Gun 2.0
Using digital brains to keep guns in your cold dead hands
After the penultimate Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan (it was the last debate when I started writing this, slow down guys), the issue of gun control came up. Specifically, could a law that held gun manufacturers responsible for mass shootings advance gun technology to the point where mass shootings simply couldn’t happen?
I’m sure I’ve completely butchered the political and legal points, but I don’t care about the legislation or politics, I’m just interested in this thought experiment:
If a gun manufacture wanted to make a firearm that makes you feel safe while still giving you that American gun-boner, what changes could he make to ensure he stays out of jail because it could not possibly be used in a mass shooting?
Let’s start by making our guns at least as smart as our phones.
The Connected Gun
Technology we use and take for granted hourly, could greatly increase gun safety. Having a firearm connected to a communications network creates an intelligent and dynamic environment that could potentially block senseless tragedies.
BIOMETRICS
An obvious addition would be the finger print sensor. This would ensure that only the person with an enrolled fingerprint could operate the gun. The problem is, some whackadoos get their guns legally, so the fingerprint scanner would give them the all green.
Similar to our phones, surely you could enroll more than one finger print — you have to enable shooting with my left and right hands, so minimum two fingerprints enrolled into the gun. You could use those minimum two spots for yourself, or you could enroll your right hand and your son’s right hand.
Just because you’re allowed to operate a gun, doesn’t mean you’re the one licensed for it.
On the other hand, you could enroll just your fingerprints where you buy your gun — like TSA Pre. The originally enrolled set would be the same ones applied to every gun you purchase.
Additionally, resetting the biometrics on a gun could only be done at authorized dealers or law enforcement offices. No swaps, trading, or givebacks.
LOCATION AWARENESS
Location, location, location.
Another option would be to make your gun know not only its location but also the type of location. Your phone can push you a froyo coupon before you walk into Yogurtland and show you your boarding pass when your walk into the airport, couldn’t your gun refuse to fire when it knows it’s in a movie theater or hospital?
Conversely, there could be places that the gun could fire freely: gun ranges, of course, your home, if you must. That’s the end of my list, but I’m sure others would have a longer one, but come on, schools, hospitals, malls, movie theaters, airports, bars, guns auto-lock.
SMART LICENSES
Just because you legally have a gun now, doesn’t mean you should always have a gun. Your license to own and operate a firearm could be tied to other events going on in your life.
Shouldn’t the expiration date on gun licenses be enough? The system can check up on everyone when the go to reapply. Let’s pretend the issuance system is working, and let’s pretend everyone goes back to renew their license, expiration dates are for 20th century chumps.
Doctors, mental health professionals, or law enforcement could automatically and remotely disable all connected firearms registered to you in the event of mental illness or arrest. There would be no waiting, as soon as life event happens that disqualifies you from owning a firearm, your guns become instantly inoperable.
STREAMING ACTIVITY
As a last resort, every bullet shot from your connected firearm could be streamed, stored, and analyzed by law enforcement. It’s less preventative, but coupled with location awareness, proper authorities could be immediately alerted in the event of unexpected discharges.
Given the location or other variables involved in determining the severity the shooting, a governance system could remotely deactivate the firearm until an investigation can be performed.
We’ll share a photo of every single macaron we see, why would sharing the fact you shot your firearm be so unpalatable?
A quick objection from a gun enthusiast with dreams of being an action hero:
“OK Jamie, what if I need to shoot someone because they’re shooting at me!? What if I get shot defending a school full of children and the person standing next to me can’t pick up my gun and keep going after that damn shooter because it doesn’t recognize their fingerprint!?”
Great point, gun enthusiast with dreams of being an action hero, we’re going to need additional safeguards to undo our safeguards to ensure that we can keep each other safe from each other.
UNDOING THE SAFEGUARDS
So what if you really, really, REALLY need to use your gun?
There would still be people in the world with older, non-connect guns. There will always be people who figure out how to jail-brake or root their guns to get full, unfettered access to their firearm — no doubt voiding the warranty and terms of use of the gun. There will always be work arounds.
Imagine a nefarious actor is using his non-connected gun, or jailbroken phone, and there you are with your stupid smart gun, in the middle of a park, everyone waiting for you to save the day, and your gun won’t fire because it’s in a park.
If Gun 2.0 is going to sell, it can’t make you feel like an ineffectual wiener. It’s still going to need to provide protection.
AURAL AWARENESS
Let’s start with obvious threats: someone is already shooting at you. If Amazon’s Echo can always be monitoring the sound in my apartment on the off chance I say the keyword “Alexa,” I think a gun could recognize a 140–190 decibel BANG. Depending on the situation, the presence of a gun shot could override the public-place safeguards.
Obviously, watching a Tarantino movie in IMAX would probably fuck things up, so some fine-tuning would need to be done.
Also, what if you see someone with a gun before they shoot?
OPTICAL RECOGNITION
But do they have a gun? Is it loaded? I don’t want to get into this with you, they have a gun, you want to stop them, I get it.
Facebook suggests people to tag in photos I just uploaded, so facial recognition is no problem. Could real-time weapon recognition be developed as well to identify threats from non-threats? What could we do with that information?
Of course we could turn a gun on and off for safety in the event of a recognized weapon being seen, but if a gun is already processing a stream of visual data, what else could that be used for?
SMART SITES
If a threat is identified, the right combination of sensors and accelerometers could let a gun know whether or not its pointed at that threat. With that information, it could make decisions about when it fires and when it doesn’t, even in crowded situations. You know, like a video game.
Additionally, could that same technology be used for non-lethal shots? My Xbox can perfectly match my avatars to my movements, why shouldn’t a gun only be able fire when it’s pointed at a limb? Furthermore, if that person isn’t moving anymore, or they’re no longer holding their weapon, should my gun still fire?
Don’t worry, you’ll get used to aiming with the new sites, just wave it around until they change from red to green. Eventually, you won’t know how you ever lived without them.
March 7, 2016, news broke that for the first time, ransomeware was found on the unsinkable ships of Macs. Evil doers found a way in when they shouldn’t have. Technology alone cannot keep us safe, it just creates challenges for those hiding in the shadows.
While technology is not far off from creating Gun 2.0, we cannot keep all our freedoms and hope technology picks up the slack. We have to fundamentally reexamine the way that we view one another and what products we’ll tolerate being produced.
If the government wants a backdoor into our phones because of the potentially dangerous material on them, let’s give them one into our guns as well. It’ll keep us safer.
