when i’m not writing clean technicaI’m writing a part-time job the truth about guns, a popular gun blog. My experience as a firearms instructor and as a student of emergency management, homeland security, and intelligence not only steered me in that direction, but also pushed me to try and make things move in the better direction possible. I will guide you.
Recently, I’ve noticed that solar technology has permeated where most gun owners don’t want to see it: in their guns.
People don’t trust computer technology to live inside or on top of guns
One of the big gun debates we see a lot is the idea of a “smart gun”. Responsible gun owners should only allow trusted adults to operate their guns without supervision. We usually do that with safes, retention holsters, etc. This way kids and thieves can’t take a gun and do bad things. But some lawmakers and activists believe guns should have smart technology built into them. So only the owner and trusted people can fire the gun.
The obvious problem with doing things like attaching fingerprint readers to guns is well explained in the following video.
A weapon should have no less safety features than a mobile phone. Today, I asked firearm manufacturers why they don’t put fingerprint scanners on all their guns. pic.twitter.com/q1p0Mrg5oh
— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) July 27, 2022
If you look carefully, you can see that the congressman had a bit of trouble getting his fingerprints on the phone and opening it. I also know that it often doesn’t work at all. When the difference between shooting and being shot is 1/100 he is 1 second, a little hesitation or misbehavior becomes a big problem. That’s why most gun owners aren’t willing to buy a gun that requires fingerprinting or other technology that can fail when you need it most, and most law enforcement officers aren’t willing to take that risk either. .
Before scrolling down to discuss this in the comments, let’s not stray too far from what we usually cover here clean technicaThe only reason I’m sharing the above is to show that people generally don’t trust gun electronics. But the fact that people are wary of mixing guns and computers is well known, and that’s the only point we have to take away from this section.
Most people are perfectly happy with basically proven 19th century technology with minor refinements and don’t want to risk malfunctioning. But there is one clean technology that has gone into many people’s guns. Not only are they happy to use it, but they’re making it more reliable.
A gun with a small solar panel
Many innovations in firearms technology began in competitive shooting, and that’s where today’s cleantech story begins. Competition shooters often use “race guns”, or heavily modified guns set up strictly for competition use. Their flared magazine wells, recoil weights, reduced recoil ammunition (in some classes), odd attachments, and even magnetic holsters are all highly impractical for concealed carry or police duty.
One of the things that emerged in the late 1980s was the use of “red dot” sights on pistols. Instead of requiring the sight, eye, and target to all line up perfectly, the red dot sight allows you to spot any imperfections by moving the dot to indicate where the bullet will hit, even if it doesn’t look perfectly straight. Leave room for – centered on it. This obviously saves a lot of time and improves your score.
Red dot sights were used on rifles and even BB guns for a while, but not on semi-automatic pistols common in the military, police, and concealed carry. Competitors in the division began experiments with pistols. We couldn’t put them on a slide (the top that moves back and forth to load the next round). Still, the semi-auto shake regularly killed the Red Dot Scope.
But over time, manufacturers got better and built sturdier optics that could survive riding on anything from an AR-15 to a semi-auto pistol. It proved sturdy enough to mount directly to the slide and now everyone has it on their guns.
A Holosun red dot sight mounted on a pistol slide. Image courtesy of Holosan.
Well, almost everyone. If things really go bad, there are still plenty of skeptics who don’t want to count on electronics with a holographic red dot spectacle Younger shooters who trust the technology say Elmer named the older shooter after his fudd I tend to call it “fad”. But valid concerns, such as what to do if the dot disappears, have been addressed by “witnessing” the iron sights (if high enough, you can see through the red dot).
But Fudds still had one valid argument. The question is what to do if the battery degrades or dies in a serious emergency. That’s where a company called Holosun came along, offering red dot sights with tiny solar panels to keep the red dot charged from any light hitting it, not just the sun, but like a calculator.
Today, Holosun dots are used in everything from grandma’s purse guns (red dots are good for blind people) to highway patrol pistols in many states.
what to learn from this
Again, I didn’t write this article to discuss gun control, police, etc. These are conversations worth having if done maturely (a rarity in discussions like this), but this is not the place for them.
The really important thing to take away from here is that clean technology, solar power, has become highly trusted, even by tech-skeptical gun enthusiasts. No, but you’ll spend hundreds of dollars (or more) installing solar panels on your gun to keep it working.
When you get discouraged by clean tech and think people aren’t convinced it’s a good idea, keep these things in mind: Clean tech could eventually penetrate even the most stubborn traditionalist markets, if people see the benefits.
It’s up to us to share that information.
Featured image: A solar-powered holographic sight mounted on an AR-patterned rifle. Image courtesy of Holosan.
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