Unsmart guns, so-called smart guns, or guns with significant impediments to being assured of reliably utilizing a firearm in self-defense, are set to hit the US market. The unSmart guns have things like digital fingerprint safety features that are intended to assure only the user can fire the weapon, the kind of safety feature you want to rely on when you face a life or death situation.
Exclusive: Smart guns finally arriving in U.S., seeking to shake up firearms market
From www.reuters.com
2022-01-11 17:32:00
Excerpt:
Jan 11 (Reuters) – Personalized smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers after two decades of questions about reliability and concerns they will usher in a new wave of government regulation.
Four-year-old LodeStar Works on Friday unveiled its 9mm smart handgun for shareholders and investors in Boise, Idaho. And a Kansas company, SmartGunz LLC, says law enforcement agents are beta testing its product, a similar but simpler model.
Both companies hope to have a product commercially available this year.
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LodeStar co-founder Gareth Glaser said he was inspired after hearing one too many stories about children shot while playing with an unattended gun. Smart guns could stop such tragedies by using technology to authenticate a user’s identity and disable the gun should anyone else try to fire it.
They could also reduce suicides, render lost or stolen guns useless, and offer safety for police officers and jail guards who fear gun grabs.
But attempts to develop smart guns have stalled: Smith & Wesson (SWBI.O) got hit with a boycott, a German company’s product was hacked, and a New Jersey law aimed at promoting smart guns has raised the wrath of defenders of the Second Amendment.
The LodeStar gun, aimed at first-time buyers, would retail for $895.
The test-firing of the LodeStar gun before Reuters cameras has not been reported elsewhere. A range officer fired the weapon, a third-generation prototype, in its different settings without issue.
Glaser acknowledged there will be additional challenges to large-scale manufacturing, but expressed confidence that after years of trial and error the technology was advanced enough and the microelectronics inside the gun are well-protected.
“We finally feel like we’re at the point where … let’s go public,” Glaser said. “We’re there.”
Most early smart gun prototypes used either fingerprint unlocking or radio frequency…