Quote of the day—Ralph Fascitelli

The major gun safety groups like Brady have done very little to promote a technology approach. … This we “believe” is because of a small group of naïve well-heeled idealists on the left don’t want a safer gun to be the solution to gun violence. The idealists on the left, who supported the New Jersey mandate, and right have prevented a pragmatic solution for a long time.

Ralph Fascitelli
October 31, 2018
A Former Remington Exec Takes On A Challenge: Building A Smart Gun That Can’t Be Hacked
[I don’t think I would be likely to purchase a “smart gun”. I don’t think they will be an good solution to most, or even many, firearms needs and should never be mandated. But I do have a sense of loss that the technology has been indirectly prevented because of crazy politics.

Fascitelli has been president of Washington Ceasefire and I don’t think I have ever said anything nice about him in public before. And that goes back at least nine years.

But recently I listened to a podcast where he was interviewed and claimed that murder of a gun control advocate was unlikely to have been committed by a gun rights advocate. Paraphrasing, he said, “They have a code. They respect and obey the law. I don’t think this was done by one of them.” This is a recognition of what we have been saying for decades, “If gun owners were as bad as the political left claims anti-gun activists would have all been shot years ago.”

And now, here, we have Fascitelli saying “smart gun technology” has been prevented, in part, by anti-gun activists. That is an insightful and almost certainly correct observation about a failure of “his people”. I think I could almost sit down with him over lunch and chat without either of us feeling the other was evil incarnate.—Joe]

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13 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Ralph Fascitelli

  1. I believe that an effective, reliable, competitively priced “smart” gun is something that I would be interested in buying. To my knowledge, they don’t exist yet.

    I believe I will continue to wait for “smart” guns to be widely adopted by police.

    • Precisely. If someone can sell a ‘smart gun’ to the cops, successfully, then I’ll be interested.

    • Cops are possibly the largest pool of gun users with a primary reason for such “smart” guns. Something like 1/4 of them murdered are killed with their own gun. When a cop arrives at a trouble spot, there is always a gun on site. The one in his/her open carry holster. As Tam has stated, it’s not their gun, it’s “y’all’s gun”, when push comes to shove. When these gun designers can achieve 100% reliability that it goes bang when the cop pulls the trigger, it will sell. Frankly, I don’t see that happening any time soon. The technology doesn’t currently exist to fit it into such a small item, especially as robust as the environment would require.

      • My Uncle was a cop, and carried bullet fragments in his spine (fortunately he was not paralyzed and was active up to his death 33 years later). He acquired those fragments because his weapon was snatched in a fight and used on him.
        If these “smart” guns are such a good idea, the people who demonstrably need them most aren’t buying them. As Patrick Henry said in other circumstances, “I smell a rat”.

    • I wouldn’t buy one on a bet. Every bit of technology is just one more thing to break that you can’t fix away from your workbench. I’ll stick with revolvers and military designed and proven pistols. Thanks anyway, but nein danke.

    • Dogboy, you’re welcome to do so but I will never join you. One reason is that I’m a software engineer. Another reason is that I do not and never will trust the government not to abuse such technology.

  2. Just how long does ‘smart’ tech last?

    I have an LC Smith shotgun that has been in the family since 1908. Still goes bang when trigger is pulled.

    I accept the risks of simple mechanical devices. They can still fail, but most any idiot can replace the parts necessary.

  3. Any “pragmatic solution”, to a leftist, involves the initiation of government force against his political opponents.

    If it doesn’t involve the expansion of government authority at the expense of liberty, it is not “pragmatic”, nor is it “common sense”.

    If it involves the relinquishing or the checking of government authority, in favor of liberty, it is “reckless”, it is “irresponsible”, it is “bigoted” and all the other things we’ve heard ad nauseum.

    Any “un-hackable” system (something which we’ve never seen) could, and would, still be built with back doors into it.

    If you should ever “sit down over lunch and chat” with such a person, you’d need to establish some definitions before getting deep into it, otherwise you’ll be talking across purposes, speaking, in effect, different languages. You may both be speaking of “pragmatism” but using essentially opposite meanings of the word, etc.

    One who worships at the alter of the supreme authority of the state (any and all leftists, Progressives, Fascists, et al) sees all problems as state problems, all solutions as state solutions, all property as state property, and the free and unencumbered exercise of state power as the ultimate and final good in the universe (Final Solution, if you will). Having given his allegiance over to that authority, you are contesting his faith in his god. Before getting into any specific “issue” then, it is necessary to establish the fundamental point on which you disagree, by establishing the differences between your “gods”.

    Being an atheist you have a tremendous challenge because ultimately you’re talking about issues of morality, like it or not, and the left, when pressed, will argue that there is no morality but that which Man decides for himself, for reasons of the “pragmatism” of the time (“he shall seek to change times and laws”). Like Karl Marx, they’ll all eventually get down to the assertion that there is no ultimate morality, ergo there is no good or evil but that which we imagine for ourselves and for our own purposes.

    • There are three ways to have a debate on such things. Only one of them is over, in essence, morality. I describe them as: 1) Practical such as “more guns less crime”. 2) Philosophical, which involves the right to gun ownership derives from the right to life. And 3) Legal, which involves the constitution including the Miller and Heller decisions as well as many others such those which involve the First Amendment. Being an atheist does not imped these discussions.

      If I were to talk with him it would be to explain to him why the technology, even ignoring the politics, for “smart guns” will meet so much resistance. It would be to explain how the decades of deceit and “common sense” laws advocated for and passed, which cannot possible make society safety, demonstrate the real motive cannot be to reduce illegal violence in general. If he is sincere in wanting to make our homes, community, and country safer he needs to overcome decades of history and acknowledge they were at least misguided, if not knowingly lying, about their motives before we will discuss political solutions to his concerns about gun ownership.

      I would listen to him but I would not tolerate “common sense solutions” which involved any restrictions upon the right to keep and bear arms which have not also been applied to all facets of the First Amendment and passed constitutional muster.

  4. Technology like a smart gun only make people think that they will be safer. It is part of a ‘common sense’ feel good effort (not the top priority – that’s taking guns away).

    Just look at what we are collectively spending on making schools safer only it has not demonstratively shown much if any success. Communities are desperate to do something and officials are responding. The established narrative is that it is the guns and that is what they aim at. Other potential causes and solutions are brushed aside and if considered are likely to end the official’s job.

    We have lost the collective ability to think and reason.

    See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-and-campus-safety-industry/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ff0da05b2626

    • “Child proof” medicine bottles sound like a great idea. It actually resulted in a slight increase in the rate of children poisoning themselves because people were more likely to leave their medicine where kids were able to access it.

  5. [This we “believe” is because of a small group of naïve well-heeled idealists on the left don’t want a safer gun to be the solution to gun violence.]
    They don’t. It’s the same response as anti-smoking zealots wanting to ban vaping, even though it’s far safer than burning tobacco. For people who want to control people, 100 percent is the only acceptable goal.
    “Naïve” is the wrong word to describe them.

    • My brother the Leftist is offended by the sight of someone using a vaping instrument, and it seems that it is because the person is getting a hit of the nicotine without actually smoking, circumventing the smoking prohibition laws. It never was about second hand smoke, it was about receiving a drug disfavored by Leftists. I haven’t heard any opinions from him about the use of Marijuana, the lovely scent of which wafts in from neighboring houses on an almost daily basis. But that’s not a problem because a (tame) Doctor is willing to write a prescription for it. As a judge said once in my presence, “I can get a doctor to say anything I want, and I’m poor.”

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