Leading community proponents of “smart guns” that will fire only for authorized users are calling on President Obama and city leaders across the US to order thousands of such weapons for law enforcement officers, as a way of increasing public safety and boosting a nascent industry that has been sidelined by the mainstream gun lobby.



Obama has spoken with increasing frustration about Congress blocking gun control proposals that emerged in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut just over two years ago.

Campaigners against gun violence are urging the president and Eric Holder, the attorney general, to take far-reaching executive action by naming the government as a pioneer customer of the kinds of weapons that feature fingerprint-, palm print- or radio signal-activated security systems.

Orders from police departments would also help so-called “smart guns” catch on with manufacturers and consumers, they said, in the same way the widespread use of Glock pistols by police officers has made the Austrian brand wildly popular with the gun-buying US public.

“The technology is here; it’s not science fiction any more,” said Joel Mosbacher, a leading member of the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of community organizations that has stricter gun safety among its goals.

Smart or “personalized” firearms would largely prevent the common tragedies of children accidentally shooting themselves or others with their parents’ guns, or criminals firing a stolen gun, whether the weapon was burgled, trafficked or snatched from the holster of a police officer, said Mosbacher.

In the latter case, personalized guns would also undermine the rationale for police officers shooting unarmed civilians who try to grab their sidearm.

“Look at the situation where the cop in Ferguson last summer shot Michael Brown not long after he was allegedly trying to grab the officer’s gun as he sat in the patrol car,” said Mosbacher. “And the homeless guy who was shot dead in Los Angeles earlier this month, where you could hear the cop saying he thought he was going to take his gun.”

He says those deaths may have been prevented if the officers and the public knew that the handguns chosen for law enforcement personnel could only be fired by the officer and other authorized individuals, such as the cop’s patrol partner.

Holder, vice-president Joe Biden and Obama have previously expressed interest in restricted-access guns. Obama has talked ruefully about America’s abnormally high death rate from shootings, at around 33,000 a year, and the link with a lack of gun control regulations at local, state and federal level.

The technology behind guns that feature biometric identity strips or radio receiver chips is still being refined, and some skeptics worry the devices are more clumsy to handle and slower than a normal gun.

But Mosbacher, a prominent New Jersey rabbi who became a leading voice on gun control in the years after his father was shot dead during a petty robbery in 1999, said he wants government leaders to provide the final push the industry needs to perfect the specialized products.

He has discussed the matter with senior aides in the offices of Holder, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett at the White House and the mayors of New York City and Chicago, Bill de Blasio and Rahm Emanuel.

Professor Stephen Teret, a professor and gun control expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, on Saturday called on Obama to use his executive powers to promote gun safety; a lucrative federal order could act as a high-profile endorsement of smart guns.



James Bond, and other smart gun users

James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, uses his ‘smart gun’ in Skyfall. Photograph: Francois Duhamel

Fans of the British super-spy James Bond were fascinated when in his latest film, Skyfall, 007 was issued a pistol that was programmed to operate only upon recognition of his palm print.

Kodiak Industries, a Utah firm based in Salt Lake City, makes the “Intelligun”, programmed to fire when the owner or another authorized user whose fingerprint is registered on the sensor in the handle picks up the weapon and pulls the trigger. Without the right person’s grip on the gun, it won’t fire.

“What if your gun could only be used by you?” asks the Intelligun website, above a picture of a wholesome couple with their small child. It invites you to purchase one online for $399.

The gun also features a manual override activated by a special key – presumably for when the shooter is wearing gloves or wants to pass the gun around for friends to try out at the shooting range.

Bill Gentry, the president of Kodiak, enthusiastically described the gun to a fascinated Holder at a meeting in Washington DC last year – but then told the attorney general he would “burn down” the facility where he was developing the Intelligun if the government tried to mandate its use.

New Jersey, meanwhile, ran into controversy more than 10 years ago when it passed a law that would mandate the purchase of childproof guns across the state within three years of the technology being market-ready. The National Rifle Association began lobbying against the measure, arguing that it was a threat to mainstream gun manufacturers and gun rights and marshaling fierce opposition to the law and developers of smart guns.

One dealer in California and one dealer in Maryland last year received death threats after they decided to stock a pistol made by Armatix, a German firm with a US subsidiary; the weapon is activated for use by a radio transmitter in a watch worn by its owner.

Mainstream gun manufacturers in the US, such as the giants Smith & Wesson and Colt, have kept their distance from personalized gun technology. The specialized arm of the industry has struggled to emerge from the fringe. But Teret said the specialized gun industry just needed the kind of push a large government order for weapons for federal law enforcement officers would represent.

“I don’t know what is keeping President Obama from doing this. This would not have to go through Congress – it’s something that the White House could do, or, short of that, the Department of Justice. Eric Holder is still attorney general for a little longer and he is very knowledgeable about the personalized gun industry. He or the president could take action before they leave office,” he said.

If as lucrative and prestigious a client as the federal government became a “launch customer” by placing a substantial order for personalized guns, even if the designs were still being perfected, it would be similar to what airlines do when aircraft manufacturers are working on new jets, he said.

“Or they could announce their specifications for the kind of weapon they want and then manufacturers would compete to develop that and win the contract,” he said.

This would help to bring down the number of gun deaths in the longer term, Teret said.

Around 80 preschool-age children and around 50 police officers are killed by guns each year in the US, according to statistics from the FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.