weapons

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IMPACT

The Legal Age For Purchasing Assault Weapons Does Not Make Sense There Are Historical And Psychological Reasons Why

The Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings in May 2022 had at least two things in common: The shooters were 18 years old, and they had both legally purchased their own assault rifles. The shooters’ young age was not an aberration. The average age of school shooters is 18, when tracking incidents since 1966. The relatively young age of most mass shooters has ignited conversations about the minimum legal age for purchasing firearms. When it comes to gun laws, there is clearly a legal debate about how to define adulthood. But there is also a complex history of how societies determine adulthood, as I’ve examined in my work on the age of marriage and sexual consent. Considering someone an adult once they turn 18 is a relatively recent trend, and it’s not clear that it can stand up to public scru...

As Nations Pour Billions Into Autonomous Weapons Research – UN Fails To Agree On ‘Killer Robot’ Ban

UN fails to agree on ‘killer robot’ ban as nations pour billions into autonomous weapons research. Autonomous weapon systems – commonly known as killer robots – may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity’s final one. The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons debated the question of banning autonomous weapons at its once-every-five-years review meeting in Geneva Dec. 13-17, 2021, but didn’t reach consensus on a ban. Established in 1983, the convention has been updated regularly to restrict some of the world’s cruelest conventional weapons, i...

Hackers could shut down satellites – or turn them into weapons

Last month, SpaceX became the operator of the world’s largest active satellite constellation. As of the end of January, the company had 242 satellites orbiting the planet with plans to launch 42,000 over the next decade. This is part of its ambitious project to provide internet access across the globe. The race to put satellites in space is on, with Amazon, U.K.-based OneWeb and other companies chomping at the bit to place thousands of satellites in orbit in the coming months. These new satellites have the potential to revolutionize many aspects of everyday life – from bringing internet access to remote corners of the globe to monitoring the environment and improving global navigation systems. Amid all the fanfare, a critical danger has flown under the radar: the lack of cybersecurity s...