Justin wrote: > > I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are > useless if > stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip > storing a 128-bit > reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before > allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal > from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages?
The 'stolen gun' problems most of the so-called 'smart gun' proposals are trying to address are the situation when a cop's own gun is taken from him and immediately used against him, or a kid finding one in a drawer. A determined and resourceful person can, given time, defeat them all. After all, a 'determined and resourceful person can build a gun from scratch with a small machine shop, and many do (its not automatically illegal). I link below to an absolutely bizarre proposal - apparently real and claimed to be existing in prototype - by an South African inventor to make an unstealable gun. Amongst other weirdness, it fires the specially manufactured cartridges by firing a laser into the glass-backed primer. As a result removing the electronics would make it unusable. You'd have to hack it instead. http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm This is a typical example of what I meant when I said that 'smart gun' proposals all come from people with zero knowledge of how guns are used. I strongly suspect that the gun in the picture is a non-working prop. Peter Trei
