At this firing range near Denver, you just load the bag
in the bottom there and then rack the slider chamber
around Kai Kleer loads a nine millimeter pistol and
pulls the trigger. Then it's my turn and I'm going to
pick it up. I pulled the trigger. Nothing happens. S
gun, same condition. That's all there is to. The gun
doesn't work for me because I'm not an authorized user.
This is a smart gun, a mash up of pistol and
programming designed to keep it from firing in the
wrong hands. That's really sort of the key part here is
as soon as I put this down, it's going to lock right.
The weapon is marketed as the world's first ever
biometric smart gun. It uses built in fingerprint and
facial recognition sensors just like on your phone. The
white light means it's trying to authenticate, trying
to recognize me. And then the green light means it's
unlocked and ready to go. In 2012. Klepper was a high
school sophomore with a talent for engineering when a
gunman opened fire in an Aurora Colorado movie theate
it inspired him to build a smart gun for a science fair
project. This is the final science fair prototype, n
a natural gun because I was 16 and it was illegal for
me to own a gun at the time. He founded Biofire in
This is where we do all of our engineering prototyp
testing. Now with about 40 employees, the company is
focused on guns for home defense marketing videos,
pistols perched on shelves in living rooms and kitchens
for home defense in particular, you need to have fast
access to that firearm and that leads to a lot of
people leaving their firearms in many cases, totally
unsecured. Klepper says his smart gun will help prevent
some of the tens of thousands of gun suicides and
accidental shootings every year My mission is firearms
are now one of the leading cause of death for Chil
and teenagers in America. And that's not something that
any gun owner I've ever talked to wants. Right. Nobody
wants their kid to find their gun. Biofire says gun
owners strongly support the ide of buying a smart gun
but there are skeptics, electronics break down, try to
get a smartphone that's over 10 years old or a tablet
that's over 10 years old and see how fast it works. A
few years ago, a hacker demonstrated for wired how a
German company, smart gun could be outsmarted by cheap
magnets. It does fire the National Rifle Association
isn't against smart guns but calls it unproven
technology saying gun owners will continue to have
legitimate concerns about firearms that collect data
can be GPS tracked or deactivated remotely or that by
legislative mandate, we will phase out access to
traditional mechanical firearms Is the gun vulnerable
to hacking. The gun is a completely closed local
hardened system. Right. So there's no wifi Bluetooth
gps, any sort of other kind of radio communications of
any kind, it's impossible to remotely compromise the
gun in any way. There's no kill switch the government
has or anything like that. The gun went through
multiple designs. Now, I would say it's been hundreds
of versions, thousands of iterations. Many look right
out of a sci fi movie. We knew pretty early on this wa
going to be so drastically different than anyt
was out there. It really was like we talk about it kind
of being the firearm from 50 to 100 years from now.
What does the future look like as fast as I can
possibly pick this up and have it on the shot It's
unlocked, right If Klepfer can convince buyers that his
gun is as reliable and quick as traditional handgu
you'll see it unlocked for you. All right. And I do
have the green light, he believes the future will
ultimately look a lot safer. Biofire has the
opportunity to have a substantive impact on what I
consider to be one of the most sort of substantive
public health problems of my generation. And I don't
really see a world where no matter who's elected, that
guns are not going to continue to be a part of American
culture if we can save one kid's life, like I would
consider that to be a net positive. Clayton Sandell r
News Broomfield, Colorado.