Smart Guns - a cautionary origin story

[OakRiver]

Any electronics in my RFID example would be molded into the handle and not likely to break from a drop or be affected by solvents/lube.
As for the fingerprint reading guns, that would require much more sophisticated electronics having to be located on the outside of the grip, which is much more likely to break in the event of a drop.

I apologize if I am misunderstanding you, but it was my understanding that for a smart gun to work successfully the electronic parts must interface with the traditional mechanical components (whether the trigger pack, fire control, firing pic, etc.) to effectively control the firearm. It is this interface that would be susceptible to damage from cleaning products if their seal is broken.

 

[Plague421]

well, none I guess if the point of the rfid guns is to keep them out of toddlers hands, wouldn't it be easier to just keep the gun in a retention holster on a high shelf? I have a two year old, he's into EVERYTHING, however, he can't reach 6' in the air, and there's no way for him to climb up to where I keep my gun, and he still has to get it out of the holster after he figured out how to get to it. I think basic parenting would do a lot more for toddlers safety than restricting my gun.

Those are all ideal solutions, and you are correct these problems stem from lack of responsibility.
I think a point to make is that these devices would kind of be the "last resort" or perhaps a "fail safe" type of safety.
This is an example of something that one might not foresee happening that may have been prevented had it been a smart-gun.
I do realize that this would have been prevented if he was properly restrained, but the fact is we can't make people be responsible parents.

"27 April: In Wisconsin, a two-year-old boy shot and killed his mother. She was driving down the highway when the gun slid from under the driver’s seat. In the back seat, the toddler, who was not in a child-restraint seat, picked up the gun and fired it through the front seat."

I did state in my previous post that I in no way what so ever support any type of legislation requiring gun owners to use these devices.
Your guns are your guns and nobody should be able to tell you what kind of safety you HAVE to have on them.
I do however disagree that the idea of trying to develop a practical and functional smart-gun is a terrible idea. I think they should be available for purchase by those who would wish to own one.

The problem as I see it is the totally irresponsible actions of the adults. The acts of stupidity are mind boggling when considering the so called adult is keeping a handgun around for protection from whatever but has no concerns for the protection of a child. It does seem more and more of the stupid adults are being prosecuted for at least endangerment.

I couldn't agree more. Again I want to say that I do NOT support any legislation requiring gun owners to use a smart-gun. However it might not be such a bad idea to have them available for purchase by these kinds of people.

It doesn't. The larger point is that we have a lot of experience with the press ginning up "awareness" of a problem by apparently coordinated attempts to publicize an issue in an effort to create change, whether the data is valid or not. That is why I asked. It is important to verify because of an extensive and ongoing history of propaganda campaigns regarding firearms.

So, there appears to be a one-year rise in such accidents. Certainly not good and I hope that more people will hear about and take safety precautions more seriously. We'll see where it goes from here.

That is true and I to despise the cleverly worded "selective fact emphasis" smear campaign against guns that is constantly broadcast on TV. I didn't mean to come off as as offensive with my reply, if I did I apologize.

 

[Frosty]

Those are all ideal solutions, and you are correct these problems stem from lack of responsibility.
I think a point to make is that these devices would kind of be the "last resort" or perhaps a "fail safe" type of safety.
This is an example of something that one might not foresee happening that may have been prevented had it been a smart-gun.
I do realize that this would have been prevented if he was properly restrained, but the fact is we can't make people be responsible parents.

"27 April: In Wisconsin, a two-year-old boy shot and killed his mother. She was driving down the highway when the gun slid from under the driver’s seat. In the back seat, the toddler, who was not in a child-restraint seat, picked up the gun and fired it through the front seat."

I did state in my previous post that I in no way what so ever support any type of legislation requiring gun owners to use these devices.
Your guns are your guns and nobody should be able to tell you what kind of safety you HAVE to have on them.
I do however disagree that the idea of trying to develop a practical and functional smart-gun is a terrible idea. I think they should be available for purchase by those who would wish to own one.

unfortunetly, some of these parents just make an honest mistake, but some are just irresponsible ****s that don't deserve to have been blessed with children and definitely aren't mature enough to have a loaded gun in their possession, IMHO. That parent failed on every level if you ask me. Now she is dead and her kid will get to live with that horror forever.

 

[Plague421]

I apologize if I am misunderstanding you, but it was my understanding that for a smart gun to work successfully the electronic parts must interface with the traditional mechanical components (whether the trigger pack, fire control, firing pic, etc.) to effectively control the firearm. It is this interface that would be susceptible to damage from cleaning products if their seal is broken.

I haven't the slightest idea of how one would interface the electronics with the mechanics.
I was really addressing the flaw in the "authorization system" in which it would be activated or deactivated.
Honestly I am not qualified to speculate on how it would interface with the mechanics but I would assume that an electronic solenoid would have to be used.
From what I know of solenoids, they use magnetism to move a pin through a wire coil in a push-pull motion. I am assuming that it wouldn't have to be "sealed" but more contained or held in place.
I am not a gunsmith so how viable that would be in the compact inner workings of a trigger assembly I have no idea, it's just my speculation.

 

[Plague421]

unfortunetly, some of these parents just make an honest mistake

Those are the people I think should have the option to purchase a smart-gun. Nobody is perfect, sometimes people forget, no matter how responsible you try to be.

 

[Frosty]

Those are the people I think should have the option to purchase a smart-gun. Nobody is perfect, sometimes people forget, no matter how responsible you try to be.

Well, like you've said, it's fine if they want to make them, as long as the .gov idiots don't try to force them on us. Your completely correct though, the fog of parenting is a real thing, especially when at a grocery store

 

[IndyDave1776]

Maybe an iris scanner located inside the barrel would convince those liberals that this isn't such a good idea....

That, or make them stop having ideas altogether.

 

[Plague421]

Well, like you've said, it's fine if they want to make them, as long as the .gov idiots don't try to force them on us.

I think the problem most people have with the idea is that it is quite likely the gov. would end up forcing them on us. I myself don't doubt that, and it's a damn shame the gov. wouldn't be happy with letting us choose for ourselves.
It would be nice if the NRA or GOA were able to get legislation passed that would prevent the gov. from forcing us to use them. Perhaps on the grounds of reliablity in terms of failing to fire or somthing like that. I can dream can't I? lol

 

[cooltools]

I think the problem most people have with the idea is that it is quite likely the gov. would end up forcing them on us. I myself don't doubt that, and it's a damn shame the gov. wouldn't be happy with letting us choose for ourselves.
It would be nice if the NRA or GOA were able to get legislation passed that would prevent the gov. from forcing us to use them. Perhaps on the grounds of reliablity in terms of failing to fire or somthing like that. I can dream can't I? lol

I have heard law enforcement has totally rejected the idea of arming itself with so called smart guns, ( what say you LEO members ? ) and of course the armed forces. Considering the daily failure of technology, smart phones, computers, etc. I myself would not ever rely on this type of gun in a critical situation.

 

[rugertoter]

The "smart" part of the gun is supposed to be between your ears.

 

[cooltools]

The "smart" part of the gun is supposed to be between your ears.

Well said sir ! Wish I would have said that.

 

[WarJunky91]

I will never buy any kind of smart gun. I have literally grown up immersed in technology. My preschool classroom had a computer in it. And i went down the rabbit hole so to speak and learned exactly how this stuff works, but also exactly how it fails, and how it can be defeated. I will never trust a smart gun. Technology is so vulnerable, especially documented, standardized technology like RFID. You are literally mixing the worst of both worlds putting electronics in a gun. You open yourself up to not only more mechanical or electrical failure, but deliberate deactivation or unauthorized activation of the weapon by hackers.

Since we are talking about RFID to start with i will go off on that. Almost every RFID chip today follows some major standard, so its not going to be hard to guess what kind of frequencies and what kind of data you will be expecting to see on these devices. RFID skimming is already a problem, as seen by the surge in popularity of RFID blocking technology for items used to hold RFID cards or passports (its even required by the US Government that new ID cards be shipped in shielded envelopes). And RFID skimming doesn't need to be someone coming up and almost touching you with a big scanner as you may have seen on TV. If you can get someone to pass through a loop of wire, say one that is wrapped around the outside of a door frame, you can scan any RFID item inside of that loop. Ask yourself how often do you check random doorways for wires around the edges? What if someone installed that doorway with the specific intent of RFID skimming? You would never be able to tell.

Now RFID comes in 3 flavors, passive, semi-passive, and active. Passive has no power source and just bounces back a signal with the energy given to it by the incoming signal, semi-passive uses a power source to send a signal after it gets a request, and active continuously broadcasts its data. In the Smart Gun sense the weapon would be the requester and the watch would be the static tag. The smart gun would query the tag for its information, it would receive a response from the tag, and then it would approve or deny access based on the received data.

Problem 1: That data is not encoded! If you skim a Police Officer's RFID watch you now have his access code to the weapon.

Problem 2: How often would you query the watch to make sure it is in range? Every second, every 5 seconds, every 30 seconds? If its longer than once a second you may very well end up without someone having the gun outside the range of the watch and being able to fire. Well that is an easy fix right? Just make the watch an active tag and have it broadcast constantly and when it stops receiving signal the gun shuts itself off right? Well you are now broadcasting your unlock code to anyone who walks by, you don't need a closed loop wire skimmer for that anymore. Just sit outside the cop shop for a couple days and you have every unlock code a criminal could ever need.

So we are back to Problem 1: RFID is not encrypted, simple fix, lets add a layer of encryption. But wait, that adds a whole new level, your smart gun now needs to run encryption and decryption software, so does the tag, yet more complexity. And at the same time the watch tag needs to know what the code is to decrypt the incoming message! So you either have exclusively matched pairs of watches and guns (not likely), or you could have the gun broadcast its request without encryption, while including its "public key" that the tag will use to encrypt the return message. Oh and i forgot to mention all of this is taking up more battery life both inside your gun and your watch, how often do you forget to charge your phone, but now you got your gun too? "Oh sorry I can't get that 911 call, my gun is on the charger!" But really encrypting your watch tag signal won't do much if hackers have the format for the code. They could just broadcast every conceivable code or a group of them to unlock the gun. An easy way to defeat this would be to limit the number of access attempts. But then that could be used for nefarious means also, that means all you have to do is broadcast a gigantic wave of RFID signals at someone's gun and it would lock them out of it, even if they had the correct watch!

So what if we get away from RFID entirely and go to something different, well that just starts the whole process over again, and at the end we still arrive to my last issue.

And last but not least, my biggest issue with Smart Guns: Bugs. You are going to be putting out a piece of not easily changed hardware and software that may have some literally deadly bugs in it. Let's say some hacker is playing with his gun and finds that due to a hardware failure or a software error that if you broadcast a serial number of extremely long length, say 100,000 digits, it will force a reboot of the system, and upon reboot it will accept any tag in its range as good. How do you update guns like that? Send out a software update? To a physical item not connected to the internet? What if its a hardware bug, do you recall all these guns? How do you make sure these all get recalled or get updates, in a way that doesn't leave someone dead. Issues like these are why in the lock picking community failure modes in locks are treated like national secrets until they can inform that manufacturer and they can do a recall, repair, or replacement as soon as they fix the issue. In the electronic community people are not so well inclined to look out for the safety of others, especially when the nefarious ones have much more to gain financially for it. And imagine if these guns were WiFi enable for "easy updating", imagine some hacker putting a lock on New York PD's entire arsenal unless he is paid a ransom. It's insane. Chunks of metal and plastic are much more reliable than silicon wafers and copper wires.

For all the reasons listed above i will never entertain the idea of a "smart" gun. It's a fantasy of the technologically illiterate.

 

[Frosty]

I will never buy any kind of smart gun. I have literally grown up immersed in technology. My preschool classroom had a computer in it. And i went down the rabbit hole so to speak and learned exactly how this stuff works, but also exactly how it fails, and how it can be defeated. I will never trust a smart gun. Technology is so vulnerable, especially documented, standardized technology like RFID. You are literally mixing the worst of both worlds putting electronics in a gun. You open yourself up to not only more mechanical or electrical failure, but deliberate deactivation or unauthorized activation of the weapon by hackers.

Since we are talking about RFID to start with i will go off on that. Almost every RFID chip today follows some major standard, so its not going to be hard to guess what kind of frequencies and what kind of data you will be expecting to see on these devices. RFID skimming is already a problem, as seen by the surge in popularity of RFID blocking technology for items used to hold RFID cards or passports (its even required by the US Government that new ID cards be shipped in shielded envelopes). And RFID skimming doesn't need to be someone coming up and almost touching you with a big scanner as you may have seen on TV. If you can get someone to pass through a loop of wire, say one that is wrapped around the outside of a door frame, you can scan any RFID item inside of that loop. Ask yourself how often do you check random doorways for wires around the edges? What if someone installed that doorway with the specific intent of RFID skimming? You would never be able to tell.

Now RFID comes in 3 flavors, passive, semi-passive, and active. Passive has no power source and just bounces back a signal with the energy given to it by the incoming signal, semi-passive uses a power source to send a signal after it gets a request, and active continuously broadcasts its data. In the Smart Gun sense the weapon would be the requester and the watch would be the static tag. The smart gun would query the tag for its information, it would receive a response from the tag, and then it would approve or deny access based on the received data.

Problem 1: That data is not encoded! If you skim a Police Officer's RFID watch you now have his access code to the weapon.

Problem 2: How often would you query the watch to make sure it is in range? Every second, every 5 seconds, every 30 seconds? If its longer than once a second you may very well end up without someone having the gun outside the range of the watch and being able to fire. Well that is an easy fix right? Just make the watch an active tag and have it broadcast constantly and when it stops receiving signal the gun shuts itself off right? Well you are now broadcasting your unlock code to anyone who walks by, you don't need a closed loop wire skimmer for that anymore. Just sit outside the cop shop for a couple days and you have every unlock code a criminal could ever need.

So we are back to Problem 1: RFID is not encrypted, simple fix, lets add a layer of encryption. But wait, that adds a whole new level, your smart gun now needs to run encryption and decryption software, so does the tag, yet more complexity. And at the same time the watch tag needs to know what the code is to decrypt the incoming message! So you either have exclusively matched pairs of watches and guns (not likely), or you could have the gun broadcast its request without encryption, while including its "public key" that the tag will use to encrypt the return message. Oh and i forgot to mention all of this is taking up more battery life both inside your gun and your watch, how often do you forget to charge your phone, but now you got your gun too? "Oh sorry I can't get that 911 call, my gun is on the charger!" But really encrypting your watch tag signal won't do much if hackers have the format for the code. They could just broadcast every conceivable code or a group of them to unlock the gun. An easy way to defeat this would be to limit the number of access attempts. But then that could be used for nefarious means also, that means all you have to do is broadcast a gigantic wave of RFID signals at someone's gun and it would lock them out of it, even if they had the correct watch!

So what if we get away from RFID entirely and go to something different, well that just starts the whole process over again, and at the end we still arrive to my last issue.

And last but not least, my biggest issue with Smart Guns: Bugs. You are going to be putting out a piece of not easily changed hardware and software that may have some literally deadly bugs in it. Let's say some hacker is playing with his gun and finds that due to a hardware failure or a software error that if you broadcast a serial number of extremely long length, say 100,000 digits, it will force a reboot of the system, and upon reboot it will accept any tag in its range as good. How do you update guns like that? Send out a software update? To a physical item not connected to the internet? What if its a hardware bug, do you recall all these guns? How do you make sure these all get recalled or get updates, in a way that doesn't leave someone dead. Issues like these are why in the lock picking community failure modes in locks are treated like national secrets until they can inform that manufacturer and they can do a recall, repair, or replacement as soon as they fix the issue. In the electronic community people are not so well inclined to look out for the safety of others, especially when the nefarious ones have much more to gain financially for it. And imagine if these guns were WiFi enable for "easy updating", imagine some hacker putting a lock on New York PD's entire arsenal unless he is paid a ransom. It's insane. Chunks of metal and plastic are much more reliable than silicon wafers and copper wires.

For all the reasons listed above i will never entertain the idea of a "smart" gun. It's a fantasy of the technologically illiterate.

I've said it at least three times but I'll say it again. No technology in a tool my life depends on!

 

[Plague421]

I will never buy any kind of smart gun. I have literally grown up immersed in technology. My preschool classroom had a computer in it. And i went down the rabbit hole so to speak and learned exactly how this stuff works, but also exactly how it fails, and how it can be defeated. I will never trust a smart gun. Technology is so vulnerable, especially documented, standardized technology like RFID. You are literally mixing the worst of both worlds putting electronics in a gun. You open yourself up to not only more mechanical or electrical failure, but deliberate deactivation or unauthorized activation of the weapon by hackers.

Since we are talking about RFID to start with i will go off on that. Almost every RFID chip today follows some major standard, so its not going to be hard to guess what kind of frequencies and what kind of data you will be expecting to see on these devices. RFID skimming is already a problem, as seen by the surge in popularity of RFID blocking technology for items used to hold RFID cards or passports (its even required by the US Government that new ID cards be shipped in shielded envelopes). And RFID skimming doesn't need to be someone coming up and almost touching you with a big scanner as you may have seen on TV. If you can get someone to pass through a loop of wire, say one that is wrapped around the outside of a door frame, you can scan any RFID item inside of that loop. Ask yourself how often do you check random doorways for wires around the edges? What if someone installed that doorway with the specific intent of RFID skimming? You would never be able to tell.

Now RFID comes in 3 flavors, passive, semi-passive, and active. Passive has no power source and just bounces back a signal with the energy given to it by the incoming signal, semi-passive uses a power source to send a signal after it gets a request, and active continuously broadcasts its data. In the Smart Gun sense the weapon would be the requester and the watch would be the static tag. The smart gun would query the tag for its information, it would receive a response from the tag, and then it would approve or deny access based on the received data.

Problem 1: That data is not encoded! If you skim a Police Officer's RFID watch you now have his access code to the weapon.

Problem 2: How often would you query the watch to make sure it is in range? Every second, every 5 seconds, every 30 seconds? If its longer than once a second you may very well end up without someone having the gun outside the range of the watch and being able to fire. Well that is an easy fix right? Just make the watch an active tag and have it broadcast constantly and when it stops receiving signal the gun shuts itself off right? Well you are now broadcasting your unlock code to anyone who walks by, you don't need a closed loop wire skimmer for that anymore. Just sit outside the cop shop for a couple days and you have every unlock code a criminal could ever need.

So we are back to Problem 1: RFID is not encrypted, simple fix, lets add a layer of encryption. But wait, that adds a whole new level, your smart gun now needs to run encryption and decryption software, so does the tag, yet more complexity. And at the same time the watch tag needs to know what the code is to decrypt the incoming message! So you either have exclusively matched pairs of watches and guns (not likely), or you could have the gun broadcast its request without encryption, while including its "public key" that the tag will use to encrypt the return message. Oh and i forgot to mention all of this is taking up more battery life both inside your gun and your watch, how often do you forget to charge your phone, but now you got your gun too? "Oh sorry I can't get that 911 call, my gun is on the charger!" But really encrypting your watch tag signal won't do much if hackers have the format for the code. They could just broadcast every conceivable code or a group of them to unlock the gun. An easy way to defeat this would be to limit the number of access attempts. But then that could be used for nefarious means also, that means all you have to do is broadcast a gigantic wave of RFID signals at someone's gun and it would lock them out of it, even if they had the correct watch!

So what if we get away from RFID entirely and go to something different, well that just starts the whole process over again, and at the end we still arrive to my last issue.

And last but not least, my biggest issue with Smart Guns: Bugs. You are going to be putting out a piece of not easily changed hardware and software that may have some literally deadly bugs in it. Let's say some hacker is playing with his gun and finds that due to a hardware failure or a software error that if you broadcast a serial number of extremely long length, say 100,000 digits, it will force a reboot of the system, and upon reboot it will accept any tag in its range as good. How do you update guns like that? Send out a software update? To a physical item not connected to the internet? What if its a hardware bug, do you recall all these guns? How do you make sure these all get recalled or get updates, in a way that doesn't leave someone dead. Issues like these are why in the lock picking community failure modes in locks are treated like national secrets until they can inform that manufacturer and they can do a recall, repair, or replacement as soon as they fix the issue. In the electronic community people are not so well inclined to look out for the safety of others, especially when the nefarious ones have much more to gain financially for it. And imagine if these guns were WiFi enable for "easy updating", imagine some hacker putting a lock on New York PD's entire arsenal unless he is paid a ransom. It's insane. Chunks of metal and plastic are much more reliable than silicon wafers and copper wires.

For all the reasons listed above i will never entertain the idea of a "smart" gun. It's a fantasy of the technologically illiterate.

You make some very intelligent and valid points.
However your arguments against smart-guns is biased by your implication that this technology would/could/should be used for security purposes.
I never advocated the use of smart-guns for security or anti-theft purposes, mainly because of the very good points you have made here.

Smart-guns could be used as an added safety feature when the guns are stored within the home.
Nobody ever said that you wouldn't be able to turn such a feature off for when you EDC.
Perhaps by the use of a small key, or pin which would disable the smart-features entirely.

My argument was to prevent accidental death/injury caused by an untrained teenager or small child unwittingly coming into possession of the gun.
Current gun locking devices aren't really practical in terms of home defense, they are likely to slow you down or prevent you entirely from using your gun.
With a smart-gun you would be able to have the safety features of a gun lock, with the advantage of being able to use the gun at a moments notice.

Your arguments hold merit against this purpose as well. Home invaders could "jam" the RFID signal and cause the safety to undesirably engage.
However this would indicate a premeditated and methodical plan to invade your home, which would require more preparation and "reconnaissance" than 99% of home invaders would be willing or able to pull off.
I think its fair to say that the typical home invader is not on the higher side of the IQ scale.
If the person was smart enough and had the means to hack or disable the smart-gun, I doubt you would have had much of a chance against their attack anyway.
After all, the most successful criminals have one thing in common, proper planning.

Which is why I still feel like developing such technology shouldn't be so quickly dismissed and looked down upon.
Smart-guns would have purpose, but not the purposes the gov. would like them to have.

 

[cobber]

And there's another one:

Developer seeks high-tech solution to make firearms safer after police deaths

 

[pudly]

Smart-guns could be used as an added safety feature when the guns are stored within the home.
Nobody ever said that you wouldn't be able to turn such a feature off for when you EDC.
Perhaps by the use of a small key, or pin which would disable the smart-features entirely.

I'm afraid this is very naive thinking in a world that contains anti-gunners. 100% of these smart guns are designed to default-fail when the technology breaks. I've yet to hear of one that allows you to disable that feature because the entire justification is to prevent crooks and kids from using them if taken. Also, the government has a long history of using law/regulation to mandate use of various safety devices that come to market. There are entire multi-billion dollar federal agencies devoted to enforcing their use and local police are often leveraged as additional enforcement agents. Many courts would buy an argument that such devices that will fail first "for safety" or can be disabled remotely by authorities do not violate 2A rights and allow such features to become mandatory.

 

[KLB]

I think the problem most people have with the idea is that it is quite likely the gov. would end up forcing them on us. I myself don't doubt that, and it's a damn shame the gov. wouldn't be happy with letting us choose for ourselves.
It would be nice if the NRA or GOA were able to get legislation passed that would prevent the gov. from forcing us to use them. Perhaps on the grounds of reliablity in terms of failing to fire or somthing like that. I can dream can't I? lol

NJ is already waiting to impose just such a requirement.

Any legislation passed can be rescinded or changed. I think the one constant here is that you really cannot trust politicians.

 

[Plague421]

NJ is already waiting to impose just such a requirement.

Any legislation passed can be rescinded or changed. I think the one constant here is that you really cannot trust politicians.

Do you have a link with more information on this? I am interested.

That is true, but isn't it more difficult to have laws changed or rescinded than it is to get them passed in the first place?

 

[pudly]

New Jersey Childproof Handgun Law

The name is just one step towards driving mandatory smart guns. Last year, legislators tried to make it mandatory for gun sellers to display at lest one. N.J. lawmakers act to put a 'smart gun' in every gun shop | NJ.com

 

[Leadeye]

Meh, smart gun tech is just another bad idea that gained traction by promoting it with the help of dc law/lobby firms. Like the microstamp ammo, it didn't sell well with manufacturers so the people behind it just take the route of using government to push it by going through the beltway machine.

Always follow the money