#smart guns

>mfw reading this article

The country’s first biometric smart gun started as a Boulder teenager’s high school science fair project.

Ten years later, Kai Kloepfer is bringing his smart gun to market in what could be the first weapon to break a decades-old political and manufacturing “log jam” that has kept smart guns from mass production.

Kloepfer’s Broomfield-based company, Biofire, on Thursday announced the sale of guns that use both fingerprint and facial recognition to make sure only authorized users can fire the weapon.

His goal is to reduce accidental deaths and suicides and to keep children from accessing their parents’ weapons. The gun will allow people to have a weapon at hand but want to make sure children, visitors or criminals can’t use it.

The gun is primarily marketed for use as a weapon for home defense, Kloepfer said. Gun owners must balance keeping a weapon easily accessible in case of emergency but also secure enough that others can’t access it.

“Home defense is an area that even for firearm experts remains a frictional area,” he said.

The 2012 Aurora theater shooting sparked Kloepfer’s interest in guns. The mass shooting an hour from his Boulder County home was the first time the then-sophomore seriously thought about gun violence.

As he researched, he learned that the toll of accidental shootings and gun suicides far outpaced deaths in mass shootings.

Over the next 10 years, Kloepfer developed more than 150 versions of the prototype, raised funds, recruited staff and learned how to run a business. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but stepped away to pursue Biofire full-time.

“It’s been a wild journey,” said Kloepfer, now 26.

How the gun works

The challenge with smart guns, Kloepfer said, is creating a locking system that unlocks for an authorized user instantly, every time, and in any environment.

Fingerprint readers are relatively established technology, he said. Most smartphones have the ability to read a fingerprint, but fingerprint technology can be unreliable if a person’s hands are wet or dirty.

That’s why Kloepfer used both a fingerprint scanner on the grip and a facial recognition system built into the back of the handgun — either can unlock the weapon. Dirty fingers don’t impact the effectiveness of facial recognition and conditions that might affect facial recognition, like lighting, don’t affect fingerprints.

The gun comes with a small tablet computer that is used to register new users and a charging dock for the its battery. The system is not connected to the internet and the data is encrypted.

Biofire on Thursday started accepting orders for the gun, which starts at $1,499. Guns will start to ship out to purchasers at the end of 2023, Kloepfer said.

While the aim is to minimize deaths, adding more guns to the hundreds of millions already in circulation carries its own risk — especially if people who wouldn’t purchase a standard gun decide to buy a smart gun. The presence of a gun increases the risk of deaths by suicide and accidental shootings, said Adam Skaggs, vice president of Giffords Law Center, citing numerous research studies.

While the technology might keep that person’s child from shooting themselves, it wouldn’t stop the authorized user.

“It’s kind of a brave new world,” Skaggs said. “In theory, there will be benefits and, in theory, there will be risks by putting these guns on the market. It’s hard to say.”

Pushback on smart guns

Researchers, entrepreneurs and the gun industry have pondered the creation of a smart gun for decades.

Other companies have produced guns that can be activated by a device worn by an authorized user, like a ring. But those technologies have not proved perfect.

A German company, Armatix, created a gun that unlocked when in proximity to a linked watch. But the gun lost viability after it was discovered it could also be unlocked with $15 worth of magnets.

Some gun stores that opted to sell the Armatix product faced death threats and boycotts from people who oppose smart guns.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation — the firearm industry’s trade association — does not oppose smart guns. However, the foundation opposes any laws or regulations that mandate the sale or use of smart guns and remains concerned about technology that could prove faulty in a moment of crisis.

“A ‘smart gun’ must work as safely and as reliably as current technology,” the foundation’s position statement reads.

Some of the backlash against smart guns can be traced to a since-changed 2002 New Jersey law that required all gun shops in the state to only sell smart guns once such guns became available. The mandate violated the Second Amendment, opponents said. In 2019, New Jersey lawmakers amended the law to require that licensed firearm retail dealers make smart guns available once they are included on a state roster of approved personalized handguns.

But the opposition to smart guns goes back even further.

Gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson in 1999 promised to invest in developing a smart gun as part of an agreement with the U.S. government following the shooting at Columbine High School in Jefferson County. But the company backed away from that work after the National Rifle Association organized a boycott that nearly destroyed the company, forced the ouster of its CEO, and prompted the sale of the company.

“There have been very strong headwinds against bringing smart gun technology to market in a robust way,” Skaggs said. “It could be that this is the first one to break the log jam and get out there.”

So far, Kloepfer hasn’t received any harassment or pushback for Biofire. Early reviews of the gun have been positive, he said.

Kloepfer doesn’t believe smart guns will or should replace all firearms in the U.S. But they will provide a solution to the “uniquely American challenge of gun deaths,” he said.

It was high early afternoon. The Tower's 3.5-ton ringer tolled out 16 poms, directly on sign. By at that point, the temperature was well into the triple digits. The sun radiated down on local people and college understudies, workforce, and staff the same, all continuing on ahead and lives. August 1, 1966, was simply one more Monday in Austin, Texas. At that point somebody began shooting.

Claire Wilson was the first to be taken shots at. She was eight months pregnant. The shooter tried to hit the 18-year-old human studies understudy in the stomach area. Claire's life partner Thomas Eckman was in that spot alongside her, and took a round as he bowed to her guide. Disarray pursued as the pop of shots resonated crosswise over grounds. The projectiles simply continued coming—in different bearings, at different onlookers. In any case, where were the shots coming from check here?

In a little while, specialists detected a man, later recognized as previous US Marine and UT designing understudy Charles Whitman, roosted on the 28th floor perception deck of the college's Main Building, the University of Texas at Austin's 307-foot regulatory focus referred to just as the Tower. It's one of most notorious highlights in Austin.

For a talented expert sharpshooter twisted on silly butcher, it was the ideal spot from which to track and slaughter honest regular citizens. Whitman followed, chillingly, to the one shot, one execute marksman ethos, which means none of his exploited people were hit by follow-up shots after they'd disintegrated to the ground. At the point when it was all more than, 16 of them were dead. Whitman injured another 32, one of whom later kicked the bucket.

It was unprecedented. The Austin Tower slaughter practically without any help prompted the ascent of the cutting edge SWAT unit. About five decades on and the disaster remains as one of the principal significant mass shootings in American history, and being fairly one of a kind in that it put killing up front in the national awareness see at Guns News By Goat Gun.

By and by, America's emphasis on long-extend shooting in concentrated on Austin, yet under less horrendous conditions. Today, in the allegorical shadows of the Tower, applied innovation startup TrackingPoint Solutions is working enthusiastically to transform tenderfoot shots into exactness riflemen.

The organization stood out as truly newsworthy in mid 2013 when it divulged the accuracy guided gun (PGF). Consider it a long-extend, laser-guided robo rifle—as much Linux-based PC as customary gun. The PGF's shut circle framework contains not simply the weapon itself, a custom Surgeon rifle, yet additionally custom ammo and, strikingly, a restrictive (and WiFi-empowered) scope. The innovation stuffed into TrackingPoint's underlying PGF bundle is progressed to the point that we'd heard it could have an unpracticed shooter, possibly somebody who hasn't ever discharged a weapon, putting lead on focuses at more than 1,000 away in unimportant minutes. Not lifetimes. Not years. Minutes.

That this kind of stage is presently freely accessible—TrackingPoint takes into account trackers and game shooters, more than anything—has Peter Asaro reviewing the Tower disaster. At the point when he initially knew about the PGF and TrackingPoint's intend to increment purported "first shot achievement likelihood" Asaro, a scholar and innovation ethicist at The New School, disclosed to me that he was promptly helped to remember Whitman.

"The most distant shot he had the option to slaughter someone was 500 yards," said Asaro, who's additionally a subsidiary researcher at Stanford Law's Center for Internet and Society and an establishing individual from the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. "What's more, when taking a gander at TrackingPoint, they're ensuring precision at 1,200 yards."

Possibly you see where this is going. On the off chance that the exactness of any of the weapons in his stopgap munititions stockpile had been higher, state to the PGF's outrageous range limit, could Whitman have killed the entirety of his accidental focuses on that splendid, hot Monday in the mid year of 1966? Would he be able to have executed much more individuals?

It's hard—maybe inconceivable—to state. Yet, how about we back up.

In the event that you truly need to get at the foundation of how, in absolutely ballistic speak, TrackingPoint might just turn the guns business on its head you need to recollect that the startup, which over the previous year have developed to a staff of around 100, isn't generally a firearm organization in conventional terms. The "gun" in "exactness control gun" is only one piece of a mind boggling framework. Chief Jason Schauble said to such an extent: He revealed to me that TrackingPoint has done the same old thing as far as creating firearms appropriate. The mystery sauce, TrackingPoint's meat and potatoes, is in the degree.