Polly Mosendz, Austin Carr, and Neil Weinberg break down the history of the smart gun and the legislative efforts that had unintended consequences for its adoption. Read it on Bloomberg here.
What it’s about
The article answers the question of why a venture capitalist approach to raising money paired with technological advances tied to making everything “smart” haven’t been applied to making guns safer.
What’s the answer?
It’s actually been tried! But previously it has failed due to a combination of “regulatory friction, industry resistance” and “technological challenges”, as described by a venture capitalist interviewed for the article.
The gun industry is wary of producing a gun that could prevent it from selling all of their other guns (a nod to the regulatory piece of this), and a 1 in 100 glitch product is an unacceptable rate of error for a marketable life-or-death self-defense tool.
Why it’s important
The regulatory part of this story is particularly fascinating. The piece points out that well meaning state legislation in New Jersey, that was designed to create adoption of a successful smart gun, overreached and gave the NRA the means to mobilize its members against smart guns and legislation promoting them. This made smart gun research and development by the big gun makers a toxic issue that, to this day, they’ve distanced themselves from.
Crucial quote
In describing how New Jersey’s law (the one that would require all New Jersey gun dealers to only sell smart guns after 3 years since the first smart gun went on sale anywhere in the US) played right into the hands of the NRA to kill the smart gun movement nationwide:
“The group [NRA] said in a statement that it doesn’t oppose research but “opposes any law prohibiting Americans from acquiring or possessing firearms that don’t possess ‘smart’ gun technology.” The New Jersey law did just that. Which made it the perfect tool for mobilizing bitter opposition to any attempt to sell smart guns, even hundreds of miles away from New Jersey.”
Read the full article on Bloomberg here.