Remote firearm deactivations

Beyond pointless.

Aside from guns being pretty dang simple tools, making such a system easily disabled or bypassed, there's always the whole issue of the 300 million or so non-smart guns already extant in this country....

Where there's a will...

If I'm forced to get a "smart" gun, it's gonna get a tinfoil hat, too.

Don't patents have to be non-obvious?

Tracking Point?! Christ, to think I was about to apply for a job with these people (had to type that three times just now for it to not be a profanity). Noop, Pflugerville can now suck it. Between their Darpa involvement and now this, I can safely conclude they are on the side of public funding and not consumers (consumers kicked their little side-project with Remington to the curb, as well, IIRC)


What kind of backward and circuitous crap design requires satellites to figure out how many tens of yards you are from a location? I guess the thinking is the gun will lock itself if it ever loses a GPS signal (from the aforementioned tin-foil holster), and that will force the shooter to wield it vulnerable as intended. While one could say this is harder to hack than a garage door, it can still be jammed and rendered useless just as easily, and mechanically or electrically overridden just as easily.

EDIT:
Also, is this 5-minute Paint sketch seriously what passes for a patent application these days? Shameful. Some people are positing this is a pre-emptive and defensive patent, to protect TP's Smart Gun business from being destroyed by a company (probably from New Jersey, say the odds) trying to market such a Kill Switch. To that I say, a patent only lasts so long, and there's a hundred ways of deactivating their tech, so a better solution is to build their products to be resistant against deactivation; that would win private and public business if they can find a way to pull off an electronically-enhanced gun with none of the drawbacks.

TCB

Stupid and worthless! Unless all of the millions of current guns were miraculously converted to smart guns, what would it accomplish?

Twiki357 said:

Stupid and worthless! Unless all of the millions of current guns were miraculously converted to smart guns, what would it accomplish?

Click to expand...

Some company will make a lot of money doing all the converting, especially if it is mandated by law with just one standard and it is proprietary and only one company will be allowed to install it.

Meanwhile the politicians who voted for this will be promised jobs for life at the company doing the converting probably at double or triple the salary they are making now as a reward for voting for this technology into U.S. law.

Later on some 16 year old hacker from Europe will get rich overnight selling plans on how to defeat the system with a couple of keystrokes.

As much as it is gun control, I think the money trail needs to be looked at as well.
.

The intent, of course, it to require it on new guns sold at a certain sunrise date. Once equipped, then, of course, all the schools and other buildings will need to buy the transmitters designating them as gun free zones - on our tax dollar.

The next step would then be to require older firearms to be retrofitted after the next selected date, or they are declared illegal and contraband. If that passes and the public accepts it, then ANY gun not politically correct would also be declared illegal and contraband. See Great Britain and Australia for the unintended consequences.

The best argument against this project is that it's just an effort to shill our tax money and it won't do a thing unless we all commit to it - which leaves just the cops and military with guns that work at all times. If you live within 1,000 feet of a school, it makes you vulnerable to assault, too. Expect muggers and car jackers to work inside the perimeter to find unarmed victims, exactly what we don't need. And, if there is an active shooter, the average citizen who carries won't be able to do a thing except duck and run. Nothing will stop the shooter until SWAT or a First Responder arrives, and it's already a known fact to the wrong people one member of their team can stand off to shoot them in the back.

It's a stupid idea marketed by people with no concern whatsoever about the real results, and couched in terms to sell it to those who aren't qualified whatsoever to decide on it. Which makes it All American in all the worst ways.

The proposed system works off GPS and GPS jammers already exist. Should such a system become mandated expect criminals to carry jammers.

However, lets follow this along further.
The system requires a radio receiver and computer for the GPS. How about a piggyback system that just waits for a code and disables the gun. This could be called out in the cause of removing guns from people that become prohibited.

Since cell radios are already packaged together with the GPS it would be trivial to add transmit capability. Add that and there is a way of locating a gun either by specific code or by area.
A system could be made that transmitted a text to 911 if a gun was fired inside city limits.


It is all slippery slope stuff but when you are already on the slide trying to climb up you get wary of people nearby with grease.

"It's the shoulder thing that goes up."

With people making gun laws who know absolutely nothing about guns, I shudder to think what would come out of Congress.

I find it interesting to note that within the actual patent application they acknowledge the futility of gun free zones.

"While such pre-defined areas may prevent lawful gun owners from carrying their weapons in such areas, a criminal may ignore such restrictions, carrying weapons into such zones."

Then they go on to shill for yet another device that will be no more effective for essentially the same reasons...because criminals will simply ignore any laws put in place requiring the use of such technology.

Rob, that is the reason for this tech to exist. They are saying that right now people can ignore such zones but with this handy tech they could not.

I CANNOT believe that people still take "smart guns" seriously. Per a DOJ report I posted recently at http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=750263 these idiot items can be circumvented by simply removing the electronics and either locking a mechanical linkage in place or removing a link. I REITERATE, REITERATE, REITERATE--NO HACKING REQUIRED. JUST REMOVE THE STINKIN' ELECTRONICS.

Look at it this way; imagine an electronically controlled deadbolt lock on a house. Someone wishing to bypass it does not mess around with hacking or such--they just bust the stinkin' electronics, reach in with their fingers and manually throw the bolt. Same with the "smart guns".

This information needs to be ground in politicians' face so they don't waste anyone's time or money with requiring a failed idea.

From what I've read, and I don't claim to have authoritative information, just sharing what I have read:

Trackingpoint patented the technology to have federally protected intellectual property control over it, not to market it. The idea being, if they didn't patent it, someone else could, and that 'someone else' was probably flaming antis.

With this IP secured, not only can they bury it, anyone else who attempts to develop remote disabling devices for firearms can be hit with patent infringement.