At Townhall.com: Democrats Keep Pushing Smart Guns

Jul 3, 2019 | Featured

Dr. John Lott has a new piece at Townhall.com on the constant push by Democrats for so-called “smart guns.”

Perhaps former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats should watch fewer James Bond movies. Biden announced at the Democratic presidential debates last week, “We should have smart guns. No gun should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could pull that trigger. It’s within our right to do that.”

Biden isn’t alone. Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy promises to soon sign a law mandating that each gun dealer in the state carry a smart gun, once one becomes commercially available.

Despite the promise that this innovation will prevent  firearms from being used against their owners and reduce gun theft, this technology is more likely to endanger lives than to save them.

These “smart” guns use a fingerprint or palm reader — something akin to what is available on smart phones. Or they can utilize a radio signal from a wristwatch worn by the owner.

This proposal is nothing new for Biden, who headed up the Obama administration’s push for new gun control regulations. In 2016, he asserted that an “overwhelming majority” of Americans fully support “smart guns”. Biden claimed that this technology “could have gigantic payoff for us,” and proposed using federal grants to encourage police departments to adopt it. The idea was to prevent officers’ guns from being used against them.

In the five years from 2013 through 2017, 7 police officers were murdered with their own guns. This is slightly more than 1 per year, out of 670,279full-time law enforcement officers. Those possible saved lives have to be balanced off against the risks from using these guns.

Police have been less than thrilled about experimenting with these new types of guns. “We have some very, very serious questions,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Imagine police arriving on a crime scene and finding that their guns can’t fire, because of interference with the radio signals. The German-made Armatix iP1 has been jammed with radio waves and hasn’t proved useful in preventing theft as it was hacked with $15 worth of magnets.

Should police rely on fingerprint technology instead? The iPhone supposedly has state-of-the-art finger print scanners, but anyone who uses the device knows that the technology is far from 100% reliable. The phone won’t unlock if your finger is positioned in the wrong way, or if it is slightly damp or dirty. For police, a few second delay may mean the difference between life and death.

Another problem is that the recoil from firing the gun can damage sensitive electronics. This is especially true of larger caliber guns. The gun that is currently available is a mere .22-caliber LR handgun and costs about $1,200, about $800 to $900 more than the cost of a similar gun without the “smart” features.  But the .22-caliber LR bullet is much smaller than the 9mm ammunition used in typical police handguns, and packs a lot less stopping power, something that is valued by both police and civilians who are using a gun defensively.

Even if the price of these guns falls to the point of being only a few hundred dollars more costly than other firearms, the expense will be too high for many Americans. These laws will disarm the very people who are the most likely victims of violent crime — poor blacks living in high-crime urban areas.

But Democrats seem only too happy to increase the price of guns. As with the push for expanded background checks, it’s hard not to think that these laws aren’t yet another way of reducing gun ownership.

Gun control advocates only seem to look at the potential benefits of gun control. But if they really want to save lives, they have to finally acknowledge that these laws present real safety hazards.

The rest of the piece is available here.

johnrlott

1 Comment

  1. S Hendricks

    In 1941 A.E. Van Vogt wrote his novel “The Weapon Shops of Isher” the tag line of which is: “The Right to buy arms is the right to be free.” This was certainly true in 1941 and resonates very loudly today when the entire legal and moral framework of civilization is under attack.

    In this novel a weapon was made available which was keyed to it’s owner. It was also fully automatic and responded instantly to a threat. The user had to active put his finger on a switch to stop it from firing, rather than to cause it to fire.

    This situation came into play because the government, in this instance, was highly corrupt and wanted to enslave the people. This is undoubtedly an example based on the principles that the Founders of the United States recognized, that there is a possibility that the government may go rogue and need to be replaced. With the newly elected members of congress, this seems to be a real threat.

    The fabulous automatic gun, did not exist then or now. The theory is interesting, but a firearm is an device that MUST be available instantly, not after a delay. A trained shooter (which very fortunately the Police almost never have to face) can draw and fire in .02 seconds time. The Armatix owners, even when it was functioning properly experienced delays of up to 30 seconds.

    Similarly, a handgun locked in a safe, will take several seconds to make ready to fire. While some politicians think this is an improvement over having a firearm ready to fire (because a VERY SMALL number of children have killed themselves and other with unsecured guns) the result of delay is likely to be death as well. While it’s tragic that children sometimes die from firearms, many more of them die from poison, falls, and being run over by their parents. The inordinate emphasis on recognizable firearms is inappropriate and will get people killed, just as gun free zones do.

    Talking about tools. A HUGE number of people will be injured with common tools. Everything from splinters from the use of hammers, to cuts from lawn mowers, knives, etc. injure and kill far more people than firearm accidents. This nation’s politicians are far too concerned with self promotional grandstanding to appeal to ignorant persons who have no idea what is truly important and proportional.

    Virtually NOTHING that politicians do concerning gun violence has had any effect for the past several decades. Their activities, in fact, have increased violent behavior which is, in many instances, caused by the same persons repeatedly.

    We know what works to stop gun violence. It’s stop and frisk. It’s highly manned patrols of high crime areas. It’s removing people with proven violent tendencies from society.

    We have the ability to reduce of eliminate ALL forms of violent sociopathic behavior if we use common sense and act on the source of the violence, which is violent people, not inanimate tools.

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