“This, then, is what the NRA is terrified of: that lawmakers who don’t even know how to begin to evaluate the impact of the smallest, most random-seeming feature of a given firearm on that firearm’s effectiveness and functionality for different types of users with different training backgrounds under different circumstances will get into the business of gun design. And they’re right to be afraid, because it has happened before.” – Jon Stokes in Why the NRA hates smart guns [at techcrunch.com]
The article is surprisingly rational for a lefty.
Somehow, I don’t expect the fascists in the gun “control” movement to give up trying to ban things just because it always blows up in their faces.
“The article is surprisingly rational for a lefty.”
Even a blind acorn finds pigs when… Wait… There’s a pig eating blind people… No. I always screw this up. When you throw corn at pigs they aaahhh… I got it. We should feed Lefties to the pigs…
Yep, that’s the one.
Yeah, except for the casual one time use of the epithet “gun nut” in talking about gun owners, he actually could have been a “real” journalist; you know, that mythical creature, reported but never actually seen in the wild; of simply reporting the facts without pushing; through lies, manipulation and half truths, a society transforming agenda.
Epithet? I think he secretly classes himself as a gun nut but that aside. When did it become an epithet? We use the term to describe OURSELVES all the time. What are we doing? Making a new N-word rule so we can be just as up our own arses as #BLM and SJW’s? C’mon. We can all drop the butt hurt card when someone uses some set of words to describe us or our passion for a topic especially when it’s true. We are nuts for guns in the same way that bronies are nuts for ponies. We’re just not quite as bizarre to encounter in the wild.
How many white people ever got offended by being called a honkey? Yeah, because none of them see it as an epithet because it’s not one unless the hearer wants it to be.
BTW, I encountered a real bronie in public this morning. That was seriously creepy. I was terrified he’d pull out a little pink pony and start combing its mane or start making clippity clop sounds at any second.
You know, if you won’t even refer to the “N-word” as anything but that, and not the actual word, then you’re into it, its mystique, and the whole controversy as much as BLM, SJWs, Chris Rock and every rapper is.
As for gut nut, it’s different. It isn’t who’s saying it that makes it bad, it’s what they mean by it. Intent can often be inferred from the speaker’s identity, but fundamentally it’s intent that is offensive.
Gun nut used casually in here is apt to mean gun enthusiast, hobbyist, or buff. Even if the person does indulge in the hobby with a higher than average household budget allocation, gun nut still means nothing malicious or menacing, just that the person is really into them.
Hurled by an anti, however, it means more than just just being a fan (short for fanatic, and also not pejorative, by most intents). In that sense, you’re challenging someone’s mental health, honesty, good/evil alignment, really their entire rationality, fir no other reason than you disagree with their politics and pastime.
I don’t think we’ll see gun nut become the “GN word”, any more than we’ll see fan become a new F word. We’ll still call people with a favorite team a fan. Likewise we’ll still call suicide bombers fanatical, which I’m sure pther terrorists find offensive. Same root word, but the intent is different.
+1 to pwserge
I read the author’s entire article and his previous article that he referenced … both seem to be pretty darned accurate, truthful, and straightforward.
I’ve had their cheese, I’ve seen their healthcare. I guess I can see why they won’t design a decent weapon.
Not a bad article, really. I love the meme of “Predator” when referring to ‘the shoulder thing that goes up’.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised to read an article about guns on a more liberal site that actually used logic.
This article was a surprisingly good read.
The NRA’s not “afraid” of anything in particular. The people of New Jersey are afraid of smart guns.
Actually this is something we should all be worried about, because they do that sort of thing (legislation sans knowledge) in a lot of areas, not just firearms.
Indeed. Like Health Care Systems that cost more and provide less. Like cars that are so complex that they can’t be fixed and require 6 year loans. Like water saving toilets that can’t flush number 2 without multiple flushes, defeating the entire point of the product. Like CFL bulbs only made in China, contributing mightily to China’s military-industrial coffers. Every one of these boondoggles the product of fed.gov and the whining activist set.
Bring on the smart guns – without government subsidy for research or sale. Let the free market decide if the product will succeed.
Like microstamping, which is now mandated on all new pistols in CA?
That was one of the points in the article; what starts out as independent market choice will be morphed into a forced government mandate if the technology is ever reliably developed (or even if it’s not; see microstamping in CA, which has never been successfully accomplished in an actual firearm production facility, only in lab testing).
Will give points for a well balanced article that spells out the truth on who is legislating in a lot of cases and why they likely shouldn’t be.
will say I don’t totally buy the whole “you need eons of training to really know guns” thing because in the car world there comes a point where you have drivers, enthusiasts and race car drivers. Just because an enthusiast doesn’t have all the skills of the race car driver doesn’t mean they don’t have quite a bit of skill and knowledge. Like many things in life you can learn a huge portion of it with a bit of work but perfection can take decades of honing.
The article is good and it also highlights that if they can totally screw up gun legislation because they are clueless and is driven by stupid special interests groups, imagine how screwed up other legislation can also be screwed up. From healthcare to environmental to education, they all have their own forward grip of stupid.
Although I appreciate a good run-on sentence, the quote above was difficult to read.
I know, I had to read it several times to understand it, and even then I’m not sure I did.
I read yesterday that Mossberg was getting into the smart gun act. I hope this is a small spinoff venture and that more prudent voices at Mossberg rein this in.
http://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2016/05/gun_maker_wants_industry_to_gi.html#incart_river_home
Jonathan Mossberg has a LinkedIn account that doesn’t mention any affiliation with O.F. Mossberg & Sons Inc, the company that actually produces Mossberg-brand firearms. That company is run by the founder’s grandson, Alan Mossberg, and his son, Iver Mossberg, and is headquartered in CT with production facilities in Texas. Jonathan Mossberg runs his iGun company and “The Mossberg Group” out of Daytona Beach, Florida.
I’m not sure what connection he actually has to O.F. Mossberg & Sons, if any, nor what experience he has in firearms manufacturing, if any.
Correction, LinkedIn says he was a VP at OF Mossberg & Sons for almost 12 years, until 2000.
His iGun Technologies company doesn’t list an address on its own website. Small business directories in the Daytona Beach area show it at a location now occupied by Johnstone Supply, Google Street View shows no signage relating to iGun Technologies.
I’m glad this looks to be a separate entity altogether. The PennLive article really tried to make the connection to Mossberg Firearms.
Just to get a little off topic, but I know at least one cop who uses the magnetic ring system on his duty gun. Has a ring on both hands and likes it, never any problems. But would not do squat if the gun is stolen, as it is not too had to convert the gun back. And that is the real problem, The ring system is the only one that doesn’t require batteries, but all you have to do is get a magnetic ring, and you are in business.
In the TechCrunch article’s comment section, someone linked this device, and it looks *very* interesting to me.
Is anyone familiar with this mechanical lock?:
http://zore.life/youtube
First I’ve seen of it. A quick analysis begs the question whether the locking function is electro-mechanical, or strictly mechanical in nature. Obviously the alert function requires battery power, and the alert function is actually a pretty good idea, from my point of view. However, if the locking/unlocking function requires any amount of battery power to function, then it’s a major fail just waiting to happen, in my eyes.
Briefly, if you need your gun and the battery is dead, so are you.
The alert can be defeated with tinfoil, the combo unlock is a fine motor skill, needs a special holster I’m guessing. OTOH on a home defense pistol it adds layer upon layer of child discouragement so I would probably still buy one.
The simplicity of the lock I like.
Hey, TTAG Management, how about requesting a T&E sample from them?
http://zore.life/youtube
+1
Interesting to get a hands on third party view of this.
Nobody sane wants mandated “smart guns”-FIFY
Like in everything else te liberals hate the free market. This is because it always proves them wrong.
Smart gun” technology places a “permission sequence” between the individual’s decision to fire a gun and the gun itself. Over and above the reasonable expectation that any technology can and will fail at some point (in the case of a gun, usually when you most need it not to fail) , there is the very real expectation that the progressive/fascist state will seek to insert it’s own political preferences into the “smart” permission sequences.
Sure you’ll be able to own guns, only the state will use the smart technology to determine when, where, and under what conditions you’ll be allowed to actually use the gun. Think this won’t happen? After touting “smart meters” for months and months my local power company began installed electric meters with the new technology. Although, you had to dig for it, numbers of smart people found that the real purpose of smart meters was to allow the power company to control your energy usage. The language in the connection contract was quite clear: in the interest of “sustainability” the power company could use your smart meter to ration energy usage. Once installed, homeowners would not be allowed to remove the new meters during sustainability events which, of course, could be imposed at anytime by the local government. Environmentalists have been telling us for years that summertime air conditioning was, by definition, unsustainable so smart meter users can expect to be told to sweat during sustainability events. Something similar is exactly what a gun-control obsessed government would want to do. That’s why the NRA opposes smart gun technology.
As stated in a previous article response, if this technology is to be mandated, it better me mandated with law enforcement first to show an example of how well it works. Though I doubt the average cop is going to want anything else between him/her and going home for dinner or ending up in the hospital/dead.
The article and its link to why people wouldn’t want smart guns were very beneficial in having quality conversations with people who just don’t know.
They are the new 2A supporters. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. People don’t always know when they are being fed a load. As Dame Maggie Smith said, “It must get cold up there on that moral high ground.” 🙂
Outstanding. The more non-gun owners learn about how little our elites know about the firearms they wish to regulate/ban, the more they’ll realize how little these people know about health care, banking, climate science, etc.
Well, he made the case, and gets it to some extent. He’s also stuck in not thinking about the things he’s not thinking about.
“This, then, is what the NRA is terrified of:…”
Well, maybe it’s the gun users he names many times in his article, and the NRA is just a vehicle for advocating their interests. Advocating to who, and why?
“…that lawmakers who don’t even know how to begin to evaluate the impact of the smallest, most random-seeming feature of a given firearm…”
Well, how about these folks he names, who seem to be doing stupid stuff, mucking with stuff they don’t understand. (That or they have some other agenda that dare not speak its name.)
“…And they’re right to be afraid, because it has happened before.”
And the same folks hesitate not at all about trying to make it happen again. We need an assault weapons ban because all the cool countries have one.
I’m a bit bugged at how he casually jumps to the “gridlock and stasis” riff at the end. The point of making it hard to do things with government is because stupid stuff is so hard to unwind once it gets started. So, have the debate.
This article Techcrunch article makes a nice complement to the Sullivan act piece here on TTAG. I wonder if we could get Techcrunch-guy to read that.