The End of Killing

How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problem

By: Rick Smith

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Technology will make killing a thing of the past.

The gun is antiquated technology, and it is responsible for tens of thousands of senseless killings every year. Humanity has accepted that killing is an unavoidable fact of life - but Rick Smith argues that it doesn’t need to be this way and that we have the means to make the bullet obsolete in our lifetime.

Smith is the founder of TASER (now Axon), and in this book, he demonstrates that we are on the cusp of a world in which killing is neither required nor acceptable. That change won't come by way of stricter gun control laws. No, what holds us back from making an overdue and necessary shift in how we think about weapons is our skepticism about new technologies and their potential.

Smith has devoted his career to understanding why and how we kill each other. In The End of Killing, he reviews the history of weaponry and warfare as well as the latest technologies in crowd control, surveillance, and artificial intelligence. He delves into the big, thorny questions about how technology is creating more tools for police, homeland security, and military, and offering more options for our personal safety and our justice system. With clarity and conviction, he challenges the conventional wisdom on these subjects, showing how technologies that appear strange and scary at first can be the key to making the gun a relic of the past.

In our current impasse of dead-end debates about gun violence and police brutality, Smith offers us a clear roadmap into a safer future. Thought-provoking, insightful, and controversial, The End of Killing will make you reconsider the violent world you inhabit - and imagine the safer world on the horizon.

©2019 Rick Smith (P)2019 Rick Smith

Genuinely different than I anticipated.

This was a really good book, and it does indeed challenge my preconceived notions of military and policing, I'm the perspective of less lethal force.

Rick Smith makes a compelling position regarding reducing and even eliminating bloodshed in wars, and in policing. I did not expect to have my position swayed, but when approached with an open mind, I am titillated.

While Rick Smith is the CEO of Axon, this does not come off as a marketing infomercial. This is some truly transformational thought. The technology already exists to achieve these goals, and the best is the enemy of the good. Like Tesla's auto pilot, critics and media focus on the failures public concept and not whether the concept is better than what it is looking to replace. As a Tesla auto pilot crash is world news, Taser injuries/deaths are newsworthy.

It is exciting the possibility the future may hold. These concepts don't lead to the dystopian futures that are fed to the masses.

I consumed this book in two days. I'll revisit it again, without a doubt.

Seems crazy until it’s not

I was a cop for 25+ years. I was the first patrol cop in my District in Denver to use the old M26 TASER on someone. I never had to shoot anyone with a bullet. I was prepared to and came really close 5 times. REALLY close. I’m glad I didn’t have to. I hope Rick Smith finds a way to make the bullet obsolete. Great book with really irrefutable facts that DO NOT go into the usual dichotomy. You can want cops AND the public to all be safe.