Oh look, another wanna-be “smart gun” salesman. This one — for some reason — wants to sell the deeply flawed Armatix iP1 to the public . . . Guns Getting Smarter: Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Man’s Plan to Improve Firearm Safety
Gareth Glaser could be seen as an optimist. After all, he believes gun owners will pay more to implement strong safety mechanisms in firearms.
He even believes gun owners might be willing to have chips implanted in their hands.
I’m not sure “optimist” is the word we’d use, but whatever. Glaser, CEO of something called LodeStar Firearms, wants to begin selling the poorly designed, under-powered Armatix iP1 pistol. And yes, he’s fully aware that doing so would trigger New Jersey’s mandatory smart gun sales law, Loretta Weinberg’s infamous poison pill that has done more to impede the development of smart gun technology than anything bad design reluctant gun buyers could ever do.
But Glaser’s hoping that the impending exit of Chris Christie from the New Jersey governor’s mansion in favor of a newly elected Democrat, Phil Murphy, will mean Weinberg’s ill-conceived smart gun mandate will finally be thrown on the ash heap of legislative history where it belongs.
He said Lodestar plans to bring a smart gun to market by the summer of 2019. He expects the handgun to cost about 20 percent more than its common counterpart: roughly $750.
Good luck with that. Most gun owners don’t want anything to do with so-called smart guns, but don’t mind if others want to throw their money at them. No one — other than dedicated hoplophobes — wants them mandated, though, hence the vehement opposition to their being sold anywhere to date.
Then again, all marketing starts with a good product. And the iP1 ain’t that. Something Mr. Glaser will likely find out the hard way.