Safe Shoot Device For Hunting and Friendly Fire | SHOT 2017

Safe Shoot is an Israeli company that was showing their device off at the Next booths. The device is a picatinny or scope mounted block, that electronically links up with blocks or transmitters on other rifles or just about anything you want to mount it on (if you can). The concept is brutally simple: Whenever the device is pointed within a certain arc of another device, a rearward facing mini screen lights up red. When it isn’t pointed in that direction, the screen remains blank. The first option obviously means it is pointing at another device and thus another shooter (or game dog), and the second option means there is a clear field of fire only when concerning the people in the party that have a device on.

The device is primarily intended for hunting and civilian application, an attempt to reduce hunting accidents. With dogs I could possibly see this being a feasibility, if a shooter’s dog jumped in front of a muzzle at the wrong time, or was in some brush and the shooter mistook the dog for a animal to be hunted. Secondarily there is a Military/LE purpose with a team of LE officers/ soldiers all being armed with the device, moving through a building, and being able to prevent friendly fire casualties.

The theory side of me is screaming that this device isn’t anything more than a safety gimmick that will make shooters complacent in their rules of safety. Eventually this could lead to exactly what the tool was created to try and prevent. However, from a tactical perspective, I can see some feasibility. Although we have IR chem lights that teams can place on themselves, NVGs go down, chem lights fail, flare from lights at night, all sorts of stuff can happen. However with this device, a shooter can get an immediate signal of whether or not his target is friend or foe.