As gun violence becomes more prevalent in the United States, I think it would be interesting to explore potential technological solutions to the problems we face as a society when it comes to gun violence.
It’s unfortunate that in 2018 someone with a mental disease, or who harbors ill will towards some group of people, can purchase automatic weapons with relative ease – causing devastating damage in a short period of time.
There are several problems to tackle here:
– How easy it is to get a gun.
– What types of people should be allowed to get a gun.
– What types of guns they can get.
I think technology can play a huge role in designing a system in which people still feel safe, and don’t feel like their rights are being attacked.
The crux of the second amendment, and the reason it was created, was to give the people a means to protect themselves from a government that has become corrupt.
In the scenario where the government, and military, turn on the people, having some form of protection was/is necessary.
A second reason for guns is to protect your home, family, and property.
The problem is if you don’t have a gun, and someone else has a gun, you’re at a significant disadvantage. So you need to get a gun because you know a criminal who would attack your life / property would likely have a gun.
You don’t want to end up with a knife, in a gun fight.
Taking all of these things into consideration, we can start to build an ideal system, and work backwards to find a way to implement it in todays society.
To pull back from the politics and sociology of the situation, it would be interesting to examine an ideal system.
Imagine a future where every gun is registered to a person, or group of people who are able to use the gun.
Any tampering of this system would cause the gun to mechanically fail, and would be implemented by the manufacturers who comply with government regulations for firearms.
So now we have guns that are mapped 1:1 to a unique person, and anyone else can’t operate the gun.
This would solve some problems.
Further, every time the gun is used, the events are logged into a blackbox, and periodically sent up to an encrypted database.
This means every-time the safety comes off or the trigger is pulled, the time, location, pitch of gun, and user-authentication token would be sent to a centralized (or decentralized) database.
Any crime that involves a gun would have a complete historical record to back up the events that took place – hard data instead of after-the-fact guesswork.
Now – this begs the question, won’t criminals just use guns that are made the old-fashioned way?
Yes, I think so. But I have a feeling that a lot of mass-shootings could have been prevented if there were more steps involved in actually executing their plan.
Going to a Wal-Mart and buying a rife, and then ordering a bump-stock on amazon is a lot different than driving 25 miles at night to a sketchy part of town to buy a gun out of the back of some guys truck with all cash.
By adding more barriers, it’s a minimal annoyance to a good-person, but it’s a huge barrier for someone who has evil intentions.
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Thinking further into the future – an interesting solution would be to create a weapon that’s better than guns, is designed for protection, and has limits to what it’s able to do in terms of damage.
There’s two types of protection people need – their home/land and their physical bodies.
We will explore both:
Imagine a safety drone that you carry in your pocket. If you get in trouble or someone is harassing you, you can turn on the drone. It begins recording the encounter, and will ensure a 10ft barrier between the two parties. It will also call 911.
If the other person pulls out a weapon, the drone would have several offensive weapons at its disposal – ranging from mace, to a taser.
It’s also possible that instead of being automated, the drone is actually piloted by a 9-11 operator. Instead of calling 9-11 and waiting for a officer to arrive on scene – you can actually deploy an officer to your location instantly, allowing them to mediate your situation, and legally protect you with force if needed.
This saves money as police don’t need to roam the streets – and the drones can act as a proxy for handling various situations.
This may seem far-fetched and sci-fi, but the technology exists today. Drones can fly with precision, computer vision can identify weapons and objects relatively easily and within milliseconds.
To protect your home, it would also be possible to rig it with various offensive weapons.
To be honest, if an intruder enters my house – I would much rather have a automated system deal with it, than personally have to confront the attacker myself.
A voice activated system in every room would allow a small turret in the top-corner of the room to shoot rubber bullets at any non-invited guests.
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While these systems seem complex and very out there – I have a feeling they could be implemented within a 5-10 year span if solving these problems was actually a goal instead of a politically motivated talking point for people trying to gain voters and become elected officials.
We have technology that can do magical things – and in the right combination, they can be implemented to solve problems like gun violence.
It won’t be easy – it will take a lot of time, money and cooperation to implement a system like this – but the purpose of government is to pool resources in order to protect and provide security for the people – this seems to be an issue that needs to be solved before people will truly feel safe.
– J
Also published on Medium.