Smart guns? Recording shots? New tech.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/24/police-gun-tracking_n_6040930.html

Says some departments are incorporating tech into their Glocks.


Earlier this month, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department and the Carrollton, Texas, Police Department began equipping some of their officers’ Glocks with the new technology, Yardarm stated in a press release Friday.

“We’re looking forward to what we believe law enforcement is heading towards,” Carrollton Police Sgt. Wes Rutherford told HuffPost. “We thought we might be interested in purchasing this in the future.”

Anybody familiar with such. Seems to me that minature cameras are not far away.

[KeeFus]

If that thing sent an alarm every time I drew my pistol it would break. Not that I pull my gun often at work...I dry-fire A LOT!

I really think that they're over thinking the issue.

[GardoneVT]

If that thing sent an alarm every time I drew my pistol it would break. Not that I pull my gun often at work...I dry-fire A LOT!

I really think that they're over thinking the issue.

This would seem to be an administrator cheif's Christmas gift.

"Mr Street Cop, please come into my office. You need to be nicer to the thugs, because our mayor needs their vote. If your holster draw stat hits the red again , you're on the unemployment line...."

[LSP552]

Even the concept of things like this make me glad I'm retired. God Bless my Brothers still working in the business.

[SWAT Lt.]

Even the concept of things like this make me glad I'm retired. God Bless my Brothers still working in the business.

+1

[Hambo]

Currently, for the sensor to work, an officer must be carrying a smartphone.

How many agencies issue phones to every patrol officer?

[TAZ]

I guess the good part is that it appears to be a passive system that doesn't interfere with the function of the gun just records movement.

[dbateman]

It's a terrible idea.

It's the tip of the wedge.

[czech6]

How hard would it be to register false positives and who are the established experts in the field on interpreting the data? New big brother technology has a tendency to cost departments lots of money settling cases to stay out of court, and get good cops in trouble because it's unreliable.

We were one of the first large departments to install GPS tracking in squad cars. It was a terrible system. The system would often show officers driving over 100mph on city streets or show officers in places that they never were at. At first it was a bad joke and then the lawsuits started rolling in. It wasn't hard for an attorney to claim a systematic patterns of misconduct. The "we're good buys, we just make really horrible decisions about equipment" defense doesn't work in court, and the experts that in the field at the time worked on aeronautical systems and had little to experience with land based systems.

[Coyotesfan97]

Company Makes Gun Tech That Could Help Prevent Police Brutality

That's the headline on the article. Not only no but hell no!

Any time you draw your gun it sends an alert warning of potential danger. Maybe if command staff is drawing a gun...

Great. It probably locks up your radio channel too. Beep gun drawn. Beep gun drawn beep gun drawn etc. We have emergency buttons on our radios too. They're always accidently hit. The channels taken for ten seconds and only that radio can transmit. Sometimes it's funny cause it brings a torrent of cursing. I see this system giving all kinds of false alerts and just being a big PITA in general.

What about training. Now there's a lot of drawing and firing. Can it be remotely shut off so you can train without sending alerts?

You need a smart phone to make it work you better plan on issuing one because your not putting a Department app on my cell phone. My Dept has 800 Officers. That's a lot of phones and that's a lot of data packages. That's a lot of coin.

According to the article this company wanted to sell an app to remotely shut off guns but dropped it because of the uproar.

[Tamara]

Quoting a friend of mine from elsewhere:


I can see it as being useful. I frankly see them as looking a little short on this. I've got a Streamlight M3 tac light on my Gen 4 Glock at work, which was great stuff 10 years ago, but which is an underperforming hunk of stuff on the rail, now. It's incandescent, uses two CR123 batteries, and performs ONE function. Suppose they make it LED, use only one Li battery, and add video, actuated by RFID tech in the gun and holster? As a cop, I want that. but I don't want the camera to see BETTER than the human eye-- just as well as.

[dbateman]

Quoting a friend of mine from elsewhere:

I don't think your friend has thought the whole thing though.

And if they have they aren't someone I would want as a friend.

[Tamara]

I don't think your friend has thought the whole thing though.

And if they have they aren't someone I would want as a friend.

We're talking about cop guns, here. Publically-owned weapons. Absolutely a different thing to privately owned firearms.

How much you wanna bet the Ferguson PD wishes they had body cams and shot loggers and any other bit of evidence they could get?

[GardoneVT]

We're talking about cop guns, here. Publically-owned weapons. Absolutely a different thing to privately owned firearms.

How much you wanna bet the Ferguson PD wishes they had body cams and shot loggers and any other bit of evidence they could get?

It would be irrelevant.

The people convinced Brown is innocent will not be swayed by mere fact. Neither will politically oriented LE agency management ,who will have another tool to jam up patrol officers in a politically uncomfortable situation. The headline writes itself- "Chicago/LA/NYC cop drew his gun 500 times according to police records before killing g̶a̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶f̶f̶i̶l̶i̶a̶t̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶n̶d̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶d̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶s̶l̶i̶n̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ teenage member of the community!"

[Dagga Boy]

From the guy who spent 17 years as the person in charge of the logistics on a group of police issue weapons hat:
Technology that would give me an accurate count of the number of things like slide cycles would have been helpful for justification of proper maintenance and parts replacement and tracking where "agency owned" guns are.

From the guy who spent almost 20 years in cop work hat:
LE people SUCK at procuring technology. All the people in charge of "buying technology" were hired to be cops, and often sucked at that, so they ended up in charge of toilet paper and technology acquisition. Every spidey sense I have says that a lot of technology contracts are full of corruption on how they were picked in my individual experience. The "good" systems tended to be designed by smart technology people who have not a fricking clue about what cops actually do, thus can often not function correctly in the field for L/E.
From the guy who has done the firearms and ballistics work ups on over 75 officer involved shootings hat:
Figuring out how many rounds the cops fired and who fired them was never an issue or remotely the problem in shooting investigations. So if that is the justification.........spend the money on getting the LEO's trained to actually hit the right people in the right place at the right time, would be a FAR better investment of funds and brainwork. Training is the issue, not round counts. By the way, if training is done right the training round counts will be high and will result in low numbers in actual use. I know this for fact, and it is not a mystery or something that those who are successful in this area don't know........it's just that they are the people that those people in charge of acquiring technology tend not to listen to.

[czech6]

We're talking about cop guns, here. Publically-owned weapons. Absolutely a different thing to privately owned firearms.

How much you wanna bet the Ferguson PD wishes they had body cams and shot loggers and any other bit of evidence they could get?

Given Ferguson PD chief's handling of the situation to date and complete lack of PR skills, I seriously doubt that any video or shot loggers would help Officer Wilson. Police use of force is rarely a text book event, it's down right ugly and rarely do we get the clear cut, smoking gun in hand videos everyone likes to see. Even with video that exonerates an officer's actions, it's very easy to use the video out of context and draw far reaching conclusions. Having video is great, but not being to present it to the public in the proper context and in a believable format, won't do much to sway the court of public opinion.

[dbateman]

We're talking about cop guns, here. Publically-owned weapons. Absolutely a different thing to privately owned firearms.

How much you wanna bet the Ferguson PD wishes they had body cams and shot loggers and any other bit of evidence they could get?

The thing is at first its an sensor that detects a draw then it's a camera fitted to the pistol like your friend would like, then it's interlocks ect all in the name of safety and accountability.

If they get that implemented in the Gov it will filter down to privately owned guns.

As far as Ferguson PD goes whether there was video that showed exactly what happened or not the people who have a problem would still have a problem.
They're just looking for an excuse to act out and don't give a two hoots about whatever the hell that punks name was.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

As far as cameras go - I agree that zealots would not be interested in disconfirming evidence. However, there is also a battle for the minds of the general public. The surface appearance of multiple shots fired at an unarmed man would suggest to most that the shoot was outrageous. Thus a zealot can enroll many in the cause. A realistic video of the action might take away this recruitment of more people to the cause.

[GardoneVT]

As far as cameras go - I agree that zealots would not be interested in disconfirming evidence. However, there is also a battle for the minds of the general public. The surface appearance of multiple shots fired at an unarmed man would suggest to most that the shoot was outrageous. Thus a zealot can enroll many in the cause. A realistic video of the action might take away this recruitment of more people to the cause.

There is a flip side to that coin;a realistic video can be edited to present a slanted image . See the Rodney King debacle for an applied example, or ABC's strategic editing of Zimmerman's 911 call.

[Tamara]

As far as cameras go - I agree that zealots would not be interested in disconfirming evidence. However, there is also a battle for the minds of the general public. The surface appearance of multiple shots fired at an unarmed man would suggest to most that the shoot was outrageous. Thus a zealot can enroll many in the cause. A realistic video of the action might take away this recruitment of more people to the cause.

I know that this video played well in the court of public opinion:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnFyKOQnDEM

Fast forward to about 1:10 or so to watch the guy with the knife close the ground between him and the cops faster than you can say "Dennis Tueller". It certainly cut down on idiots (at least idiots that weren't related by blood to the shootee) saying "Why didn't the police just <$dumb_idea>?"

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Anything can be edited - thus, it is the role of those in the debate to demand the real unedited raw info be presented.

In a sense all testimony is edited by the overt and covert mental processes of the witnesses and then the influence of their questioners and social context they live in.

Having raw video is probably the best counter to such.

The editing of King and Zimmerman are well known and the actual info is quite available.

[dbateman]

I know that this video played well in the court of public opinion:


To be clear I am not against the idea of dash cams lapel cams ect. In fact I think they are a valuable tool.


I am against putting sensors, cameras ect into firearms. Why complicate a simple machine that works ?

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Given the lights and lasers hung on guns, a small camera as my flip phone had, doesn't seem extreme. One wonders if a home and/or SD gun would be a place for a camera accessory. I can think of cases where such might save or sink the civilian defendant. Yep, I've read of the laser, light weight inducing failures to function.

The world is complicated.

[dbateman]

The world isn't complicated people just think it is.

[Tamara]

Given the lights and lasers hung on guns, a small camera as my flip phone had, doesn't seem extreme. One wonders if a home and/or SD gun would be a place for a camera accessory. I can think of cases where such might save or sink the civilian defendant. Yep, I've read of the laser, light weight inducing failures to function.

The world is complicated.

This. There's a difference of kind, not degree, between an aftermarket shot logger or add-on camera and an integrated electronic trigger interface.

[dbateman]

This. There's a difference of kind, not degree, between an aftermarket shot logger or add-on camera and an integrated electronic trigger interface.

True, however if you think it will stop at a camera bolted to a 1913 rail you have a lot more faith than me.

[TAZ]

Id say a good caveat to embracing this tech would be that it in no way shape or form effect gun function. If the camera or sensor goes tits up the gun should still go bang. As such it becomes another tool that can save your bacon without increasing your risk. It would be a step closer to smart guns which nobody wants so that piece of the pie needs to be considered as well.

How the video is used or misused is another topic to be discussed, but then if we fell victim to the whole "X" can be misused by asshats we wouldn't have guns, painkillers or other things that generally help us.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Smart guns for civilians - problems:

1. Can't get them to work in a reliable manner for reasonable tactical situations with current tech
2. If they exist, they might be mandated.

However (and I am NOT in the market for one), supposedly Colt and other companies had market research indicating there was a market for them with folks who would not normally buy a gun. Thus, some antigun organizations are against them as:

a. It would encourage another population segment to buy them.
b. If smart guns were available and mandated, it might cause legislatures to life handgun owning bans in some locales with strict laws - like DC or NYC (giving a multiplier effect to Heller and McDonnell).

[dbateman]

Smart guns for civilians - problems:

1. Can't get them to work in a reliable manner for reasonable tactical situations with current tech
2. If they exist, they might be mandated.


This is what I am worried about.

Just because the they exist and don't work reliably doesn't mean they won't be mandated.

[Tamara]

This is what I am worried about.

Just because the they exist and don't work reliably doesn't mean they won't be mandated.

Are you also against mechanical safeties on firearms? I mean, if you're gonna use the "slippery slope" fallacy, you might as well get all the way on board with it.

[dbateman]

Are you also against mechanical safeties on firearms? I mean, if you're gonna use the "slippery slope" fallacy, you might as well get all the way on board with it.

It's not a fallacy I am basing my opinion on seeing similar things happen in the mining industry. That and 15 or so years ago I had a one off lifetime firearms licence and could own a machine gun the same as any other person over the age of 18... Now I can't even own a 10/22 without a shitfight and now have a licence that need to be renewed every year and it's treated as a new application so theres no guaranty it will be reissued.

And you you're basing your opinion on ?

[Glenn E. Meyer]

If you are in Australia - the bans happened because of:

1. Moral Panic from the massacres
2. No Bill of Rights - as one of your PMs bragged about on USA TV after Aurora and Newton. Thus it was easy to instituted such. He was proud that Australia didn't have courts to protect civil rights as in the USA (or so he said).

The mechanics of gun usage weren't causal as compared to these. Quite a few recent rampages in the USA were done with legal semis and could have been done with a legal smart gun.

[czech6]

Here's a Taser Cam video, that looks good to the general public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YxPn1EFE0g

These are the kind of videos that most people that think gun and taser mounted cameras are going to provide. There enough time to develop some sort of opinion about the environment the officer(s) is working in and time to assess the suspect's actions. If the video was of officers with gun mounted cameras and searching a house for a burglar, it'd be a great video to have when the officers shot the burglar. It seems like a good idea, when it's an "I told you so video". What about a video that has 2 seconds of useful footage, that shows a pistol being drawn from a holster and a contact shot to the back of someone's head?

We tested Taser Cams years ago, they didn't last long. Video that were long enough to provide some sort of context were great, the really short videos were generally useless in an investigative capacity and a huge liability. We had an incident where the only video footage was from a Taser Cam, and the 4 useful seconds of the video showed an officer tasing a 15 year old girl in the back and her face planting into a curb. She had a serious brain injury and spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. It's a horrible video, there's nothing good about it. What the video doesn't capture and can't explain is that two officers responded to a shoplifting call. The girl runs from the officers. One chases her on foot and the other in the squad car. She runs across the parking lot, down an embankment, across a major freeway and service road (14 lanes total), and causes a 8 car pile up when people swerve to avoid hitting her. The officer on foot stops chasing her at the top of the embankment, and the officer in the car takes an over pass and cuts her off on the other side. She runs back across the freeway and causes another major crash. The officer on foot cuts her off and she turns to run across the freeway a third time and the officer draws and deploys his taser. In this case the officer were fine, there was so much carnage and independent witnesses involved in the situation, that the video never came into play. If there had not been the car crashes, and it came down to he said she said, and the whole situation is borderline unbelievably fantastic, the video could have easily been used to indict the officers. A lot of cops get hemmed up for using force to stop women from playing in traffic on the freeway.

Hypothetically, an officer stops some hooks walking down the street, and one of them attacks the officer while his getting out of his car. There's a serious life and death struggle and the officer is fighting for his gun. The officer manages to draw his pistol and shoots a continuous string of fire until the bad guy is falling to the ground, effectively ending the assault. What would a gun camera see? It wouldn't see the initial stop, the assault or the fight. Pistol coming out of holster, close rang body shots, and possibly a bad guy falling backwards from being shot, and if he lost his balance or motor control he might be flailing his arms (appears hands up), and it might appear that the bad guy was surrendering. There's what happened and then there's a video that has no context, that shows a police officer shooting some at contact distance and then finishing off why he tries to surrender. An objective view would be "I don't how he got there, but he did what he was trained to do", the media would portray that as a cold blooded execution.

Gun mounted cameras seem like a great idea when they come with the expectation or fantasy of providing great video.

[ford.304]

I'm really vague on what specific incidents these are supposed to solve... I'm a huge fan of lapel cams and dash cams, but are there that many incidents where:

1) The cops fired

2) We were unclear from the investigation when they drew, when they fired, and how many times they fired.

3) The lack of clarity was significantly important to the outcome of the case.

I mean, I like that it's tech that won't break the gun if it fails. But do we have a rash of incidents where it's unclear if a cop drew down or not, and it matters?

[dbateman]

If you are in Australia - the bans happened because of:

1. Moral Panic from the massacres
2. No Bill of Rights - as one of your PMs bragged about on USA TV after Aurora and Newton. Thus it was easy to instituted such. He was proud that Australia didn't have courts to protect civil rights as in the USA (or so he said).

The mechanics of gun usage weren't causal as compared to these. Quite a few recent rampages in the USA were done with legal semis and could have been done with a legal smart gun.

The PM you refer to is John Howard, he is the ex Prime Minister of Australia. He is also a very sick man.

"1. Moral Panic from the massacres" The majority of people did not want the new gun laws. In fact there were marches ect I know the one in Sydney had hundreds of thousands of people turn up in opposition to gun bans. Gun laws in Au are controlled by the states the states did not want to change they were forced into it by the federal government.


In regards to the massacre that lead to the 1996 NFA the current laws would not stop it from recurring for a start it took police four hour to respond and even then they did jack about it.


If you ever wanted to know how low a hoplophobe would go to achieve their goal you only have to look at Au. They don't care about your second amendment if they could write it out of existence they would if they cant they'll find a way around it, and some of you guys are entertaining it.


The truth is gun control in Au is a lie but that doesn't stop them trying to convince the world it works.

[TAZ]

Are you also against mechanical safeties on firearms? I mean, if you're gonna use the "slippery slope" fallacy, you might as well get all the way on board with it.

Not quite sure I get the point of the question here. Are u suggesting that unreliable technology (smart guns) and mechanical safeties with decades or more of reliable service are the same?

I'm neutral on the whole gun cam thing simply cause at this stage didn't disable to gun in any way. I admit that the first thing that came to mind after reading the OP was the whole what's the next step on he boiling frog thermostat. Once we get into the whole disable the gun thing tied to some electronics or other new gadget I call Bovine Scatology. Even if it were some new fancy mechanical device, I'd want to see detailed third party test data, then test the crap out of it myself and even then Id bitch and whine about being mandated to use it.

I also tend to agree that this tech is a solution in search of a wide spread problem. Even the current big profile case where CSI tech could have saved the day would most likely have been addressed by a common car camera and voice recording.

[Tamara]

Are u suggesting that unreliable technology (smart guns)

I haven't said anything in this thread about "smart guns".

[Matt G]

So, czech6, your argument is that the video is no good, because it could be taken out of context? And your supporting case is one in which the video didn't even come into play? So we're worried about "how it might look"?

Man, I heard a lot of the same arguments when we were first putting cameras in patrol cars. "The public won't get the whole story. That camera only shows one point of view." Et cetera. Most of this was from cops who were afraid of being crucified. You know what? Maybe we should be afraid. I know that the first time that I pointed my pistol at someone during a felony stop, I noticed as I reholstered after that I had an indentation on the top of my right thumb, from where I had been jamming the safety of my 1911 up as hard as I could throughout the stop. Not tremendously tactical, but I didn't want to shoot that guy.

The weapon cam concept gives some hardpoints to hang your hat on, even if briefly: what was the orientation of the target when the shot was fired? Was a threat clearly visible throughout the shooting incident? Was it quick, or was there some lag? Even the quick-draw-and-shoot video can tell us a lot, if only to let the viewer understand how very rapidly the situation changes.

I've pointed guns at people. I've never shot anyone. I've had a couple of occasions where I really, REALLY thought that I was going to have to shoot someone, even after I'd had my pistol out for a period of greater than 5 seconds. If I'd had a pistol cam when such a shooting had occurred, there would have been context, as seen through the sights of my firearm.

I get that we're going to be second-guessed. But we already are. And I'm tired of being called liars over things that we're doing right. And the cops (we're mostly talking about a police application, here right now) who are embellishing their narratives on their Use Of Force reports? They need to go find other work anyway.

As for why the Taser cams have gone away, the main reason is that they take a J-frame sized grip and turn it into a grip like a High Power, significantly increasing the size of the saddle horn to grab seat belts and such. They also add a lot to the price of the Taser. They also originally didn't have much memory. Little digicams have come a LONG way since they came out, though.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

If Australians wanted to change the gun laws - might they not resort to the ballot box? Having a march is not enough. It takes concerted legislative action. Not to divert the thread but I've met Australians who think the laws are fine. Is there is town, rural split? Look at states like NY - there is clear rural opposition to the gun laws but the city and suburbs drive the law. That the Australian states went along so quickly is a similar moral panic effect as seen in NY with Cuomo's laws passed in a rush of just doing something.

As far as gun cameras - it is an empirical question has to whether technological sound devices can be made and whether they garner useful info. With body cams and gun games (if they work), it would seem a good shoot would stand out as such.

In Ferguson, the distance issue and posture would be resolved by either, it would seem. While activists might fume, you need to speak to the general public. There are always nuts - look at 9/11 or the JFK shooting.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

PS - this is a good read on how in our day, information about a shoot usually serves the departments well - http://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/7791137-Why-no-comment-no-longer-works-after-a-critical-police-incident/?utm_source=7790172&utm_medium=email&utm_content=exclusive1FullStory&utm_campaign=P1MemberOld&nlid=7790172

Hiding a bad shoot won't.

[czech6]

So, czech6, your argument is that the video is no good, because it could be taken out of context? And your supporting case is one in which the video didn't even come into play? So we're worried about "how it might look"?

You better believe that I'm very concerned about how things might look. Cameras are a reality in law enforcement. If it's not being recorded on a department's camera, then someone standing around is recording the incident on their phone. I think agency's should make every effort to use cameras, and as reasonably possibly, record an incident in it's entirety in a single uninterrupted format. I've been several incidents where video completely exonerated my actions. I've been in two horrible looking use of force videos, because use of force just isn't pretty, and was eventually exonerated by the department because of the video. One of those was an OIS where we shot a shooting suspect for pulling a pair car keys out of his pocket on a felony pedestrian stop. But that didn't save me from the media circus or riding a desk for months while things cooled off. The truth about why events unfolded the way they did wasn't important, what appeared to happen dictated the department's response to the incident.

I never said I was against video and didn't mention any other means of recording video. I said that gun mounted cameras can fail to provide context for a video, potentially leaving a large gap in events that lead up to the camera being activated. Any video can be taken out of context. If you can't look at a camera system and weigh the potential for damaging versus useful video, and then compare that to other camera systems and weigh those benefits, then I think something important is being missed. Banking on luck isn't a good strategy. It's like an agency stumbling its way through a major incident. At the end of the incident, it's obvious that no cops got killed because the bad guys weren't interested in killing cops. It wasn't good tactics, good training, or good officer safety that kept the anyone alive, just pure dumb luck. All the cops and their supervision know that they are fucked up like a football bat, but since everyone made it out alive, it's chalked up as a win and no corrections are made.

I'm against gun mounted cameras, I'm not against cameras at all. A body camera, especially a POV camera like a Taser Axon, will do everything that a gun mounted camera will do, plus have a much greater potential to video that will cover the entire situation. It'll also work in situations where the gun camera is not in play.


Man, I heard a lot of the same arguments when we were first putting cameras in patrol cars. "The public won't get the whole story. That camera only shows one point of view." Et cetera. Most of this was from cops who were afraid of being crucified. You know what? Maybe we should be afraid. I know that the first time that I pointed my pistol at someone during a felony stop, I noticed as I reholstered after that I had an indentation on the top of my right thumb, from where I had been jamming the safety of my 1911 up as hard as I could throughout the stop. Not tremendously tactical, but I didn't want to shoot that guy.

Maybe we should be afraid of what exactly? Cops that are afraid of being crucified are cops that don't work, or cops that get killed because they're scared of their agency's response to incidents that aren't picture perfect.

[dbateman]

If Australians wanted to change the gun laws - might they not resort to the ballot box? Having a march is not enough. It takes concerted legislative action. Not to divert the thread but I've met Australians who think the laws are fine. Is there is town, rural split? Look at states like NY - there is clear rural opposition to the gun laws but the city and suburbs drive the law. That the Australian states went along so quickly is a similar moral panic effect as seen in NY with Cuomo's laws passed in a rush of just doing something.


The Australian gun laws and why it's such a mess is pretty complex.

The reason I mention the marches is because if you go looking back on what happened back in 1996 you will see very little opposition to the gun control.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth in my experience as someone who was there most did not want the current system.


Shooters at the time were not well represented we didn't have a political party as such, we do now.

At the time we had the SSAA (Sporting Shooters Association of Australia) which at the time was quite small, under the 96 NFA (national firearms agreement)
you need a genuine reason to get a firearms licence (personal and property protection isn't one, which is odd because I can't think of a better reason to own a gun) and at the time there were only about two or three sporting organisations that you could join to satisfy this genuine reason. So over night it was pretty much legislated that you had to join the SSAA so they sold us up the river.

In the state I live in we almost got a castle doctrine into state law, the SSAA stopped it.

The SSAA back in the day was set up and run by shooters and it was good they did a lot of good things, but now it's turned into a business it's not about shooters and gun rights it's about getting members and making $$$s.


I've met Australians who think the laws are fine. Is there is town, rural split?

I'm not sure if there is a rural city split as such, more a people who don't think they're responsible enough to make decisions on their own and those that think a responsible adult should be free to own what they want without state approval.

What is the background of the Australians you have spoken to about the current gun laws ?


As far as gun cameras - it is an empirical question has to whether technological sound devices can be made and whether they garner useful info. With body cams and gun games (if they work), it would seem a good shoot would stand out as such.

In Ferguson, the distance issue and posture would be resolved by either, it would seem. While activists might fume, you need to speak to the general public. There are always nuts - look at 9/11 or the JFK shooting.

I don't really see any major benefit to having weapons mounted cameras, not when we've got lapel cams and dash cams already.
Someone did mention a shot counter could be handy for guys maintaing guns. Outside of durability testing I don't see any benefit in knowing the number of cycles that a weapon has gone through.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Again, not to go off cameras to Australians but the ones I run into are visiting academics. So that's certainly a great sample for finding progun folks I admit. One referred to the progun Australians as 'nutters'. I do know one very progun Australian female anthropologist who told me that there was much gun control support as she studied the issue. One thing that I read was that in the debate the Australian shooter organizations tried to defend gun ownership on a 'sports' rationale. Please don't take away our sport was supposed to appeal to the general Australian sports emphasis. How true this is - I don't know.

I think you are probably right tha with body cams, officers probably don't benefit from gun cameras. Somewhere in this discussion, I mentioned it might be useful for an ambiguous civilian shooting and some non gun owners might find it a positive sales feature. Supposedly, gun companies said there was a new market opportunity for smart guns.

As another Australian aside, in the discussions of violence prevention in the US literature, the Australian example is used as there have been no massacres since (or I haven't heard of such). There is a split in the gun violence literature between economic, poverty,slum gun violence vs. rampages.

[dbateman]

Again, not to go off cameras to Australians but the ones I run into are visiting academics. So that's certainly a great sample for finding progun folks I admit. One referred to the progun Australians as 'nutters'. I do know one very progun Australian female anthropologist who told me that there was much gun control support as she studied the issue. One thing that I read was that in the debate the Australian shooter organizations tried to defend gun ownership on a 'sports' rationale. Please don't take away our sport was supposed to appeal to the general Australian sports emphasis. How true this is - I don't know.

There is support for guncontrol in Au however not as much as people think. However Australian universities are a hub for anti gunners.


The main reason we haven't turned it around is

A. We listened to the SSAA, and they sold us out.

B. Being the biggest one, no one took the NFA seriously we all thought it was a joke and it would blow over in a year or two... How wrong were we.

When you sit down and look at the amount of firearms imported into Au and the amount that were surrendered you get a bit of an idea of how well supported gun control is in Au. Up to this point the Gov has removed just under 1 million firearms of all types from circulation.



As another Australian aside, in the discussions of violence prevention in the US literature, the Australian example is used as there have been no massacres since (or I haven't heard of such). There is a split in the gun violence literature between economic, poverty,slum gun violence vs. rampages.

You need to be very careful with data from Au, it like most statistics is twisted to suit what the fed gov is pushing, example home invasions are recorded under burglary ect.

Mass killings in Au are quite rare it's just not something that happens very often. So for someone to say because something that happens very infrequently hasn't happened for a while we've fixed the problem... Well it's a joke really.

But then we have had mass shootings and mass killings since the Port Arthur massacre.

We had the Monash University shooting in which seven people were shoot but only two died so it isn't classed as a mass shooting.
This shooting lead to restrictions on handguns in Au, ironically the handguns that were used in the shooting are still available in Au.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

Then we had Childers in which 15 people died.

And we had a siege in Hectorville, three people were killed.

Then we had Quakers Hill, a fire lit in a nursing home by a nurse that worked there killing ten people.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

One incident causes the moral panic - the classic sadly amusing prime example is how Cuomo pushed through the 7 round mag law in NY. There is always a risk for more laws to be passed that way.