New Smart Gun Company Hopes To Begin Production This Summer

Lucas123 writes Safe Gun Technology (SGTi) is hoping it can begin production on its version of a smart gun within the next two months. The Columbus, Ga.-based company uses relatively simple fingerprint recognition through a flat, infrared reader positioned on the weapon's grip. The biometrics reader enables three other physical mechanisms that control the trigger, the firing pin and the gun hammer. The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible. A single gun owner could also temporarily program a friend or family member's print into the gun to go target shooting and then remove it upon returning home."

Comments

I won't be buying one...

[jsrjsr]

When I pull the trigger, I want the gun to fire. I doubt this will be reliable enough to depend upon.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[EmagGeek]

Precisely. If there is any chance at all that my gun will simply refuse to fire when I pull the trigger, I don't want anything to do with it.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[DJ Jones]

"We've dedicated well over 10 years to come up with this solution. We have a lot of people in this company who've put a lot of blood sweat and tears into it and never gotten a penny out of it. If we were in it for the money, we would have been out of it a long time ago. "Our motto is ... if we save the life of one child, it's a miracle to that child and everyone that child touches."

If they were true to their motto they should have dropped the project and donated their funding to a children's hospital 10 years ago.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[Jane Q. Public]

Qualifiers:

When I say "near 100% reliable", I'm not joking. 99.9% just isn't good enough for something I'd trust my life to. But if it approached 99.99%, then it's getting near the reliability of the gun itself, and may be good enough. That's approximately 1 error in 1000 rounds. Even that is pushing what I view as acceptable limits.

And even just given that it's battery-powered, it probably will never reach that goal in the foreseeable future.

As for its intended purpose (blocking unauthorized users), I have no doubt that it would work some of the time. But how often, given that it has to be that accurate for the authorized? I'm not confident that it would be that good at its job. It's a very difficult balancing act, and I would need a lot of convincing.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[swb]

The only safeties on most revolvers is between the ears of the person holding the gun and a heavy-ish double action trigger pull.

Some gun makers have included an internal lock on their revolvers (S&W and some Taurus) which has been controversial, although I've never had a problem with it (I don't use it, either and have never put it in the lock position).

Re:I won't be buying one...

[a1cypher]

Presumably because people buy guns for security, not just for entertainment at a range.

If you're about to be attacked/killed by a burglar and you reach for your gun and pull the trigger you want to make sure as hell that the gun works. If it doesn't work, for whatever reason, you're in a worse position than you started because now the burglar has reason to incapacitate/kill you.

I cant see this being useful for a security gun. If you reach for your gun you'll have to very consciously "unlock" it with your fingerprint. If your nervous, it's dark, or whatever, it might not recognize you. Even in the best case scenario, this unlocking will take time. Couple that with requiring a battery, and it could be trouble.

However, if this is just being used to secure less crucial weapons such as hunting rifles, or the kind that you might only ever use at a range, I could see the fingerprint being scanner being useful. It would help to prevent children or thieves from using your weapon and when you're hunting or at the range, you presumably have the time to check the batteries and swipe your finger a second time if it fails to register you the first go.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[PortHaven]

Except for all the accidental trigger pulls that have gotten Glock wielders shot. Like DEA agents. ;-)

Sorry, a Glock is designed to be utilized in a holster. I do believe it is unprofessional and irresponsible to carry a Glock without using some sort of holster/trigger protection.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[ByOhTek]

Or ricochet into spots higher than the person's foot? Or does he avoid walking on surfaces that would cause a ricochet?

If you are carrying a gun in a way that it can go off without you intending it to, then you are being irresponsible, and the concerns of the anti-gun crowd are quite warranted.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[rohan972]

a spring and a lever have a MTBF measured in millions of cycles

You fire "millions" of rounds from a single weapon?

No, he doesn't, that's the point, the MTBF of a spring and lever is far higher than normal use making failure very unlikely which is not the case with consumer grade electronic components. They say there are no stupid questions but I think you've come pretty close. Do you have an emotional response to firearms that makes thinking difficult for you?

Re:I won't be buying one...

[swillden]

I don't see a problem if he wants to carry that way.

I do. I think a case could be made for reckless endangerment, and if it goes off and hurts someone I would definitely support criminal negligence charges.

He should just get a holster. There's really no reason not to use a holster. If nothing else one of those ultra-minimalist holsters that covers nothing but the trigger guard.

Re:I won't be buying one...

[interkin3tic]

I'm guessing you mean any increased chance, since we live in the real world where everything always has a non-zero chance of not working as advertised. How much of an increased chance do these things have of failing? I'd be interested to see real data rather than conjecture. If this thing fails one out of every, I dunno, one thousand trigger pulls, that could be more reliable than your average Saturday night special.

I think you'd also want to compare, if possible, the chances of you needing to shoot someone with the chances of someone shooting you with your own gun, before concluding you're worse off with this. Whether or not you're safer with a gun in the home is controversial and heavily written about, the risks of being shot by your gun vs the likelihood of you shooting a would-be-attacker. I don't have an opinion on the subject as I'm not prepared to wade into the literature, but it seems like this tech would avoid the chance of the former while still giving you the chance at the latter. That could be a net benefit even given the chance of the gun refusing to fire when you needed it.

Either way, these are just hypotheses, we'd need hard data. I know its fun to not use data when discussing public policy and especially gun control, I certainly don't have any.

How about gloves?

[Anonymous Coward]

People often wear gloves when shooting pistols. And in combat situations, fingers may get dirty, or even partially damaged or burnt. This strikes me as a REALLY bad idea. Lives will be lost to this.

Re:How about gloves?

[PoolOfThought]

I agree with what I think you meant to say. But the words you chose were just too wrong (all by themselves) to leave there...

You generally want some lives to be lost in a combat situation.

No... you want to get your way. You don't WANT some lives to be lost.

Even for a home invasion situation you don't WANT a life to be lost. You WANT that creep OUT and you will do whatever it takes INCLUDING ending a life, but killing is not what you WANT to do. In an ideal situation you could just spot the invader and say "go away" and they'd turn and leave. But since that's highly unlikely and since there's a good chance there will be a struggle then the safest bet for you is to end the conflict as immediately as possible and in such a way that minimizes your own chances of being harmed. Therefore, you shoot 'em with an intent to kill (so they don't shoot back).

For general political WARS, your statement still goes too far. In a combat situation the goal is almost never "to end lives". The goal is to end a dispute (in neutralize the opponent) and to get your way. Lives being taken is more of a by product of the process than the goal itself. Total annihilation / beating them to nothing is often the simplest route to achieving the end of the war, but make no mistake. It's not that you WANT lives to be lost or resources to be destroyed... you just want break your opponent and get your way.

Then there's the extremist viewpoint. It's the viewpoint that anyone who disagrees must be the devil and should be killed. That attitude certainly breeds a type of combat, but it's not combat in general. And really, the defender (the "not extreme party") still only wants to stay alive through the combat... they're not necessarily interested in killing.

Is this thing battery powered?

[larry bagina]

I'd prefer a fool-proof gun over a smart gun.

I would have serious reservations...

[MAXOMENOS]

..about buying this equipment for my guns.

I don't care much about the false positive rate, because I keep my guns locked up. What I need to know before I buy is, what's the false negative rate and the response time? I own some guns for sporting purposes, and a couple of big clunky rifles for hunting. A false negative or a laggy response time on those isn't necessarily a big deal. OTOH my wife and I also have guns for self defense and home defense. A false negative or laggy response time on those could get us killed.

Safety loophole

[j-stroy]

This technology could cause accidents by people assuming the safety function is operational, similar to when electric carving knives were introduced they had a pressure activated on switch on the blade.

It may also lead to the assumption that a gun is safe when it can still accidentally fire for other reasons inherent in a firearms mechanism.

Re:Access management nightmare?

[eth1]

I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.

Nowhere near the nightmare caused by all the soldiers that would die when their weapons refuse to fire. Or when an enemy figures out that a relatively cheap EMP generator will disarm an entire unit.

Re:Updates are available

[schlachter]

more like: Pulls trigger. Nothing. Turns gun sideways to get a closer look at a why it failed. Pulls trigger again. BAM.