“Instead of – or in addition to – ordering Apple to build a technological back door to its phones, why aren’t we ordering weapons makers to put technology in their products that can be used by law enforcement to protect us from gun violence?” Get the government to mandate “smart guns” then give them the power to remotely disable firearms? How do they do it? How do they cram so much fail into such a short sentence [via Maine’s pressherald.com]. But the columnist, former state senator and failed Democrat US Senate candidate Cynthia Dill‘s not done . . .
Do guys with assault weapons and stockpiles of high-capacity ammunition – good or bad – have a privacy right to carry them in public places undetected? Or do citizens have a right to be alerted by their iPhone when such a weapon comes within shooting range?
What in Sam Hill is going on inside this woman’s mind? Can’t she see how her “automatic weapon notification” idea — and I use that term loosely — would lead to the targeting of legal concealed carriers by the government, gang-bangers or God knows who? If nothing else, the electronic heads-up would give bad guys the one-up on legal armed defenders. SMH.
Why is it a 6-year-old child can pick up an iPhone and be prevented from accessing its contents because of a passcode, but that same child can pick up a gun and shoot his 3-year-old brother in the face and kill him by accident?
If a judge can order Apple to create software that can unlock phones that are now impenetrable, why can’t Congress order gun makers to lock their guns?
The justice system has a legitimate argument that some privacy rights have to be given up for the sake of security, so let’s stop protecting the privacy of people who shoot and kill others with guns.
Here’s the kicker: “Cynthia Dill is a civil rights lawyer and former state senator.” So not only does Ms. Dill have more than a passing acquaintance with the United States Constitution, she swore an oath to uphold and defend it. As long as America has people like Ms. Dill in the public square, our gun rights will be in a pickle. If you know what I mean.
My iPad is setup with TouchID, and is locked. So are most of my guns, they are locked in a quality gun safe.
But I do those things voluntarily. They aren’t pushed on me by the government.
So she is reaching for things.
I’d be cool with a gun upgrade every two years. You know, upgrades that make the gun more deadly, more accurate, higher capacity, that kind of stuff.
I’m in!
“Oooh, Bayonet 3.1 has been released!”
I think this is the first posting that I actually chuckled over.
(reading TTAG for at least 2 years)
Maybe I should email her a video of my 2 year old inputting the 6 digit pin code to my iphone after he has tried unlocking it like daddy with his thumb.
Children are cleaver and pick up things quickly – only twice have I put the pin in and he knew it. Let me pin code my gun – Kids will learn very quickly. How about we teach them about gun safety the correct and proper way by actually teaching them about them and not trying to scare monger them away. Even my MiL from NY has come to see sense in this.
“high-capacity ammunition”?
O’rly
“We fire the whole bullet, that’s 65% more bullet per bullet!”
Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s going to burn your house down! With the lemons!
“Are you there?”
My personal favorite:
“Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“Bad news is we’re postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we’ve got a much better test for you: Fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You’ll know when the test starts.”
It’s a bullet inside of a bullet inside of a bullet. Like those Russian dolls.
In Communist Russia, the bullets do not wait for the people, the people what for the bullets.
“Yo Dawg, I heard you like bullets. So we put a bullet inside your bullet so you can shoot while you’re shooting.”
xzbit.jpg
I just ordered a case of high-capacity .45ACP from bulkammo.com.
“…stockpiles of high-capacity ammunition…”
Stopped reading here. I can’t take these people seriously.
What even is high capacity ammunition? Too much buzzword.
ETA: to address the rest of the article: yes ma’am, they do have a right to their privacy while carrying a weapon. Just as they have a right to their privacy when they are not carrying a weapon.
She clearly must be talking about birdshot shotgun shells. So many more pellets-o-death than buckshot or slugs.
Sigh.
the 500 S&W brass holds a pretty high capacity of powder, makes me cry every time i reload them
Makes me cry & go “Owie! Owie! Owie!” when I pull the trigger… 😉
And makes your wrist cry when you pop a few off…
(Hurts so good)
It is NOT reloading and having to pay for my ammo that makes me cry.
Obviously she’s talking about .22short rounds, you can pack 50 of those suckers in a matchbox.
I can fit a hundred .9 mm in a matchbox…
Assuming she means “high capacity of ammunition”, a stretch I know, the question is not whether I have the right, but whether I have enough ammo cans.
I doubt that she means anything really.
In her mind guns are probably just some blurry concept. She wouldn’t know a magazine from a barrel shroud. So she’s just spouting words that she thinks are vaguely related, without any understanding of the topic.
I know that one! It’s the shoulder thing that goes up!
Gun awareness…just put some internet on it…and everyone will be safe.
Yup. The Internet. Everyone’s safe there.
Umm…Because in the one case the parents were responsible tool users and used already available safety & security measures, and in the other case they didn’t.
In either case it’s the actions – or lack thereof – on the part of the parents that ultimately generated the result, not any foresight or maliciousness on the part of the manufacturers.
My experience has been that “civil rights lawyers”, as that term has generally been used, have little to no interest in protecting the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. Rather, their stock-in-trade has been to invent an ever-expanding list of pseudo-Constitutional “rights” in order to aid the criminal, subsidize the non-productive, and normalize the destructively aberrant.
Civil trial lawyers contribute nothing to our economy other than redistribute wealth.
Now, when you say “civil trial lawyers” that rings a whole different bell. Hereabouts, that is what the ambulance-chasing personal-injury lawyers call themselves. But they do also do the re-distribution thing, too, I guess, one client at a time.
Multiplied by millions.
Guns are mechanical devices, any electronically activated mechanism that would prevent it from functioning can be removed or modified. Give me an afternoon with an Armatix and I bet I’ll have that pos slinging lead without needing that watch.
I have already had enough internet for the day. I feel sick.
Ha, with the enormous amount of propaganda and astroturfing nonsense on here, can’t blame you!
Cell phones are not a constitutionally protected item.
No, but their contents are.
FLAME DELETED
If responsible parents of young children can lock their iphones, then they can secure their firearms in the home, as well, without the Government forcing them too so. My guess is in many cases if you find a failure in one, you’ll find a failure in the other.
Having an app that somehow identifies and alerts the presence of a firearm would certainly work well for criminals and thereby kind of defeats the whole purpose of self-defense, and of course, Police would be exempt, while the criminals would disengage the tracking device or procure arms without it.
Does this woman have a daily meeting with herself entitled. “How can I be even more stupid today than I was yesterday?” I am sure this is a common practice among Leftist tyrannists because the evidence is so abundant.
Well in order for the government to remotely disable guns…they have to be connected to some type of network…even if there were smart guns they still wouldn’t be able to disable them because they wouldn’t be connected to a network….and on top of that we would need national wifi or something
not necessarily. Have a disabler device inside the gun that keeps a safety engaged when it receives an outside signal. It doesn’t need to be attached to any network if it is only listening.
Or, worse, it defaults to off when not connected…..
Private companies have tried to market smart gun technology. It’s a loser. So of course a Democrat wants the government to go all in on the idea. Some failed smart gun company exec is whispering in her ear hoping for a subsidy or government mandate. Also Apple is telling the Statists to pound sand, this lady is counting her chickens a little early.
Start a “smart gun” company called Cylindra (revolvers, obviously) and sell it to the Obama regime. Declare bankruptcy when the thing won’t sell, walk away with $500 million dollars without producing a damn thing and everybody is happy.
liberals = worse than cancer, because sometimes cancer can be cured.
I have always maintained the idea that Liberalism is a mental illness. There is absolutely, positively NO WAY someone with a sound, rational mind can think anything like this woman.
She wants the gubmint to protect us from ‘gun violence’ but then who’s going to protect us from the gubmint?
Exactly. How many LEOs get arrested for criminal violence every year? Enough that they should not be exclusive carriers of deadly weaponry.
LEOs have twice the murder rate of legal carriers. And that’s just when they’re acting on their own. It’s when they’re following orders that I’m worried about.
“How do [gun-grabbers] cram so much fail into such a short sentence?”
Like the U.S. Congressman who asked Navy brass at a Congressional hearing whether a new naval bass on Guam would cause the entire island to capsize and sink into the Pacific Ocean? (Yes, Congressman Hank Johnson actually asked that question!)
The ignorance (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way) of politicians and gun-grabbers is often profound.
When I’m in need of a chuckle, I watch that video.
Now I have a reading source to give me chuckles. Ms. Dill.
Her question makes as much sense asking, “If we can make a cell phone that fits in your pocket, why can’t we make a car that fits in your pocket?”
Well, mockery here is fun, if redundant. Really, could they come up with a new stupid? It’s boring.
But, seriously, what to do? Realoy, a sober, succinct fisking in the same rag seems in order. That and send prototype attack ads using this stuff to every potential politcal opponent.
The stuff writes itself, but it’ll never mobilize opposition voters, or adjust her rhetoric unless it gets out there.
“Well, mockery here is fun, if redundant.”
Idiotic blabber from an ignorant gun-retarded imbecile indeed. And yet what is most troubling, as stupid as this stupid bint is, there are loads and loads of voters out there listening to her thinking, ‘wow, she sure is right, let’s do it’.
Let us ask this question: what makes you think that you can trust government agents, bureaucrats, and politicians with your privacy Ms. Dill?
Now let us ask this question in a slightly different way: if we can trust government agents, bureaucrats, and politicians with our private information, then why do we have the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to our U.S. Constitution and requirements that make search warrants and wiretaps difficult (in theory) to obtain Ms. Dill?
Epic fail Ms. Dill
“. . . So not only does Ms. Dill have more than a passing acquaintance with the United States Constitution, she swore an oath to uphold and defend it. . .”
While the has a good understanding of the US Constitution she simply doesn’t believe in it. This is typical progressive/fascist conceit. People like this are so invested in the idea that they can use government power to achieve their narrow lifestyle agendas that they intentionally ignore fundamental issues like freedom and liberty. For them, abstractions like preserving freedom and liberty are obsticles which are in the way of establishing gun control. You can’t fix stupid.
There are likely at least 350 million privately owned firearms in the United States. Even if we had the police state to end all police states and no new “dumb guns” were created – not even any illegal ones coming from the black market – and one “dumb” firearm was removed from America every second, it would take over 11 years to get them all even from a weak and compliant populace.
And yet, these same leftists who would call for confiscation tell us that removing 11 million illegal immigrants would be impossible!
/;-D
At the same time presuming that none of these illegal immigrants would be armed and fight deportation.
“Or do citizens have a right to be alerted by their iPhone when such a weapon comes within shooting range?”
Beware what you wish for, lady.
When your iPhone starts blowing up, you’ll realized with a quickness how often you come within “shooting range” of guns. And you’ll probably sh*t yourself.
You’ll get what you want, but you won’t like what you get.
Ha! That’s what I was thinking. People would be turning their ringers off to save their own sanity (and their phone’s batteries).
It might be a good reminder of just how often they come within “shooting range” of a deadly weapon on a daily basis. And of just how often nothing bad happens.
Who gave this woman a JD? Bet they feel really foolish right about now.
“Bet they feel really foolish right about now.”
Hardly. Her parent’s check cleared…
Apple locks iPhones and we own guns because we do not trust the government.
A government that can force apple to unlock a phone or disable your gun is one that can do as it pleases.
“she swore an oath to uphold and defend it.”
I laugh because people still believe that the oath means anything to most politicians. If they go against their oath, what or who would stop them? Answer: Nobody. Why have integrity when the political narrative of your political party is more important?
In this case, she is trying to gather a base of hard left so that she can make another run for office.
The one thing of anyone who aspires to be in political office, they are in 100% campaign mode 100% of the time even after leaving the office.
No Cynthia, I’m sorry, I don’t have to give up any of my privacy rights to be secure. I will keep my privacy AND be responsible for my family’s and my own security, thank you very much.
One thing that could probably be predicted if the government had the ability to unlock/decript every smart phone is that this segment of the electronics industry would collapse and some company would have to step in with new technology not covered by this legislation.
We got along just fine for a lot of years before Apple came up with the iPhone concept.
An iPhone and a gun are two different things, madam. My life doesn’t depend on my phone.
But hey, what if it did? What if I needed to dial 911? Well look at that. Every mobile phone out there allows me to make an emergency call without the need to unlock it.
Funny how that works. Now what was your argument again?
Huh? I tried to follow the logic but had to stop when I felt the overwhelming urge to begin vomitting, how did she get from “private industry A is fighting government infringement on their customer’s civil rights” to “therefore government should force private industry B to infringe on their customer’s civil rights?” Anyone?
As far as I’m concerned she can FLAME DELETED her FLAME DELETED in her FLAME DELETED.
Why, Timbo, I do believe that is TTAG’s first ever ‘FLAME DELETED’ hat-trick!
Congrats! 🙂
Anyone wanna try for 4? Anyone….?
Maybe she thinks there are miniature gears inside the ipod and that Apple can command them to stop turning.
The lack of understanding of differences between the basic functioning principles of computer and a completely mechanical device just stuns me. Anybody told her already that Skyfall was just an entertainment movie? 🙂
Between this article and the one saying that firearm rights are predicated on the Roe vs Wade decision, I can only handle so much stupid.
Civil rights lawyer? I don’t think so. Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer. Alan Gura is a civil rights lawyer. This twit is just a twit. (Sorry for the misspelling, twice. The “a” on my keyboard sometimes seems to stick.)
What a FLAME DELETED.
Perhaps a lecture on the flaws of trying to use technology to solve social issues. Maybe she should take to the streets in Chicago to ask the bangers to get these iGuns.
That might work if they were Obamaguns distributed free to the indigent.
There already are to Mexico.
The derp is strong in this one. Proof positive that extensive background checks should be required for politicians.
I’m so tired of the stupidity coming from people about firearms. You can only disprove an argument so many times before giving up. It’s like arguing with a brick wall.
“…so let’s stop protecting the privacy of people who shoot and kill others with guns.”
The problem with your idiotic proposal, Ms. Dill, is that it obliterates the privacy of anyone who owns a gun, not just the ones who commit murder with them. Which is Apple’s argument against putting backdoor access into the iPhone’s software – it reduces the security of hundreds of millions of iPhone users who have done nothing wrong, to target a miniscule fraction of wrongdoers. Both approaches are, pardon my French, f*cking stupid.
Also, you want the privacy of people who murder with knives, bats, bare hands and cars to remain inviolate? Unacceptable! We must have a team of government agents assigned to each citizen to follow them around 24 hours per day and monitor all of their activities, ready to jump in and prevent them from murdering anyone.
I smell a lucrative business opportunity! DO you think we could get the Obama regime to fund a company producing smart hammers, smart bats, smart knives? The mind boggles.
Of course we already have a method of searching personal property and effects called the search warrant.
I’m not even going to waste my fingers on this one.
something something Ben Franklin
1) Not the same thing
2) wtf does the iPhone thing have to do with guns? This is like that person that hangs out with your friend suddenly and loudly proclaiming they’re vegan while you’re in the middle of a discussion about 70s rock.
Apple makes said iphones, uncle sam dont do squat,except taxin and reading your texts
“Instead of – or in addition to – ordering Apple to build a technological back door to its phones, why aren’t we ordering weapons makers to put technology in their products that can be used by law enforcement to protect us from gun violence?”
[Darth Vader] The derp is strong with this one… [/Darth Vader]
I’d be okay if Apple started making a line of firearms, even if they were “smart”, for people who are currently turned off by the old-style gun technology. Not holding my breath though.
Why stop at smart guns? We need smart scissors, smart hammers, smart knives, smart axes, smart bleach, and smart swimming pools. I plan on coating every interior surface of my house with soft rubber. I’m going to cover my car with styrofoam and limit its top speed to 8 mph. Basically we need to make this whole nation look like the inside of a suicide prevention room. If it saves the life of one child, it’s worth it.
/condescending sarcasm
Great minds, etc., etc.
Big idea: Cage match between Ms. Dill and Dana Loesch! Who wants tickets?
Would’nt last 30 seconds and predict Mrs. Dill goes horizontal.
I will *consider* smart gun technology myself, after every LEO in the country, starting with every member of the Secret Service, has used them–exclusively–for a period of at least two years.
And then, after careful consideration, I will decide against.
Here in NZ, if you call someone a “Dill”, you are basically calling them an idiot. How did this woman ever get elected to any public office? I think she should volunteer to test drive a smart gun in a nice, safe place like, say, Chicago after dark, and see if that protects her. Then again, she might like what happens next.
Seems kind of ironic that she weighs locked computers (which the government is demanding control over) the same as electronic locks on guns (a technology the government would never ever abuse!).
Does she not understand that the FBI, its its overreach, has proven why no one would trust a smart gun?
I’ll just drop this off here:
Thank you Mr. Charles Babbage.
Basically… I have concluded that Ms. Dill is a tyrant promoting marxist/communist ideals where government can order businesses to do whatever they please. She is another one of those “There should be law..” type of people. Her quest? Not only should there not be privacy for your phone – but there shouldn’t be privacy in your firearms either. All she needs now is a republican opponent with the exact same mentality. They can fight back and forth with legislation, enforcing their opinions on each other, until it is illegal for either one to do what they enjoy doing.
I think she needs to read this portion of the Alabama constitution”The sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.” (Article 1, Section 35). Or maybe this from the declaration of independence”To secure these rights [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Yikes! Just yikes.
if its not guns, its something else…
But, but, why is it that a 6 year old can try to eat an Iphone, and get cut on the glass. The government needs to dooooo something….
Thank goodness those intelligent enough to realize theocracies work infinitely better than democracies, are also intelligent enough to figure out how to more efficiently operate reproductive organs. This dump is beyond salvation.
Why is it Civil rights lawyers or scholars that always violate the constitution? Aren’t they the ones that are supposed to know it?
How in the heck do we deal with educated idiots who so mentally defective that they deserve institutionalism? This women compels me to self-censor myself so much to keep from providing descriptive of the ways that she should commit Seppuku and finish with self-immolation. Just a useless piece of human trash.
The government cannot and should be not forcing Apple or any gun maker to do any of these things. All of these arguments are shoddy and ignorant. This woman should be given the utmost disdain she so richly deserves for these comments. Unfortunately the leftist bent of most comedians will not touch this. Pity.
A lock is an item you use by choice. Nowhere in technology or guns are you forced to accept the automatic locking of a device without your deliberate action to set it up that way.
Government cannot force an individual or a company to produce something they do not have. Warrants to provide documentation can be had and the feds can spend a couple billion bucks trying to understand iOS and then figuring out how to crack that specific phone or they could admit that they just don’t have this bit of useless evidence.
The SB terrorist attack was a jihadi attack from within our borders and the offenders are all dead. How about we call it a done deal and close that damned case instead of spending millions more dollars to find out what we already know. Saudi connection, Pakistani jihadi connection, complete failure to catch this in immigration screenings and complete failure to allow their victims to defend themselves.
The feds are treating this like Tashfiend and Fardouche are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is an outrageous waste of public resources and does nothing to further the “war on terror” (a sillier or more pointless war has never been contemplated).
As long as people are willing to wage war on an emotion (fear) they’ll be willing to wage war on any imaginary thing while ignoring the thing which is much closer and much more insidious that actually could use a little war being waged on it while it lords over us all like a giant looming prison cell of our own construction.
That’s a weak analogy. A better analogy would be a demand from the government for a manufacturer to circumvent smart-gun technology which prevented law enforcement from conducting ballistics testing. For the record, the government SHOULDN’T be able to compel apple to circumvent its protection just like they shouldn’t be able to compel manufacturers to incorporate “smart” gun technology into all firearms. If the technology exists to bypass an encryption instance, it will inevitably get out. Security through obscurity makes just as much sense as safety from all gun violence through complete disarmament.
Pseudo-intellects have enough education and refinement to believe they are intellectually superior to others, without the actual brain power to back up the claim.
Cynthia Dill is their poster child.
As others have pointed out, the analogy is inane. The device encryption (lock) on an iPhone protects the user of the device. It was implemented as a security and privacy feature by a private sector organization, as demanded by its customers. The “lock” does not prevent any unlawful use of the iPhone (i.e., to plan a criminal or terrorist activity) and indeed complicates law enforcement’s job in trying to investigate such activities.
A government mandated “lock” infringes, rather than protects, our civil rights. Such a government mandate simply creates a new class of criminal charge, possibly adding incarceration to the trauma of losing a child or having a child injured in a firearms accident. The lock does not protect the owner or any third party, except to complicate the use of a firearm when it might most be needed–in a high stress self-defense environment (such situations occurring, by the most hostile estimates, more than 100,000 times each year).
But gun control advocacy is always irrational. The appeal to emotion (that of “save the children”) is specious. The total number of accidental firearms deaths is around 500 per year, and does not even break the top 20 causes of death by misadventure in adults OR children.
When one analyzes Dill’s arguments, one is left with two conclusions: either she is being intentionally ironic (a charitable assumption that she is smarter than her words), or unintentionally ironic (which seems the more likely explanation).
Comments are closed.