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.
In contrast, the smart guns mentioned in Obama’s directive are weapons that will only fire for an authorized user. Essentially, this means that it will work if the gun’s owner fires it, otherwise it will not. The control systems that allow for this capability are varied, with some using a smart watch, and others using a ring – with the idea being only the owner would be wearing the item that activates the weapon. Other systems add fingerprint sensors to the trigger or grip sensors to the handle, both of which use biometric data to verify the user’s identity. The hope for this type of smart gun is that they will improve gun safety and reduce the ability of criminals to acquire firearms through illegal means.
In the civilian market, there have been considerable reservations about adopting firearms that use smart technology to authorize users. Some consumers are worried that the introduction of smart guns could lead to increased gun control, or that efforts to promote smart guns are intrinsically also tied to efforts to get rid of conventional firearms. This has led to some unfortunate situations when distributors have attempted to sell smart guns in the U.S. Helmut Brandtner, Managing Director of ArmatixGmbH – which makes the iP1 smart handgun – found that “in some cases, distributors who wanted to sell the iP1 were threatened by gun owners.”
However, most smart gun opponents are worried that the electronic systems could malfunction and render the gun unusable – and gun manufacturers echo this concern. Wayne Weber, President of Heckler & Koch USA, told The Cipher Brief that he thinks, “smart gun technology still has quite a bit of research and development to undergo before it’s considered a proven technology.” Many consumer electronic devices suffer from bugs or glitches, and here the fear is that the gun could malfunction in a self-defense scenario. Simply put, the stakes for failure when it comes to firearms are viewed by many as being higher than the stakes for failure with a phone.
The future of smart guns in the United States remains uncertain, at least for civilians. While everyone agrees that increased safety is a laudable goal, some are concerned about legislation that would mandate the use of smart firearms. In 2002, New Jersey created the Childproof Handgun Law, which states that distributors in new Jersey would have to switch over to only selling smart guns within 30 months of smart handguns becoming available anywhere in the U.S. This type of legislation has proven to be a significant obstacle to smart guns gaining a foothold in the U.S.
Smart guns sit at the center of several powerful forces – from cultural values to gun control to market behavior – and that makes it very difficult to forecast how the market for such weapons will change in the future. That being said, as the technology continues to advance, and with pressure being exerted by the President to accelerate that advancement, smart guns have a better chance of breaking into the U.S. market now than they ever have before.
Luke Penn-Hall is the Cyber and Technology Producer at The Cipher Brief.
