720p? Pfffft. 240i. Rip them in ‘2014 YouTube over 2G’ quality.

but gun safes and locks aren’t really expensive enough to justify these kinds of purchases

This is the only thing I disagree with you on. A good gun safe and lock is incredibly expensive. Anything that’s actually burglary rated is going to start at about $5k and go up from there. Good locks, like an S&G mechanical combination lock, can be had for a couple hundred bucks. (And by ‘good’, I mean the ones that the DoD uses for high-security; it would take an autodialer about a day, on average, to open one.) ‘Good enough’ safes are not too bad though, since they’re mostly acting as a deterrent. E.g., little Timmy probably isn’t going to spend a couple hours trying every possible combination until he finds the right one, and he’s probably not going to take a pry bar to it.

Deviant Olam has a few videos up on gun safes, and also has a video of him showing what it takes to break into a DoD-approved safe (…that he was getting paid to break into). IIRC the general rule of thumb is that a gun safe should be 15-25% of the replacement value of your guns. If you only have one or two, whatever meets your state’s requirement–if your state has a mandate about locking guns up–is fine. If you’ve got $10,000 in firearms–which is scarily easy to do–then you probably want to spend about $2000 or so on a residential security container. If you have a single legal machine gun, you’re probably going to want to invest in a safe that’s upwards of $10k.

I sincerely hope that they can find a way to make these work and be as reliable as a Glock. Not necessarily because they can’t be spoofed, trafficked, etc., but because it would significantly cut down on accidents, and it would also make it much less likely that your own gun could be used against you.

They simply aren’t reliable in the kind of situations where you’re likely to need a firearm though. As I said in another comment, I would want a smart gun to be at least as reliable as a 1911, and–to be very clear–a 1911 is not what I would call a reliable firearm.

I have constant problems with the fingerprint scanner on my phone. If my hands are too dry, no dice. Even slightly wet, nope. Bad day? Yeah, I’m going to have to enter my passphrase. And what if I need to shoot off-hand? Facial recognition? Cameras have a hard time with black and Asian people already, but now my life might depend on a camera getting it right the first time? And might depend on it in bad lighting?

This isn’t something I would ever seriously consider.

IMO, if you want-or need–to keep a loaded gun near you while you sleep, just leave it unlocked, and then either lock it in a real security container, or keep it on your person when you aren’t in your bedroom.

BTW - I generally avoid anything with Ian McCollum, since he’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t support 2A rights for everyone (e.g., the poors, LGBTQ+ people, non-white people, etc.), and has generally been acting like a right-wing grifter. Which is unfortunate.

Even an RFID reader would be a bad thing, IMO. First and foremost, you have the issue of battery life; most people fail to check the batteries in their smoke detectors regularly, so I can’t imagine people would remember to check the reader in their firearm. Secondly, given that many people that have guns have multiple guns, you would need some kind of sending unit–assuming that the firearm would be the reader, since the reader is going to be larger–that is either universal, or can be programmed and paired to multiple devices. Either one of those would still allow unauthorized users to steal your gun. Especially if they had something like a Flipper Zero that could read and modify RFID data.

Adding on to this, you may have to shoot with your off hand, or in a position where the reader isn’t close enough to detect the chip; then you have a no-shoot situation, which could potentially be deadly.

I had to scan my credit card three times at the grocery store yesterday; the reader couldn’t read my card. Now imagine that when someone is trying to carjack you.

I would want smart guns to be at least as reliable as a 1911–which is not a reliable firearm–before I would go for them.

Oh, I’m aware. It’s not the, “BATF hates this one trick! Single drill defeats months of waiting for paperwork!” that people think. I’ve seen shop drawings somewhere, but the time in federal prison isn’t worth it, IMO. I have a hard enough time hitting a sub-33% IPSC target at 50y on the clock as it is, I don’t need to mag dump into the berm and still miss. (What are those, 33% A-zone only targets?)

Even an AR15 (which has relatively mild recoil) will still walk all over the place if you hold the trigger down.

FWIW, most AR-15s are semi-auto only. Yes, the M-4 is also an AR-15, but most AR-15s are not M4s, etc. Most of the time what happens when you hold the trigger down is that the trigger doesn’t reset; that’s been the case for every AR-15 I’ve seen outside of the very few post-ban dealer samples that you can rent at a very limited number of indoor shooting ranges. Yes, it’s a nit-picky point. (Edit: I have both an AR-15 and an AR-10. I compete–badly–in shooting matches like PSCL, IDPA, Gun Run, multi-gun outlaw matches, and so on.)

The NFA wasn’t really aimed at organized crime, per se; machine guns weren’t in common use even by organized crime, although they were used in some very high-profile cases, like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre(which was organized crime), Machine Gun Kelly, and Clyde Barrow (who used a cut-down BAR that he’d stolen from a Nat’l Guard Armory). Bank robbers–which wouldn’t generally be classified as organized crime–tended to use them more than organized crime mobs did. The mob didn’t really do “training” per se, since para-military operations weren’t their area of expertise.

As a fun fact, the only reason that the NFA sailed through the Supreme Court is because the plaintiff of the case had to go into hiding (…or was killed by his former gang; I don’t think he ever surfaced after disappearing), and no one even showed up to argue his side in front of the court. It was a “tax” because the US AG was pretty sure that 2A didn’t allow banning guns, but taxes were a-ok. And it originally tried to ban pistols as well, which is the entire reason that short barrel rifles and shotguns are included (e.g., it was thought that someone could cut a rifle down enough to be effectively a pistol and that would circumvent the ban). No one knows why silencers were included; there’s no record of any debate about them at all. They seem to have just showed up on the bill, and gotten passed through without comment.

Haven’t played that one, so I don’t know which on it is.

Smart guns in Cyberpunk seems interesting, but I don’t think that most anti-gun people would be that happy about Skippy being real.

This is the real answer.

When you look at serious violent crime, defining that as robbery, battery, forcible rape, and murder, the rate of serious violent crime is similar in the US and UK (edit - and Australia!). The UK has largely removed firearms from the equation–which is easier, since they’re an island, and didn’t start with 600M firearms–and it has decreased the murder rate, but their overall violent crime rate is still quite high. Despite nominally having single payer health, the system has been intentionally broken by conservatives, and poverty is pretty significant. You see the same kind of sharp economic divides in the UK that you see in the US.

The predictable result is violence.

Murder isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. It’s like saying that the awful cough and shortness of breath is your problem, and then thinking that cough syrup (with codeine!, since that’s the good shit that works!) is going to fix the underlying pneumonia.

In the US meanwhile […] [a]nd that without any background checks, psychological reports, justifications, approval required, without anything like that. In many states even convicted criminals can get guns like that.

If you’re talking about buying a firearm from a store, that’s simply not factually correct.

Every single firearm sold by an FFL holder must have a form 4473 filled out, and each person buying a firearm must go through a criminal background check. ANY felony conviction that could have sent you to jail for more than a year–regardless of whether or not you got jail time–permanently bans you from owning a firearm until the conviction is expunged (and in many states, your gun rights need to be proactively reinstated). Any misdemeanor domestic violence conviction will likewise bar you from legally owning a firearm, as will having an active retraining order. Being involuntarily committed to a mental facility will bar you from ever owning a firearm at a federal level (without a judicial proceeding to restore your rights), and being voluntarily admitted will cost you your rights in some states.

Keep in mind that these are federal regulations that supersede any state or local regulations. A state can not opt out of the NICS or decide that gun stores don’t need to comply with BATF regulations. The only “exception” per se is that, in my state, a carry permit means that the gun store doesn’t have to send in form 4473 for approval; you’ve already passed a more stringent background check–including fingerprinting–so it would be moot. You do still need to fill out a form 4473, and the gun store is still required to retain a copy, but the instant background check is deemed irrelevant.

Depends on the state. IIRC, in Illinois it’s legal to carry a sword as long as there isn’t criminal intent. (Committing a crime with a sword is apparently prima facie evidence that you had criminal intent.)

A long sword likely isn’t very practical though. I’d suggest an arming sword or a rapier. Both of them are more effective in close quarters.

I’m very, very pro-2A. But… I dunno, man. Yeah, I’m mostly opposed to the NFA of 1934, and the parts of FOPA that prevented new machine guns from getting tax stamps post-'86. But indiscriminate fire into a crowd will absolutely kill more people than a shooter taking aimed shots. If you’re aiming, after the first shot, people are going to start running, and aimed shots are going to get much more difficult. If you’re shooting indiscriminately on full-auto, you’re probably going to mag dump in five seconds or less.

Thankfully “smart” guns are not ever likely to make it to the market, despite what a large swath of anti-2A people believe.

I can’t even get the fingerprint reader on my phone to work consistently; why would I want to put something like that on a firearm when my life could be at risk if my gun doesn’t work correctly?

It’s kind of wild to realize that some states are trying to outlaw owning blocks of steel that have zero machining operations on them because benchtop CNC exists. I don’t even know how they think that this is going to work; make every single machine and tool and die shop have an FFL in order to own a Bridgeport?

This is a fundamental problem with gun control; the tools that are used to make firearms–and to make ammunition components–are widely available, and have many uses outside of making firearms. Most people don’t make their own guns because it’s more expensive if that’s all you’re doing, unless that’s your business.

Interestingly, Glock is another one that there’s strong 3D printed support for. It’s likely because Glock was designed to be polymer, and there’s very strong aftermarket support for them, so you can print the serialized part and make it work as a firearm with no real problems.