Cars are every bit as dangerous as guns. But no one here seems to be in such a panic with Tesla or self-driving cars.
I feel there is a bit of undercurrent of Luddite sentiment going around here. Lots of people mentioning how "primitive" a baby monitor is or should be. But is it? It's an LCD video screen powered by modern advancements in battery tech connected wirelessly to a CCD video camera, with sensing technology to detect when a baby is crying and even provide other information such as room temp. None of this existed 20 years ago. Not to mention that between now and back then, baby monitors went through a long phase of being hot garbage. Many still are garbage.
> I feel there is a bit of undercurrent of Luddite sentiment going around here.
Oh, I'm no Luddite, don't get me wrong---I'm a machine learning researcher. I have no problem with data science. The difference between all of the complex technology you pointed out inside the baby monitor and what we're talking about here is that all of that complex technology is robust and, for the most part, well-designed! The data science work here has tons of issues, and I think the vast majority of reactions are reacting to that: machine learning and data science really can be useful... but not if you apply it really badly. Someone else commented elsewhere in the thread that a simple thresholding algorithm would be just as effective---and not suffer from the myriad potential problems present with blindly applying TensorFlow because it's cool.
I wonder if there are huge advances to be made in suppressor technology? Other than the noise, guns are basically perfect in their intended function. I guess you could try to further reduce recoil.
There have been some pretty fascinating experimental weapons over the the years. For example, the H&K G11 [0] used caseless ammunition. The potential advantages of that are no need to eject a spent casing and a soldier can carry more of it since it weighs less.
Oh, there's a lot more stuff that can be done to guns:
1) improve aim: embed wind and angle sensors, possibly even battlefield intel (position, weather, land layout) to account for any drift that might impact the bullet. Also, auto-fire if a designated target is in the crosshair (train the AI on human faces, combine with the previous sensoring). I would not be surprised if this technology will be developed rather sooner than later with armed robots, and then made smaller until it fits in a gun or at least a rifle.
2) improve/rethink propulsion. Right now almost all guns operate by some form of bullet in a casing with explosive propellant (excluding the rare caseless guns and co2/pressured gas sports guns). Railguns are already a thing at "ship scale", it will be only a matter of time until it gets scaled down to hand-held guns.
3) improve projectiles. Right now bullets are dumb pieces of metal. Why not have active bullets (e.g. subminiature rockets) or bullets laced with poisons so that even a scrape kills in the end?
4) improve... guns themselves, as a concept - think laser guns a la Star Trek, highly focused microwave, sound or other energy.
In the end humanity will always improve ways to kill each other, and all the concepts are already there in sci-fi (and in the case of poison bullets, the Russians made it a reality with the Markov murder).
I think those are all really great ideas for new inventions, some of which might eventually replace firearms. But I still think firearms are basically topped out. Anything else done to them complicates them more than it improves them.
I feel there is a bit of undercurrent of Luddite sentiment going around here. Lots of people mentioning how "primitive" a baby monitor is or should be. But is it? It's an LCD video screen powered by modern advancements in battery tech connected wirelessly to a CCD video camera, with sensing technology to detect when a baby is crying and even provide other information such as room temp. None of this existed 20 years ago. Not to mention that between now and back then, baby monitors went through a long phase of being hot garbage. Many still are garbage.