If guns have the same security mechanism as our mobile phones, no one can use them except the owner. This is what biofire is building. At present, it has raised $17 million to finally complete the commercialization of its biometric security guns.
Kai kloepfer, founder of biofire, said he began to study the idea after the mass shooting in Aurora in 2012. "I began to think, what can I do to make an impact on this problem? How can I apply product manufacturing skills to what seems to be a public health challenge? Children and adolescents find guns, accidents and suicides - this is where I really see the impact of technology and product based physical solutions."
But one thing to be clear is that a gun that only holders can use is difficult to prevent most mass shootings. In addition, gun ownership is also closely related to suicide, which increases the risk in almost all aspects. In recent years, very little progress has been made in terms of security and restrictions on firearms.
Now, although there are some locks: trigger locks, gun safes and so on, as kloepfer points out, "all of these require human action to re secure the gun - and sometimes this is not feasible. These situations may be that the gun is taken away, or more likely, it is simply forgotten or ignored to lock the gun."
"So we thought of a very simple thing. You pick it up and it will unlock. As long as you hold it, it will remain unlocked, but when you put it down, it will lock again in a fraction of a second," kloepfer said.
It is understood that the team comes from various industries with high reliability requirements, such as aerospace and military. Then they began to use real basic methods to make guns. "We're really back on the drawing board," kloepfer said This is because, despite deep expertise in manufacturing reliable firearms, no one has so deeply integrated biometric and intelligence capabilities. Now there are some conversion kits and biometric trigger locks, but in the end it's just an ordinary gun with a fancy lock on it. The focus here is to establish the locking mechanism at the most basic level.
Kloepfer carefully added that this is not a "smart gun" in the sense of many other "smart" items, which have all kinds of unnecessary digital appendages and opportunities to fail or be invaded. Therefore, although the gun has built-in modern electronic devices, they all serve the locking mechanism. Ideally, users don't even have to consider this problem.
Kloepfer continued: "obviously, this is an electronic device, so it has an internal battery. But the system we designed makes the vast majority of customers, probably 99%, never have to consider the problem of the battery - charge it and discharge it. In addition, the user's privacy is the most important - this gun has no form of RF communication. This is a complete and reinforced system with a reinforced interface port."
The picture of the gun shows a fingerprint sensor on the left side of the handle, where users can put their thumb. When asked for more details about the company's methods and safety, kplofer said it still declined to comment on these methods in the end.
Frankly, the silence on key systems at this stage is a bit worrying. It is difficult to imagine adding more measures at this time, as the firearm is clearly at a sufficiently advanced stage to be available to testing partners. Unfortunately, the company said it would not share any more details about these mechanisms or how they work.
One thing is certain that investors have shown enough confidence that they have invested $17 million in the completion of the system.
Innovation and technology may play a role in the field of gun violence, but they are not omnipotent. They are only one of many layers of control and security to ensure the legal and personal use of guns.