- 3 か月前
Tales of the Gun Super Guns of Today and Tomorrow
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00:01The gun has played a critical role in history.
00:04An invention which has been praised and denounced, served hero and villain alike,
00:09and carries with it moral responsibility.
00:12To understand the gun is to better understand history.
00:20They are the unknowns.
00:24Weapons whose evolutionary process is just beginning.
00:30They promise the ultimate in technology.
00:33They fight simulated battles on computers, decades before a shot is fired.
00:39But will they make the world safer?
00:42Or more dangerous than ever before?
00:47Super guns of today and tomorrow.
00:50Next, on Tales of the Gun.
01:15In the world of modern firearms, the future is closer than you might imagine.
01:23The marriage between sophisticated technology and tradition has brought gun makers to the brink of the world.
01:29Of a new frontier.
01:33Products that can come out of this are really limited by the imagination of the engineering personnel that are assigned
01:41to the project working on it.
01:43If we think we can do a ray gun, we probably can do a ray gun.
01:46It's just going to take a little more technology, a little more time.
01:50I think what we will see will be guns that fire bullets that will be able to go over top
01:58of barricades.
01:59They'll explode over top of barricades and they will strike the bad guys.
02:04I haven't been told to go build a lightsaber yet, but I'm waiting for that.
02:10Since the first crude firearms were forged by hand centuries ago, the goal has been the same.
02:17Make lighter, more durable and smarter guns that can fire faster, farther and with more accuracy.
02:27Ironically, in the next century, the goal will also be to make some guns less deadly.
02:37But creating the guns of the future will go beyond making improvements to just the machinery itself.
02:44Looking at future weapon systems is to start moving your eyes from simply pipes with rifling in them
02:51to systems that work together to accomplish the mission.
02:56Right now, we think of a rifle alone as a weapon system, and that's the gun.
03:01But what we're beginning to do by putting electronics on the gun, putting electronics on the soldier,
03:07and having the multiple soldiers being able to link together is then making the entire element a weapon system.
03:18The idea is simple. Take what works and make it work in a changing world driven by the advanced technology
03:26of computers.
03:30However, implementing that idea is not an easy task, given that the basic components of a gun are not much
03:37different than they were 100 years ago.
03:41When you think about it and you look at the firearms that are out there, a lot of our basic
03:44technology hasn't changed an awful lot since World War I.
03:48You had your automatic pistols, you had semi-automatic rifles that were developing in World War I, you had machine
03:53guns even prior to World War I.
03:55A lot of the basic technologies that were using, self-contained cartridges, many of the actual delivery systems really are
04:01fairly primitive, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old.
04:05We've improved upon them, we've added some embellishments, but the technology hasn't changed an awful lot.
04:14The history of firearms can be charted by a continuous, ongoing series of technical advances.
04:24The first hand cannons replaced bows and arrows. Match locks replaced the hand cannons.
04:32Then came wheel locks, followed by flint locks, cartridge revolvers, and ultimately, automatic pistols and rifles.
04:42In any given time, a particular gun would be the gun of the future.
04:46In other words, the guns of the past at their particular place and time in history were futuristic guns.
04:54The period since World War II has seen a rapid acceleration in improvements to gun technology.
05:00The result has been guns of the future that exist today.
05:07In the mid-1960s, for example, the Army introduced the M16 assault rifle, which replaced the standard M14.
05:19Initially called the AR-16, the M16 was made from metal alloys and plastics.
05:25Thus, the gun was much lighter, a tremendous benefit for soldiers in the field.
05:32I was a young Marine in Vietnam at that time and carried an M14.
05:37And the M14 had been the first gun that I had actually fired.
05:41I formed the opinion that the M14 was certainly perhaps one of the finest rifles ever made.
05:47However, I think, and looking back at it, and even looking at the AR-15-16 at that time,
05:53it was a lot lighter, easier to carry.
05:56I think it was certainly a weapon of the future.
06:02But for every success, there have been dozens of misfires.
06:06Some attempts failed miserably.
06:12Maybe you could call them solutions for problems that didn't exist,
06:17but they were kind of fun, and they were certainly innovative in their time.
06:25One such weapon developed in the 1960s was called the Gyrojet.
06:30It was not so much a gun as it was a small rocket launcher.
06:35The way it works is the cartridges themselves are loaded into the gun, into the magazine.
06:41Their hammer is actually forward of the cartridge.
06:45And what happens is that when you pull the trigger,
06:48the hammer pushes the little rocket back onto a fixed firing pin.
06:54This ignites the charge, and this thing takes off.
06:59The Gyrojet had two major drawbacks.
07:02It was not very powerful, and it was wildly inaccurate.
07:08We're not going to be able to fire this here today because of the dry brush in Southern California.
07:13It would probably ignite this whole place.
07:16So, unfortunately, we will not be able to fire it.
07:25Another attempt to make a space-age gun was the Dardik.
07:31What made the Dardik revolutionary was not so much the gun, but its ammunition.
07:36Triangular, plastic-coated bullets called trowns.
07:43It was a revolver of sorts.
07:45You took these little trowns, and you put them in the magazine in the butt.
07:50And as you pulled the trigger, it would kind of, you know, flop into the cylinder,
07:55and you'd fire it, and then the cylinder would rotate, and it would fall out.
07:59And they would pick up another one, and then you'd fire it, and then the next one would fall out.
08:02The guns themselves were kind of flimsy.
08:06Nobody cared.
08:07I mean, what's the advantage to this thing?
08:10Today, the Dardik is a collector's item, and its ammunition is so rare that a single trown cost...
08:19Fifty dollars.
08:23Though the Dardik and the Gyrojet were failures, they were emblematic of an ever-accelerating race to create new weapons
08:30for the next millennium.
08:34Today, gun makers agree that the key to the future lies in the materials used.
08:42And the next generation of super guns will be made from synthetic alloys never before dreamed possible.
08:52For those familiar with firearms, the new Heckler & Koch G36, introduced in 1999, is the future.
09:08Made from a polymer plastic, the machine gun is one of the lightest automatic weapons in the world, weighing in
09:15at just six and a half pounds.
09:19The G36, as being a futuristic weapon, starting with the material that it's made out of, the receiver, the buttstock,
09:27the pistol grip, most parts of the pistol, the carry handle, everything is just about polymire.
09:32We are finding that polymire.
09:33We are finding that polymire is a very durable, flexible, reliable material.
09:40Even the gun's magazines are made from plastic.
09:43They are more durable than steel magazines, which can dent if dropped on cement.
09:53Besides its light weight, the G36 uses state-of-the-art gun technology to create a weapon that some say
10:01is near-perfect.
10:06The gun is easy to assemble and disassemble.
10:09It rarely needs cleaning.
10:11And it can be quickly adapted to any situation.
10:17The G36 comes with three different barrels that can be changed in the field, depending upon tactical needs.
10:28For Dan Cusseter, who spent 24 years on the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department SWAT team, being able to alter
10:35the appearance of a weapon is important.
10:42The SWAT team can use it with its fully automatic capabilities, and then you could take that same weapon, change
10:48the trigger group on it, and put it in a police car that may travel around the city in a
10:53semi-automatic mode, and more conducive to the people that see that.
10:58I think that people in the community see a fully automatic machine gun, and they expect that that gun is
11:04going to be used in the use of deadly force.
11:07And I think they accept it on a SWAT team, but the average police officer that comes out maybe to
11:13take stolen bicycle reports, they really don't expect him to show up with a machine gun.
11:21Another futuristic feature of the G36 is the ability to change the sights to fit a specific situation.
11:31The G36 can use a traditional iron sight, a daylight scope, or a night vision scope.
11:40Though it has become a favorite of the police, the weapon has also made an appearance in the war zone,
11:46with German peacekeeping forces patrolling in Kosovo.
11:52You will probably be able to look back at the G36 and realize that could be or could have been
11:58or is the platform or the basis for whatever's coming in the future.
12:03You know, we're talking about the polymire, we're talking about the easy controls, the cleaning, the maintenance, the ability to
12:08easily operate.
12:11Ultimately, what sets the G36 apart from other weapons like it is its weight.
12:19But gun manufacturers traditionally have been leery of making their products lighter for fear of reducing durability.
12:29Plastics and aluminum seem to be one answer.
12:32At the Beretta manufacturing plant outside of Washington, D.C., the world's most popular handgun, the 9mm, is made.
12:42What we started with is this solid block of aluminum, and you can see that we've hogged that all out.
12:50We've taken out about 75% of the weight, and you can see all the material that's been removed and
12:56how we end up with this finished frame,
12:59which is now ready to be anodized and then sent to the manufacturing and assembly area.
13:06In the 1970s, the Glock automatic pistol revolutionized how people thought about plastics and firearms.
13:13More than 90% of the gun was made from plastic, proving that the material could be used successfully in
13:20a handgun.
13:25But perhaps the most revolutionary material being utilized today is the metal alloy called titanium.
13:37Titanium is often used in the aircraft industry as a substitute for aluminum.
13:42It is found in the outer skin and landing gear components of commercial planes.
13:47It also serves as housing for jet engines.
13:55Titanium has been widely used in missiles and space capsules,
13:58and it was a major part of the Apollo and Gemini space programs.
14:07But only in the past few years has titanium found a home in the gun industry.
14:15Because it is a metal that bends, meaning it can be easily manipulated in the manufacturing process,
14:22it was at first thought to have too much give to work in a firearm.
14:33But by incorporating small sections of steel into the housing of a revolver,
14:38new ultra-lightweight titanium handguns are starting to come on the market.
14:44The advantage is it's corrosion resistant, it's much lighter than steel,
14:49it's a little more flexible.
14:51Consequently, you have a little bit of a problem making a gun completely out of titanium.
14:56The Brazilian firm of Taurus has a superb new series of titanium revolvers out
15:02where the guns are about 99.9% titanium.
15:06But the guns still must have steel liners in their barrels because titanium cannot be rifled.
15:14Other parts, like springs and the firing pin, must also be made from steel.
15:21And because so much of the gun is made from light material,
15:24a large revolver can weigh as little as a pound.
15:31In fact, the weight of the largest steel handgun made by Taurus, the .454 revolver,
15:38amazes even the most seasoned gun enthusiasts.
15:45But super guns are not just ultralight weapons that still have power.
15:50In the military, the simple act of firing at a target
15:54may someday incorporate a dizzying array of advanced technology.
16:00But even there, the most important component still will be the soldier himself.
16:09At an underground military firing range,
16:12just outside of Washington, D.C.,
16:15the Army's latest weapons technology is put through its paces.
16:22Called the Land Warrior System,
16:24this weapon of the future is not just a gun, but an entire soldier.
16:34Those developing the Land Warrior System use words more associated with computers than guns,
16:40software, batteries, mouses, joysticks.
16:48Though the Army may not care for the comparison,
16:51a soldier equipped with a Land Warrior resembles something out of a science fiction film.
16:59What it enables you to do is, it enables you to give the individual soldier now
17:02enhanced capability on the battlefield.
17:04Now what's happened is, we've now incorporated the chin mic system here,
17:09which is simply done by activating on the chest, push to talk.
17:13This enables now, each individual soldier on the battlefield to voice communication at all times.
17:18This is essential for command and control, especially at a leader's standpoint.
17:23The soldier carries an M4 machine gun, which is fitted with infrared and thermal sights.
17:33A heads-up display can be accessed through an eyepiece,
17:37which can give the soldier instant information about where he and his unit are in the field.
17:45Okay, the IHAS here enables the soldier a direct link through his computer system to the weapon system that the
17:50soldier carries now.
17:51This weapon system is the M4 modular weapon system.
17:55This weapon system was designed to incorporate different sights according to the mission.
17:58Today, this leader configuration is equipped with a medium thermal weapon sight,
18:04a digital laser range finder with integrated compass,
18:08a daylight video camera, and can also incorporate a bayonet.
18:14You literally start with a naked soldier who's trained and ready.
18:19Then what we begin doing is we put the initial environmental layer around him,
18:24uniform, protection from chemical environments, those type of things.
18:29You then wrap him in any mission-specific equipment, load-bearing equipment, packs.
18:36The third layer then becomes the digital components, the computer radio subsystem,
18:42the integrated helmet assembly, which has the daylight video sight
18:46and the night thermal sight with the daylight imaging capability in it.
18:53He sends them a message, and he may want to...
18:56Platoon leaders carry a handheld computer screen,
18:59which allows them to manipulate data in the field before sending it to command.
19:04With this map, you can go over to the different things,
19:06and you can see that you can draw on the map, you can enlarge it,
19:09you can zoom in on your position. Go to zoom in, please.
19:13There, and you've got to click down here.
19:15So you click on the particular target, and you zoom it in.
19:21A computer mouse button on the trigger housing of the M4 allows the soldier to decipher information
19:27and transmit it to his command center.
19:31He clicks, pops open a menu, it's pre-formatted messages, data's already filled into the appropriate fields.
19:39He fills in any final details he wants, hit send, and it hops up the chain of command to the
19:45appropriate levels.
19:47The soldier's computer that he has on board is located right here.
19:50This computer system enables him really in an adverse area to work with.
19:56He's able to pull up certain data files that he needs to use for individual tasks as well as for
20:01the mission task.
20:02And once again, this is brought up through the monocular display that he has on the front of his Kevlar.
20:07The soldier's global positioning system he has on board, which he's able to bring up in his IHAS as well,
20:12gives him the ability to know his position on the battlefield as well as his friendly soldiers left and right,
20:16and enemy positions.
20:19Though the trading of information in battle is crucial to victory,
20:23one of the system's more basic components may be the most favorite among soldiers field testing the land warrior.
20:31The gun site has a video viewfinder that can relay televised images of the combat zone back to command.
20:40The viewfinder also means a soldier does not have to be looking down the barrel of the gun in order
20:46to accurately fix on a target.
20:50Let's say the soldier's in a military operations and urban terrain mount environment.
20:55Lots of shooting around corners, lots of exposing yourself to try and see what's around corners.
20:59With the sights on the rifle having the ability to connect up to the heads-up display,
21:06this soldier can look through the sight on the weapon.
21:09So instead of having to lean around the corner and expose the upper portion of his body to potential fire
21:16in order to see,
21:17he instead just has to take the rifle and put it around the corner, exposing at best his hands.
21:23If he does it right, he can probably get away with not having to do that as well.
21:27Not only will he be able to see around the corner, but he's also going to be able to engage
21:32targets precisely.
21:33And that's an important piece of this. It's the precision with which you can engage targets.
21:38You may remember scenes from Vietnam that you'd see on TV where there'd be people shooting over their heads out
21:47of foxholes and they're just spraying bullets.
21:51You don't have to do this. You can put the gun up there, you still have the same security that
21:56you had in those positions in Vietnam,
21:59but you can precisely engage the enemy.
22:04However, the high-tech sighting systems of the Land Warrior go far beyond simple video technology.
22:12The gun is also equipped with day-for-night sights that allow a soldier to look into the darkness and
22:18see as if it were high noon.
22:23And to ensure that the system has every technology currently available, the Army has incorporated thermal sighting as well.
22:32A soldier can detect the body heat of an enemy up to 500 yards away.
22:39Let's say you're at night or you're having trouble identifying targets in a wood line,
22:43you can flip over to your thermal weapon sight and the body heat of an individual brings you up like
22:49a big lightbulb in a dark area.
22:53And again, there are crosshairs on there, lined with the barrel, and you can lay your sight directly on the
22:59target again and return fire.
23:01So from a personal perspective, personal engagement standpoint, the weapon system becomes more a part of the individual soldier and
23:12a more precise weapon.
23:16Perfecting the Land Warrior requires sophisticated training facilities as well.
23:21This special night vision range is a high-tech marvel unto itself.
23:29We have the ability to turn the lights off, we can go in complete darkness as you can see,
23:37and we can use the image intensification devices which depend upon a small amount of light to intensify and provide
23:45you an image.
23:50Though the Land Warrior system is still in the prototype stage,
23:53the Army hopes it will be ready for the field within two years.
24:00The challenge now is to make the components of the Land Warrior system even smaller and lighter.
24:07The total package now weighs less than 25 pounds.
24:11On this system right here, since it's a demonstrator model and everything,
24:14what we've done is we've incorporated the soldier intercom system here, which this will be done away with.
24:20This system right here is the DCM, which basically runs from the IHAS through to the computer system.
24:24This will be reduced about half its size.
24:29The cable itself, we're still working the routing aspect of it and which direction we want to go with it.
24:35One of the main drawbacks to the system is a lack of battery time.
24:40Currently, all the computer technology in a Land Warrior drains a battery in about 12 hours.
24:49A soldier can only carry two of the batteries, so he must be resupplied every 24 hours.
24:56The other factor is cost.
24:58So far, millions have been spent developing the Land Warrior system,
25:03and millions more are necessary to get it into the hands of soldiers in the field.
25:09They're going to be more expensive, there's going to be more things that can go wrong,
25:14and it's going to take a greater degree of training and sophistication to get the average soldier to use these
25:19things.
25:20I've been in the Army, and I can remember getting the average recruit just to be able to work his
25:24M-14 properly was difficult.
25:28But Army officials say soldiers trained with a Land Warrior pick it up quickly.
25:35For young people who grew up in the computer age, having a mouse control button on a gun seems natural.
25:44The Army believes that the new Land Warrior system is the weapon of the future,
25:49not just because of its firing capabilities, but as part of a total information system.
25:58Many envision a day when a soldier looking at an enemy on the ground
26:03can send information or an image to a pilot in a fighter jet high above the combat zone.
26:12In essence, this gun of the future will fight on a virtual battlefield.
26:20Warfare has managed chaos.
26:22And what you want to do is you want to allow the enemy to have much more of the chaos
26:27and you more of the management.
26:29So you want to make sure that as the pilot comes in, he can discern where you are, where the
26:33enemy is,
26:34he understands what his targets are, and so you want him to gather data from the soldiers on the ground.
26:41But not every super gun is geared for killing an enemy.
26:46In the gritty world of police work, the objective is often the opposite.
26:53For the deputies in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department,
26:56using modern technology and their weapons may help them with the toughest part of their job,
27:02fighting criminals and saving lives.
27:10For police officers across the country, taking a human life is a last desperate resort.
27:20If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to think of every problem as a nail.
27:23And as a result of that, if the only way you have of resolving this problem is with lethal force,
27:28you tend to think of it as a lethal force problem.
27:30Well, there's some real problems with that, one of which is that it takes substantial provocation to use lethal force.
27:39And right along with that provocation comes a substantial amount of risk.
27:43So anything that we can do to intervene at a lower level by using less force or less lethal force
27:50allows the officer to resolve the situation without the accompanying risk.
27:57I think there's a trend that maybe to be more tolerant to find techniques, maybe to use less lethal force.
28:06I think that police officers 10, 15, 20 years from now need to be a lot smarter than we've been
28:12in the last,
28:13through the 60s, 70s and 80s, certainly more tolerant.
28:18But developing non-lethal methods to fight criminals, many of whom are armed to the teeth, is a speculative venture.
28:27There's such a new field that some of these terms we've actually had to coin, non-lethal being one of
28:32them.
28:32There was never a way to describe that.
28:35What happens is that a less lethal weapon, for the first time in history, is being defined by its intent
28:42and not its capability.
28:43Where a lethal weapon attempts to defeat an adversary's ability to fight, a less lethal weapon attempts to defeat his
28:51will to fight.
28:53Finding clever ways not to kill people who are fighting the police has involved years of trial and error.
29:02Rubber bullets, meant to be used in riot situations to strike a person in the knees, can ricochet off the
29:09ground and shatter a windpipe.
29:14There's two misnomers with less lethal force.
29:17One is that it won't kill you, and that's not true in most cases.
29:21And the other one is that it's painless, and that's definitely not true.
29:24To more precisely define it and keep it in the minds of our deputies, we tell them that it's less
29:29lethal or less than lethal,
29:31meaning that we're trying to intervene without having to resort to our sidearms.
29:41At the L.A. County Sheriff's firing range, a new generation of non-traditional weapons holds promise.
29:51What has happened is that in the last four or five years, the Department of Defense has been downsizing.
29:57And as a result of that, the developers and defense contractors and federal laboratories,
30:02who have had this huge defense market in the past, have had to find some way or some other place
30:10to sell their goods.
30:11And as a result of that, very similar in application and function is law enforcement.
30:19The premise is simple. Stop a violent criminal without having to take that person's life.
30:25Police believe the best way to do that is to inflict pain.
30:32The idea of pain we're comfortable with. We can use pain to induce compliance.
30:37The problem is that most of these devices also have trauma accompanied with the pain.
30:43Pain is okay. The trauma we're trying to avoid.
30:46It's usually something that we're willing to live with for right now.
30:50Bruising, abrasions, but sometimes it can break bones, it can leave serious bruises,
30:55and depending on how it's used, serious injuries, internal injuries and things like that.
31:03To try and avoid inflicting trauma,
31:06sheriffs are using an arsenal of new weapons in their battle-to-end officer-involved shootings.
31:13Though this weapon looks like a regular shotgun,
31:16it actually fires shells filled with bean bags.
31:20This is probably the boldest venture that we've taken so far.
31:25Every radio car has one in the field right now.
31:27Keeps it in the trunk. It's available when they need it.
31:30We've saved, I don't even know how many people's lives.
31:32The very first weekend that we employed it, we saved a guy's life that had a knife.
31:37Had he, had that same incident occurred even a day before, they'd have had to kill him.
31:44Little training is needed because the stun bag weapon works just like any shotgun.
31:56The biggest problem with a bean bag right now is that it's not very aerodynamic.
32:00It doesn't fly straight, and as a result of that, it doesn't go where we want it to go.
32:04They're either square or circular pads that are curled up inside the shotgun shell,
32:09and then they come out of the tube of the shotgun and then open up.
32:12In order to be effective, they need to strike flat.
32:15But in order to fly, they need to allow the wind to go around them,
32:19so they fly like a leaf in the wind.
32:23A step up on the pain threshold is a severe-looking weapon called the Arwen.
32:28The gun fires five-inch shells of hardened plastic that can dent a metal door.
32:43As you can see by the impacts on this metal door,
32:46that the velocity and the weight is enough to give somebody no question that they've been hit.
32:54And generally, one or two shots put somebody down.
32:57We saved a woman's life. She was going to commit suicide.
33:01She had a .357 underneath her chin, and we hit her right in the arm with the Arwen.
33:07Broke her arm, and we felt bad.
33:10We thought, oh, we're really going to catch heat for this.
33:12But we were the heroes, because the alternative to that same situation was to shoot her,
33:17or let her shoot herself.
33:19And so as a result of that, even though it wasn't the circumstance that we had hoped for,
33:23it was so much better than the alternative.
33:25And that was one of the times that we coined the phrase,
33:28the standard is not perfection. The standard is the alternative.
33:35A crucial factor in implementing less-than-lethal force
33:38is keeping the police far away from an armed suspect.
33:45One answer is firing thick plastic rings from an air-powered rifle.
33:52The rings can travel up to a hundred yards and still be effective.
34:06When used properly, the ring can knock the wind out of a suspect,
34:10or inflict enough pain to stop a person in their tracks.
34:18If all else fails, police are working on a less high-tech, non-lethal weapon
34:23that utilizes an ammunition typically associated with teenage pranksters.
34:29This gun fires stink bombs,
34:31plastic pellets filled with a revolutionary liquid
34:35that smells worse than just about anything on Earth.
34:39It smells like a combination of fecal matter,
34:42uh, dead mammals, garlic and sulfur all mixed together.
34:50You can just wave it under your nose.
34:59This stuff will gag a maggot.
35:01This stuff is going to be great.
35:04We don't even know everything we can do with this stuff yet.
35:08Another version fires pellets filled with pepper powder,
35:11a choking compound that irritates the eyes and throat.
35:22So we have special masks for the deputies that filter out the,
35:25the, uh, the powder, but also on the suspect's clothing,
35:29we need to keep it on him so we don't contaminate our car,
35:33contaminate our jail.
35:34So what we've come up with is conventional, regular hair spray
35:39that we spray it on and it seals it to the clothes.
35:42So this powder that's here will be sealed on there
35:46with the stickiness of the, the hair spray.
35:51For the police, attempts to put weapons
35:53with less than lethal force into the field
35:56is essential to the future of law enforcement.
36:00Because when an officer is forced to fire his gun,
36:03the repercussions for everyone involved are severe.
36:08There is some tremendous trauma,
36:10particularly psychological trauma,
36:13that accompany people that, that use lethal force.
36:16We send our people to a psychologist for five days.
36:19Uh, they're taken out of the field.
36:21I mean, it's a tremendous life-changing event
36:23when you're put in a position that, that you're not allowed to flee from
36:29and have to resolve and end up having to kill someone.
36:32So less lethal provide that option of intervening without that accompanying humanitarian problems.
36:38Not to say that there's none there with it, it's just not to the degree with lethal force.
36:44Implementing less than lethal weaponry on a wide scale may still be years away.
36:50In the meantime, gun manufacturers are looking for ways to make traditional weapons
36:55not only more effective, but safer.
36:59Thanks to computer technology, these guns may someday have brains, as well as bullets.
37:11Inside the grip of this Colt .45 may lie the future of supergun technology.
37:23The smart gun is equipped with a small computer, which allows the trigger to be activated only by its owner.
37:31This is possible because the shooter wears a special wrist watch programmed to restrict access to the gun's firing mechanism.
37:42If the concept proves successful, it could revolutionize guns and gun safety.
37:50It's not as easy as putting a lock on it like some people may want to tell you.
37:54I think it's a situation that if we can build the better mousetrap, to coin that phrase,
37:59we're going to be a company to go into this next millennium and be the head of the game like
38:03our founder did when he first started it.
38:05Two years ago, after a series of highly publicized school shootings,
38:10officials at Colt Manufacturing decided they wanted to do something to make guns safer, much safer.
38:20Another motivation was the fact that 12% of the police officers killed in the line of duty each year
38:26are shot with their own guns, taken away from them by criminals.
38:34Colt hired a team of Silicon Valley designers to blend the latest in computer technology with the firing system of
38:41an automatic pistol.
38:45This product has an electronic device that is installed in it that prevents the trigger from operating
38:54unless the weapon is in the hands of an authorized user.
38:58This particular weapon has been developed for the law enforcement community.
39:04It is our second prototype of the smart gun and it uses a transmitter.
39:12As you can see, the trigger is not active right now in that when you pull it, the hammer does
39:19not fire.
39:20However, when in the close proximity of a transmitting device, the trigger unlocks and now the gun can be fired.
39:29And as long as the weapon is in the hands or in close proximity to the transmitting device, the weapon
39:37becomes or stays active.
39:39If the weapon is taken away from the police officer or the person using it such that it is no
39:45longer in proximity of the transmitter, the weapon no longer is functional.
39:53The smart gun has come a long way since the first prototype was built in early 1999.
40:01The technology that makes it work used to be housed in a large box.
40:05Now, it fits into the grip of the gun.
40:11In June 1999, our cameras were the first to record Colt's working smart gun prototype in action at the company's
40:20range in Hartford, Connecticut.
40:28Since members of law enforcement will most likely be the first to use the weapon, officials at Colt want to
40:34be very sure that it will work every time.
40:37The question now is can we do it reliably?
40:41And therein lies the $64,000 question and the unknowns associated with the product.
40:51There are a number of people that have commented that this technology is ready for prime time right now.
40:59That's not quite so.
41:03We have the technology to make the firearm functional, as you can see from this one here.
41:11Now, the question is, is this gun going to operate reliably in the field first time, every time, for as
41:18long as the law enforcement official needs it?
41:22It's that reliance on computers that has many in the gun world wondering just how far technology should go in
41:29trying to improve something that has been around for more than 500 years.
41:35Computers are certainly the wave of the future.
41:38They're being included in everything, automobiles, airplanes, and firearms.
41:42The problem with computers, and I think we've probably all experienced this with our cars as well, is that the
41:47more things you've got going on in there, the more chances you have for something to go wrong.
41:51And when you're in a battlefield situation, you want things to work as simply and as effectively as possible.
41:57I am certainly no expert on electronics and computers, and I'm sure that they're probably coming up with some wonderful,
42:02wonderful systems.
42:03But we must always remember that there must be some simple backup system so that if something happens to these
42:09things, you can still fire the gun without having to worry about wearing a helmet or a heads-up display
42:13or some sort of a smart system whereby nobody else can fire the gun but you.
42:20But in an age where the computer is the driving force behind nearly every new technology developed, there is no
42:27denying that the interaction between the microchip and the firearm is inevitable.
42:33I think we'll see some kind of a marriage or combination, computerized ammo, computerized guns, that will be really doing
42:41very smart things that will take all the thinking other than the decision to use deadly force.
42:48I think those computers will do the distance, and we're already there in a sense, but I think they'll refine
42:53that even more.
42:55I think the marriage between the computer, the gun, and the ammo will be even greater.
43:02And as technology changes the world of guns, it also changes who buys guns and why.
43:10The person buying and carrying guns today are much different than even 30 years ago.
43:15You know, we grew up with firearms.
43:17Kids that were in high school in the 70s, you know, we hunt, we fished, we did a lot of
43:20shooting.
43:21Today, people are less exposed to firearms due to the political climate, a lack of ranges to go shoot, and
43:27a general lack of hunting in this country.
43:29So the guns of the future have to have systems built into them, very much like cars, electric dryers for
43:37your hair, any kind of tool or appliance that's used by a novice.
43:41But with the firearm, keeping your finger off the trigger is only part of the system.
43:46Internally, it has to be drop-proof. It has to be able to function correctly at all times.
43:52If we wanted to just sit back and just sell guns for the sake of selling guns, we could write
43:58our current designs for probably another 50 years.
44:00But we would be less responsive as a company, I feel, if we just did that.
44:07What will the super gun of the future be like?
44:10Just looking at the changes that took place with technology in the 20th century, it's anyone's guess.
44:17As a kid growing up and reading comic books, for instance, and I'm reading all the crime fighters,
44:24or I'm reading comic books about people going to the moon and in rocket ships and space platforms and everything,
44:30and whoever would have thought that in the 90s or the 80s, putting a space shuttle up is just, you
44:36know, a thing that can be done any day of the week.
44:40You know, and so based on that experience, I think that 30, 40, 50 years, maybe we'll be using ray
44:47guns, magic things that won't have any failures, that won't shoot the wrong people.
44:54You know, Forces and