Meghan Neal at Vice.com laments the fact that nobody appears interested in buying so-called “smart guns”. Her theory is that consumers want to own “smart guns” but the industry has no interest in selling them. She believes they will save lives (a strange policy for a website that is dedicated to, and engages in, incredibly unsafe behavior). She wrote …

The problem is getting anyone to buy them. A group called Safe Gun Technology developed a functioning prototype of biometric fingerprint recognition technology in 2008, and recently tried to crowdfund the money to build a market-ready version. The Indiegogo campaign fell $48,000 short of its fundraising goal.

Robert McNamara, cofounder of TriggerSmart, a startup that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) to match owner and gun, has tried to convince the gun manufacturers to license the product, but none have agreed. If the gun industry won’t budge, it could take a government mandate to get people to buy personalized guns.

I disagree. Ruger, S&W, Colt and others would gladly take you money in exchange for a smart gun. Nothing Ruger sells today is all that different to what was sold 100 years ago, and everything they sell will easily last 100+ years if properly maintained. The gun industry NEEDS genuine innovations as well as gimmicks and fads in order to survive. Guns packing electronics would do wonders for the bottom line of gun companies IF consumers were willing to buy them. But they are not. Putting software into a gun is as insane as putting software locks onto a pair of scissors, pruning shears or a chainsaw. Many consumers go out of their way to avoid simple mechanical locks on their guns because they are unreliable (and therefor unsafe). I wonder if Mr. Robert McNamara would be willing to accept legal liability if the software on his guns failed to work correctly and a person was injured or killed by an intruder. I am 100% sure he would not.

Now excuse me while I go and patent my electronic-locks-on-scissors idea. I feel the education and child-care industry is in desperate need of this technology, they just don’t realize it yet.

Many thanks to WhaleOil for the tip.