At 11:20 08-03-01 -0800, Joshua wrote:
>Ooh, ooh, new idea...
>
>You may have seen tech news articles about cell-phone jammers being
>proposed and/or installed. The notion is that they would be installed in
>places like movie theaters.
>
>Combine this with the proposed electronic trigger locks and ... well, you
>see where I'm going.
>
>Let's see how this might work:
>
>- The punishment for selling, posessing or manufacturing guns without
>electronic trigger locks is incredibly high.
>- Guns issued to military and law-enforcement officers do not have these
>devices, but they are required to have the fingerprint-locks instead.
>
>- If you want a gun for home defense, great - your home won't have a gun
>jammer.
>- Conversely, you could install a home-gun-jammer if you wanted one.
>- Legitimate places for the discharge of firearms - e.g. shooting ranges,
>hunting grounds, etc. - obviously wouldn't have the jammers.
>
>Potential problems:
>
>- Can these be designed such that the lock can't be defeated without
>rendering the gun inoperable? The notion of the trigger locks is to
>prevent (e.g.) a child using the gun, not a dedicated sociopath who can
>disassemble the gun.
>- Obviously, you could smuggle a gun into the country that doesn't have
>one of these devices. But isn't the US the largest manufacturer, etc. etc.
>- This would be impossible to retrofit into existing weapons.
>
>- The "self defense" contra-argument - I break into someone's house
>carrying a portable scrambler and a baseball bat.
>
>Further thoughts?
Of course, it's always easier to propose some technological solution than
to deal with the real problem, which is why do today's school kids think it
is necessary to kill other kids to solve disputes that preceding
generations of kids dealt with in much less permanent ways . . .
-- Ronn! :)
