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Children, "smart guns," and smart adults by Ralph D. Sherman
Anyone who has watched science
fiction movies in the past 20 years has seen a smart guna computerized
gun that will fire only by an authorized user. In
real life, however, such guns do not existand for good reasons. There are two basic problems with a
computerized gun. The first problem is that the gun may not fire when it should. The
second problem is that the gun may fire when it shouldnt. Both situations are
frightening. Both have caused legitimate manufacturers to back away from the concept. Lets look at the first basic
problem. If something goes wrong with the computer inside the gun, the gun may fail to
fire when its really needed. Computers are not foolproof, as anyone who uses an ATM
or a word processor is aware. And a computer inside a gun would be subjected to tremendous
physical force every time the gun is discharged. Think about taking a hammer to laptop. A gun that fails to fire when needed
is not desirable to anyone who owns a firearm for self defense. Although some police
bureaucrats have advocated the computerized gun, no patrol officer wants such a gun in his
or her duty holster. In actual tests computerized guns have never proven adequately
reliable. But even if the computer problem were
solved, another real-life difficulty has prevented the production of guns that recognize
authorized users. A gun that contains sensors to recognize fingerprints will not work when
the user is wearing gloves. That means that police, hunters, or anyone who needs to use
this type of gun outdoors in cold weather will have a problem. Those who advocate computerized guns
say they would be safer because they cant be fired by children or by criminals. But
does that mean that one could leave a computerized gun where a child could find it? Of
course not. So child safety really would not really be improved by putting a computer
inside the gun. The gun still must be stored so that children dont have access. This brings us to the second basic
problem. A computerized gun may fire when it shouldnt. But the computer
"safety" feature will nevertheless tempt some persons to store the gun where
children can find it. (A study in the 1990s showed that child-proof aspirin
containers actually caused the number of child poisonings to increase, because too many
adults depend on the child-proof feature, instead of storing aspirin out of
childrens reach and teaching their children that aspirin is not candy.) Another possible benefit of
computerized guns is that they might be safe if they fall into the hands of criminals.
Thats the theory behind steering-wheel locks, too, but millions of cars are stolen
every year. The fact is, if a criminal steals a gun, hell have plenty of time, after
he gets home, to open the gun and disable the safety mechanism. In fact, it may be very
easy to do this. For several years Colts worked
on a computerized gun, which never got past a prototype. At one point the big question
was, what if the battery dies? Should the gun be designed so it fires or so it stays
locked? Colts had received a government
grant to design the computerized gun for use by police. If a police officer were using the
gun to defend himself, hed want the gun to work even with a dead battery. So thats
how the gun was designed. That means that if a criminal stole such a gun, all he would
have to do is remove the battery. Then the gun would shoot for anyone. Ironically, the original reason that
computerized guns were proposed was that they might prevent police officers being murdered
with their own guns. Somebody suggested that police officers were often disarmed by
criminals and then murdered with their own guns. But the facts show that this is an
extremely rare occurrence. According to the FBI, in a recent year six officers in the
United States were killed with their own weapon. Every one of those cases is a tragedy,
but thats six officers per year out of about 700,000 sworn officers in the entire
United Stateshardly a widespread occurrence. In the late 1990s several gun
manufacturers posted information on their web sites about their ongoing attempts to
develop computerized guns. Today the web pages are gone. A firm in Oxford, Connecticut,
that made a news splash with advanced fingerprint technology for guns has also
disappeared. The companys web site promised that the technology would provide a
high degree of certainty in the operation of computerized guns. The web site is
gone. A gun that operates with a high
degree of certainty is at best unnecessary and at worst downright dangerous. Smart
adults who have guns at home treat them as if they are always loaded, all the time. And
smart adults treat children as if they are always curious, all the time. Smart adults
teach children from an early age that guns are dangerous for childrenthe same as
power saws, kitchen knives, and electrical outlets. Smart adults store guns in locked
cabinets so that the guns are not accessible to children. Smart adults also use the National
Rifle Associations Eddie Eagle safety program, which teaches children what do to if
they come across a gun when they are playing outside or at another home: Stop; dont
touch; leave the area; tell an adult. Smart adultsa much more
sensible solution than smart guns. Ralph D. Sherman is an attorney in
Connecticut. |
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