Opinion

The most deadly product can be a little safer

If there were a consumer product that killed 85 people every day, or 31,000 every year, politicians and the public alike would be clambering to ban it.

That is, except when that item is a firearm. Reared on a steady diet of cop shows, tales of the Old West and movies in which it's always OK for the good guy or girl to extract deadly revenge, Americans have taken to guns in a huge way. There are about 300 million privately owned guns in the nation, just about one for every man, woman and child. We like our guns and we like them handy.

The NRA would have us believe that nearly all of these 31,000 deaths are either caused by career criminals or by law-abiding gun-owners shooting these career criminals in self defense. Statistics tell us a different story.

The NRA has bullied Congress into prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control from looking into firearm deaths as a health issue. This is unfortunate because, with all of those guns in homes, they're the go-to solution that law-abiding people use to settle arguments.

They're also the preferred method to commit suicide. About 19,000 people in the U.S. intentionally shoot themselves every year, or nearly two-thirds of the total number of gun deaths. And many of these are committed not by the gun owner but by teenagers in the home who find a parent's handgun.

Then there's the most tragic of all gun deaths, the children who accidentally shoot themselves, their siblings or their friends with their parent's found handgun or rifle. This is where the CDC ban on gun death research heavily favors the NRA because it's estimated that only about half of these accidents are properly reported as accidents; many are listed by coroners as "homicides" instead. The official number is 600 accidental child gun deaths a year, but a report last year by the New York Times estimated that the real number to be double that figure.

Thousands more receive debilitating injures from these child gun accidents and need a lifetime of special care.

The latest effort to slow this river of blood began earlier this week in Bridgeport. Called Don't Stand Idly By, it's a coalition of city and clergy leaders.

More Information Why this matters: Smart gun technology can go a long way to reduce the number of gun suicides and accidental gun deaths in this country.

The group, which includes Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe and Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, would like to see the gun industry adopt smart technologies to make firearms safer. They also question whether the industry is doing enough to prevent thefts in their factories and supply chains. The smart technology continues to improve, but weapon manufacturers in the United States have been resistant to the idea and just about all of the gun dealers in the nation haven't shown much interest in the technology either.

Still, the technology is out there. From Germany comes the Armatix iP1, a .22-caliber handgun that has a safety mechanism built around a watch that emits a radio signal, unlocking the gun. If the weapon is separated from the watch by more than 10 inches, it won't fire. Mossberg offers a similar feature in which the weapon operator has to wear a special ring in order for its shotgun to fire.

And Kodiak Industries of Utah offers a patented fingerprint locking system that "provides an additional layer of safety for your firearm," according to the company's press release.

Rather than going down the legislative route, Don't Stand Idly By is instead pushing the gun industry to warm up to so-called smart guns. They note that law enforcement agencies purchase about 40 percent of the handguns sold in this country, and that this leverage can be used to get gun makers to adopt this technology.

We support Don't Stand Idly By, and we hope that the gun industry takes a serious look at its arguments.

Smart gun technology won't stop anyone from purchasing a handgun to commit a homicide. But it can prevent children in the home from hurting themselves or others with a parent's weapon, it can prevent distraught teenagers from shooting themselves and it can prevent stolen handguns from being used to commit crimes.