http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52178,00.html

NRA: Smart Guns Are Plain Stupid
By Steve Friess
2:00 a.m. April 30, 2002 PDT
RENO, Nevada — Maybe it’ll know your fingerprints. Or you’ll wear a magnetic ring with a pulse that can decode a trigger lock. Or, in some of the more fanciful conjectures, a sensor would be capable of recognizing the unique way you grip the handle.

The aim is the most significant proposed innovation in firearm technology in decades, a gun that knows and performs only for its owner.

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But at the National Rifle Association’s 131st annual convention last weekend, mere mention of “smart-gun” technology elicited sneers and snickers faster than a speeding bullet. The conference, attended by 40,000 of the gun lobby’s 4.4 million members, boasted an exhibition hall of 200,000 square feet that included no booths directly related to the idea.

“Nothing has been devised yet that is fully reliable,” said Robert Stutler, general manager of Sturm, Ruger and Company, one of the leading gun manufacturers. “They’re all just concepts now.”

There are, however, at least two intensive efforts afoot to make a “personalized weapon recognition system” work.

The Department of Justice announced in 2000 a partnership with Smith & Wesson and FN Manufacturing to study the idea, stemming from the FBI’s concern that 57 police officers were slain by their own weapons grabbed from them during the 1990s. Another leading gun maker, Taurus International MFG, is paired up with the New Jersey Institute of Technology to develop the guns.

“We don’t disagree that it’s going to be a monumental challenge to achieve a level of reliability in order for this to be usable technology, but knowing it will eventually happen, we feel better being a partner in that development instead of waiting on the sidelines for it to be handed to us,” Taurus marketing manager Eduardo Fernandez said.

That NJIT effort, spearheaded by Dr. Donald H. Sebastian, is close to creating a technology that would recognize the grip of the owner or various owners, so the gun could be used by a married couple or 50 members of a police squad. Sebastian, whose lab has gotten $1.5 million from the state to work on the project since 1999, has petitioned the U.S. Department of Justice for another $2.5 million for three years to perfect it.

“We’re working with something called ‘new biometrics,’ which basically is that the gun can identify the user by the size of the hand, length of each finger and the ingrained pattern of the muscles when you squeeze,” said Sebastian, NJIT vice president for research and development. “This is literally at the moment of truth. It’s gotta be you or it won’t shoot.”

To the NRA, though, these efforts represent yet another legislative front to which it must move its powerful lobbying troops. In Maryland, a 2000 law requires its Handgun Roster Board to give a status report on smart-gun technology to the state by this July, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is optimistic about chances in New Jersey and California to push through measures requiring gun makers to implement smart-gun concepts as soon as they are available.

When that might happen is an open question. Shooting Times technical editor Dick Metcalf claimed he’s seen prototypes, but none of the major gun manufacturers would admit that they even exist. The fear is that if they acknowledge it, they’ll be legally pressured to offer it before it’s perfected, Metcalf said.

“There is zero room for error here,” he said. “If you swipe your ATM card and it doesn’t read it, do it again. But if you reach for your gun to defend yourself and it doesn’t recognize your identification, you don’t get a second chance.”

And such mistakes could only create new legal liabilities for gun makers, said Stephen F. Ware of the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association. Plus, while the talk right now centers primarily around personalized technology for handguns, Ware fears next up will be requirements that such technology be used on shotguns and rifles, which hunters and target shooters routinely pass among one another.

NRA officials, too, scoff at the concept, insisting that more regulation is intended mainly to hamper the public’s access to weapons.

“Tragic victims couldn’t have been saved by trigger locks or magazine bans or ‘smart-gun’ technology, or some new government commission running our firearms companies,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said. “They could have been saved by something far simpler and more common sense, zero-tolerance enforcement of the mandatory sentencing provisions in the gun laws against violent criminals we’ve had on the books for a long time.”

Intriguingly, the NRA isn’t the only one shooting holes in the idea. The handgun ban group Violence Policy Center, target of incessant verbal assaults from the NRA during the convention, nonetheless agreed that requiring manufacturers to apply this technology is a bad idea. Their take: Gun makers will use it to sell more weapons.

“It would be a marketing device by the gun industry to expand the number of firearms out there,” said Tom Diaz, a policy analyst for the group. “It’s going to give people a false sense of security because it’ll be called ‘smart’ or ‘safe,’ but it will still have all the characteristics that contribute to our record levels of gun violence. People who ordinarily would not buy a gun are going to be encouraged to go out and buy one because it sounds safe.”