Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

Full disclosure: I'm a hardware hacker and I own many firearms, including so-called "assault weapons".

A couple of thoughts here:

1. Keep your firearms in a @$(@$ safe unless you can put your hand on them within a second or two at any given time. If you can't physically control it at all times, it needs to be locked away.

2. Don't give the safe combo to your children or anyone else. Don't let them watch while you open it.

3. Don't buy a crappy safe. Hotel-style 4-digit lock codes won't cut it.

4. Once a weapon is out of the safe and you're not there to witness it, it might as well be stolen. In other words, what you want to watch is the status of the safe's door and not the location of the individual guns. See #1 and #2.

5. There are already many wireless solutions to track door status. That NinjaBlocks appliance on HN the other day comes to mind. I don't want to invest in an entirely separate system. I want something that integrates w/ my existing home security.

6. You're not going to get much milage with the firearms community by calling them "assault weapons". That's a loaded term and I don't like it. Your potential customers are guys like me: considerate, caring people who happen to enjoy shooting guns and who own a few, but want to keep their collections safe. I'm not assaulting anyone and your use of that term is enough to keep me from buying your product.

7. You're wrong about mass shootings. Most, including the most deadly (VA Tech), were committed with handguns, not long rifles.

Expanding a little more on my #5 point:

The secret sauce here is not an API, or a cloud-based service, or SMS messages or any of that. The secret sauce is the hardware that goes inside the safe.

Contrary to popular belief, the primary reason to own a gun safe is for fire protection. Many of us have tens of thousands of dollars invested in our guns. Fire is the most probable undesired outcome and so a safe must protect against that. Your hardware device needs to be inside the safe so that it can be safe from tampering, but it /can't compromise the integrity of the fire protection/. Furthermore, it needs to be able to communicate to an outside station. This may be a problem if the device lives inside this big steel box.

I hope that you guys don't try to re-invent the wheel. There are already a number of home metrics collectors similar to NinjaBlocks and I would much rather use a platform that I can also use to monitor things like fire detection, home security, electricity usage, environmental conditions, lighting, etc. Build us something that works with most quality safes and have it integrate into the existing systems. Sell us the hardware.

agreed

there are lot of people who hoard good domains, wanted a .com domain which tells the intent. I would have very well called gun safe tracker, but I am not building a tracker for it.

I would like to get ninja blocks, they look interesting

banning high capacity magazines can reduce the fatalities, but even that is tough to achieve

it is a matter of time there is going to be another shooting somewhere, and we will again discuss and forget it, we have blood in our veins not just water, hope we can make some progress

> banning high capacity magazines can reduce the fatalities, but even that is tough to achieve

The colombine shooter that fired the most, used 10rd magazines, not the one with the TEC-9. Src: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#...

I will give you props though, unlike most of the anti-gun crowd, you're thinking something other than 'ban'.

if we start with the "ban" as the idea it will take another year atleast to bring it to vote, and democrats are not majority, so the day we start announcing lot more people will start buying everything of the shelf. NRA knows how to twist people to listen to their own version of the truth.

even when the ban if it comes it would be for "manufacturing and sales of guns" just like 18th amendment for banning alcohol, it would do nothing to keep the existing guns in safety.

so my thinking is safety of the guns by owners without involving guns and and restrictions of guns in public places by involving people, organisations and if needed the government, this would be a compromise which republicans and democrats can agree on.

If you pass a ban, you'll have something around a 10% compliance rate. Then, you accept it, or you move to confiscation. Clearly you are not steeped in the non-coastal, non-liberal-elite culture, because if you were, you would realize that would trigger a LOT of blood shed.

I think you are missing his point. The term "assault weapons" is a made up term. It describes a series of cosmetic features on a rifle, and if a rifle has a sufficient number of those features, it becomes an "assault weapon". The gun community, the people who you would need in order to buy your weapons, is not going to like that name. Since most of your potential buyers aren't going to like the idea itself, you might as well come up with a website name that they are going to find blatantly offensive.

most people will not wear a seat belts while driving a car if it was not mandated. same applies to air bags, they are not effective if seat belts are not worn.

http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/DriverSafety/Pages/SeatBelts....

here is the link to seat belt legislation and compliance

though the first seat belts came in Saab, volvo and mercedes in late 50's early 60's it took 80s to get them as a law in US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislation_in_the_Un...

The usage of Seat belts for every state is between 72.2%(New Hampshire) to 97.6%(oregon)

if we can achieve those numbers some day Americans will feel more like Canadians

Thank you. My first thoughts were a lot less polite.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com