Motherboard:

The technology is here. So-called “smart guns” are being programmed to recognize a gun owner’s identity and lock up if the weapon ends up in the wrong hands. Entrepreneurs and engineers have been developing technology to make safer guns since the early ’90s, and by now we’ve got working prototypes of guns that read fingerprints, hand grips or even sensors embedded under the skin. But after 15 years of innovation, personalized guns still haven’t penetrated the marketplace.

Why? Smart guns are caught in the crosshairs of a heated debate over guns, for one thing. Pro-gun groups see it as an attack on Second Amendment rights and, you know, freedom. Anti-gun groups worry that if guns are safer it will inspire more people to buy them. Perhaps more troublesome is that consumer demand just isn’t there. “The gun industry has no interest in making smart-guns. There is no incentive for them,” Robert J. Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland told the New York Times.

No incentive? What about saving lives?

Some people argue that even if all guns came equipped with the latest personal lock technology, it would only make a tiny dent in gun violence, since the vast majority of gun deaths aren’t caused by accidents, but by people firing their legal weapon. Still, the flood of tragic news of senseless preventable violence keeps the smart gun conversation kicking. Interest in the technology saw new life in the wake of Sandy Hook. In response to the tragedy, President Obama called for research into gun safety technology, offering prizes to companies that developed affordable personalized guns. The Sandy Hook Promise Innovation Initiative is also working with Silicon Valley to offer grants for new gun safety technology.

But the problem isn’t coming up with ideas. There are already numerous startups developing biometric technology—sensors that identify fingerprints, hand geometry, eye scans and other biological features to authenticate the owner of a gun a la James Bond’s gun in Skyfall that’s been coded to his palm print.

The problem is getting anyone to buy them. A group called Safe Gun Technology developed a functioning prototype of biometric fingerprint recognition technology in 2008, and recently tried to crowdfund the money to build a market-ready version. The Indiegogo campaign fell $48,000 short of its fundraising goal.

Robert McNamara, cofounder of TriggerSmart, a startup that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) to match owner and gun, has tried to convince the gun manufacturers to license the product, but none have agreed. If the gun industry won’t budge, it could take a government mandate to get people to buy personalized guns.

Rep. John Tierney of Massachusettes is taking on that fight.

Gosh, if someone could have just seen this coming.  Really seen this coming.  You know, really, really seen this coming.  I mean, just flat out, seen this for what it really is.

Of course, there are other gun owners to hear as well.  Regarding Tierney’s fight, bring it!  We’ll see just how well that “government mandate” works out.

David Codrea:

Daniele Perazzi, president of the Italian Perazzi Shotguns firm, was taken into custody yesterday by Adams County Deputies [see update, below] along with several prototype shotguns. The executive was picked up in the parking lot of the Denver Merchandise Mart, hosting the high-end Colorado Gun Collectors show this weekend, after a taxi driver, likely reacting to a suspicious activity reporting outreach program conducted by law enforcement, told authorities he thought he could be transporting an armed “foreign speaking” terror suspect.

Continue reading to find out why the Sheriff asked him to leave town despite the fact that he had done nothing wrong.

Kurt Hofmann:

… the Personalized Handgun Safety Act of 2013, mandates within two years that newly manufactured handguns be equipped with the technology that allows the guns to only work in the hands of their owners or other authorized users. Manufacturers that do not meet the standards could be held liable. And individuals or businesses selling older handguns must have them retrofitted with personalization technology within three years after the bill is enacted, at the expense of the federal government.

This bill has little chance of passing, but even if it did, the author isn’t even smart enough to exempt LEOs, who won’t endorse it without that exemption.  Kurt discusses the law enforcement take on such laws.

Both of these issues fall into the category where I advocate letting the market decide who wins.  Colorado has made their bed and must now lie in it.  They will eventually repudiate their onerous laws when enough industry leaves, enough industry won’t consider coming, and enough gangs begin to terrorize the state, but the rich part is that they will learn by doing rather than by being told what to do.  If I was Mr. Perazzi I wouldn’t waste one more dime or second on Colorado.  I’d never return, and I’d do my best to ensure that my wares were never sold in that state.  We need not fill in the gap for the intentional failures of others.  It interferes with the learning process.

As for smart guns, as I said before, I advocate at least one manufacturer investing significant resources to develop the technology and see how the market treats their brainchild.  Will it be alive and kicking, or stillborn?  Perhaps the Obama administration should spend a billion dollars on such technology.  Will we be able to track another Solyndra in the making?

I’ve already inveighed against smart guns, saying that I’ll buy one when hell freezes over.  Are there enough people out there to make this a worthwhile investment?  In particular, I strongly recommend that H&K be the first one out of the gate.

Prior:

Manufacturers Dabble In Smart Guns

More On Smart Guns

Pushing Smart Guns

The founder of Sandy Hook Promise weighs in on firearms technology.

At present, most gun marketing is predicated on power and machismo. But what if the unique selling point of a weapon became safety features, like a trigger that only works in the hands of the gun’s owner? That, in a nutshell, is the aim of the Sandy Hook Promise Innovation Initiative.

The initiative will pull together the tech and venture capital communities to form a Technology Committee to Reduce Gun Violence that will work to identify and foster innovations in gun and school safety and mental health research. The group will solicit proposals for the best ideas in these areas and award a prize to encourage the most promising innovations. The point is that making firearms safer could help the nation to reduce the 30,000 gun deaths a year, including nearly 19,000 that are suicides. But if that isn’t incentive enough, there’s the money, and the Volvo lesson, to consider.

Starting with the three-point seat belt in the late 1950s, Volvo introduced safety features, from head restraints to side impact protection systems. Sales grew tenfold. By the time the first mandatory seat belt use was enacted in New York state in 1984, Volvo’s market share hit a record.

Budding gun entrepreneurs could become rich by emulating Volvo’s golden years. Weapons manufacturers could first and foremost tout their products’ safety features. And public policy could guide them along that path.

New Jersey, for instance, has a law that would require smart gun technology in all new handguns sold three years after the state’s attorney general determines a prototype is safe and commercially available. Other states are considering similar rules.

As the Volvo story underlines, however, government action isn’t the only way to reduce America’s gun fatalities, which have remained stubbornly high for decades. The only thing more characteristically American than gun ownership is the impulse to create wealth in free and open markets. Let the innovation begin.

Yea, let the innovation begin.  But recall what we observed about the shotgun with a solid state circuit board in the stock?  Remember how obscene it was?  It is obscene because of any number of things, including control over that circuit board, traceability of that circuit board, and just as important, the introduction of a new failure mode.

Take it from a registered professional engineer.  You see that picture above with the solid state electronics inside the gun?  It is obscene.  Not only that, it’s stupid.

There are even old school shooters who don’t believe in such a thing as the grip safety (Beaver tail) on my XDm.  I am not among that crowd, but the notion that I would rely on a gun with solid state electronics for my own protection is absurd, leaving aside the problems I have with it being amenable to governmental control.

David Codrea has weighed in before (and also links a related NPR article), and Bob Owens weighs in as well.  Read them both.

I’m simply not smart enough to know whether violent FPS video games have any affect on the player in this context.  I’ve seen them before, and they bore me.  I tend to think that they cannot have an affect on the person if the tendency to violence isn’t already there.  The problem is evil.  Evil is in the heart of man (Jeremiah 17:9 and Mark 7:21), and only God can change the heart.

For me it’s simple.  Maybe I am looking at this as a firearms purist, but as I said before, I’ll purchase such a gun when hell freezes over.

Manufacturers Dabble In Smart Guns

More On Smart Guns

WBUR:

“Smart guns,” or guns that will only fire for an authorized owner, are back on the radar.

The White House has called for pushing ahead with smart gun technology.

James Bond has one in the movie “Skyfall,” but in the real world, the technology is not quite there yet, according to smart gun activist and investor Jonas McCord.

McCord’s company Biomac Systems is working on smart gun technology, and he’s not alone.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology has been working on a gun that will recognize the owner’s grip.

Trigger Smart, an Irish company, relies on radio frequency embedded in the gun and in a ring or bracelet the owner is wearing. Without the owner’s ring or bracelet, the gun will not fire.

Armatix GmbH, a German company, has a personalized gun it hopes to put on the market in the U.S. this year. The gun will only shoot if it’s in range of a radio device which carries the owner’s biometric data.

I hope they spend a lot of money on it and get it on the market soon.  Let the market tell them what something like this is worth.  Like I said before.  When hell freezes over.

Believe it or not.

Manufacturers are looking into new sensor and biometric technology to restrict gun use to the owner.

They’re called smart guns. When placing a sensor ring on the gun, it shoots. Without it, it can’t.

It’s part of technology designed so only the authorized user can fire the weapon.
Another design uses biometric technology that recognizes your grip.

“One of the major designs is where it accepts either a fingerprint or a thumb print so it will release the firing pin or the trigger area so that it can fire, so if it doesn’t recognize it, it won’t allow the gun to fire,” says Santa Maria gun shop manager Joe Degeus.

Making it useless, if the gun were to fall into the hands of a child or a criminal.

“It is kind of like James Bond,” says Degeus. “But you got to remember, with technology comes the opportunity for more mistakes.”

Gun owners say it sounds good in theory but argue the technology is lacking.

“If that system jams up or if we have a problem with it, I’m in a bad situation,” says gun owner Joshua Miller. “Because the criminal that’s coming at me…he’s not going to have any limitations so his gun’s going to fire every time.”

Take it from a registered professional engineer.  You see that picture above with the solid state electronics inside the gun?  It is obscene.  Not only that, it’s stupid.

There are even old school shooters who don’t believe in such a thing as the grip safety (Beaver tail) on my XDm.  I am not among that crowd, but the notion that I would rely on a gun with solid state electronics for my own protection is absurd, leaving aside the problems I have with it being amenable to governmental control.

Every gun you have should be capable of personal defense.  Some guns (and cartridges) are better for concealment, some better for target shooting, some better for more sophisticated and formal competition such as 3-gun or IDPA, some are better for hunting, and some are best for personal defense.

But whether .17 HMR, 5.6 mm or .338, every gun you have should be at least minimally capable of use in some sort of defensive situation, even if not the best suited for that purpose.  This is true because you might be in a position where you have to pick it up and use it for that very purpose in a crisis.

Having solid state electronics as yet another failure mode in any of those guns is not an option for me, and I suspect, for 99% of all other shooters.  So here’s a note to manufacturers.  You go right ahead and “dabble” in smart gun technology.  I will purchase such a gun when hell freezes over.