Any HN readers have ideas for improving gun safety?

[pg]

Ron Conway asked me to post on HN asking for tech ideas for improving gun safety. He asks that you email them to [email protected].

They're particularly interested in ideas for improving

- the safe handling, possession, storage and discharge of firearms and ammunition, and

- the management, scaling, and privacy safeguarding requirements for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

[philwelch]

So here's a crazy little idea.

Most gun violence is directly linked to gang activity. Gang activity is directly linked to the money involved in the drug trade. So the best technological approach to reducing gun violence would be one that took all the money out of the drug trade, giving the gangsters less to shoot at each other over. There is precedent for this. The fact that crime, including violent crime and violent crime committed with firearms, is so low now compared to the 80's and early 90's is directly linked to the collapse in the price of cocaine.

We've made it almost impossible to stop everyday copyright infringement, why not make it almost impossible to stop physical smuggling or fabrication of narcotics? Commoditize the gangsters straight out of business. Part of what made the bottom fall out of cocaine was crystal meth. So there's one direction: freely distribute the information and materials necessary to manufacture competing drugs. Then there's the distribution: Silk Road is a start, but find a better way of doing it that will pull in more producers, consumers, and distributors. If you work all the angles, you can engineer an end run against the war on drugs the same way we engineered an end run against copyright.

Too far out? ;)

[rdl]

Heh. I do agree that ending the drug war is the single best thing that can be done to reduce violence, poverty, racism, hopelessness-among-minorities, etc.

Guns and gun violence are a very minor issue by comparison.

I'd rather not have a widespread "everyone a tweaker" program, though. Crystal meth is actually pretty bad. Decriminalizing existing drugs and production of drugs would probably be a lot better than replacing illegal pot/coke/etc. use with illegal meth use.

[strlen]

It's interesting that both pro-gun rights libertarians and most anti-gun violence liberals agree on this point but for (one reason or another) fail to advance this.

Irrespective of what you think about gun laws, if you want to significantly reduce violence in US and Mexico, working on making drug trade less profitable would be a higher leverage activity than changing gun policy.

[codex]

I think that ending the drug trade would actually increase violence against the average citizen.

Drugs provide a lucrative means of employment for a large number of people with few skills. Take that away, and the world looks much bleaker. These newly unemployed, who used to make hundreds of times what they would working at McDonalds, can now no longer afford their own shoes. They might then turn from dealing drugs and occasionally shooting each other, to armed robbery and occasionally shooting a law abiding citizen.

[raverbashing]

Well, you know, about the substance you cited, it's difficult to synthesize it

That's why they still get it from the leaves of the plant, and have to transport it

There may be 'alternatives' but I suppose some people will just go for it, not to mention the 'new' different cheap format (rocks that can be smoked)

[Zak]

What exactly do you mean by "gun safety"? I don't think you're talking about accidental or negligent discharges resulting in injury or death. Firearm enthusiast groups, firearms manufacturers and dealers have put significant effort in to educating the public about safe handling which has reduced unintended shootings by a large amount over the past 50 years or so. This would be a strange problem for someone not involved in the firearms industry directly to tackle.

If you were to include suicide, which accounts for the majority of fatal gunshots, I submit that there doesn't appear to be much if any correlation between suicide rates and access to firearms internationally. I'd certainly try to keep a suicidal friend away from firearms, but it's just not that hard to find a quick and reliably way to end one's life. Suicide prevention probably shouldn't focus on methods of suicide.

If you're talking about reducing gun crime, I actually do have an idea. Right now, very few people who fail NICS background checks are prosecuted, yet many of them have committed a felony by lying on the background check form they're required to fill out when buying a gun from a dealer. If it's due to criminal history, the police should show up to deliver the news about the failure in person - and arrest the buyer. If it's for mental health reasons, the person should be involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation. Obviously, the false-positive rate needs to be low for this to work.

[rdl]

I know enough about firearms and mechanical reliability that I don't put much faith in anything which modifies the critical firing path of a weapon. I don't even like S&W revolvers with an integrated trigger lock. However, there are lots of other areas for improvement.

1. Figure out a way to make firearms registration easy to compute owner from a given recovered weapon, but not to enumerate a list of all guns owned by a specific person based on his identity only. There are a variety of cryptographic ways to do this -- if we had a way to do write-only storage on guns (say, with a 2d barcode or something which couldn't be removed, and which included a cryptographic signature and timestamp), it would make tracing guns recovered in crime easier (and thus catch/prosecute straw man purchasers for gangs and such), but would prevent the "nazis seize all guns before implementing the ovens" irrational fear.

2. A way to do NCIC NICS checks without a huge amount of trust. A private party should be able to run one (with consent of a purchaser), using a smartphone and ID provided by the buyer. Something like a Square reader. Maybe something which uses both the buyer's phone and the seller's phone and an online server. It's unreasonable to require all buyers/sellers have smartphones (a lot of gun owners are old, and there's a constitutional argument to allow poor people to buy guns, too), but at a gun show, you could loan iPod Touch to various sellers for the day. This would be supplemental to normal at-dealer-premises FFL checks. You could possibly also just require all FFLs to purchase a reasonable terminal, too.

3. Safes suck. We can do so much on locking mechanisms to rapidly open safes. For non-self-defense weapons, having safes which do periodic "I haven't been broken into yet!" liveness reporting to the owner (and maybe law enforcement, insurance) remotely, and then which alarm on tamper events, would be great. I'd love these since my safes each contain >$50k.

4. Third-party custody. I'm more than willing to lower the bar for temporarily prohibiting someone from possessing firearms. Yet, turning them over to the police isn't really fair. There should be some kind of self-storage facility optimized for storing firearms where control can be temporarily ceded to a trustworthy third party, on a bailment basis. If you are suspected of mental illness/etc., they'd be safe, and you'd be prohibited from access for a period of time; access would be restored at some point. This would make it easier to lower the bar for removal of access to weapons. Someone like Mrs. Lanza may have considered placing her weapons in such a facility while trying to get rid of her son.

[csense]

1. There are too many existing weapons floating around. Convincing owners to bring them all out for cryptomarking is a non-starter.

3. Wouldn't this technology already exist? I'm surprised, you seem to say it doesn't.

4. What would be the incentive for gun owners to use these facilities?

If you have a gun because you like them, you want to use it, and having it in your house is much more convenient, especially if you live in a rural area and can hunt or target shoot without getting in the car.

If you have a gun for protection, you want it to be by your side at all times.

The facility would presumably cost money. Why go to the increased hassle?

For people that are temporarily legally restricted from possessing firearms, it would be attractive to have a place to leave your weapons safely and legally. But such people are rare; far more common is a felony conviction or other consideration that bars people from possession for life.

Digression: I'd be in favor of making firearm restrictions for felons lengthy but ultimately temporary. For example if you have a clean record for 10 years after serving your time, you get your voting and firearm privileges back, but a judge or parole board can deny the latter at their discretion if your crime involved illegal or grossly irresponsible use of firearms. My thinking is that there should be paths for redemption and rehabilitation for all but perhaps the most violent, most serial or most insane criminals, because while crime needs to be punished, if a criminal's life is ruined by the consequences of his/her first crime, he/she has no incentive to even try to become a productive member of society if it's impossible.

[samstave]

I like #3 - which is similar to one of my comments. I also like #4 - although the suspicious side of me would worry that it could be used against someone; i.e. I claim that RDL is a nutter and should not be allowed access to his arsenal! some overly cautious system then prevents RDL from accessing his cache, and instead he comes and bludgeons me with his fists out of anger, thus proving that he is a nutter!

I really think that #3 - smart safes with an sms/email/http-host alerting system is a very easy entry into this market. (I do not know if these exist yet - I'll have to go look after this post) - but it would appear, based on the current public sentiment - that a safe which can differentiate between authorized access and not (two factor) would be a good thing.

The safe can open with whatever key/code it requires for physical access - but there is a smart-phone dead-mans-switch which, if this portion of authorization is not completed - the police are notified of the unauthorized access.

An external access log, would also be good. If you specify what weapon is in what slot/location - the alert could also include the exact weapon type moved. (think of the weighted mini-bars in hotels)

My buddy from lockheed and I designed a bar system which could easily be modified for this purpose, using weight sensors and passive RFID to tell which alcoholic beverage was poured and how much - its trivial to convert this into a gun safe system...

[strlen]

Very well said (I think I may have been the one to mention the cryptographic signature idea to you, but I am pretty sure I've read it elsewhere).

1) I think the other key point is inferring how guns go from the factory floor to the crime scene: how many are illegally imported, how do firearms sold to civilian and law enforcement markets go from their legal gun owner to the criminal.

Essentially a Palantir-government type solution, not so much for legal purchases, but for firearms used in crimes. This can lead to improved policing: e.g., if it's found that firearms used in Los Angeles come via straw-purchases from Arizona, then police attention can be directed to CA/AZ border.

2) For classes of firearm owners that are licensed or registered (CCW in different states, handgun owners in some states, NFA), it may be helpful to keep track of what licensing procedures were used, the demographics of the owners, the type of firearm, and then correlate this with any crime involving either the firearm or the owner -- using this as a feedback loop to improve licensing and registration laws. E.g., if it is found that there is no significant difference in terms of incidents/accidents with CCW holders that had 15 hours of training vs. 30 hours of training, there's no point in maintaining the 30 hour training requirement.

3) I think 1 and 2 need significant buy-in from gun owners, manufacturers, law-enforcement officers, and gun rights group. When the previous scientific studies come out with proposals these three groups (whose buy in crucial) find non-sensical (for very good reasons) and backed by poor data, that leads to loss of trust and the belief that studies that find facts contrary to a pre-conceived agenda will not be permitted.

It makes perfect sense, for example, for CDC to investigate gun violence -- yet given the previously shoddy and biased studies on this matter, the significant stake holders are less likely to cooperate. This, in turn, leads to lower quality data, further perpetuating the cycle.

So if a group can manage to persuade congress to drop wildly unpopular and non-sensical measures (like Feinstein's semi-automatic "assault weapon" ban proposal), they have far better credibility for starting a conversation with the stake-holders.

Law enforcement, for example, have often found ways to work with organizations like the ACLU to ensure due process is observed, when implementing legislation opposed by those organizations. There's no reason why SAF, NRA, as well as ACLU (in regards to avoiding racial profiling, protecting the rights of mentally ill, and other first/fourth/fifth amendment issues -- especially with the #1 "tracking" proposal) should not play a role in a more in depth data-backed gun violence studies.

[yakiv]

The cryptographic thing might be a good idea, but we would need to consider not only current computers' ability to crack it but also future computers' ability to crack it. Much faster computers will probably get here eventually.

[dmix]

Penn Jillette made an excellent observation when confronted with a question of how can we solve a problem together as a species?

He said, the best question to ask is how can we solve this problem with more freedom rather than less?

So my only point is that we should be looking for ways to use technology for freedom, such as spreading information about safety or getting help for mental health issues.

And not trying to restrict the average normal healthy citizens with technology. Which has been proven again and again throughout history that technological restrictions are rendered ineffective against clever hackers or criminals.

[cookingrobot]

Philwelch has a clever suggestion for this above: end the war on drugs, which would remove the drug gang economy and related gun violence.

[roguecoder]

In that case we should be considering technology that allows me to disable guns in my vicinity, since I want to be free from having high speed projectiles discharged around me.

[jellicle]

This is a naive request.

There is plenty of tech that could create new, innovative weapons. Personal tasers for everyone, charged with USB. Peppersprayers with chemical encoding to identify assailants uniquely. Weapons that can only be used by one person.

The problem is these are NEW weapons and they do not in any way reduce the current supply of weapons. The current supply of weaponry is deadly, cheap, easily available, and apparently, no law can be created to reduce or inhibit the current supply. Under those circumstances, adoption of any new tech will be tiny and unimportant.

Gun violence is a political problem, not a technological one. Once the groundwork is laid for political action to occur, then and only then can it move into the realm of a technological problem.

[monochromatic]

Gun violence is a political problem? Really??

[Harkins]

It seems to me that one of the major drivers of hostility to NICS is the fear that the government having a complete and accurate listing of gun purchases will enable a future fascistic government to neuter resistance by confiscating guns. So one way to reduce political opposition to NICS would be to make it useless as a database of gun ownership. Run it in such a public fashion that everyone can trust it's not keeping track of all guns, or constantly run fake queries against it for all citizens so that gun owners cannot be identified.

I unsure if what I've read about this belief is fringey or common among gun owners, so maybe this is not necessary to gain enough political support to require background checks for all firearm sales.

[rdl]

There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry, so that should influence NICS design.

We saw in California and NY that registration -> confiscation. I actually trust the federal government more than the California government, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. Borderline guns (say, .50bmg) which are 100% registered would be at risk to confiscation in the future if possession is banned. It would be much easier legally to ban possession of the .50bmg, particularly in semiauto, than anything else, since those are so expensive and rare, and so destructive that they look great on TV.

[mindslight]

I've got a modest proposal - the second simplest idea of them all.

Instead of beating around the bush with restrictions that should be ruled unconstitutional but won't be, simply ban all firearms. The building-a-better-world folks would be happy to finally get their wet dream. The constitutionalists could stop deluding themselves as to its applicability, and thus choose to secede or revolt. And everybody who wants personal freedom would be free of a red herring and could better concentrate on functional ways of neutering the modern governments' ability to do things like ban personal tools in the first place.

[rdl]

If someone passes an unconstitutional law, the reasonable response isn't to secede (which is itself unconstitutional), but to challenge it in the courts (as well as to vote out of office the legislators/executives who pushed those laws).

"Cutting off your nose to spite your face" would be the cliche here.

[nthj]

> The constitutionalists could stop deluding themselves as to its applicability, and thus choose to secede or revolt

Or revolt over seceding? The Civil War would not have taken place had Lincoln allowed the South to go on their merry way.

[roguecoder]

* Require gun insurance and make gun purchasers criminally responsible if the guns they buy are later used to commit a crime.

* Provide incentives to encourage people to rent guns if they are going to shoot recreationally at a gun range. This could be accomplished through a flat tax on guns owned by individuals, combined with storage and tracking requirements for guns at ranges.

* Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons.

* Repeal the second amendment. Any gun ownership should be based on efficacy and maximize safety. Currently gun ownership can not be optimized because it does not have a defined aim.

[monochromatic]

How could GPS tracking possibly work? I mean everything you just said is laughably misguided, but the GPS thing shows a lack of technical understanding of both GPSes and guns.

[Zak]

Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons.

How do you prevent people from disabling the GPS when the gun is stolen or "stolen"? It seems like it would be pretty difficult to make a GPS tracking unit that couldn't have its power source disconnected. If you managed that, it's fairly easy to destroy electronics. A few seconds in the microwave usually does the trick.

[maxharris]

What about better ways to recognize those people that are mentally ill and violent before they strike again?

Unfortunately, this isn't really a tech problem. We're in this mess now because Thomas Szasz began a movement to destroy the profession of psychiatry. This led to the massive deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill thirty years ago, swelling the ranks of the homeless. That, in turn, played a major role in these recent killings, because of the impact the movement had on civil commitment laws: it is now very difficult (if not impossible) to commit those in dire need of effective, full-time treatment before people get killed.

[roguecoder]

Only 75% of adult spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis and the most common diagnosis is "depression". Less than 20% of teenage spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis. Tiller wasn't mentally ill at all, just racist and power-obsessed.

As convenient as blaming mental illness may be, it is also short-sighted.

[quasque]

Discouraging or banning ownership seems to work well in many countries. It's a shame that so many citizens of the US feel intimately tied to these violent objects, and for such archaic reasons.

[Jayschwa]

Having the ability to defend yourself is not "archaic".

[kunle]

What if guns were treated like cars.

Every single gun has a unique signature (like a VIN #), and you had to buy insurance on your gun in order to own it, transfer title anytime its sold, and be held liable for any violence damage caused by a gun you own.

Insurance companies would have to vet you in order to give you a price, and any mishaps that occurred from guns you own, would make your insurance rates increase. As such you would take as much care who has access to your guns as you do with who has access to your car, and you'd only own guns you need.

Gun owners who are responsible would see the cost of owning guns go up a bit, but more careless folks would feel the economic effects, which would prod them to behave more responsibly.

This way, we can worry less about loopholes around what kinds of weapons people should own, or deal with bans or gun buybacks (which would secretly just be a boon for gun manufacturers). The people so adamant about owning weapons would now have a mechanism to compensate society for the damage they caused (if any).

Good policy because it's a market driven mechanism for gun safety, and good politics because it's functionally the government setting the rules, and getting out of the way (which the right wants) and reducing the societal cost/damange of gun ownership by pricing in externalities (which the left once).

[rdl]

Guns already have to have serial numbers (equivalent to VIN, but less structured, and managed by manufacturer, and no central registry).

The issue is that car accidents are accidents (often involving negligence), whereas gun crime is generally willful (sometimes involving crazy people, but generally just criminals).

There's the issue that a lawful collector or random hunter or whatever with lots of guns is a lower risk than a gangster with one gun, and the risk per gun is vastly lower for a law abiding person with lots of guns vs. a bad guy with one or a few.

In fact, I'd bet that gun crime goes down as the number of guns possessed goes up. Obviously 0 is the least, but 1 is the most, and it's probably close to exponential after that. The guy with 31 guns is way less likely to kill someone than the guy with 3.

The only risk when someone has lots of guns is that they'll get distributed to others -- either through theft or through willful straw-man purchase or other distribution. A person who holds ~30 guns for a gang, then distributes them as needed for crime, is a problem, yes.

[Jayschwa]

Insurance is for covering unexpected events. A gun being fired is a deliberate act. I don't see how it makes sense in this context.

[dr_doom]

I don't think gun safety is the major issue, gun violence is the big killer.

Biometric scanners and high tech safes may help save a few people but there are more murders during a Chicago summer than all school shootings in the last 10 years combined.

[rdl]

The question is, are the possessors of those (mostly handguns) in Chicago lawfully able to purchase them?

If there were a 100% effective (no false positive or negatives) gun to legal owner biometric ID thing, then that should reduce Chicago gang violence as well. The problem is I don't believe it's technically possible to build even a 90% effective system like that (a trigger and firing mechanism is mechanically simple; I could just open the gun and replace the advanced biometric system with a traditional one, perhaps 3d printed), and the are the 200 million existing weapons.

Biometrics are potentially good for preventing someone from taking your gun and shooting you with it (which mainly applies to police who open-carry in close proximity to felons), or potentially for keeping children from getting access (although a traditional safe or lockbox works fine for that).

[ctoth]

I often have discussions with pro-gun friends of mine about reasonable solutions that would allow them to retain their weapons, which they evidently greatly favor, and would still increase overall safety.

It seems to me that the argument that a gun provides protection is a valid one. What other device gives us the ability to point and click and stop someone literally dead in their tracks? This is the problem, and as I see it one that is asking for a technical solution. Consider a device with the following attributes:

  - It is extremely quick to deploy. Just as quick as drawing and firing a gun.
  - It can be used multiple times in succession
  - It renders a potential threat (say a hostile person with a gun) inert or otherwise incapacitated
  - It is affordable, $99 or less.
  - It is difficult if not impossible to block (no Faraday cage armor)

Now, how might this be done? Can we induce paralysis remotely without deactivating critical muscles like the heart? I know about TASERS (TM), and from what I understand the primary drawback with those is that they are only one-time use weapons, once deployed they aren't easily reusable (I.E. if you miss you're out of luck) and their range is not equivalent to a handgun. Can one of you smart hackers find a link to a scientific paper about some sort of field that makes rats fall over? As a blind person, I would love it if the device could simply be pointed in the general direction of a threat and cover a wider area, say a shotgun stun device.

This has interesting second order implications which I haven't thought about -- what happens when you can easily go up to someone, shoot them, paralyze them for 30 minutes and steal their stuff? But all things considered, if someone is going to steal my stuff, I'd rather live through the experience.

Thoughts? Am I completely off base? Or is this a reasonable way to approach the protection part of the problem?

[johncarpinelli]

An automatic gun defense device like a smoke detector that is cheap and ubiquitous. The device should cost $100-$200 and could be installed in schools, shopping malls, cinemas and street lamps.

If the device detects a gun-shot, it locates the shooter through triangulation of the sound and image recognition. Non-lethal defenses would be deployed automatically to prevent continued shooting: e.g. stun grenade/flashbang, tear gas, electric shock. After detecting a gun-shot, the device would record audio/video and call 911 automatically. The shooter's escape could be tracked through a network of the devices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_lo...

[jauer]

Shot spotter (http://www.shotspotter.com/) does the detection aspect of this.

A low-cost clone might not be feasible due to patents: http://www.shotspotter.com/patents

[codex]

In this age of smartphones, it would be possible to mandate that all guns radio 911 with the current location whenever all the following events occur:

- they are withdrawn from the holster

- the safety is disabled

- there is ammunition loaded

- they are not at a shooting range or hunting area

This could help reduce the carnage from mass shootings and draw police to legitimate threats sooner. It is compatible with gun owner's rights. Heck, it could even take a picture and record audio whenever a shot is fired to aid in the legal nightmare that is sure to follow any gun discharge.

Another technological solution: RFID rings that must be on the shooting hand in order to discharge the gun. This keeps guns away from kids, prevents theft, and prevents guns from being used against their owners.

[niggler]

In almost all major gun incidents, the weapon in question isn't registered to the shooter. Prima facie, something as simple as a fingerprint trigger lock could be acceptable to the gun enthusiasts (much less use for a stolen weapon).

[alid]

Microchip all guns? Or utilize nanotechnology to hook them up with a scannable barcode that can be scanned with a smartphone app? If it's not chipped, it's not legal. All police nationally should be equipped with necessary devices to scan guns on the spot.

Why would this help? There are currently millions of guns that have been subject to very little character checking or cross-checking. A gun census, of sorts, is needed. So I would suggest a harmonized shooter's license scheme and weapon registration scheme. Similar to a buyback - all gun owners have within a defined period to re-license (read: microchip) every one of their guns, after which time any unlicensed weapons (under the new universal license scheme) are illegal and confiscated. Part of this new licensing includes universal registration - so police nationally have records of all gun ownership and licenses - providing a uniform standard of safety across the country.

Bias: I'm Aussie, and in 1996 laws were introduced banning semi-automatic weapons in Australia (via a buyback scheme). In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings - but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. Firearm homicides and suicides reduced dramatically. Life is safer without guns.

[strlen]

This may be off-topic, but I thought I'd bring it up: in a nut shell, defensive "use once" less than lethal weapons for public areas. They would be strictly licensed and regulated by first responders, much like public defibrillators are.

While I found NRA's idea of arming teachers to be (let's be honest here, and I say this a strong second amendment supporter) absolutely nuts -- several people have circulated the idea of providing less than lethal weapons to teachers and administrators. I think most teachers (or most people in general) are not keen in owning a firearm, do not have the time to go through the training to use a firearm effectively in a high-stress scenario.

However (and this idea isn't original to me, I've seen it suggested elsewhere online) provide a modified than lethal weapon (e.g., a carbine length taser) in each classroom -- hidden behind glass door much like a fire extinguisher or a defibrillator would be. They would be given training in using this weapon to stop (or slow down) an opponent and there would be strict rules to ensure it cannot be used for any other purpose (e.g., it would have "drive-stun" capability removed and be limited to only a few rounds). Shattering the glass in any classroom would immediately set of alarms in all classrooms (giving other teachers time guide children to safety) and cause first responders to come (irrespective of time or day).

While mass shootings do not represent most of gun violence, they are especially unnerving. Generally, however:

1) Mass shootings are usually murder-suicide. Suicide here is either a primary (with murder being secondary) goal or a way of escaping retribution. If, on the other hand, the perpetrator knows they are more likely to be simply disabled and then arrested and thrown in prison, this creates further deterrence: it now makes more sense not to go through with the plan, to surrender right away before committing any violence.

Sentencing guidelines could reflect it: attempted school shooters who surrendered without firing a shot would receiving more lenient sentencing (but the case itself would be sealed, put on a gag order to prevent those seeking notoriety from making attempts), those are arrested by force would receive far stricter sentencing than those surrender voluntarily (idea being surrender voluntarily/commit no further crime crime < captured by force/commit no further crime < surrender voluntarily/commit further crimes < surrender by force/commit further crime).

Essentially the goal would be to sent two messages:

I) If you are suicidal, you're far more likely to fail, be captured, and have your life made much worse (on top of what ever is ailing you) if you try to "take others with you"

II) It is very difficult to escape retribution in a mass shooting, so the best strategy would be to either not attempt a mass shooting or to peacefully surrender without firing a shot.

2) Contrary to popular belief, mass shootings are not always in explici "gun free" zones (Giffords shooting, Portland Mall shooting, possibly the Aurora shooting) -- and usually a single armed guard or a CCW license holder might be there but wasn't be able to do much.

However, several shootings have been ended early by multiple unarmed individuals tackling a disoriented perpetrator. Obviously it is not expected for elementary school teachers to be able to tackle an assailant, yet this approach has the advantage that now there are multiple individuals (teachers in different classrooms) armed with less than lethal (which by no means means "non-lethal") tools that significant amplify their own physical ability and can disorient the assailant even without directly hitting the assailant (i.e., one volunteer using the weapon now makes the assailant more susceptible to additional uses of the weapon).

3) The less than lethal weapon should be designed with the purpose of making an otherwise untrained individual (with no firearms experience) not only able to incapacitate an assailant, but to also make them feel confident that they are able to.

That is why I think a "carbine/shotgun-length taser" might be better approach here than a hand-held tool: it would be easier to aim, look like a more menacing weapon, and fit a wider variety of individuals.

4) (Added this later) Teachers, guards, other volunteers have a "homeground advantage here" vis. an intruder. This would be more effective than a passer-by CCW holder in a mall.

5) (Also added later) Less than lethal weapon have less chance of causing serious damage to bystanders or those using the weapons.

[rdl]

In theory this is a good idea, but I'd be afraid of slippery slope. When a teacher comes upon two kids fighting, the temptation to use a "non lethal" emergency device to break up the fight would be a lot higher than the temptation to shoot one of them.

You might be able to deal with it by declaring use of the device the same as using lethal force, with criminal liability for any use where deadly force wouldn't have been otherwise authorized.

I would be ok with the NRA "arm the teachers" IFF the teachers were given ~10-14 week sheriff's deputy/POST level training, and volunteered, in addition to regular CCW. I couldn't imagine an elementary school teacher doing this, but a college professor or a high school science teacher or someone seems like a reasonable candidate. Putting full time armed guards at most schools is just insane from a cost-benefit perspective even if it did help (which I don't believe it would, overall). $1-5k of extra training for a volunteer teacher would be a lot more reasonable.

[froo]

1) Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard initiated our gun buyback scheme in 1996 and since then, our firearm related suicide rate has fallen 74% and we have not had a single gun massacre since (we had 13 in the preceding 18 years before it).

He wrote a piece on this for the NYTimes recently, linked below

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-a...

It will be an unpopular position, especially amongst conservatives who seem to believe that Gun rights and right wing politics go hand in hand (I'll note that John Howard led our main conservative party in initiating the buyback).

It has surely worked for us. Our gun violence statistics have dropped dramatically since the scheme was implemented.

[lsllc]

Teachers don't need to be armed in case of a shooter just as teachers don't need to carry fire extinguishers in case of a fire.

Teachers DO need to be trained in what to do in a shooting just as they do when there is a fire. When there is a fire, we don't lock ourselves in the classroom waiting for the fire department to show up. We escape, we fight the fire (with fire extinguishers) until the fire department shows up to deal with the situation.

This is what the Israelis do, they have gun safes placed around the school that contain a handgun and a magazine. They train the school personnel on how to operate the weapon, they're not looking for the next Jason Bourne, just someone who can slow down (or possibly stop the shooter). Opening the safe automatically dials 911.

http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2012/12/15/agains...

What should the kids do? Escape and evade, don't sit around waiting to be executed:

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/parents-guide

[GFischer]

I second this idea.

I've wondered a long time why there isn't more development of nonlethal weapons, something like a stun / tranquilizer gun.

I don't want a gun for my own self-defense, because, once you have a gun, and actually target someone, you have to be WILLING to fire it, and live with the consequences (automatic jail time here in my country, except in the most strenuous self-defense, and then only if the assailant had a gun himself).

However, I'm strongly considering a Taser for myself, after witnessing a particularly appalling mugging (I was to slow to intervene, which is actually a good thing, because I'm overweight and out of shape, I would have been beaten up).

[scotty79]

There is much simpler solution to mass shootings. The one that is successfully used all over the world (was recently successfully implemented in Australia). Ban individual gun ownership and go back to the original intent of 4th amendment (before gun manufacturers twisted it) that gun ownership is legal for private organised law enforcement organisations.

I was under the impression that the person who asked those questions doesn't have mass shootings in mind.

Making guns accessible to nearly anybody and asking not to have mass shootings is like having gravity and asking not to have anything seriously damaged by the fall ever.

[femto]

Are there any constraints? If not, the obvious (low) tech idea is a steamroller.

[varunkho]

I have this thought recently that firearms should be replaced with faintarms for general public. Guns for public should be designed to cause faint to the aponent if discharged rather than killing. This way individual claim to 'right to defend/protect' him/her is maintained while at the same time, his ability to kill somebody is also curtailed with the use of that gun.

Just a thought.

[rdl]

Non-lethal weapons are something which have gotten a lot of research. Unfortunately, there's no technology yet which works like a Star Trek phaser on stun -- instant incapacitation without serious risk of death. So, "faintarms" don't exist. If you can develop them, they should go to every police officer, military unit, etc., as well as for self defense.

Pepper spray (OC) is essentially irrelevant once you're in close. If someone wants to kill you, and you pepper spray him, not only will it also affect you, but he can continue the attack. (I've been pepper sprayed during classes a few times, and it really sucks, and continues to suck for a long time, but I was able to unholster and fire into a body-sized target at 3 meters with all shots on target).

Tasers are ineffective if someone is wearing heavy clothing. They're also single-shot -- if someone runs at you, and you miss with the taser, you're kind of screwed. They're probably the closest, though.

Contact stun guns are pretty horrible because they require you to be in close. Essentially, if I can win a fight with someone to the point where I can use a stun gun on him, I'd just skip the stun gun and stomp him. They're really useful in psych wards or other environments like that to control people who you could actually control otherwise, while doing less damage to them. Pretty irrelevant for self defense.

Knives and sticks are potentially quite lethal, and are ineffective unless you're highly trained or substantially overmatch your opponent in strength/skill/size.

Flashlights (the 100+ lumen combat type) are probably the best in that they have low downsides, and are fairly effective in defense, and can be used to identify threats. I'd never carry a pistol without a flashlight in my pocket, and all my home-defense guns have mounted lights.

Sound is an interesting idea (infrasound, in the sub 10hz range). There's stuff like the LRAD. Unfortunately it is the size of a truck.