ASSIGNMENT 1

Assignment 1



Assignment 1

Introduction

Gun misuse by unauthorized gun users is a serious problem. About one-seventh of police officers who are fatally shot are shot with their own guns. Many guns used by criminals have been stolen from their proper owners. While gun suicide is quite rare for most young people and children, the gun suicide rate is not insubstantial for males aged fifteen to nineteen. Although gun accidents involving children have fallen to an all-*158 time low, any fatality involving a child is tragic.

Accordingly, policy-makers have begun looking for ways to reduce or eliminate gun misuse by unauthorized users. Personalized handgun designers face the daunting challenge of merging *159 twenty-first century computer technology with firearms, whose current design is not greatly different from firearms design in the late nineteenth century. Can tiny computers function reliably when gunpowder explosions are taking place inches away, jarring the gun, producing intense bursts of heat, and sending smoke in all directions? How much reliability can be sacrificed before the gun becomes unreliable for defensive purposes?

Besides the direct effect on defensive gun use, what are the secondary consequences of gun storage and gun design mandates? For example, Canada has determined that registration of every firearm and police inspections of the homes of gun owners are necessary to enforce the nation's safe storage requirements. Given the near-certainty of evasion of gun storage laws by a substantial number of Americans, would pressure build for similar home inspections in the United States? A different secondary consequence stems from presence of 250 million firearms in civilian hands in the United States today. If legislators mandate new types of firearms design, will the new designs change gun safety habits? Imagine that ten years from now, there are twenty million new "smart" guns, plus the old supply of 250 million "dumb" guns. Persons used to "smart" guns can handle them carelessly, because the "smart" guns' built-in technology prevents accidents. Will people who are used to "smart" guns act carelessly with older, "dumb" guns? Will people be able to distinguish the "smart" guns from the older guns--and then act appropriately?

Mandated Sales of Gun Locks

Congress has adopted legislation requiring that federally licensed firearms dealers to have gun locks available for sale. Some states require that a gun lock be sold every time a firearm is purchased. These state laws contain no exemption for a gun-owner who has a large safe, and thus does not need a $6.95 trigger lock. In October 1997, handgun manufacturers joined President Clinton in the Rose Garden to announce that they would voluntarily supply locks of some kind with all handguns sold. Thus, legal mandate or not, every handgun buyer gets a lock, whether she wants it or not, and whether or not the company's lock which is tied to the gun sale is the kind of lock the buyer would prefer.

So far, legislative proposals for mandatory lock purchases do not require that owners use the locks. Thus, gun owners who rely on their firearms for ...