Why Obama’s Smart Gun Push Will Misfire

As a gun owner, this article is pretty accurate account of why it should fail. The most important thing for a gun is for it to fire when the user wants, everything else is effectively worse than useless. Due to the wide range of operating conditions in which a gun must work, only the most basic of safety measures can be taken (generally a bar preventing the trigger or hammer from moving) to meet this requirement.

As the article states, pretty much the only acceptable way to improve the safety of a gun is to make sure its locked up correctly when not in use. This also has the side benefit of working on all existing guns with a minimum of extra cost to a gun owner. Smarts will add a few hundred dollars at a minimum to a gun design, vs a few 10s of dollars it would be to keep it in a safe along with the rest of the owners collection.

If they really wanted to make things better, they should introduce testing of safes used for gun storage and a set of fines for people selling safes that don't pass the test. A bunch of existing safe vendors attempts at security are worse than useless. See this video of a toddler opening a bunch of gun safes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erGOJxQIf5c It doesn't matter if the toddler was coached to open them, the point is it must be impossible for them to open the safe regardless of conditions. The FCC tests radios (generally through certified third parties), why cant they introduce something similar for gun safes and other gun safety measures?

I have to say that I do agree with many of the points in TFA... most of the gun guys I know would rather have something reliable over extra features. I have a friend who won't keep a gun that's misfired/jammed at the range. The acceptance of glocks over other options comes down to the additional safety features that tend to sometimes not work.

In the end the simpler device is the reliable device. Anything that increases public safety will come down to education, training and citizen responsiveness. In real life, bad things happen... it may be with a gun, or a bomb, or a car, or any number of things that are legal to own. Civil defense is a basic human right, I wish that people understood what that means better.

That said the concept of civics, and civic duty are no longer part of general education in this country. If something is going wrong, and you have the ability to intervene, you have the responsibility to intervene. Taking firearms away from the general population hinders that ability.

I can't even get the biometric entryways at work to register the first time more often than not... I'd rather not have that happen in a crisis.