I admit, I’ve been on a bit of a Hideo Kojima bender lately. However, in this article instead of recommending new ideas for future releases, I’ll do the opposite. Today I’ll be going over the realistic applications of a common feature of both Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2; the gun camera. Sharpen your pitchforks and alert the bots because this article is going to ruffle some feathers. For the venture capitalist who might be reading; grab your checkbook because you’ll definitely want to jump in on this idea!
For the uncultured among us who are ignorant to true greatness, both of the aforementioned Metal Gear Solid games feature the standard type of surveillance cameras that we have all encountered in our daily lives (at least, before the fish-eye lens was invented). However, as the player progressed through the game, they would inevitably come across gun cameras. These are exactly what they sound like; surveillance cameras with semiautomatic guns attached. Rather than triggering an alert phase that summoned the nearest patrols to come and kill Snake/Raiden, these cameras would instead just start shooting at the infiltrator.
The first two Metal Gear Solid games were future-looking, that is to say that the games took place several years after their real-life launch dates. The original was released in 1998, yet takes place in 2005, and the sequel dropped in 2001 and takes place in 2007 (Snake)/2009 (Raiden). Thus, this feature, among countless other themes discussed in those two masterpieces, were Kojima’s predictions of the future. While we currently do not have gun cameras, there is nothing stopping us technologically from doing so for home defense purposes. Moreover, there is little stopping us from installing these cameras in many states across America.
First, let’s focus on the technology involved. In the games, when Snake/Raiden walk into the line of sight of the gun camera, the gun camera is able to recognize the foreign intruder and immediately starts shooting. This requires the use of artificial intelligence in the camera; after all, the gun cameras are never shown to shoot at the Russian soldiers. In our modern era, we have artificial intelligence models that use machine learning to detect things such as pedestrians on a city street in cars or fraud in financial documents. Thus, an AI can be trained on data from court records and purchased videos/photos from social media platforms (quick, somebody call Da Zuck!) to teach the algorithm what a home invasion or burglary in process looks like. Hence, the camera will be able to safely determine the FedEx guy from a filthy criminal. The AI can also be trained on what suburban unorganized sports, dogwalkers, first-responders and joggers look like, thus further reducing the chances of accidental shootings.
Future releases of the gun camera would inevitably have nicer features. The gun cameras in the Metal Gear Solid gameswere hyper vigilant, however in reality they could also be linked to motion sensors in power-saving settings. This shouldn’t be much of a technological leap since we already have floodlights that turn on when the motion sensor gets tripped. To prevent outside interference, the gun cameras will operate on a closed-circuit system inside the owner’s home, thus taking external hackers out of the equation entirely. The homeowner would simply arm the system prior to leaving for work in the morning (because, as established last time: most home break-ins happen in the middle of the day) like they would any other home security system from the 1990’s. However, future updates to the product could include a special night-vision package, for the homeowner that is extra paranoid (read: lucrative).
The ideal customer for this product would be the security conscious family man. My word choice with family man is very intentional because men are overwhelmingly the primary purchasers of firearms. A particular emphasis will be placed on marketing towards the South and the Southwest. The reason for this is two-fold; these states have the atmospheric climate ideal for mounting an outdoor firearm from a metallurgy standpoint. These states also have the ideal political climate for these cameras via lax gun ownership and home defense laws. Republicans and Libertarians would be the target sales demographic, from both an ideology standpoint as well as a financial one, as both of those demographics would be willing to spend heavily on home defense.
Gun enthusiasts and materials scientists may give me some well-intentioned feedback regarding the metallurgy of such an idea; and they are correct to a certain extent. The gun cameras will need to have magazines and ammo loaded into them in order to function, and bullets have a shelf life, The gun cameras will be primarily outdoors, thus exposed to the elements. However, this is a problem that can be side-stepped with regular ammo change-outs; a clever marketing campaign along the lines of change your clocks, change your mags could work wonders in this situation. Future models of the product would feature advances in materials science; fat profits tend to increase R&D budgets after all! This is an R&D model that has already been shown to work in the auto industry concerning metallurgy, so I’m not exactly re-inventing the wheel.
Now the legal side of things. First, the gun cameras will need to be installed facing inwards. That is to say, that the gun cameras need to absolutely make sure to only fire upon the homeowner’s property, thus taking uninvolved third parties (read: the largest source of civil lawsuits regarding firearm use) out of the equation entirely. The AI can be trained to recognize the edges of the homeowner’s property (lawn edges, sidewalks, fences, etc.) and be trained to not shoot if the trajectory would hit these things. This would limit liability considerably. As mentioned earlier, the marketing of this product would be heavily focused on states that actually fucking obey the 2nd amendment. Each gun camera kit will come with adequate warning signs to be mounted on the windows of the home and lawn of the homeowners.
Now for the moral argument, which is what everyone has been sharpening their pitchforks for. “Dan, don’t you care about the sanctity of life regarding the piece-of-shit burglars?” No. And by “No”, I really mean “Fuck No”. Don’t want to get shot? Then stay off the god-damned lawn. End of discussion.
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