle, and possibly some other issues. Eventually a whitepaper was produced that appeared in a few journals, and can still be found on line.
The current set of recommendations being discussed is largely cribbed from the segment of the paper that discussed the inherent problems of all the technologies presented.
There's one way the DOJ could get smart guns into production - issue an RFQ for smart guns to re-equip all federal prison guards and law enforcement personnel. But they won't do that because the prison guard and police unions are against it. And that ought to tell you something about how unreliable the technology is. Prison guards would rather go into the cell block unarmed so the prisoners can't grab a gun than carry a smart gun...
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