To Build a Smart Gun, You Need to Build a Smart Gun Market
Read the full article from Newsweek here.
A Maryland gun shop owner has dropped his plan to be the first in the United States to sell the so-called smart gun, after a backlash that included death threats.
At the investor meeting for Sturm, Ruger & Co. on Tuesday in Greensboro, North Carolina, the gun-maker’s CEO, Michael Fifer, highlighted some of its future projects: “fun guns,” “cool guns” and “takedown products.”
The words safety and smart gun never came up, according to Donna Weinberger, an activist with the gun safety group Do Not Stand Idly By. Weinberger was part of a group with two clergy members who were lent four shares of the company’s stock, allowing them to attend the meeting, with the intention of asking Fifer why the company hasn’t moved more aggressively on what the group sees as a massive, untapped market: high-tech guns for military and law enforcement that have built-in safety features.
For Weinberger, guns that work a bit like your smartphone to figure out who owns them just make sense. “It seemed like there was a way to add gun safety that didn’t alienate both sides,” she tells Newsweek.