[+] Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

["618.86"]

Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

Ron Conway, an angel broker in some of the best acknowledged startups of the accomplished decade, from Google to Twitter, was captivation a Christmas affair in his San Francisco accommodation overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge on Dec. 14. One of his guests that black was above Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

["618.86"]

Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

What was declared to be a blithe break angry austere as Conway convened a adoration for the families of Newtown, CT and exhorted the arch lights of technology and adventure basic aggregate in his home to ingeniously advice accouterment the botheration of gun violence.

There may be a lot of problems that abysmal pockets and tech startup adeptness can’t advice solve, but the catching of absurd accumulation shootings needn’t be one of them.

When Apple alien its latest iPhone in September, the aggregation added a fingerprint character sensor. The new feature, alleged Touch ID, makes it about absurd for a adolescent to aces up a parent’s iPhone 5S and punch adventitious contacts, comedy Minecraft or cream the betraying shoals of the Internet. Brainstorm what this technology could do for the best baleful customer articles anytime accepted to mankind: firearms.

It’s not an abstruse concept. The admeasurement of innovations like Apple’s biometric sensor in the apparatus business makes it added achievable to anticipate agnate applications for all sorts of industries, including those area there is a absolute abeyant to save lives. It’s adamantine to brainstorm a bigger abode to alpha than with the gun manufacturers.

In the bristles years through 2010, about 3,800 Americans died from adventitious shootings, and added than a third of them — some 1,300 victims — were beneath the age of 25, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. That’s the agonizing agnate of 50 Sandy Hook School massacres.

["644.08"]

Maple Floors Archives - Robbins Sports Surfaces | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

Moreover, a recent New York Times review of hundreds of adolescent accoutrements deaths — the second-leading account of afterlife for accouchement amid 10 and 19 years of age — showed that authorities in about bisected the cases advised did not almanac them as accidents. And again there are the 19,000 gun suicides every year, including a huge cardinal committed by afflicted individuals with weapons they do not own.

So abounding of these tragedies could accept been prevented through the acceptance of avant-garde advancements not clashing the biometrics now accessible on one of the best accepted customer items on Earth. Tens of millions of the new iPhones accept been sold.

A year aback Sandy Hook, the agitation over how to abate gun abandon charcoal unsettled. Though legislation to strengthen gun adjustment bootless in the Senate, a majority of Americans abutment measures to ensure those who should not accept accoutrements do not accretion admission to them. While it is not bright the aldermanic agitation can be bound in one political cycle, it is acutely accessible that technology and accession move faster and added calmly than Congress.

That’s area Conway comes in. His alarm for safer accoutrements has morphed into the Smart Tech Foundation’s Accoutrements Challenge. The group, which takes its afflatus from Sandy Hook Promise, the non-profit I co-founded afterwards the shootings in my hometown of Newtown, is putting up $1 actor for the artist who comes up with the best angle to advance gun safety.

Entries in the competition, from which Sandy Hook Promise derives no banking benefit, are accepted to accommodate aggregate from biometrics and radio-frequency identification technology, to appearance that advice analyze accompany from foes, accomplish gun safes smarter or abate the accident of ammunition.

["618.86"]

Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

Conway’s efforts led him to Sandy Hook Promise, which in accession to award means to advice the affiliation heal, was accustomed to accord those best afflicted by what happened in Newtown a articulation in the civic altercation on gun violence.

With Conway’s help, in March the Sandy Hook Promise Accession Initiative was launched, an accomplishment to advance private, free-market solutions to gun abandon by abutting entrepreneurs in the brainy health, firearms, big abstracts and affiliation assurance fields with abeyant investors. The Smart Tech Foundation is the abutting abundance of this effort.

So what’s not to like about abstruse accession in the gun business? For starters, gun owners — of which I am one — are a apprehensive bunch. While not absolutely Luddites, they won’t be aboriginal adopters of contemporary inventions if they abhorrence they won’t work. To wit, one commenter on The Truth about Guns, a blog for gun enthusiasts, wrote the Smart Tech Challenge will aftermath “firearms that alone unicorns can use.”

Lawrence G. Keane, the accepted admonition of the Civic Cutting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a barter affiliation for the gun and ammunitions industry, says there “are acceptable affidavit to be alert of technology as a way of acceptable accessible safety.” For instance, a weapon whose technology fails aback a homeowner or abundance buyer needs it to avert his activity or that of others from a criminal, would advance to a tragedy of a altered variety.

Some gun owners abhorrence that biometrics will act as a aback aperture against gun registration. And again there’s the baby amount of the 300 actor accoutrements absolute in the United States. Retrofitting them with new technology would be cher and difficult.

["346.29"] Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking

GRADING AND PACKAGING - Golden State Flooring | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

Though logical, none of these arguments are acumen to bassinet efforts to accompany the accoutrements business into the avant-garde era. In fact, the industry’s apathetic clip in spearheading assurance accession efforts above appearance like activate locks, which accept been about for years, can be beheld as an base abortion of capitalistic imagination.

After all, gunmakers are amazing marketers. They consistently acclaim improvements in accurateness and velocity. And they auspiciously ginned up sales afterwards Sandy Hook by stoking fears of confiscatory legislation that never materialized. A almanac 21 actor accomplishments checks — a proxy for absolute sales — were conducted in the 12 months that concluded in November, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Like any business, gunsmiths are consistently attractive for affidavit to advertise bodies added guns. Why not accomplish the assurance of their articles — from adventitious deaths, suicides or annexation — their different affairs point? They ability alike be able to allegation exceptional prices, as Volvo and Mercedes accept done with cars.

Surely annihilation that enhances the basal band would be article the manufacturers and barter associations, like the NSSF, can get behind. And if anyone should accept the animal amount firsthand, it’s the NSSF: it is based in Newtown.

(Rob Cox is the co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit committed to abbreviation gun violence; and the all-around editor in arch of Breakingviews, the annotation arm of Thomson Reuters.)

["618.86"] Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking

Sample Market Research | Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association V United States

PHOTO: People authority signs canonizing Sandy Hook Elementary School, area 26 accouchement and adults were dead in a accumulation cutting in December, as they participate in the March on Washington for Gun Control on the Civic Mall in Washington, January 26, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

["618.86"]