It's the future. Why don't we have ray guns yet?
I don't wanna talk about the right to have a gun. This isn't about gun control, or legislation, or rights, etc... it's about the physical guns and ways they might change as futuristic technology is applied with the intention of preventing deaths.
I'd like to point out two things.
First; lots more people die from guns in the U.S. than other places. I assume you generally agree death = bad.
Second; there are some technological possibilities that might be able to lessen the number of dead Americans.
1. Add a Digital Lock
If your phone is stolen there are all sorts of bad consequences; lost contacts, lost photos, pictures of butts being uploaded to your facebook wall, people surfing your private stuff (ie; porn), prankster texting, and the whole damn inconvenience and cost of replacing the phone. It is socially and a little financially awful but not generally life threatening. To avoid this annoyance your phone has a digital lock, a little finger swipe or something. Once stolen, it can't be used. Your phone is, essentially, a paper weight.
The consequences of a stolen gun are considerably worse than a stolen phone. Finger-swiping takes less than a second and isn't a safety deterrent in emergencies. Who knows, maybe voice activation could work as a lock in the same way. In any case, some simple, less than a second, authorization from the owner, or else the weapon doesn't work, would lessen the viability of stolen guns. It would also limit the threat of having your own gun turned on you.
2. Automatic Cameras
So what really happened with George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin? Nobody can say for certain. We can guess, we can listen to George's side of things, but we don't have a complete picture. Nobody was recording it. But what if the gun had been recording? Cameras are tiny and guns are designed to be aimed at the action. In fact, they're so tiny you could have one facing the gun wielder and one facing the target and have a memory card all for less than 1/20th of a pound. Could we program them to passively record saving information around the time before and after the trigger is fired? Absolutely. Could those memory cards actually be in a cloud somewhere preventing tampering? Absolutely. Would some people think twice before pulling a trigger if they knew it was recorded? Absolutely. Is it an invasion of privacy? Not sure. I'm inclined to think that shooting at someone is never a private act and isn't protected though. But that doesn't cover all the people shooting at targets or hunting. They could see this as an invasive act. Or perhaps they'd be stoked to have their awesome marksmanship on their latest hunting trip recorded.
3. No Bullet Zones
There are plenty of places in the world where you're allowed to shoot guns and plenty we all agree you should not ("Not in the airplane! You'll kill us all!") Imagine a bullet with a built in transmitter that pings the gun location to a satellite when it fires. You're in a regular zone, private property, out in the woods, gun range, whatever, then nothing happens. Everything normal. If you're in a school, a hospital, stadium, or someplace we all agree isn't the place to be shooting things, it sends an automatic 911 call to the nearest law enforcement. If it's a crime, they've been alerted the moment shooting starts. If it's defensive or an accident, they're still alerted so they can go make sure everything is okay. Knowing that the moment you pull a trigger in certain places will immediately inform police will deter some criminals.
Now, the fear would be that these "No Bullet Zones" are restricting your rights to have guns in that area, but that's not the case. You just can't fire it without attention.
4. Trigger Finger Sensor
Several hundred children a year die from picking up a handgun, looking down the barrel, and accidentally pulling the trigger. While the digital lock idea would prevent a lot of this, even without that, sensors could be built into triggers to identify the size of the finger pressing it. If the finger is not "adult" or even possibly calibrated to the owner, then the gun won't fire.
5. Power Up Notifications
Having a digital lock on the guns would not have stopped the Sandy Hook shooter. They were family guns and he would have likely had the codes, just like he knew where the safe keys were. Every year hundreds of teenagers sneak keys, get their parents guns, and shoot themselves. If the guns were made to transmit, to the guns owner, an activation message whenever their lock-boxes were opened, or the digital lock was unlocked, then the owners would know that someone was doing something with their weaponry before it was fired. This information could be potentially life saving and gives the gun owner more resources to keep their guns under their control.
6. Auto 911 Setting
Guns could have a setting, much like the safety, that can be toggled off and on. In the on position, the gun will automatically call 911 in the event that it is unlocked. This essentially eliminates the choice to either call for help or seek out personal protection. They're conjoined and function together. Also, if someone chose, this setting could be made permanent on guns specifically intended only for defense, eliminating their value as criminal tools. If all the gun is for is protection, it makes sense that it calls for help while fending off threats.
7. Siren
We make trucks that are backing up beep loudly so people know that something is dangerous in the area. We make car alarms gain attention in the event someone attempts to rob them. We put sirens on our police and firefighters to indicate that rapid, irregular, traffic patterns are going to be happening. Is it any more unreasonable that an active gun with a bullet ready to be fired wouldn't also make a loud warning noise? Obviously, this wouldn't work for hunters or sportsmen, but in urban areas, where the vast majority of shootings occur, it might give people an early warning in the event of a spree killer.
So, what does everyone think? Viable? Too expensive? Infringement of rights? Worth pursuing? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
