Obama announces new steps to curb gun violence | News | mankatofreepress.comWASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama announced new steps Friday to help curb gun violence, including by identifying the requirements that "smart guns" would have to meet for law enforcement agencies to buy and use them as well as sharing mental health records with the federal background check system.
Smart guns use various technologies to prevent an accidental shooting or help track down a missing gun.
Okay, I am all for the development of "smart guns" which will only fire when a registered user is holding the gun. There are a few benefits to having "smart guns" including child safety, LEO safety, and prevention of an assailant turning someone's own gun against them in a self defense situation.
HOWEVER! This will do nothing to cut down on gun crime. Most guns used in crimes are stolen, and even with this new "smart technology" implemented into the guns if they were to be stolen, then the thieves will figure out a way to modify or remove the "smart parts." They want to put a tracker on the guns? Really? Who else is looking forward to changing the batteries in their guns or having to plug your gun into a charger every night?
What is putting a tracker on the guns going to do? All they would have to do is wrap the gun in tin foil until they get it back to their hideout and disable the tracker. I'm sure a quick zap with a tazer would destroy the device, and a quick USB plug-in to a laptop would reset it.
A good example of how this will NOT work would be to think of it like a safe in your house. You have a safe, robbers break in to your house and try to open the safe, they can't. They pickup the safe, throw it into the back of their getaway vehicle and head back to their hideout. Now they can crack open your safe at their leisure.
You may have prevented them from opening the safe for now, but eventually they'll get it open. The same thing is going to happen with these "smart guns."
While I will concede "at least they couldn't use the guns right after they stole them, so that's progress," a locking trigger guard would have prevented the same thing just as well.
"Many gun injuries and deaths are the result of legal guns that were stolen, misused, or discharged accidentally," Obama said. "As long as we've got the technology to prevent a criminal from stealing and using your smartphone, then we should be able to prevent the wrong person from pulling a trigger on a gun."
This is one of the dumbest thing I have ever read. You cannot compare a smartphone to a gun, in any way shape or form. Guns were not designed to have batteries, GPS, WiFi and 4G LTE built into them. These are all things that are going to have to be added on, not simply put to use.
You can track your smartphone because it has all of those aforementioned things built into it. They are not there for the purpose of locating your stolen/lost phone, they are there because those are useful features on a cellphone to perform a multitude of other tasks! It just so happens that if your phone is lost or stolen you can use those features to your advantage.
Again I reiterate that I am all for the development of smart guns for their obvious safety features, but to come out under the guise that this is somehow going to bring down national gun violence or help locate stolen guns is a joke.
What it's really going to do is inconvenience lawful gun owners.
Ooops! Gun got knocked off the range table, now the $300 GPS is broke and the gun wont fire because the finger print reader is cracked.
DAMN IT! I over lubricated and now the oil has fouled out and corroded all the electronics! Gotta take this back to the gunsmith now...
I guess you could see it as a really clever way to increase the cost of gun ownership thus making them less accessible to people trying to legally acquire them.
The Social Security Administration will publish a proposed rule to help ensure that mental health records about people who are prohibited from buying a gun are reported to the background check system.
I can't wait to see what "mental health problems" they deem problematic enough to prohibit someone from owning a gun. I understand that there are mental disorders people have which should prevent them from owning guns, for fear of causing harm to themselves or innocent people. However I am very leery they will abuse this and start pulling things out of people's distant past in order to prevent them from purchasing a firearm.
What if you were diagnosed with depression years ago, or you had ADHD when you were in high school? Would that prevent you from owning or buying firearms today?
Your dog/Dad/Mom/Grandparent died and you told the Dr. you were feeling depressed about it? No guns for you SIR! You're clearly unstable!
I realize that this may sound childish and a tad paranoid, but the way I see it, if there is anyway they can prevent you from owning a gun they're gonna try to do it.
I don't trust that this will be used for the "greater good." Maybe if GOA or the NRA was putting this together, at least then I could trust that the "prohibitable conditions" are going to be reasonable.