I want my friggin' jet pack!

B

bushidomosquito

New member
and a flying car would be nice too. I'm one of those guys that thinks this every time I write a check and am reminded that it's 2008 (!). I just had to buy a new computer and with tax refunds available I went all out. It's insane what this thing will do but it's even more insane what it won't do given the fact that it's 2008 (!). Same goes for my cell phone. Science fiction was awfully optomistic given that it had the cameras watching us all 24 years ago, and we will be contacted by aliens in less than 2 years.

What's my point? I have a video camera on my phone, why not one on my gun so I can show the jury that guy really was foaming at the mouth and flinging shurikens at me? My car knows who I am, (well, it knows I have a thing in my pocket that somehow says, "It's cool, he's with me.")
Why not my gun? When I touch my trigger I want my gun to verify that it is indeed me, and a voice override for when I need to toss it to a downed and out of ammo LEO. I want that aftermarket rear slide cover plate for my Glock that counts the remaing rounds in my mag and displays the number on a little full color LCD screen, and I want to watch South Park on it when I'm reloading. I want a (voice activated) 100 lumen LED in the tip of my guidrod.

Let's start out easy. I want my gun to drop it's magazine after it's last round is chambered. That mag is empty. I don't need it anymore. I want all of these new replaceable backstraps that everyone is using to contain batteries that power useful stuff like lights and lasers already built into the gun. I saw a 4 x 10 mm laser diode online for 12 bucks. Where won't that thing fit?

We are 3 years away from the 100th anniversary of the greatest handgun ever. In that 97 years we have made them lighter, doubled their capacity, shrunk them down somewhat and made them easier to shoot in the dark. I'm not looking for a death ray or anything but doesn't it seem like the gun manufactures are a little behind given the available tech?
 
4

44 AMP

Staff
And the reason is......????

Maybe that many of us won't buy them. What is an annoying failure at the office can mean the difference between life and death (yours!) when it happens in the real world. Even though electronics have come a long, long way in reliability in the last couple of decades they still haven't reached the point of matching the mechanical and chemical interaction that makes a dependable firearm.

"Smart Gun" technology is certainly on the way, but a lot of us won't even give it a look until it has proven itself in the field for a couple of decades. I know the torch is being passed, and the younger generation does not have an ingrained distrust of electronics like us old farts do, but come on, wake up and smell the coffee. Dangerous game rifles (if properly made) always have back up iron sights. Why do you thihnk that is? Is it because in a bit more than a hundred years we haven't learned to make a dependable telescope sight? NO, it is becasue when your life is on the line, you need to be ready for anything, because Murphy plays no favorites.

Any kind of user lock out for your gun could fail, and if it happens at the worst possible time, your ass is toast. Sueing the manufacturer from the grave may benefit your surviving family members (assuming there are any), but it won't do you much good. A lot of us even have issues with mechanical locks built into our guns, I know I do.

One of the biggest and sneakiest hidden dangers we face as gun owners is the smart gun technology, and the perception of what it is in the hands of our lawmakers. I know there are several of them that are just chomping at the bit, waiting for somebody to market a smart gun that works part of the time. As soon as that happens, they will all jump together, and with both feet into pushing legislation to mandate "safe" guns. And as soon as they can after they get that, they will ban ownership of all our old guns, because they are not "safe". After all, instead of being able to be fired only by the authorized user, these antiques can be fired by anyone who pulls the trigger!!! Get these unsafe monstrosities off the streets!!!

And just as there are some who are (reportedly) putting a chip (or whatever) into the new cars so that the police can shut them off remotely, how about a requirement that such a chip be put in every civilian gun! SciFi right now, but in 10, or maybe 20 years, who knows?

I am such a reactionary that I barely believe in fire, and only recently adopted electronic scales into my reloading setup, and battery operated red dot sights on non-defensive guns. My balance beam scales are put away, but available at need. And if I loose the red dot on a plinker, I'll just use something else until I get another battery. No problem. As long as my life doesn't hang in the balance, I don't mind hi tech on my guns, but when it might, that's a differrent story.

And on a further background note, some of us came of age waaay back during the bad old days when a nuclear war was a very real possibility, and EMP was something to be considered in your survival plans. A nuclear blast hundreds of miles away could fry everything electronic you own, including your car's ignition system, not to mention its computers. In a situation like that, I really, really don't want it to fry the owner ID system of my defensive handgun(s)! Hmmmmm...Maybe I better go and buy a flintlock or two, just in case!:rolleyes:
 
H

hamster

New member
that would be neat. but considering what a gun is intended to do (save your life) i'll stick with the old: K.I.S.S.
 
S

Sriracha

New member
We do have an awesome new trigger lock technology that is saving countless innocent lives and keeping our streets safe.

:D

I do agree with the original point though -- it's quite surprising how little innovation has happened in the last century. One would figure that there could be many innovations, even those that are purely mechanical and not electronic or computer dependent.
 
D

DMK

New member
I'm a computer network technician by trade. Been one for over a decade. I love playing with technology, but I have little faith in anything with a 'chip' in it. I've seen way too many electronic devices fail with no warning and little apparent reason.

These days manufacturers have enough trouble making purely mechanical guns that work reliably. Adding electronics to them greatly increases the likelihood of failure.

Oh, and keep in mind that tiny electronic devices generally do not like sudden mechanical shock (like the recoil of a gun when it fires). Attach your cell phone to a piece of 2x4, then wack the back of the board with a hammer a couple dozen times. This is similar to what the electronics in a gun will experience.
 
A

armoredman

New member
When your battery dies, will you?
Bad juju, keep it simple. that's why rifles with electronic sights still have BUIS, or Back Up Iron Sights, because anything electronic can and will fail, just as the best built firearms in the world can still fail. We reduce the number of failure possibilities to the lowest number possible, and adding electronic gimcracks and gee gaws just doesn't cut it, unless it's either a phaser of disruptor.
 
D

David the Gnome

New member
The reason they don't have anything that fancy on firearms is because people are still perfectly content to pay over $1,000 for a plain old 1911. So long as people are content to keep buying them there's no reason to change anything.
 
S

Shadi Khalil

New member
I want my gun to be as simple as possible. I cant stand the over tactilizing of every single gun out there. I cant even stand the rails, I think they ruin the looks of any firearm. I know people need them but dont make it harder to not get something 95% of us dont need. now thats just cosmetic. To add things like cameras, trigger ID's, round counters, is a waste of money and down right usless on a gun. A good auto locks back on the last round, you push a little button and the mag drops, reload. Do you really need a LCD counter to tell you your close to your last shot? And, should you be in this a shoot out, do you really think you should be watching some round counter instead of your target? As for all this smart gun non-sense about only you being able to fire the gun, heres an idea, a good holster that conceals your handgun. With strong rentention, good placement and cover, there is no reason why anyone should ever get there hands on that gun, let alone ever see it before you need to use it. As for when the gun is not in use, get a good safe My 239 and 342 are stock and work great, as far as I'm concerend if auto and revolver tech. ended with those two firearms, I'd be happy. As for the cameras, thats probably something that will be FORCED on us one day. Sounds like an anti's *** dream.
 
S

shortwave

New member
DMK, you and i would not be a good P.R. person for the CVA electronic ignition muzzleloader. in short, in everyday ccw, as electronics stands today, count me out on depending on a chip or battery when it comes to reliability of my weapon. simpler the better.
 
R

rocinante

New member
Well Neil Armstrong landed on the moon one week before I turned ten. I was sure I would have a jet pack or at least a flying car or selling real estate in the moon colony. I still want my plasma rifle in the forty watt range too.
 
R

rugerp95dc

New member
I understand what he means but instead of having the gun recognize you have the holster recognize you. I still wouldnt buy it but it sounds more practical than having the gun recognize you. Having the gun eject the mag after firing the last round was already developed with the M1 Garand. It didnt work out to well for the guy holding the weapon because it gave a distinct sound. Now on to the lights and lasers, I personally dont have on my gun a laser or a light but i'm not against the lights though. I am against having a laser on a gun because I think it gives people an excuse not to practice. Lasers do come in handy when you're learning for the 1st time to shoot a gun but after you get down your trigger pull and everything else I think the laser should come off and practice as normal just using the sights on the gun. Thats all for my opinions for now!
 
4

44 AMP

Staff
Not as big a drawback as you might think, M1 "ping"!

Yes, the M1 Garand does eject the empty clip (and it really is a clip!) with a distinctive "ping". And our enemies did learn to recognize the sound. To their dismay, often. You see, our crafty GIs quickly learned to turn the possible drawback of the "ping" into an advantage. They would, whenever possible work in pairs, one man firing at a time. When one man ran dry and his rifle went "ping", if the enemy was close enough to hear it, and popped up because he "knew" the GI was empty, he popped up into the sights of the GI's buddy with a fully loaded rifle! The other old trick was to take an empty Garand clip and bounce it off a rock, making the distinctive "ping", and fooling the enemy into thinking you were out of ammo. Either way, our enemies lost a good number of soldiers who thought they were smarter than the really were.

The other side of the coin is dramatized in the movie "The Longest Day" in the scene where the young paratroop is killed by a German soldier, when he mistook the "clicking" of the bolt action rifle being loaded for the clicking of the little "cricket" ID device issued to the paratroops.

There is a counter for everything, given enough time to figure it out and get it in the field. Just wait until your home defense gun has a computer in it(required by law no less), and the bad guys hack it! Not for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top