Will You Still Like Guns When Guns Kill?

[Uncle Sparky]

So I was drinking with some dinosaur friends of mine the other day - I was drinking tea, they were drinking something much better - and the topic of 'guns' came up. All those in the conversation are Canadians, although one has joint US citizenship. We all agreed that the US idea that guns were a 'defensive' weapon was silly, but, I postulated that the mechanical/chemical reaction that causes guns to be an offensive weapon could be turned against the gunman (or woman). There should be a way to induce this reaction, from a distance, without effecting any non explosive nearby. Both the physicist and the engineer in our little group agreed that it was theoretically possible. A device could be made to cause loaded guns to discharge automatically.

Imagine - Joe Psycho walking towards his neighbourhood elementary school with his loaded gun(s) when they empty their chambers without any action on his part. If Joe only has a holstered small arm, chances are fairly good Joe will just receive a flesh wound. If he has multiple weapons, chances are he will not be able to control them and will be fatally wounded fairly quickly.

So rather than encourage people to carry guns, this would be a deterrent. Have permanent 'shields' around schools, government buildings, etc., where heroic good gun owners would know that they cannot carry loaded weapons. Maybe eventually there could be an app for that.

The physicist was particularly excited about the idea. Years ago, I made another crazy suggestion to him that led to patents on his part...

So, what do you think?

I mentioned it might also be possible to negate the chemical/mechanical reaction, causing guns to simply not fire, but what would be the fun in that?

[regexcellent]

Reposting. I think this is gonna be my new canned response to gun control threads.

[DaShi]

Much easier and less embarrassing than thinking.

[Felch]

Who would carry a gun in such a way that it would shoot them? Besides idiots?

The fundamental NRA rules for safe gun handling are:

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.

[Uncle Sparky]

This has nothing to do with 'gun control'. This will make the current concept of 'gun' obsolete.

[DaShi]

Who would carry a gun in such a way that it would shoot them? Besides idiots?

I always put a cork in the barrel of my guns for safety.

[Elok]

I'm not following you here. How would you get guns to discharge from a distance? Nanobots? Or are you talking about something theoretically possible in the same sense as the replicators on Star Trek?

[Uncle Sparky]

Rex ... I'll match you Mix-a-Lot for Mix-a-Lot.

[DaShi]

I'm not following you here. How would you get guns to discharge from a distance? Nanobots? Or are you talking about something theoretically possible in the same sense as the replicators on Star Trek?

I think he made that clear. He's proposing a scenario where one of the most common defenses of gun rights is no longer applicable. Of course, if everyone could remotely deactivate everyone else's guns, who cares who has a gun then?

[Felch]

It's why I keep a back-up crossbow - for nanites.

[DaShi]

And because it makes you feel like Chewbacca.

[Uncle Sparky]

I'm not following you here. How would you get guns to discharge from a distance? Nanobots? Or are you talking about something theoretically possible in the same sense as the replicators on Star Trek?

I'm not a physicist, nor a chemist, nor have I played one on television. I'll leave the details to the professionals. I would think that cancelling the action would be easier than inducing it, but that didn't interest the folks I was with.

Quote Originally Posted by NRA

The fundamental NRA rules for safe gun handling are:

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.

Theoretically, as soon as the chamber is loaded and the circuit is closed, the gun would fire. Therefore the gun would discharge into the ground, which with a single shot would probably be embarrassing but manageable - a multi round clip, less so...

[Felch]

You're talking about turning a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon (a crime in the US) as soon as someone completes a circuit of some sort? What's to stop someone from taking this technology, and a semi-automatic rifle, to a restaurant or other unprotected location, and turning your technology on to a crowd of unsuspecting people?

[regexcellent]

Rex ... I'll match you Mix-a-Lot for Mix-a-Lot.

[SlowwHand]

If you don't want to own a firearm, don't own one. It's a simple concept.