Milsurp After Hours

What think ye all of this?

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1:30 27 June 2006

NewScientist.com news service

Barry Fox

Password-protected bullets

Safety catches do not always prevent firearm accidents and even newfangled biometric guns, which check the identity of a user by their fingerprint, cannot stop thieves from using stolen ammunition in other weapons.

The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle of Germany, is to password-protect the ammunition itself.

Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired

by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated.

This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny

keypad matched one stored in the cartridge.

When they are sold, cartridges could be programmed with a password that matches the purchaser's gun. An owner could set the gun to request the password when it is reloaded, or to perform a biometric check before firing.

The gun could also automatically lock itself after a pre-set period of time

has passed since the password was entered.

The system would undoubtedly cost more than a conventional gun, but many firearm enthusiasts would surely pay a premium for such added security.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article ... -passwordp

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The man's a genius

That is the dumbest crap I have heard in a loooooooong time.

Vern.

That is the dumbest crap I have heard in a loooooooong time.

Vern.

Vern,

New Scientist (from which that article was taken) is a general magazine published for the both the scientific community and for interested parties. Serious topics are given space either as 'think pieces' to promote discussion or as a place to allow hypotheses and established discoveries to be discussed, however it is NOT a Scientific journal, much of it is written by journalists, and it does carry a number of light-hearted pieces.

The above piece is part of one of those lighter columns, indeed, the first paragraph of the column that article came from reads:

"... For more than 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled through the world's weird and wonderful patent applications, uncovering the most exciting, bizarre or even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a round-up of previous Invention articles...."

I think he was just highlighting some of the loopy ideas that are out there.

'Nuff said?

Tom

But there are Gun-control freaks who may think that this is a great idea.

Look at the way that they have embraced Trigger Locks, and trigger locks don't work very well on the majority of firearms.

Eoin.