“There’s a group from Silicon Valley that just gave a 17-year-old $50,000 to keep playing with guns. The Smart Tech Challenges Foundation, based in California’s tech capital, announced it is funding a young innovator from Colorado who is integrating a biometric sensor into a firearm that requires an authorized user’s fingerprint to discharge — and they claim the sensor is 99.99% accurate with fingerprint recognition — even with partial prints.” So reports theblaze.com. Young Kai Kloepfer is the recipient of the first tranche of cash from the group that says they’re looking for the iPhone of guns . . .
And with the hefty attention Apple gained Tuesday with their next round of iPhone and Apple Watch smart technology, gun investors who want to push the industry into the biotech realm may get real support. “The entrepreneur who does this right could be the Mark Zuckerberg of guns,” (Silicon Valley investor Ron) Conway added.
We don’t know about you, but given Facebook’s barely concealed antipathy toward all things gunny, a search for the “Mark Zuckerberg of guns” probably won’t give the People of the Gun any warm fuzzies. Just sayin’. Anyway…
“Kai is receiving the $50,000 grant to apply toward the integration of a fingerprint scanner, which can be programmed for a virtually unlimited number of users, from a plastic model of a Beretta Px4 Storm onto a live firearm. The sensor that Kai is working with boasts a 99.99% accurate fingerprint recognition rate—even with partial prints.
Knock yourself out there, Kai. There’s just one big problem with getting the teen’s genius, no matter how well it works, from drawing board to local gun store: the New Jersey poison pill.
Most gun owners have no problem with smart guns per se. While they’d rather drop their hard-earned cash on a vasectomy without the benefit of anesthesia than buy a “smart gun,” they aren’t bothered if other people drop their cash on one — as long a they have a choice in the matter. But New Jersey’s law is the camel’s nose under the tent that would change that. It’s the same factor that’s kept Armatix’s contraption from being sold anywhere so far.
So if Ronny Conway is really serious about getting viable smart gun technology out there where the buying public can evaluate and actually purchase it, maybe he should redirect some of his org’s simoleons toward lobbying the New Jersey legislature and convince them to repeal their ticking time bomb of a law. Until that hurdle’s out of the way, there’s no reason to think Kloepfer’s or anyone else’s ballistic brainstorms will see any more acceptance than Armatix has.