Is the idea of smart guns beneficial?
Recently, weapons from a reserved armory in Worcester were stolen, including six M4s and ten pistols (Flint, Rodriguez, and Michaels). How serious would the problem be if the weapons were stolen by terrorists who were willing to attack the U.S. as they attacked Paris? Even if we don’t consider the pistols, the M4, one of the best assault rifles in the world, is doubtlessly a real weapon of mass destruction.
However, if regular guns are substituted by smart guns that cannot be activated without the owner’s fingerprint, this problem can be less serious. It can even be treated like lost property instead of a potential terrorist attack. Although missing weapons is not a common issue, the idea of using smart guns is still worth consideration, since they can be used in various situations to make the society safer. From my perspective, the idea of using smart guns can prevent a considerable amount of gun violence.
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First of all, smart guns can make sure that only the owner can fire bullets.
“Once installed only an authorized user can fire the gun, preventing children and other unauthorized users from firing the gun” (Safe Gun Technology). In addition to the missing weapon problem, this feature of smart guns can also prevent situations like kids playing with guns owned by adults. It is true that kids should never have access to dangerous weapons like guns, but in the case that kids find guns and play with them without the permission of their guardians, “had Nancy Lanza owned a smart gun, perhaps she, her son and the 26 people he shot in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., might have lived” (Healy). There are countless incidents similar to the Sandy Hook Elementary School one, and most of these tragedies can be prevented by using smart guns instead of regular
guns. Secondly, smart guns can double-check whether gun holders are permitted to use the weapon. By this way smart guns can prevent unofficial trade and trade with those who are not eligible for having guns. Whenever someone buys a smart gun, he/she must activate the gun in the store using their fingerprint. Therefore, since theoretically the smart gun cannot be modified by individuals, even if people can buy smart guns from black market, they are not able to activate it, so that the amount unofficial trade can be reduced. Moreover, “America's biggest gun problem is suicide” (Vox 9). Because fingerprints are more and more commonly used nowadays, it’s possible, that in the future, critical mental issues will be recorded and linked to one’s fingerprint. Because even if people can have fake IDs, they can hardly fake their fingerprints, whenever someone tries to buy a gun, when uploading their fingerprints, the seller may be able to check if the person is eligible of buying one, regardless if he/she is using the fake ID. Although smart guns cannot eradicate the problem, they can mitigate it. There’s one more possible use of smart guns that to increase the safety level of the shooting range. One advantage of utilizing smart guns is that they can prevent themselves from being stolen. By using smart guns, all guns in shooting range can be wire-connected, and once somebody disconnects them, the smart guns will not be able to fire a single bullet. Another advantage is to prevent situations that people get injured when they accidently get into the ranged area. In the case that shooters haven’t noticed that and keep shooting, we can put sensors on the side of the area and disable all guns whenever someone got into the ranged area. There was an accident that “a Georgia man standing behind a target was shot by his brother-in-law just before noon Friday at the Ancient City Shooting Range, 3021 Agricultural Center Drive, authorities say” (Martin). This terrible problem would happen much less once we decide to use smart guns in shooting range. By all these aspects, smart guns can increase the entire safety level of shooting range. Some may argue that hackers may easily have control over the electric part of guns and thus make smart guns inaccurate or even make them entirely shut down (Owens). However, since the smart guns don’t have to be too smart, we can simply add fingerprint recognition system onto a classic mechanical gun, and thus this problem is something we can easily solve. Second, it is true that sometimes computer-controlled machines are vulnerable to hacking, but hacking requires some sort of connection. If the smart guns can only be wire-connected, and don’t connect to any kind of wireless connection, it would be hard to hack since stealthily getting the gun and connecting it with computers to hack is mission impossible. There are also some people saying that governments may be able to disable all the guns if they leave a loop hole on every smart gun. Again it’s about the wireless control. If the gun is not connected with the governmental system, and cannot be updated without wired-connection, the government cannot disable the smart guns as long as people are not connecting their guns with government’s computers. The only thing government can do is to double check the identity of people who want to buy guns when they are trying to activate the smart guns with their fingerprints at the gun shops. Admittedly, smart guns do have some problem. There is one plausible claim that some of the smart gun models use biometrics as authentication. However, as we know, identify fingerprints take a considerable time to process. And this small amount of time can be lethal when the gun holder was experiencing some urgent matters. Furthermore, fingerprint readers are easy to generate error when people’s hands are sweating, shaking, or when their hands are bloodied. If legitimate users could be authenticated when they trying to protect themselves, unable to fire the gun may lead to their death (Steinberg). That is a solid point, but the technology is still developing, and those difficulties can be solved by using larger fingerprint recognizing places and lower fingerprint-clarity requirement. We don’t need super clear fingerprint requirement since it is just serving as a gun-safety but not the auto-control. Although we do not have the best smart guns yet, the future is not hard to imagine. Therefore, although there are still some potential technological problems of using smart guns, it is a problem that can be solved. In many situations, smart guns can help to increase the security level. By accommodating the idea of smart guns, the amount of tragedies caused by gun using can be drastically reduced. In conclusion, although there are still some disadvantages, I believe the technical problems can be solved soon and because of the advantages smart guns may offer, they are a possible solution for gun control and making the society a safer one.
...n of this free country do not have any chance to access them. Kids are obviously not smart enough to completely know what a gun can possible do to someone and even there family.
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