PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Did Schumer just explain a great concern about 'smart guns?' :: 05/03/2016
Yesterday, while masked protesters were preparing for trouble in Seattle, New York Sen. Charles Schumer was in the Big Apple complaining about billboards that allegedly track shoppers’ cell phone data, inadvertently touching in an issue that at least some gun owners fear may be part of the push for so-called “smart guns.”
Sen. Charles Schumer is worried about cell phone data tracking, but his concerns could have more far-reaching implications.
The concern is that new technology might allow the privacy of gun owners to be compromised by making it possible to track firearms electronically, or even disable them with a radio signal. Admittedly, that may sound straight out of Buck Rogers or the tinfoil factory, but if Schumer is concerned about so-called “billboard tracking” of cell phone data, who’s to say the same technology couldn’t be used nefariously on “smart guns?”
UPDATE: Over the weekend, TechCrunch ran an article that explains why the concerns of gun rights organizations, and specifically the National Rifle Association, should not be dismissed as the worries of "gun nuts." Author Jon Stokes noted, "the NRA is actually right, in this case. If smart guns get any traction, then non-smart-guns will come under legislative assault." Think not? Look at New Jersey, where that's already essentially been addressed in statute.
This morning, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms criticized President Barack Obama’s new push for “smart gun” technology, calling it “a bunch of anti-gun hot air that will do nothing to reduce violence.” While the organization has never opposed advances in firearms technology, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, like so many other gun rights advocates, has a serious concern about the potential for mandates.
He is convinced that the president is making a “last-ditch effort to force industry and the public to accept his delusion that adding features to firearms that may make them less reliable in an emergency.” He asserted that Obama, with less than nine months remaining in his presidency, “is preoccupied” with a gun control “fetish.”
“The president is stubbornly clinging to the notion that he can convince American citizens to trust their safety to a so-far unreliable technology and push the country toward some sort of Utopia,” Gottlieb said in a statement to the press.
But now Schumer may unintentionally be nailing down one of the main concerns gun owners have about “smart guns.” Adding a feature that might be used to either track a firearm or disable it is no small concern to anyone who may buy a gun for personal protection. In January, also probably without realizing it, Obama alluded to this technology by noting, “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you've got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?”
Earlier year, the FBI made a rather big deal out of trying to access the “smart phone” of one of the San Bernardino terror suspects. After much high-profile wrangling with Apple, the feds announced that they had been able to access the phone’s data. If somebody can hack into a cell phone’s technology, what’s to prevent them from messing with a gun’s technology?
Far-fetched as that might seem to laymen, that prospect bothers more than just a few gun rights activists. Even if such technology might be used only to track a gun’s whereabouts. And don’t say that’s not possible, because even the introduction to the report on “smart guns” released last week makes mention of it right up front.
“By incorporating electronic systems into a firearm’s design,” the report clearly states, “manufacturers can give gun owners greater control over how a weapon is used, both by limiting who can fire the gun (‘user-authorization technology’) and by making a gun easier to retrieve if it is lost or stolen (‘electronic recovery technology’).”
Concern about ulterior motives may make it impossible to convince the firearms community that Obama and like-minded people are acting out of some great concern for public safety. They are constantly reminded of the old saying, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/did-schumer-just-explain-a-great-concern-about-smart-guns
