I know I’m a bit late to this party, since it was on Slashdot months ago, but people are evidently still freaking out over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point rifle. That’s the rifle with the integrated fire control computer that automatically adjusts/delays the shot until it’s dead on target, radically reducing human error.
A writer friend fretted over someone using this to take a out a kindergarten.
Don’t. Spree killers simply don’t use $17,000, 20 pound rifles firing .338 Lapua.
This gun would be the exact opposite of a spree-killing gun, because it slows down the rate at which you fire to make a perfect on-target shot, the opposite of the spree killer’s MO. It’s also a distance weapon that’s too heavy and bulky to easily carry around. It’s a weapon for rich big game hunters and wealthy gadget freaks.
Spree killers aren’t into cool technogadgets, they’re mentally unstable losers looking to erase the shame of their own failures in a spectacular act of bloody criminal catharsis. (Plus a few completely insane, like the Tucson and Aurora shooters, whose motives are unfathomable.)
In that hypothetical kindergarten killing spree with the Tracking Point, our nutjob is only going to get 2 or 3 shots before his victims run screaming out of his scope range. He’d rack up a much higher body count by walking in with an AK or Mac-10.
Might this type of rifle be used for other types of crimes? Maybe high-end, long-distance hits and assassinations: One shot, one kill from a mile away. But the downside is that this is way too bulky and conspicuous to carry around for that purpose, and all the Tracking point guns seem to be chambered in exotic big game calibers, so legal owners of such a monster will probably come up on a list of possible perps pretty quickly.
About the last thing people need to worry about is potential spree killers with $17,000 burning a hole in their pocket. You’re more likely to be killed by a cow.
