Smart Guns and reasons why they are not a good idea.

[singlestacksig]

A fee years ago HP decided to push an update to their printers, if the printer didn't have special coded HP ink in it , they bricked the printer..
No imagine how that could be used against your gun..

 

[SpaceManNR]

‘Smart’ guns fail the reliability test.

In order the meet their design concept, they must fail to ‘safe’…meaning that a dead battery, broken circuit, wet touchpad, etc renders the firearm inoperable. If they cannot get the fingerprint reader on my phone to work well, then why would I want to attach the same thing to my pistol?

 

[Sigblaster]

I ran across an older article about smart guns read it and was wondering if they had made more advancements on that technology?
Also want to discuss the reasons why they are not a good idea.

This article gives some good thoughts. I'm sure there are a lot better thoughts on this subject here on INGO.

Looks Can Be Deceiving: This "Smart Gun" Is a Really Bad Idea

High-tech handgun actually makes shooters less safe.

nationalinterest.org

Also discuss what it would have to take to develop a smart gun in order for our law enforcement agencies to adopt these smart guns.

View attachment 146634

I think that's a neat looking gun, and if I could buy one without the electronics for around $200, I'd buy it as a plinker/range toy.

However, I want nothing to do with "smart" gun technology.

If someone wants to pack electronics into a sidearm, it had better look like this to get my interest, and it had better fire regardless of who's holding it:

 

[DadSmith]

I think that's a neat looking gun, and if I could buy one without the electronics for around $200, I'd buy it as a plinker/range toy.

However, I want nothing to do with "smart" gun technology.

If someone wants to pack electronics into a sidearm, it had better look like this to get my interest, and it had better fire regardless of who's holding it:

View attachment 147424

Yep even futuristic Star Trek didn't have that junk on their phasers.

 

[JAL]

‘Smart’ guns fail the reliability test.

In order the meet their design concept, they must fail to ‘safe’…meaning that a dead battery, broken circuit, wet touchpad, etc renders the firearm inoperable. If they cannot get the fingerprint reader on my phone to work well, then why would I want to attach the same thing to my pistol?

Electronic finger and palmprint readers do not work well with those who have worked with their hands for decades, and that includes years of pounding away on typewriter and computer keyboards. It gets worse with age. Both fingerprint scanners on two laptops I had were very unreliable. Even with repeated scans, they regularly could not read my prints correctly. Just setting one up which requires scanning your print several times to verify it was a royal PITA as that never worked on half my fingers and took a dozen or more attempts with almost all the rest of them.

More recently did the fingerprint reader used by local law enforcement a few years ago . . . one of the steps required for a license to carry. I was there for over an hour while we attempted to get the reader to read enough of my fingerprints. Never did manage to capture all of them, just most of them, and barely enough of them at that. I wasn't the first person she encountered with fingerprints that couldn't be read properly. I was just one of many, and she knew all the tricks and methods used to make the difficult prints easier to read. That finally explained the trouble I had with the two laptops.

It's one of several reasons I ultimately disabled the fingerprint readers on the laptops, reverting to long passphrases, and don't use the fingerprint reader built into my phone.

 

[russc2542]

Everything else is beaten to death so technical reasons...

-EMP, either generalized or localized (think of the drone-killers... directed interference on an AR lower)
-mechanical robustness. Can it handle being carried and bounced around? Can it handle recoil? Optics and red dots have been developed to that point so I imagine it's a matter of development effort.
-How does it handle florida heat and humidity stuck in mr salt-lick's belt? How does it handle the cold OWB in northern Minnesota? (or left in a glove box either way since it's now safe to leave it unattended)
-power source. remember to change the batteries in your gun like you do your red dot. How many range trips have involved a last minute battery change or been cut short by not having spares? How many perfectly good 9v batteries are thrown away yearly because we're told to change them in the fire alarm every 6 months?
-What's the failure rate of mechanical gun parts vs powered optics?
-What happens if your unable to use it and want to hand it to your spouse?
-magnetic compenents can it be defeated by holding a magnet to the gun? can it be defeated by overpowering it? how long until the bits demagnetize and it doesn't work?
-Is it ambidextrous?
-Once you figure out how to make it work reliable, how do you fit it inside the gun? Rifles are easy. A single-stack .22 has space in the grip, a double stack centerfire less so.

Specific ID methods
-Implanted RFID chip requires an external power source and antenna (IE on the gun) to operate. Is this in addition to the chip for the bank, gov't, medicine, etc or are we supposed to piggyback all the systems on the same chip? When that ID gets stolen, how many customer service calls does it take to get everything swapped over?
-Biometrics...oof
-Fingerprints are hard to read and take time to read. easily false-fails and easily defeated. What if you're wearing gloves? what if your hands are dirty?
-I had a science teacher in HS that just naturally had super faint fingerprints. Before she taught she applied to work at a bank and they wouldn't let her start until they could get a good set of prints.
-Any sort of skin/breath/fluid testing requires chemical analysis, gonna stick that in the gun?
-voice print? rear facing camera?
-watch, ring, other wearable: What's the range? What if you have to shoot offhand? what stops them from just stealing that?
-what about people like me that can't stand to wear watches or jewelry? I've always worked with my hands, often in places where things worn are a safety concern (welding, electricity, general shop/mechanical stuff)
-codes: how long does it take to enter? how long does it take to defeat? how many tries till it locks you out for 15 minutes? how many tries till it bricks like an iphone? I decoded a couple combo locks before high school, takes an hour or 2 for 4 digits. How big are the buttons? Where are the buttons?

I'm sure I'm missing a few.

Remind me again about how unstealable cars are, how criminals can't open safes and vaults or get into your house if the door's locked? How facebook, amazon, and other tech companies are working to keep our info safe and unstealable. My wife picked a car lock in high school with a couple bobby pins with no training or experience (not even youtube) when a church friend locked the keys inside.