A few months back Brett Stalbaum, the creator of Gun Geo Maker, launched a mobile app that locates gun owners. However, the app brought on a barrage of negative response from gun blog, forum and gun owners. Stalbaum states the intention was “fake and used as a social experiment”.
In an excerpt of Stalbaum recent blog:
Secondly, the App was a honeypot. As a gun owner myself, I am all too aware of a smaller component of the community that sees any attempt at improving gun safety as an affront to their second amendment rights. Reasonable regulations that do not interfere with anyone’s second amendment rights – such as universal background checks and trigger locks when guns are unattended in the presence of children – are needed to help abate the gun violence epidemic in this country. But some places in the United States seem committed to going in the opposite direction, as in Florida where a law was passed preventing medical doctors from asking about gun safety in the home as they might about swimming pool safety. So, the project is also a culture-jamming exercise intended to draw out earnest expressions from the radical anti-gun-safety community, expressions that will now become part of a second phase of the project which involves aesthetic manifestations. The app itself will remain online for a time so that people can play with the user interface, after which it will morph into a purely “documentation” application about the project.
It is unknown which direction Stalbaum will proceed with the app next, but does appear to use the app as a “honeypot” story as an exit explanation.
Written by Jon Hines
