We made a gun detector

Would love to find out more technical detail on the project. - assume it's a CNN, but was it trained from scratch or did it use transfer learning? - how long did it take to train? - what hardware is inside that box (Jetson, presumably) - any other interesting challenges / insights

Pasha Alpeyev

Hi Destin! I admit I was slightly concerned when the video started, but your assertion that the 4th amendment was important helped a lot with that. I want to share with you results of debates I've had with friends about issues like school shootings. Most of the time (given enough chance to talk with the person) we have agreed that response time is the most important thing to ending an active shooter. Most of the people I've had that discussion with have issue with armed teachers out of fear of creating more potential shooting situations, like the teacher may fly off the handle or some student may take their firearm. The solution that I have gotten 99% of people (the 1% didnt like guns AT ALL) to agree to was having the firearm in a lockbox tied to the school alert system. The school goes into lockdown, the lock box opens, and the teacher can access the firearm. I feel your system would work perfectly with that, and that you should look into developing it further. I can't help you much on the software/electronics end, but if you need a metal box that no one can get into, let me know. Keep up the good work! Clif

Clifton Ballad

I'm very glad that you brought up privacy violations by systems meant to see through clothes. It's very refreshing to see this, especially from popular channels like yours.

That-Other-Guy

I love that you're willing to take the risk to bring a little practicality and nuance into the firestorm. Thank you, sir.

I knew what I was doing with that.

Smarter Every Day

Please change the thumbnail pic to show promote proper trigger discipline. Keep you finger off the trigger unless you are ready to shoot. I doubt you are trying to discharge in your house.

Detection does nothing without a quicker response. I'm afraid this tech will be used as the technology version of a "gun free zone" sign. It will give false security to those that do not want to face the problem head on and realize that it always takes a good guy with a gun to eliminate those that do evil with a gun. My other fear is that there will be enough false flags with this technology (not just yours) that it will produce a situation that numbs our first responders called to an actual situation. Ultimately, I don't think technology and the further stigmatization of firearms is the answer to the problem. People willing to take personal responsibility for their own safety, and those that they are entrusted to protect is the only way we are going to stop these incidents from happening.

Thanks for brining this to the table. I look forward to future discussions! Real solutions and real discussions are needed more and more so thank you!

Dungerdore

Destin, I saw on the desk when you picked up the handguns that you had some toy guns as well. Why didn't you show whether or not the system detected toys as real guns or not? I can see the obvious difficulty in training the AI not to detect toys as actual guns, but it may have been worth discussing why it does or does not pick them up as a gun. Just a thought, was a little disappointed not to see this tested or discussed. Otherwise, a very interesting discussion and idea. I feel skeptical a CCTV camera would have enough resolution to pick up a gun in a real world scenario considering how wide of an angle they have and how much area they cover. As we saw even at a distance of 8-10 feet the system struggled to pickup the gun, with greater distance and lower resolution that problem becomes even harder. Not saying it isn't a good idea or system, but it would require massive training improvements to get it to a level that would make sense in a existing security system.

Daniel Ryan

I was worried that your trigger discipline would be poor in the video itself after seeing that thumbnail, was happy to see that wasn't the case. But, I do seriously hope you'll consider updating the thumbnail to one demonstrating better trigger discipline. Besides annoying those of us who care about it, I would worry that it can contribute to the perpetuation of poor gun safety among those who don't. Great video otherwise, as usual. :-)

Joseph Spiros

2 things, does this detect rifles? All I think I saw in the video was it detecting handguns. Be careful where you share this, I just got a permanent ban on r/guns for sharing this lol

Andrew J Miller

Trigger discipline! ;) Can't wait to see it.

Workbench

Thank you for another great video about exciting tech. Your youtube views were around 29K when I started to watch the video and at 39K when I refreshed after viewing, so a bit under 1K views per minute, all in the first 90 minutes. While I hope that's simply all of your patrons checking in, I don't think the video will get buried. (Oh, and yes I came to mention trigger etiquette in the thumbnail, and I can't tell you how incredibly gratified I was to see so much educated commentary already posted)

Louis D. Monaghan, Jr.

That finger inside the trigger guard though :)

Kevin

Get ready for half the video comments to point out trigger discipline in the thumbnail 🙄 happy that you're jumping into the discussion though!

I’m super proud of you for opening a discussion on this topic.

AJ Peck

Groooooooan... such a dad joke!

Kristy

Yes, warning because his finger is on the trigger!

Yukigamine

Trigger warning!

Daniel Turner