Aside from cost, for defensive weapons, there's the risk of a lock on the critical firing path breaking (false negative) vs. the risk of someone unauthorized using the weapon (false positive).
For open-carry weapons (like police), some kind of biometric keying might make sense. They have a high weapon-retention risk (since they get close to suspects to handcuff them, etc.), so false positives > false negatives.
For concealed carry personal weapons, it's a lot less likely for someone to get your gun without authorization, so false negative > false positive.
I do really like the "gun cam" idea. Self defense training is "imagine there's a little lawyer attached to every bullet". The police unions are the ones against police logging, for privacy reasons..of the officers. They were against car cams, too. I'm in favor of full recording with the only information potentially sensitive being operational details (codes, etc., for a short term) and the identity of suspects; a suspect should always be able to get all the information which led to his arrest, including police cam footage.
I would love a gun cam integrated on my weapons for range use. Not sure if it's practical for self defense use yet, but it's going to be so eventually, and at that point I'd support it. I was trying to hack up a picatinny rail mount for a Contour+ or Hero Black at one point.
If I were ever in a SD/HD shooting, I'd love to have video available to play in court.
As you point out, the huge installed base of ~200 million weapons is a big issue.
None of them are either so small as to be something you'd keep on your gun for normal use, or high resolution/big sensor like the Black Hero to shoot great video, though :(
For open-carry weapons (like police), some kind of biometric keying might make sense. They have a high weapon-retention risk (since they get close to suspects to handcuff them, etc.), so false positives > false negatives.
For concealed carry personal weapons, it's a lot less likely for someone to get your gun without authorization, so false negative > false positive.
I do really like the "gun cam" idea. Self defense training is "imagine there's a little lawyer attached to every bullet". The police unions are the ones against police logging, for privacy reasons..of the officers. They were against car cams, too. I'm in favor of full recording with the only information potentially sensitive being operational details (codes, etc., for a short term) and the identity of suspects; a suspect should always be able to get all the information which led to his arrest, including police cam footage.
I would love a gun cam integrated on my weapons for range use. Not sure if it's practical for self defense use yet, but it's going to be so eventually, and at that point I'd support it. I was trying to hack up a picatinny rail mount for a Contour+ or Hero Black at one point.
If I were ever in a SD/HD shooting, I'd love to have video available to play in court.
As you point out, the huge installed base of ~200 million weapons is a big issue.