Biometric Smart Guns?

[FUSE]

Thought this was an interesting read...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070420/sc_livescience/shotstoppersmartgunsgetsmarter

[troyPhD]

Hahahaha. I wonder who will really buy these.

[PanzerAce]

Thanks but no thanks. I prefer the electronics in my gun to be in non-essential areas, like scopes or flashlights.

[Bishop]

Nothing replaces training and practicing gun safety.

The people who would likely buy this would be the first-time gun owners who think they're oh-so progressive for buying a gun, never train with it, never shoot it, probably never even load it, and just shove it in a closet in a shoe box on the top shelf under their old photo albums. These people are likely to let the batteries run out of their gun.

*points finger in the air* THIS is my safety.

[Can'thavenuthingood]

So I bought this gun back when I was a testosterone filled studly 18 years old. Now that I'm 70 years old my grip and reflexes are not the same.

Or through some ailment or physical work thing, carpal, arthritis etc the mechanics of grip are out of whack with the 99.99% proof required to fire the gun in time of need.

Oh like Microsoft there will be patches and updates for the loss of grip. With a note from your doctor and a signoff from the CLEO indicating you are still a safe individual.

Its a money grab. Betcha there is a government money trough involved.
Once the electronics is in place how long before the local LEO has a master switch to turn them all off in the event of a natural disaster like Katrina?

LEO's are not going to use these guns, they need 100% reliability.
I better go get some coffee.

Vick
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Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter
Robin Lloyd
LiveScience Senior Editor
LiveScience.com
Fri Apr 20, 4:22 PM ET

Police in New Jersey are testing smart guns that rely on biometric sensors in the grip to prevent weapons from firing if they detect that the trigger squeezer is not authorized to shoot them.

The handguns fire only when their internal circuitry and software recognizes the grip "profile" of an authorized shooter—that is, the particular way an individual holds a gun as it is about to fire based on the shooter's hand musculature, strength, bone structure and hand-brain communication habits.

The new technology, which works on semi-automatic handguns—typical police-issue weapons as well as the handgun of choice among most homeowners, would prevent the use of a gun by a child or someone who stole the gun, however, it would do nothing to thwart the misuse of a gun by the adult and legal owner, as occurred earlier this week at Virginia Tech when a student killed 32 people and himself during a morning rampage.

"The technology would have allowed him to fire it, which is not something we wanted to see," said project director Donald Sebastian of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "Our Dynamic Grip Recognition technology is not designed to see if you have criminal intent."

In the aftermath of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, experts are discussing whether prevention of similar events in the future could come from stiffer gun laws, stronger oversight of troubled youths and faster notification of campus and other communities when police become aware of a violent crime.

Meanwhile, the NJIT smart gun is now 98 to 99 percent accurate at recognizing authorized shooters, up from 90 percent a couple years ago. The goal is 99.99 percent accuracy before the gun would be manufactured and sold commercially, Sebastian said.

The gun is tested weekly by a group of university police at a local firing range and put through its paces under different firing conditions such as right-hand versus left-hand shooting, shooting from a kneeled position and shooting from behind a partition at a target.

A grip on the problem

Initially, the New Jersey State Legislature authorized Sebastian in 1999 to investigate what could and could not be done to make a safer handgun.

A breakthrough came when Sebastian's colleague Michael Recce said that the biometrics of handwriting analysis on touch pads was based on pressure over time, not the shapes of the letters.

"We made the mental leap that the way we grab things, like a tennis racket or a golf club, is a reflexive thing, a trained thing, that is reproducible," he said.

The project then created a database of grip profiles based on hundreds of subjects, each one generating effectively a short movie, not a snapshot, of information about how each one holds a gun while pulling the trigger.

With gun grips, individuals generate a gripping pattern that evolves within the first tenth of a second of a trigger pull, Sebastian said, faster than human reaction speed. "What is unique for each individual is the coordinated act of how you apply leverage to pull the trigger back," he said.

Triggered response

Within that tenth of a second, the electronic circuitry in the gun also is fast enough to prevent the gun from firing if the grip profile fails to match that of an authorized user profile stored in the gun's circuitry.

For a conventional gun, any displacement of any of the chain of pre-firing events that must unfold across a collection of pins, springs and levers inside the gun will stop it from firing. In an electronic gun, the shot can be prevented by interrupting the zap of electricity that touches off the primer in the cartridge.

Other ideas for gun safety in the past 10 years have included PIN numbers and radio-frequency identification tags on guns and operators, but these can be stolen.

These might work in professional settings, Sebastian said, "but biometrics is better for the home."

[1911su16b870]

I own one of those biometric locked cases. If its below 65 degrees, it doesn't open. Over 65 degrees, it may open the first time, but not reliably. That is not technology I would want on a defensive firearm.

[WallySparx]

tinfoil hat time: you figure next, they'll have some sort of rfid chip that sends out a signal that won't let these guns shoot when pointed towards source of said signal. of course they'll be marketed as an LEO tool, not to say the baddies can get them from the distributor with enough money.

[MadMex]

Just imagine... a world with no need for gun safes!

What's that? You don't quite trust the technology that much but expect me to bet my life on it to perform when I need to defend myself?

Wait until it fails to perform in the hands of an LEO, resulting in an officer's death. Bankrupt city for the developers of this crap.

A solution looking for a problem.

[M. Sage]

Hmm, how much is an individual's "grip profile" going to change in a stressful situation, not to mention normal changes over time as Can'thavenuthingood pointed out? What if I need to shoot left-handed or one-handed? Learning new technique/changing technique? How about if I'm not home and my wife needs to use my pistol for HD? The SHTF and I need to toss a buddy a weapon (yeah, like I'll toss him/her my primary. )? Battery lifespan?

No thanks. I'll keep my guns going "bang" with pure mechanical operation. There's too much that can go wrong.

ETA: I just sent a letter to the author of that article, and asked if he'd send me contact info for the people running the project, or to at least forward it along.... hopefully he does a follow-up with some of the questions I asked. After thinking about the article and the things that he didn't bring up, this is total fluff journalism. He soft-balled it... Here's my letter:

Hi, I'm just writing with some serious reservations about the technology featured in this article, and feel that some questions about it should be raised. I feel this article could have benefited from the perspective of someone who shoots handguns, not just from the people developing this technology. Unfortunately, it sounds like this program exists absolutely separate from people with practical handgun shooting experience.

There are so many different factors that could disturb the biometric profiles when someone uses a handgun, it's not even funny. There are evolutionary changes in a every user's basic technique, almost everybody's form changes over time. There are also revolutionary changes, too - learning a new technique, for example. In the case of using a handgun in self-defense or in a home-defense application, what happens if the user needs to shoot with their weak hand (for example, a right-handed shooter has to shoot left-handed)? What happens if the user needs to shoot one-handed? Your basic grip varies greatly depending on if you're using your weak hand for support, and even how that support hand is being employed. Have they studied how this pattern changes in a highly-stressful situation? What about the effects of aging and injuries on a shooter's grip? What if a user's spouse needs to use a handgun in self defense? What about cleaning and maintenance for the mechanical type, and battery life on the electronic type? Will some sand jam the mechanical mechanism, putting the pistol in the same category as a rock? There are just too many variables for this to be safely employed in the real world.

It's my opinion as a handgunner that this technology will get more people killed if it's employed than could die if it's not.

If you have a contact email address for the people involved with this project, I'd appreciate if you would share it with me so I can send my concerns to them, or you can feel free to forward this to them along with my contact info. Thank you for your time, and I'd love to see a follow-up story on this.

[Soundman]

tinfoil hat time: you figure next, they'll have some sort of rfid chip that sends out a signal that won't let these guns shoot when pointed towards source of said signal. of course they'll be marketed as an LEO tool, not to say the baddies can get them from the distributor with enough money.

They already have them (at least as prototypes) I saw it on "history of the gun". A chip is placed in a LEO's badge and the electronics are in the LEO's gun. If a badguy gets the LEOs gun it can not be used against him. The gun will only fire when the chip is behind the gun

[wildcard]

I wonder if the schematics for the gun are the same as seen in Judge Dredd

[colossians323]

I own one of those biometric locked cases. If its below 65 degrees, it doesn't open. Over 65 degrees, it may open the first time, but not reliably. That is not technology I would want on a defensive firearm.

I had a cut on the finger I used, and it wouldn't open it for a week.