{"id":65060,"date":"2021-02-20T12:20:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T18:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65060"},"modified":"2021-02-20T12:20:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T18:20:44","slug":"65060","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65060","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

SMART GUNS? DUMB POLICY<\/a><\/p>\n

President Joe Biden said he\u2019s figured it all out. Guns can be made safe if the firearm industry would just team up with Silicon Valley to create bio-enabled so-called \u201csmart guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is according to a long-buried\u00a0interview<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0with the Las Vegas Sun conducted during the presidential campaign. The information contained in it is just now coming to light and some of the findings might show why. President Biden, as a candidate, was making outlandish pie-in-the-sky claims about theoretical, unproven and unreliable firearm technology.<\/p>\n

President Biden claimed, according to this interview, \u201cI also dealt with the folks in Silicon Valley; we have the capacity now to build any weapon where it can only be fired with your biometric marker. And that technology doesn\u2019t violate anyone\u2019s Second Amendment right at all. If you pass the background check, you can purchase a weapon which only you can pull the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart Gun\u2019s Failing Grade<\/h4>\n

He\u2019s right on one count. As vice president, he did deal with tech leaders to attempt combining authorized-user, or so-called \u201csmart gun\u201d technology into firearms. It didn\u2019t work. It didn\u2019t get to the point where it could even be properly tested.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then-Vice President Biden was in charge of an Obama administration task force to come up with gun control answers. One was to pursue so-called \u201csmart gun\u201d tech through\u00a0the National Institutes of Justice<\/strong><\/a>. Officials there couldn\u2019t even test a prototype because nothing was developed to the point where a safe and reliable product incorporating such a capability was available on the marketplace today. It still isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives\u2019 (ATF) Earl Griffith, chief of the Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division\u00a0said<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0the technology still wasn\u2019t there. \u201cSome critics out there would say we have the technology and it would work, but I\u2019ll tell you we don\u2019t think the technology is there yet,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

That was after the U.S. government sunk at least $12.6 million in research to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to work with the tech industry to produce a working solution. It still eludes, but that doesn\u2019t keep President Biden from dreaming.<\/p>\n

Campaign Promises<\/h4>\n

Early on in the presidential campaign, President Biden\u00a0claimed<\/a>,<\/strong>\u00a0\u201c\u2026 we have the capacity now in a James Bond-style to make sure no one can pull a trigger unless their DNA and fingerprint is on it.\u201d That\u2019s some serious science-fiction fantasy technology. It makes for a good movie. In real life, it\u2019s clumsy and failure prone at best and impossible at worst.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s campaign trail claim of DNA-enabled smart guns is completely false. No one has introduced technology that would match a DNA sample to activate a firearm. However, attempts have been made at fingerprint-style authorized user-technology. Think of the way a fingerprint is used to open a smartphone. Now, think of all the times a smartphone won\u2019t open when a fingerprint is applied. A little wet, not the right angle, dirty, God-forbid bloody\u2026 all these can cause a failure of the fingerprint lock to not activate the technology.<\/p>\n

In a life-or-death situation when an individual is under duress and trying to activate the tool that would save their lives, swiping a fingerprint screen is the last concern. If your iPhone doesn\u2019t open, you\u2019re inconvenienced. If your firearm doesn\u2019t work at the moment you need it you could be dead. That\u2019s why study and survey work on this topic show that reliability is of\u00a0paramount concern<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>Because the technology is not yet sufficiently reliable, there is very limited consumer interest in purchasing authorized-user equipped firearms.<\/p>\n

Unwanted Mandate<\/h4>\n

Just five percent of those\u00a0surveyed<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0said they would consider purchasing a gun equipped with this technology. A full 70 percent said they had reliability concerns. They should. Firearms are more than just recreational target shooting tools. They\u2019re also self-defense tools and in a life-or-death moment, they must work each and every time as intended. There is no room for a second attempt at a fingerprint match or battery failure.<\/p>\n

Let me be explicitly clear, contrary to the false claims of gun control groups the firearm industry does not oppose the research and potential development of this technology being applied to firearms. Consumers are best left to decide what they want and the free market does a good job of weeding out bad ideas so good ones flourish. What NSSF strongly opposes, however, is the mandate of such technology, like what has recently been proposed by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). She introduced H.R.<\/strong>\u00a01008<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong>\u00a0legislation that would\u00a0mandate<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that every gun sold within five years be equipped with the unworkable technology. It goes further. It also would require all legacy firearms be retrofitted within 10 years. That\u2019s sure to go over well with collectors.<\/p>\n

The firearm industry also has serious concerns about product liability. Even the DOJ\u2019s researchers agree that any so-called \u201csmart gun\u201d technology has to be as reliable as present-day technology. There\u2019s no room for failure. That\u2019s what good engineering does \u2013 it eliminates points of failure. This is a particularly important concept for tools that are used to defend innocent lives. Forcing manufacturers to adopt this unproven and unreliable technology exposes them to lawsuits when it fails, and it will. It also\u00a0exposes<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0them to allegations that models that previously didn\u2019t incorporate \u201csmart gun\u201d technology are potentially \u201cdefectively designed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Product reliability will be demonstrated when the government adopts this technology for the firearms used by the Department of Defense or federal, state and local law enforcement. So far, however, none have stepped up eager to slap a microchip and fingerprint reader in the side of a service firearm. The National Fraternal Order of Police\u00a0warned<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that police officers should not be used as guinea pigs. Not a single police department has adopted and mandated their use. It is an anathema on the battlefield where a soldier could be left defenseless if he or she couldn\u2019t pick up a gun in a firefight to defend themselves and others. It\u2019s easy to\u00a0understand<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0why. The technology isn\u2019t reliable and if it is electronic, it is vulnerable to hacking or denial of service.<\/p>\n

This is what gun control advocates won\u2019t admit. There\u2019s nothing that they promise can\u2019t be done through so-called smart gun technology that\u2019s not already available by less expensive and more reliable means. The solution to ending unauthorized use of firearms is properly applied gun locks. That can be as simple as the cable locking device that comes with the firearm, which the firearm industry has provided in the gun case when they\u2019re sold at retail. There are other options too, like trigger locks, lock boxes or safes.<\/p>\n

President Biden and his collaborators in Silicon Valley should take a drive through the rest of America. Americans prefer their elected officials to be a little smarter and their firearms to be left alone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SMART GUNS? DUMB POLICY President Joe Biden said he\u2019s figured it all out. Guns can be made safe if the firearm industry would just team up with Silicon Valley to create bio-enabled so-called \u201csmart guns.\u201d This is according to a long-buried\u00a0interview\u00a0with the Las Vegas Sun conducted during the presidential campaign. The information contained in it … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,36,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-gun-schtuff","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65061,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65060\/revisions\/65061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}