Taking Aim at Smart Guns

In the wake of a series of high-profile mass shootings, President Barack Obama initiated an executive action directing the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security to increase their research on gun safety technology. The goal of this initiative is to improve public safety by making it more difficult for bad actors to use guns to commit crimes, without limiting access to guns for legitimate purposes.  A portion of this executive action is directly concerned with smart guns, which are firearms that have electronic components integrated into them. These innovative weapons have been in existence for a while but are still largely unavailable within the United States.

However, the term “smart gun” is somewhat ambiguous, and can refer to two very different types of firearms. One type of smart gun has electronic systems integrated into it in order to improve or expand its functionality. These systems can provide a number of different services, such as range-finding, expanded sensor integration, and recording information about the weapon’s use. This type of smart gun is primarily geared towards military use, where they can be integrated into advanced range-finding systems and paired with smart ammunition to provide soldiers with more accurate and reliable firepower.