I’ve been reading about various terrible events in which police officers have used firearms inappropriately; sometimes firing their weapons because of a combination of inexperience, poor communication and understandable stress.
Today’s invention aims to provide a small extra element of calm before any triggers get pulled and everyone suffers.
This consists of a small digital voice recorder and loudspeaker unit which would clip to a weapon. A button, located away from the trigger, would have to be pressed before the trigger could be pulled (which suggests integrating it into the safety catch mechanism).
Pressing this button would cause the loudspeaker to emit a single, clear message such as “Stop, armed police”. This would greatly reduce the pressure on an officer in having to think of what to say under terrifying circumstances but also it would ensure that a warning had been delivered before the firing starts.
The warning could be recorded in a standard, calming but authoritative tone and also displayed as text on a screen mounted beneath the barrel (the screen text might be a way to provide an alternative language version in regions where no one one language dominates -eg LA).
