Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Humorist2290 30 days ago
In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups.

An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.

3 comments

Motor vehicles are very dangerous too, including higher-power e-bikes.

Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.

It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it.

It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.

Yeah the suggestion is mostly facetious and I realize impracticable. As the other commenter mentioned -- it's a poison pill. If such a rider were added to the KIDS Act it would be dead in the water, without a doubt.

Though I think it's worth noting that age verification _without_ identity verification is basically as impracticable, and arguably more dangerous.

I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.
Fun fact: Most firearms don't have a manual safety that you disengage.
That is indeed a fun fact. One of those things I didn't realize, but immediately believe. Most of the gun owners I know have at least one or two antiques which predate modern notions like "safety" by quite a bit. They are fascinating technology, and they make for incredible family heirlooms.

To stay consistent with my point though, if we mandate that everyone must ID verify to access the internet, I think it's just as reasonable we mandate that all such antiques be forcibly modernized with some sort of 5G-connected ID scanner. For the children of course.