Last week, the White House released a plan to spur the development and availability of smart gun technology—tech that would make it impossible for anyone but a gun’s authorized user(s) to pull the trigger. While there is some ambiguity regarding the precise definition of a “smart gun”, authorized-only firing is a universally agreed-upon component.
The response from many has been…erm…less than pleasant. This shouldn’t be too surprising; the Magna-Trigger has been available since 1976 but failed to achieve widespread use due at least in part to resistance from the gun lobby.
Let me explain.
Law enforcement is a key market for smart guns, as they are in favor of most firearm innovations. The Obama administration is eyeing law enforcement in their new report, too, and several federal law enforcement agencies are involved in the push for smart gun research and development. But law enforcement adoption often requires legislative approval, if not a legislative mandate. Add lobbyists to the mix…
There are, perhaps, some legitimate arguments to be made about onerous manufacturing requirements and lack of consumer choice should smartgun technology become required for all firearms. But there’s also a very vocal faction in this country that gets their knickers in a cartoonishly-outsized twist when they feel the convenience of putting bullets in stuff is under threat…but more on that later.
For now, let’s set the politics aside and look at some of the tech—and companies—that might mean the future of smart gun technology.
Armatix Smart Gun Devices
German company Armatix was one of the first to hit the market with a modern smart gun. Its iP1 Pistol is automatically deactivated whenever it’s out of range of its companion wristwatch’s RFID signal. If the gun is stolen or dropped in a scuffle, it’s useless as anything other than a paperweight. Or a bludgeoning weapon roughly the weight of a paperweight. Or an anchor for a very small boat…
The point is, it won’t fire bullets unless the hand holding it has the watch on its wrist. As long as you keep your watch secure, your gun and the people it’s being pointed at are safe. Yay!
The iP1 isn’t the easiest gun to come by, though. At least one gun store owner received death threats when he tried to carry it shortly after it came out in 2014. He backed down (though he did cite the irony of the situation). New Jersey, which passed a law in 2002 requiring all guns to have a safety feature preventing children from pulling the trigger once such technology was developed, decided—amidst much furor—that the Armatix didn’t meet its criteria and the law would remain in limbo.
There are clear limits to this gun’s smartness; anyone who gets the watch can fire the gun, so it really isn’t user-specific. Also, the fact that this gun comes from the German fatherland probably isn’t doing it any favors among the less cultured, Teutonic engineering prowess obviously notwithstanding. So what about some good old (or new) American options?
The New Jersey Institute of Technology
OK, they’re a school, not a company, but spurred by the 2002 legislation and the funding that came with it, researchers at the NJIT were able to develop a biometric grip to identify specific users. A series of piezoelectric sensors measure hand size, grip strength, and other unique elements of a “grip signature” to determine who is holding the gun.
Firing isn’t enabled unless it recognizes an authorized grip.
Early prototypes of the NJIT’s Dynamic Grip Recognition had 90% accuracy…back in 2005. Since then, there’s been barely a peep. In a sort of catch-22, the same law that prompted funding for this research is probably playing a big part in preventing that research from reaching the public. Three years after acceptable smart gun technology comes out, every handgun in New Jersey will have to have it…and the NJIT is a public university dependent entirely on government funding…
Image courtesy of guns.com
I’m really not a conspiracy theorist, but this is so transparent it’s like looking through bullet holes.
With the private market under attack and government-funded research unlikely to soon see the light of day, who can we turn to? Why, the young millennial entrepreneur, of course!
Kai Kloepfer And The Lonely Smart Gun Grip
Formerly the 18 year-old founder, CEO, and sole proprietor of apparently-defunct Ægen Technologies, Kai Kloepfer developed a fingerprint-reading gun grip that works just how you’d expect. If it doesn’t recognize the fingerprints as those of an authorized user of the gun, the gun won’t fire.
Kloepfer claims a 99.99% accuracy rate when it comes to preventing unauthorized users from firing, and only a 2% false rejection rate (misreadings leading to an authorized user being unable to fire the gun). Of course, any false rejections at all is a non-starter for many gun rights activists, and to be fair that would be a concern in a self-defense situation—which is ostensibly what handguns are for.
But they have little to fear from Kai. His Indiegogo campaign was only 17% funded when it closed and he’s working all on his own – though you can still support his work with donations. Impressive tech, and an impressive entrepreneur and engineer, but this is one young white male who won’t be going public with a firearm anytime soon.
Yeah, I went there. If you want to lodge a complaint, write your state and federal representatives about better gun legislation first.
Daniel A. Guttenberg is an Atlanta-based writer who fell into the startup world by accident and has been gleefully treading water ever since. He will be survived by his beard and his legacy of procrastination.
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The post you published here is very nice. From hand-carved wooden replicas to factory-produced pop guns and cap guns, toy guns come in all sizes, prices and materials such as wood, metal, plastic or any combination thereof. Many newer toy guns are brightly colored and oddly shaped to prevent them from being mistaken for real firearms.
This subject of this piece is safety technology?
Are you sure? It looks more like it’s about laws *requiring* expensive, cumbersome and likely unreliable design changes to important tools.
Mental health. Good point. Every human experiences poor mental health at periods of their life. About 20% of the population. That’s why is civilized societies we leave the protection to professionally trained men and women who get mental health counselling and are not impaired by alcohol and trained.
Then you have the states where 80% of gun owners are in possession of a gun while drunk at home; 20% are suffering depression and anxiety. Most are paranoid by definition. And they have IQs that are lower than the average (it’s true, higher gun ownership are poorer, lower education, higher rates of teen pregnancy.
And sadly, nearly all truly beieve a talking snake caused a woman to sin thus making all humans sinners which means you can put a bullet into them for simply walking on the property you stole from the indigenous people (killed 50 million) and developed using slaves.
Economic inequality is why people need guns in the USA. And if Trump is elected, it will get worse.
What most of the Anti-gun crowd overlooks is the issue is NOT gun control/restriction/”gun safe” “gun free” zones but Mental Health! A large percentage of your active shooter/sniper suspects & criminals have had early warning flags that were never or half-heartedly addressed. James Holmes, Robert Dear among others. And a “mental “case doesn’t need a gun .Attacks in India, China, Belfast, Sweden, New Orleans, Germany, and more(not counting trouble spot like the Congo, Sudan, Middle East) were all carried out with edged weapons, i.e. Swords, Machetes, Axes, and Knifes. Easily accessible Mental (& General) Health Care is the key.
This post is on smart guns, which have some merit. It’s a red herring to say mental health services are the only answer, when there are many instances where this technology would save lives. For instance, all the times children shoot each other or their parents, in situations where there isn’t a good child packing heat to take out the bad child who is playing with the gun. 265 kids accidentally shot someone last year in the USA. The USA has similar rates of people being accidentally (or deliberately) shot by their dog as many countries with strict gun laws have of people being shot by people.
Also, your point on knife attacks is simply misguided. Most of those knife attacks killed very few people. Guns enable a far larger scale of destruction for individuals with less skills. The knife attack in china on a school in 2012 wounded 22, by a large man with a knife, no deaths. At Sandy Hook 26 were killed by a weak teenager with military weapons. There is a difference.
If you look internationally at murder rates, the USA leads the way, and this is down to gun related homicide. For countries with strict gun laws there is no compensatory rise in homicide rates by other means, there is just a lower homicide rate:
http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2015/10/visualizing-gun-deaths-comparing-u-s-rest-world/
Um, I think security provided by humans was what the facility at Sandy Hook was lacking when the former student came back to campus.
I don’t want to risk it wondering if my battery is good when facing down a killer.
More likely to pull the plug on this unwanted and unnecessary genre of tech.
Such a toughy debate. There are valid points on all ends, but just like with anything else it will take time to perfect whatever the desired end result is here.
There are many good comments here that are valid points. In the early stages, this seems like a “good” idea, but we should see where it goes from here.
Not sure. I get what everyone is saying here and agree that ANY electronic can be compromised. I think this might be the early stages, but not the end result just yet.
No, we’re not, and for good reason. Looming behind this push is a government mandate that would render every civilian firearm vulnerable to be remotely disabled.
Since all electronic devices are vulnerable to EMP and all efforts in ‘smart gun’ tech are electronic, there is no way to surmount that circumstance.
Which means that the whole idea is dead in the water.
The owner of Armatix admitted that he built a back door into the electronics of the pistol that would allow “authorities” to shut down the guns anytime they wanted to. And ~this~ is the gun we are supposed to trust and buy?
Very good point. As long as the owner is coming forward as transparent, could this really cause a problem for the LAW ABIDING gun owner?
@Barbara Corkery, If it is “hackable” then it can be disabled by other than the “authorities”.
Why do you need privacy? If you’re a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, I’m sure you’d be okay with the government receiving all of your browsing history and tapping your phone calls without a warrant.
The real question is how many law enforcement officers are we willing to see injured or killed in this push to sell this new, experimental, and for the most part unnecessary technology?
The Armatrix pistol is an overpriced toy, for the cost of the gun plus the separate cost of the cheesy plastic watch you can buy an Olympic quality target pistol (yes, there are still shooting competitions in the Olympics in which the US excels). Repressive attempts to foist questionable and unreliable fixes to problems that don’t exist are criminal. The major people pushing this nonsense know that it will cause MORE accidental shootings and get MORE people killed or injured. They are distressed that crime and violence along with accidental injuries are at the lowest level in decades, they are running low on fresh blood to dance in and it’s getting hard to scream CRISIS without being laughed at. They want to encourage negligence and carelessness by pretending that a dangerous tool can be left lying around because “they” have made it “safe”.
“The response from many has been…erm…less than pleasant. This shouldn’t be too surprising; the Magna-Trigger has been available since 1976 but failed to achieve widespread use due at least in part to resistance from the gun lobby.”
I own a revolver with the Magna-Trigger conversion, which I had done in 1994. At the time, police commander, writer, and gun-lobby supporter Massad Ayoob was a big proponent of this modification, and extolled it in a number of books and magazine articles. I am not aware of any articles trying to discredit the product.
Aside from the fact that the powerful magnetic ring wreaked havoc with my VHS tapes and floppy disks, I suspect the main reason it failed to achieve widespread use was that the price of the conversion was greater than the original cost of the new revolver itself.
Until such time all US police, FBI secret service and military prove this technology is as reliable as existing firearms and all of those forces including the body guards of all the elitist liars have implemented said conversion completely as well as proving the guns cannot be turned off remotely, all proponents of this bs can GFT