Smart gun

A smart gun, or personalized gun, is a firearm that includes a safety feature or features that allow it to fire only when activated by an authorized user. These safety features can prevent misuse, accidental shootings, gun thefts, and use of the weapon against the owner. Smart guns distinguish between authorized users and unauthorized users in several different ways, including the use of RFID chips or other proximity tokens, fingerprint recognition, magnetic rings, or mechanical locks. Related to smart guns are other smart firearms safety devices such as biometric or RFID activated accessories and safes.

Led by Jonathan Mossberg, iGun Technology Corporation has developed 12-gauge shotgun that uses magnetic spectrum token technology, similar in function to RFID, to secure the gun. The shotgun is activated when in close proximity to a ring worn on the trigger hand of the user. A 2013 report by the National Institute of Justice stated that iGun's product "could be considered the first personalized firearm to go beyond a prototype to an actual commercializable or production-ready product." Mossberg trademarked the term "SmartGun".

Safe Gun Technology Co., led by CEO Tom Lynch, is developing a variation on the traditional smart gun in the form of fingerprint retrofit kits for installation on home defense guns. Their retrofit technology, once installed, required an authorized user's fingerprint to unlock the gun and make it ready to fire. Safe Gun Tech is currently field-testing their fingerprint retrofit kit on an AR-15 rifle.

Biofire Technologies Founder Kai Kloepfer, an MIT student from Boulder, Colorado, has a working smart gun prototype that uses a fingerprint sensor to unlock the firearms safety. It can be programmed to register a range of fingerprints so that the gun would be able to be used, for example, by a spouse or trusted friend in addition to the owner. This prototype also promises to reduce risk of accidental shootings and firearm suicides.

Kai's live-fire prototype was launched in a feature in the Wall Street Journal written by Geoffrey A. Fowler, "A 19-Year-Old Just Built the First Fingerprint-Reading Smart Gun" and received special attention as a result of a video produced for Uproxx Tech, "Has This 18-Year-Old Created The World’s Safest Gun?", which has received more than 20 million views across platforms. He was also featured in the New York Times in an article written by Nicholas Kristof, "Smart Guns Save Lives. So Where Are They?"

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