I was speaking to a law enforcement officer.
He came home from a bad day at work, and left his gun on the kitchen table.
And when he was in the other room, he fell asleep,
and his kid found the gun.
His wife was able to intervene and take the firearm away from his kid,
and so nothing happened.
But let’s say his wife hadn’t been home.
That could have been a very very bad situation.
If that had been a smart gun, it would have been different.
With a smart gun, the kid finds the gun, it’s gonna be locked.
We want change! We want change!
Americans have never been more politically engaged on the issue of gun violence.
And yet, attempts at widespread gun control laws keep hitting a brick wall.
As the gun debate rages on, some are considering a different kind of solution –
one that could have a huge impact on certain kinds of gun violence.
A smart gun is a gun that can only be used by the owner, either because
of biometrics, that is, fingerprint, or some other technology.
Smart guns could prevent thousands of suicides, let’s start there.
If a teenager wants to kill himself and the easiest means is their father or mother’s
gun, they’re unable to do that.
It wouldn’t stop all mass shootings, but it would stop some of them, because so often
in mass shootings, the young man is using a gun that isn’t actually theirs.
So smart guns could have a profound effect in terms of gun safety in America.
My name is Kai Kloepfer. I’m the founder of Biofire Technologies,
an early-stage startup based here in Boston.
Basically what we’re doing is incorporating fingerprint sensors or other authentication methods into firearms.
Our prototype, as far as I know it’s the first fingerprint smartgun in the world.
So we’ve got our live-fire prototype here.
What this is is we’ve taken an off-the-shelf firearm and incorporated
all of our technology into it.
So uh, this is my teammate Luke.
We’ve got this here, it’s programmed to me.
And so if I hand it to you here, um got it?
And you put your finger on the sensor here, it’s just gonna flash white.
So no matter how much he pulls on the trigger, it’s just gonna be completely locked.
But if I take it, and do the exact same thing, it’s gonna go red.
And what that means is if I close the slide here, it’s gonna fire.
I’ve been involved in the smart gun space for about 6 years now.
I originally got into it as a sophomore in high school.
I thought, well of course smart guns are gonna work.
Like, I understand the technology, and I’ve shot guns, I’ve used guns in the past.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to combine these, right?
It turns out that, at the time, if I’d talked to pretty much anybody, most people would
have probably told me that was impossible.
There is no smart gun available in the United States today, because
2nd amendment absolutists are vehemently opposed to smart guns.
A safe gun is one that fires when you pull the trigger every single time.
If tech companies can’t make electronics that are 100% reliable, how are
firearms companies supposed to do it?
When you need a firearm, there is zero time to be messing with rebooting your gun.
The government could turn these things off.
They could be like, well, there’s a natural disaster in Florida, let’s turn all the
guns off for a while, for their own protection.
I swear, if one more liberal tells me how I have to live my life, my head’s gonna explode!
As if this basic level of mistrust weren’t enough, one state’s attempt to mandate
smart gun technology has made things even worse.
There’s a law that was passed in New Jersey, it’s called the Childproof Handgun Act,
that says that in New Jersey, once a smart gun is available anywhere in the United
States, all guns sold in New Jersey after a certain time period have to be smart guns.
So if you try to sell a firearm in, say, Texas – a smart gun – that is going to trigger
the New Jersey law.
What that did was, anytime someone has thought about selling a smart gun anywhere in the
United States, there’s been some pushback.
There are several instances in recent years where a store had decided they were
going to carry a smart gun from Europe.
And because of New Jersey, the store owner received so many threats of violence against him
that he decided not to carry the smart gun.
So basically mob violence has kept smart guns off the market.
New Jersey, everybody involved, including the state senators that initially
introduced the bill, have realized that it didn’t quite work the way they intended.
So that law is in the final stages of being repealed; that is on its way out the door.
This technology can only have impact if people are choosing to buy it
instead of traditional firearms.
We would much rather have the opportunity to get this out there and prove to people
that it’s a superior product that people want to buy.
All right, well we’re about to do a live fire demo here.
You can see if I put my finger on it, it’s gonna go red.
And then when I come up here to fire…
And that’s sort of all there is to it.
NARR: Kai still faces a lot of challenges.
Many potential buyers could be put off by the unreliability of fingerprint readers under
wet or dirty conditions.
And past attempts at smart guns have been unaffordable for most buyers,
because of the high-tech electronics involved.
But if his startup can get a smart gun on the market, it just might inspire
bigger gun companies to do the same.
The gun industry’s in a slump now, a terrible slump.
The great irony of course is that the president, Donald Trump, is a big gun supporter.
And that’s the reason so many fewer guns are being sold, ‘cause gun owners aren’t afraid
anymore that someone’s gonna take their gun away.
So one really strong reason for getting a smart gun on the market
is that it’s a new technology, and it’s a new product.
I think it’s inevitable that smart guns will take their place alongside
not-smart guns in America.
Actually solving gun violence is gonna be a big task.
You know, this is not something that can be solved just with smart guns.
But I think technology has a role to play.
If I can even save one life, I think that’s worth it at the end of the day.
And this honestly has the opportunity to save a lot more than that.