There’s something called a smart gun. If you’ve never heard of it, that doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve never actually heard of them either. It’s essentially a gun that corresponds to an owner, and won’t fire unless it is appropriately activated. Right now, that mostly means that the gun needs to be within a few feet of a watch or ring that activates it, or some sort of other sensor. In the future, it may mean guns that are activated by retinal or fingerprint scan. For that reason, they’re sometimes called personalized guns too.

Either way, it provides an option for added security. It mostly keeps a gun from being stolen and used, unless the sensor is stolen, too. When it comes to the guns that involve a scan, those obviously could not be stolen and used, or used by a child or someone else in the home. It would prevent those tragic stories we see so often where a young child gets a hold of his parents’ gun and shoots himself or a family member. It also would be harder to sell those types of gun illegally, because of the transfer of identification required. So to me it seems like this is a pretty awesome idea.

New Jersey legislators thought the same thing. They actually passed a law in 2003 that as soon as a viable personalized/smart gun got onto the market and was sold somewhere in the US, within three years, all guns sold in New Jersey would have to be smart guns. Essentially New Jersey wanted to make this awesome technology mandatory as soon as possible — the three-year buffer would give gun sellers the time to make the switch and make sure that all the kinks have been worked out.

So once a smart gun is sold somewhere, that three-year countdown starts. And the crazy lunatics who don’t like this technology have been trying to put off the clock for a while now. It hasn’t been a problem though, because while these guns do exist in Europe, they hadn’t quite made it to the U.S. yet. And why not? Well because anytime anyone tries, the NRA and other gun groups block it.

But meet Andy Raymond, a gun shop owner in Maryland. He announced a few weeks ago that he was going to start selling the Armatix iP1 smart gun. It doesn’t fire unless it’s within 10 inches of a corresponding watch.

But as soon as Raymond made this announcement, he, his girlfriend, and even his dog started to get death threats. Because that’s super reasonable.

Raymond is just the latest example in a long history of incredibly harsh opposition to smart guns. When the CEO of Colt wrote an op-ed supporting smart guns in the late 90s, he lost his job a short while later, probably in part because of his controversial opinions. Other gun shop owners have reported similar incidences of harassment if they tried to sell smart guns.

The argument against the guns is usually that they are by necessity too clunky — if you need to make sure that it reads your fingerprints, you might have a hard time dealing with an intruder quickly. Some crazies have also posited the conspiracy theory that the added technology in the guns could lead to the government being able to shut them off or track the people who owned them.

The New Jersey law was probably a bit preemptive — three years isn’t a lot of time to change over the entire type of gun bring sold in a state. It seems like the best approach may have been to give people the option with what kind of gun they wanted to buy, at least at first. But still, this rabid hatred for a gun that would most likely make our world safer is ridiculous. Gun advocates and the NRA need a very serious reality check.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Michael Saechang via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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