Digital Gun Control - Useful or Annoying?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was reading a book which discussed examples of dangerous goods. The book essentially claimed some manufacturers and members of the supply chain had been successfully sued for not properly ensuring the wellbeing of others when the technology existed to do so.

The book used the example of using a sort of digital fingerprint for gun control, so that only that purchaser could fire that gun. It was implied this technology exists, and the law about forcing manufacturers to use it revolves around its costs and accuracy. Nevertheless, the state of New Jersey was said to have passed some restrictions along these lines.

In other threads on gun control, I have been persuaded the laws are often strong, and that further restrictions on gun control tend to hurt law-abiding owners much more than those who would intentionally misuse them. Nevertheless, I am keen to hear arguments before and against such a proposal. Knowing little about the issue, is the book accurate in its summary? Are costs prohibitive? Does it actually work? Does the idea have merit?

2

Years ago, I mentioned in a gun thread something about a fingerprint or otherwise ‘smart’ gun that would need to be within range of the owner (or the owner’s phone, or something the owner kept on them that would maintain a bluetooth or RFID type connection).
One of the problems that was pointed out was that if, for the sake of argument, you need to use the gun and it fails to properly pair, you’ll get yourself into even more trouble. Along the lines of ‘shooting’ someone only to have them realize the gun wasn’t loaded.
IIRC the technology exists and ‘smart’ guns can be purchased, but people worry about them not working all the time. If you have a smart key for your car that automatically unlocks the door when you touch/pull the handle. Think about how often you have to do it more than once because it didn’t pair with your fob quickly enough.
Keep in mind, many people that carry (open or concealed), carry with one in the chamber and the safety off. They’re not going to want to input a finger print or make sure it’s paired to their smartwatch.

I’d also wager a lot of people don’t want their (mechanical) guns to be reliant on always having a charged battery and a working relay or solenoid or whatever locks it out when it’s not paired.

I think another question is, what protection would this provide? It would really only stop someone from shooting the gun without the device it pairs to…until they disable it. So maybe if I stole your gun I couldn’t shoot you with it once I was more than a few feet away from you, until I had time to disable the safety.

3

I think you are talking about smart guns, or guns that can’t be fired by anyone but the owner due to some biometric interlock.
There was a law passed in New Jersey in 2002 that unintentionally delayed their release. The law basically required all guns sold in New Jersey to be smart as soon as any smart gun was available somewhere. the backlash nearly drove S&W out of business. New Jersey updated the law to require gun sellers to offer at least one smart gun, instead of only smart guns.

4

I think this is a reasonable concern. I have to re-finger print my phone/computer twice a year because my skin is dry enough in the winter that the fingerprint isn’t recognized. Every few months or so my various bluetooth devices decide to do something dumb, sometimes requiring a minutes-long powercycling and repairing process. Those are minor inconveniences with consumer electronics but potentially catastrophic failures for guns.

Of course, you could argue that very few weapons actually get used that way, and that on balance guns don’t make you safer because people in your household are more likely to be shot than violent intruders. But that analysis is exactly why I don’t have a gun in the first place.

5

Speaking as someone whose workplace uses fingerprint identification and biometrics… sure, the technology is here but it is far from foolproof.

Our timeclocks and cash registers require a fingerprint to sign on. However, those of us who are older and/or have very dry skin started to have problems with these. For one thing, when you’re older your fingertip ridges don’t regenerate as fast as they do when you’re younger. When your skin is dry this also causes excessive wear. Combine this with working a lot with your hands and you can, in fact, wear the ridges on your fingers down to the point the scanners won’t recognize you. Does that mean ALL fingerprint scanners have this problem? I don’t know, but for darn sure the small, portable-size ones at work do. Also, injury to your fingers and either substantial weight loss/gain will also screw up the scanners - the fingerprint log-in scanner on my late spouse’s laptop stopped recognizing him when he lost a lot of weight.

At work, about a half a dozen of us had to be issued ID access numbers we could use in lieu of fingerprint ID. A few more had to be added to the list this year due to the effects of lots of handwashing and hand sanitizer on skin.

So… I’m not sure how popular or even practical an ID technology for a device someone might want for self-defense, or is used by law enforcement or other people with legitimate work needs for a gun, that malfunctions if you gain/lose weight, work with your hands a lot, are old, or get a cut on your trigger finger while slicing vegetables for dinner the night before.

6

Yeah, the FBI guys hated taking my prints for background checks, it tooks quite some time.

Look, it can be dont, and if you want to buy one of those guns, fine. But requiring all guns be like that is insane.

Frist, lets made the local cops try it. If they all say “OK, let’s do it!” then maybe. But they wont.

7

A couple of articles that might be helpful.

Giving a few key points to address the OP’s questions -

Are costs prohibitive? Yes, but that’s a so far. The iP1 mentioned in @Strassia’s post (great info BTW) is no longer for sale, but when it was available, ran @ $1600 -1800 (!!!) for the paired gun and watch, and was only .22 LR. Which is over 4x the cost of a normal, well made .22 Semi-auto. Prices for the next generations have not been released, and at least one is planned in the common 9mm, but prices will have to come down a lot to be seen as not burdensome.

On a note as to if it actually works… kinda/sorta. One, this is a RFID style device, so it pairs over short range to keep the pistol activated. According to the articles, people were able use a jammer to prevent it’s operation with parts costing around $20. My research into the biometric options have come up with zero prototypes, but at least one aftermarket option that was a $400 add-on and only worked on 1911 frames. Mechanically, the only test I found mentioning the iP1 found it to have substantial Failures to Fire (which were likely mechanical and could be smoothed out if it had ever made it to major production) and slowness in pairing.

Does the idea have merit. Now we’re into IMHO territory. I’m a gun owner, and currently have a permit to carry concealed, although I rarely do so. Would I buy a smartgun if they worked out the flaws? Probably not, because I already own my own weapons. Even if it was able to get costs to say, 25-50% above a ‘dumb’ weapon, it would be why buy a pricy new car when the current one works as well or better?

Now, if I had kids in the house, I would probably have 2 or 3 more thinks, but honestly, I’d probably sell or get rid of them if that were the case. I care about home defense and preparation, and have previously been in a job where self defense was a concern, but not now. Which brings me to my personal concern - the people who would likely be the marketing target of the smartgun are first time buyers, the ones who would have the least experience in protecting themselves from all the ways firearms and their safety features can fail, smart or not.

Personally, unless a smartgun program is paired with a (very) expensive gun buyback initiative, it’s not going to get rid of the issue with the countless ‘dumb’ firearms that will remain in the system. The more . . . adamant . . . members of the firearms community will actually put a premium on such weapons, and on the other hand, confiscating/banning all ‘dumb’ guns but allowing smart guns seems like a half-step doomed to piss off both sides.

My final $0.02. There isn’t (yet) a good test bed for these. If any of the companies mentioned in the article gets a solid model out of prototyping, in a useable caliber, and meeting the dependability requirements of the police, that would be the best next step. Police departments have regular churn of old weapons (I own a post Detroit PD pistol that they sold via a retail estabilshment), and are probably the most at risk of someone using a personal firearm against them. If it works to their specifications, then we’d be in a good place to move forward on a nationwide level.

But absent substantial political changes or financial investment, it does nothing to address the millions of existing weapons, most of which will last decades (or longer) with even the most basic care. So . . . it’s worth looking at, I just don’t think it will be an effective answer. We will probably be looking at generational changes in attitudes making a big difference in legislation before the existing weapons are old enough to be replaced.

8

The three main technologies I have seen are fingerprint based (garbage as above), RFID, or using a special watch/bracelet, usually a magnetic technology. All are pretty easy to subvert, for example the last one was demonstrated at DEFCON 2017.

9

Is there much of a market for gently used kids? :slightly_smiling_face:

Echoing a couple comments above, spending a couple weeks in the alkali dust at Burning Man would burn my prints off to the point of being unreadable. I knew this because, volunteering to be a school mentor, I had to get fingerprinted every year in mid-September right after I got back. It took several tries for the fingerprint guy to get good prints, even with the fancy glass plate machines.

10

Guns are an extremely rugged, mature technology where reliability and functionality has been refined to near perfection on them. Modern guns almost never suffer mechanical failures that prevent them from working when you need them.

If you were to introduce some sort of authentication system, you would add several new modes of failure. Batteries on both the receiver and the transmitter. Correctly reading the fingerprint/transponder item. Having to use the gun even if you’re not wearing your special transponder item. I would guess that such a requirement would make guns at least 10 times less reliable. If you’re ever in a situation where you need your gun because there is imminent harm to you or someone you protect, would you be okay with a 10x higher failure rate?

Additional steps, if required, like authenticating a fingerprint would also add a difficulty to use a weapon in a high stress, time critical situation.

There is additional cost, which is inherently discriminatory towards the poor. The poor have the same right of self defense as anyone else, and attempts to price them out of the market are discriminatory.

If these systems are so great, why are police not using them? Their right to self defense is not greater than mine. If police departments started using them, we might be at the point where the technology is mature enough to start considering this, but certainly not before then.

11

Of course smart guns won’t always work. That’s the whole point of them: They’re supposed to fail to work under certain circumstances.

The question, as always, is what are the numbers? How often does a gun get used that shouldn’t be, compared to how often one gets used that should be?

12

I was clearly describing a situation in which they were designed to work and should have worked and failed due to an unreliability in the system. That is not at all the same thing as them correctly refusing to work because they were attempted to be used by someone who wasn’t authorized.

Your question is relevant, but your first statement mischaracterizes what I said and draws an invalid comparison.

13

Huh? That’s like complaining about smart keys for cars. But the complain being that I can’t start your car without a your key. The problem in this thread is that your own key only works half the time.
IOW, failing when it shouldn’t, not failing when it should.

As for this part of the question, I assume part of this is about preventing kids or other household members that find the gun from accidentally shooting it and part of it is about making it more difficult to use a stolen gun. The numbers will vary greatly depending on what you’re looking at.
I’m willing to bet a small number of accidental shootings happen because someone was playing with a gun they found but a whole lot of purposeful shootings happen with guns that have been stolen or otherwise illegally gotten.
One of the questions needs to be, in addition to the gun being reliable to the authorized user, can we be sure it’ll be near impossible for an unauthorized user to fire?

14

As well, can the stolen gun be practically modified to bypass the smart lock? Helluva note if the authenticaion system served to reduce functionality & reliability for the legit owner, yet could be trivially bypassed or removed by the thief who steals it & resells it later to a totally unauthorized user.

15

And police officers not uncommonly have their guns taken away and used against them. I mean, it’s hardly a everyday event, but they even get training for it.

16

My last several cars have had smart keys. These have several flaws, from batteries which need occasional replacement to the purported ability of criminals to electronically boost the signal if the key is too close. But if they failed much of the time, no one would use them since this is inconvenient. But they do use them. They fail a very small percentage of the time.

Let us make the assumption that a reliable smart gun could be produced using fifty dollars worth of technology which worked the vast majority of the time. Assume overcoming these limitations required considerable effort and technical skill. Would a smart gun still be worth having?

Police departments primary focus might be on personal protection. However, a significant percentage of problems due to guns is in accidental use. How would these assumptions change things? Would they force gun manufacturers to use them? Would they be able to stay in business? It seems odd in a way that a safety measure would be unpopular, but I can see it making a marginal difference to misuse.

17

Because at $x more per gun it could be a significant cost to many departments. OTOH, if the batteries are good for two years & the PD policy is to change it annually, when the officer goes to the range to qualify that gun will be more reliable than the one a private citizen owns; look at how many people forget to change their smoke detector batteries.
A couple of years ago they came out with electronic shifting for bikes. All the pro teams started using it. If it’s good enough for the pros it’s good enough for lil ole me, right? Except when I finish my ride I don’t hand my bike off to a mechanic to clean it & prep it for the next day. A battery/charge can & will run out after so many hours/shifts & there’s no outlet near where my bikes are stored. Mechanical shifters don’t run out of juice so I never need to think about when the last time I charged it is.

How tough would it be to reprogram if you wanted to sell it or let your buddy use it at the range? Would it be too much effort for a gun store/range to put one in their rental/try it inventory as it would need to be programmed for each renter? Cold weather (wearing gloves) would defeat any fingerprint authentication. “Hold on, Mr. Mugger, would you mind lowering your knife while I remove my gloves & pull my gun out?”

18

Needless complication. A conventional gun is mechanical, it has no power source, no electronics, no fingerprint scanner. The vast majority of guns sit in storage. On the extremely rare occasions when they are needed for self defense, the need will likely be sudden and urgent and the proper operation shouldn’t be dependent on a battery and electronics working correctly at a moments notice.

I also think someone picking up a gun that’s not theirs and hurting someone with it is an very rare occurrence. If a gun is stolen, the thieves can certainly figure out how to bypass the fingerprint sensor easily.

19

Here’s one of many videos on hacking smart guns

20

Depending on what type of technology is used, could a smart gun be disabled by, say, a government entity that decided even the lawful owner did not need to have such a weapon? Sounds like conspiracy theory, I know. But still a thought to consider.