If the police aren’t comfortable defending themselves with smart gun technology, why should we be?

I would have no problem with manufacturers offering such devices as options, much as carmakers offered seat belts as options in the 1960’s. Laws mandating a one-size-fits-all technology, though, put those gun owners who believe in the KISS principle at a disadvantage.

I keep my defense guns secure from children by storing them in a locked safe. My primary gun is concealed on my person at all times.

No laws or technology can compensate for a lack of common sense.

At some point the electronics are actuating a mechanical device to arm the firearm. This device can be actuated by wiring around the ‘brains’ and directly to the actuator. Alternatively, the actuator can be mechanically jimmied.

These devices may prevent grabs, but are useless if the criminal or inquisitive child has more than a few minutes to play with the firearm.

With my mindset, I can’t wait to have them roll this out with RFID lock and a token for the authenticated user. Since these would presumeably be sold to homeowners and law enforcement types anxious to maintain control of their firearms, it would make my day - as a criminal.

As a criminal I know I would simply need to google to find out how to make a crude RF jammer and I would instantly be able to disarm all cops/homeowners anywhere around me. talk about power.

Think about how the system can work, but be perverted (hacking), not how it can fail(engineering).

great blog btw.

Second big problem is that this is a billion$$ solution, if widely deployed, to an exceptionally rare problem. 99.999% of shootings are made with the shooter being the owner, and a handful where an innocent is holding the gun. I think more would die per year from Smart Gun failures than deaths from the mode it’s design to protect against, where the shooter isn’t the owner.

As a firearm owner with children, I lock them up, problem solved. A Smart Gun would risk my family. No thanks.

-Concerned Gun Owner & InfoSec lecturer

To illustrate, one of the common rules of thumb in security circles is the 21 foot rule. Basically, someone with a holstered firearm has just enough time to draw and fire a single shot at someone making an unexpected attack (charge) from 21 feet away.

Additionally people tend to lose higher order brain functionality when placed unexpectedly in high stress situations. One of the reasons that double action handguns have become popular is that many people believe they would not successfully remember to disengage a manual safety in a high stress environment.

Given these extreme usability requirements that firearms present, biometric locks on firearms should face stiff resistance from the people actually use said tools, especially in a security context.

Finally, biometric id verification may have adverse effects. There have been stories about high end car owners who have lost fingers in the process of robberies so that the criminals could drive their cars away.

All in all, it does not seem, at this time, that biometric locks on firearms offer better security or higher usability than frame-integrated key locks.

Also, the 3 or 4 digit combination locks are also currently available for certain firearms. The problem with a combination lock is that they key is intangible and easily “copied” and you never truly know who has a key.

There are over 200,000,000 firearms in the United States so any kind of technology introduced now will only be useful for securing specific guns as retrofitting that many guns is completely impossible.

My main issue with biometrics and other gimmicks on firearms is they tempt people to rely on them which is extremely dangerous. When people handle a gun, they should know what they are doing and practice safe handling - having these devices may tempt people to rely on the device instead of safe handling practices.

Accidental gun deaths are always a problem, but in a nation of 300,000,000 people and 200,000,000 guns, annual accidental guns deaths have been steadily declining and are somewhere around the 800 per year mark. That is a little over one person per month per state.

Unfortunately, the key attribute of any firearm must be absolute reliability. Engineering approaches to most “new” weapons do not consider the real nature of this need - and the requirement that the operators which rely upon these weapons trust the weapon absolutely in all circumstances. This is a reason the concept never caught on, and it has nothing to do with cost or a lack of appreciation of the potential upside benefits.

Interesting discussion, however.

or wearing pink stars to denote they are the wrong religion

(That was meant to be an ironic comment on the fact that several battles are being waged, including also the one between the people and the power-hungry despots who rise to power in all governmental systems.)