SINCE January 1st 3,551 people have been killed by gun violence in America, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The victims include Endia Martin, a 14-year-old girl, who was shot in the back in Chicago last week after an argument with a former friend over a boy. The weapon that was used to kill Martin, a .38 special revolver, began as a legal gun, reports the Chicago Tribune, but somehow it made its way to into this adolescent tussle, turning a flare up between young girls into a deadly tragedy. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands? Sure, second-amendment hawks aren’t terribly keen on comprehensive background checks for buyers, but what if there was a way to build such safety measures into the guns themselves? For example, what if it was possible to ensure a gun doesn’t fire unless it is in the hands of its rightful owner? Surely this is a sound way to maintain gun rights while also keeping good guns out of bad hands. It would have muffled the gun used in the Newtown shootings, and it would ensure the safety of police officers whose guns are wrestled away in a fight. Children who stumble on an adult’s gun collection would have extra protection, preventing what happened to Kamarion Posey, a four-year old who accidentally shot himself in the head in Louisville, Kentucky, who died on Friday. Presumably the right to bear arms sits comfortably with a desire to prevent needless deaths.

Would that it were so. As it happens, guns that work only when they are in the hands of their legal owners do indeed exist. Armatrix, a German company that makes a .22-calibre “smart gun”, had plans recently to begin selling them in America. But then something odd happened: the very people who were trying to bring these guns to market began receiving threats from gun enthusiasts. Belinda Padilla, the head of the American division of Armatix, no longer picks up the phone if she doesn’t recognise the caller, having fielded too many scary calls. Andy Raymond, a gun-dealer in Maryland, decided not to sell the Armatrix guns after receiving death threats. Both Ms Padilla and Mr Raymond are pro-gun; they simply believe there is room in the market for some with safety mechanisms. But aggressive and antagonistic campaigns from gun-lovers have ensured that not a single American gun-dealer will risk selling Armatrix smart guns.

This is remarkable. It is one thing for gun-rights advocates to quibble over a few paternalistic whistles and bells on some guns for sale; it is quite another for them to prevent these guns from ever reaching store shelves. Gun-lovers argue that the smart guns could pave the way for a host of new safety regulations. These fears are apparently heavy enough to justify manipulating the market.

But all is not lost. For all the weight the gun lobby throws around, some new restrictions on gun ownership are indeed squeaking into law (something we discuss this week’s paper). A particular area where the National Rifle Association appears to be giving ground involves the rights of spouses accused of domestic abuse. Bills to disarm people convicted of (or under restraining orders for) domestic abuse are pending in 14 states, and have been enacted this year in Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The New York Times speculates that the NRA’s sudden sympathy for domestic-abuse victims has something to do with the importance of female voters in this election year, and the advocacy of a gun-safety group called “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America”. This is auspicious. The gun-control movement has long needed a sensible, maternal advocate—a group with the same indisputable more-in-sadness-than-in-anger heft of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Now if only these mothers calling for gun sense could speak up a bit, and deliver some threats of their own. But instead of promising violence, their influence is in their votes.