TTAG’s been tracking TrackingPoint’s “precision guided rifle” for some time. We just blogged Remington’s announcement that its super-secret Venture X project is a TrackingPoint rifle of one sort or another. The Austin company’s software/hardware combo makes it possible for just about anyone to hit a long range target with a rifle. That’s a good thing, right? Public radio station KUT is not so sure. In fact, they found someone, a vet no less, to throw cold water on the whole idea . . .
Some worry what will happen when these computerized rifles are available to the public. Chris Frandsen is a West Point grad, who earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star in Vietnam.
Frandsen says he doesn’t think the TrackingPoint technology should be allowed in the civilian world, because the gun makes it too easy for a criminal or a terrorist to shoot civilians from a distance, without being easily detected: “Where we have mental health issues, where we have soldiers who have PTSD, where we have children that are disassociated from society early on, where we have terrorists who have political cards to play, we have to restrict weapons that make them more efficient in terrorizing the population.”
Yup, a gun grabber’s applying the “who needs an AR-15 Weapon o’ War” thing to the most modern of modern sporting rifles. Can’t say every single member of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia didn’t see that one coming.
What is surprising: what TrackingPoint’s president has to say about that.
Jason Schauble, TrackingPoint’s president, says because the company sells directly – instead of going through gun dealers – it knows who its customers are, and can vet them. And he says there’s a key feature that prevents anyone other than the registered owner from utilizing the gun’s capabilities. Schauble said “It has a password protection on the scope. The gun will still operate as a firearm itself, but you cannot do the tag/track/exact, the long range, technology-driven precision guided firearm piece without entering that passcode.”
Seriously? Password protected optics? Will that apply to the Venture X guns as well? I don’t like the way this is going, from a practical or a political point-of-view.