From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Mar 14 2000 - 09:50:02 MST
> > I will state however, that IMO, the gun manufacturers are being
> > irresponsible in this day and age of technology, selling products
> > that are not engineered so that only the owner can turn them on.
> > If you can protect a computer from misuse, you should be able to
> > engineer weapons so that they cannot accidentally (or intentionally
> > in the wrong hands) harm people. If you accept this premise, the
> > efforts by the gun manufacturers (or members of Congress) to try
> > and enact laws that can keep people from suing the gun manufacturers
> > are highly misguided. [I might be willing to grandfather certain very
> > old weapons, but modern day products should be engineered to be safe.]
> >
>
> You can engineer computers to be protected from misuse by use of the
> very circuitry the computer is made up of. To protect a gun from misuse,
> you will need to install a computer on the gun, that is small enough,
> power supply and all, to not impede the use of the gun. Current research
> models are projected to add a minimum of $1000.00 to the cost of each
> gun if put in production, which also decreases their reliability, as gun
> recoil is NOT something that electronics are particularly good at
> dealing with on a frequent basis, and compact power supplies are
> notoriously short lived. Additionally, such technology limits the gun's
> use to the OWNER. Other family members or employees would not be able to
> use them.
Sorry, Mike, but Robert wins this one. The technology to make a gun with
a solid-state passive transponder totally immune to recoil and making the
gun usable by anyone bearing the properly-coded transceiver (worn as a
wristband, ring, cuff link...) could be manufactured for far less than 1%
of the cost of the gun. The NRA should be funding devlopment and gun
manufacturers should be advertising these things.
I give many thanks that the NRA is protecting my right to use the
effective technologies of the day to take responsibility for my life;
but it is inexcusable for them to hold back this technology.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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