Smart guns, guns without a market.

I've been fascinated with firearms for as long as I can remember, both on it's impact in history and as a mechanical device. From the precise clockwork of a Colt Single Action Army (the classic cowboy revolver) to the utter simplicity of the AK-47. If I were to make a list of my top inventors, John Moses Browning would be somewhere near the top.

The Browning M1895, the first successful gas-operated machine gun. 

For most of their existence guns have been a purely mechanical device, with some exceptions, like battery-powered, multi-barreled gatling guns. But aside from that, guns ran on springs, locks, gears, pistons and switches. Which brings us to today, with one group or another demanding that computerized locking devices be installed in guns.

Lately politicians have been trying to push so-called smart guns into the market, to the extent of trying to legislate it into the market to no avail. At best the gun owning community in general views smart guns with distrust and suspicion and at worst and attempt a backdoor gun-control via a "kill switch" signal that would permanently disable a smart gun. Basically, what happens in this scene in Metal Gear Solid 4 where the antagonist Liquid Ocelot remotely disables every smart gun on the planet... including those used by the military and police.

Hideo Kojima prediction the potential vulnerabilities of smart guns back in 2008. 

In fact, arms control plays a key role in the game's plot, being used to control populations and steer wars to their most profitable outcomes. The player is actually required to have guns that they find "jailbroken" to be able to use them.

For the most part, the gun owning community not only has no interest in smart guns, but out right shuns them and anyone even in the same room as them. Many on social media will flat out say that they will not trust their life to a computer controlled device, and given the various hacks and glitches we see happen with electronic devices who can blame them? Would you want a fire extinguisher that had an electronic lock instead of just a pin to activate? The more you add to a system the more things that can go wrong.

The other reason, is typical partisan politics. In New Jersey, Democrats had passed a law that would mandate all handguns for sale in the state were required to be smart guns after 3 years of being properly vetted and on the market. What instead happened was this essentially made smart-guns the equivalent of cancer, and the stores that did have plans to stock them were bombarded with protests, threats of boycotts, and old fashioned hate mail, to the point that German smart gun maker Armatix was practically run out of the industry by consumers in the US. The NJ law's days seem to be numbered, but the earth has already been salted. Having seen the Democrats try to unilaterally force this unwanted technology on community has only made the technology shunned even more.

Which brings us to this kid, Kai Kloepfer. For a smart gun symposium co-sponsored by Ron Conway, he created a fingerprint lock for a Glock pistol. Conway has heaped generous portions of praise on Kloepfer calling him "The Mark Zukerburg of guns" (no if anything Mark Zukerburg is the Mikhail Kalashnikov of social media, though even then I'm reluctant to compare Zukerburg to a legend like Kalashnikov). According to the article Kloepfer spend four years working on this, and to a degree I feel bad for him.

Because it's four years of his life he won't get back.

Ron Conway can praise Kloepfer all he wants. Him and the whole tech industry can tell Kloepfer that he'll "save America." But the simple fact of the matter is, this is a gun no one wants. Conway can accuse the industry for not innovating, but the maxim of "necessity is the mother of invention" stands true, and in the gun market there is no demand for smart-guns. No demand = no necessity. The only demand for them you'll find for them beyond politicians are collectors that see them as an oddity. In fact, if a company wants to stay in business and not be treated the equivalent of a Biblical leaper, the necessity is to not develop smart-guns, lest the consumer turn on you and do the economic/market equivalent of a lynching to you they way they did to Armatix.

Napster and Facebook are one thing, the centuries old firearms market is another.

"Kai Kloepfer didn't grow up surrounded by guns."

And that's the thing. He's from outside the gun-owning community, he doesn't why they do what they do, and think what they think. I'm not holding that against him, I'm just making an observation. He's on the outside making assumptions. Industry insiders like gun companies, on the other hand, do understand the community and are more often than not, a part of that community. They know, that the community has no demand for smart-guns, and in fact, the community will turn against you for even thinking about making a smart-gun, thanks to politics.

Being a teenager who grew up in an era of smartphones, battery powered devices might be an extension of his being, and while he might think his method if fail-proof, the fact of the matter is, it's still powered by a battery, it still adds another factor to mechanical device, adding yet another thing to a proven design that can fail. Pump shotguns are still in use for home defense because they are so simple and therefore reliable.

Kloepfer says the market for his invention is a generation of owners who look a lot like him. They’ve grown up in a world where technology and gun violence are both omnipresent. When they shop for a gun, “they’re looking for the same things they look for in a smartphone,” Kloepfer says. 

I don't know where he gets this impression actually. I've been in various gun shops across California and have conversed with shopkeepers and other customers and not once have I seen anyone asking about a "smart-gun", If anything the "owners who look a lot like him" (male teenagers) tend to lean towards the tacticrapped out AR-15s and AK-47s like what they use in Call of Duty or Battlefield, with all the optics, laser sights, and what not. I've had several prospective gun owners and new shooters approach me with questions. Not one had anything to do with smart-guns. Owners and prospective owners "who look a lot like him" are interested in high-tech "tactical" accessories, they want to feel like they're handling a military M-4 in a SOPMOD configuration with things with names like ACOG and EoTech, not feel like they're handling an "Apple iRifle".

Based on personal observations, younger guys are looking for things like this when they shop for a gun. They're not looking for Apple features. 

The other thing, is that "gun violence" is not omnipresent. Well maybe coverage of it is because of said technology. But according to the FBI violent crime has been on a downward trend since the '90s, continuing downward even after the sunset clause kicked in on Bill Clinton's useless Assault Weapon Ban and George W Bush refused to renew it.

“This is a world where a Model T is competitive with a Tesla,” says Kloepfer.

Again, this just tells me that this kid doesn't understand the community, the industry or firearms in general. While no one compares a Model T to something like Porsche Cayman GT4, both cars do run on engines that operate on the same principal, it's V6 385hp engine is just decades worth of refinement on the 4 cylinder 20hp internal combustion engine of the Model T. The analogy would be a French MAS-40 with a direct impingement gas system from 1940, and the SR-25 sniper rifle (think of it as a hot rodded M-16) that went into service in 2000 as the Porsche, no one says a MAS-40 is competitive with an SR-25. They use the same operating principals, but the SR-25 is a much more refined incarnation. If we're going to keep using this car analogy, then the Model T would be the M1895 in the cut-away picture you saw earlier, and the Tesla would be a the electric powered M134 Minigun (think, the big multi-barreled machine gun that Arnold uses in Terminator 2). Nobody is trying to say the M1895 is competitive with an M134.

In short Kloepfer doesn't really know what he's talking about.

At the end of the day though, this is nothing more than a quixotic crusade on Kloepfer's part because market principals still apply. No matter how great something it doesn't mean it's going to be profitable or have market penetration when there is no demand. Given the impressions that he has and statements he's made Klopefer seems to miss the fact that there is little to no demand for this product. Let alone an understanding of why there isn't a demand. Even his company's attempt to get Chris Cheng's endorsement only lead to Cheng pointing out that the community will be slow to embrase something unproven and that smart guns have a bad rap in the community because of politics. All Kloepfer has created is another incarnation of the industry pariah. As far as their target audience, gun-owners and prospective gun-owners, are concerned, the smart-gun industry may as well be a leaper colony, and the people that this device would impress and win praise from, are people who are against owning guns, and therefore have no intention of buying a gun to begin with.

The funny thing is, had Democrats not played fast and easy with other people's constitutional rights and left the matter to the market, there might actually be some smart guns on the market and not be treated like airborne ebola. Due to the fact that Kloepfer and Conway are outsiders to the gun community, and that due to political reasons there simply isn't any demand for their product among their target audience, this product and likely the entire Biofire company will be a bigger bomb than anything the daesh has suicided with. I think it should actually be in the market to let the consumer decide, but whether it lives or dies by it's own merit should be left up to the consumer, not ignorant law makers trying to create an artificial market with artificial demand though legislative fiat to score points with emotionally driven voters.

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with a "smart" device on a gun that I was using for purely sporting purposes. Something where if I have a electronic related malfunction I can call "Time" and resolve the issue. But for something like a home defense 12ga pump shotgun? No fucking way.