New Technology Could Allow Government To Turn Off Your Gun

A new technology that could allow authorities and others to literally “turn off” guns by remote control has been patented.

German arms maker Armatix GmbH has filed a patent for an improved smart pistol that can be shut down by a wireless signal.

“Preferably, the apparatus of the invention can be controlled remotely, for example via satellite and can send information to a satellite,” the European patent application for the gun says.

Armatix already makes one smart gun, the iP1 Personalized Pistol, that can only be fired by a person wearing an “Intelligent Watch.” The watch sends out a wireless identification signal that activates a chip in the gun. The new pistol would have that feature and the remote control capacity.

Here’s how the iP1’s designer, Ernst Mauch, described the weapon in a Washington Post op-ed piece: “The iP1 Personalized can be synced with our Intelligent Watch, which is worn on the wrist. The authorized user inputs a five-digit personal code into the watch that activates the firearm. Without that code, the gun cannot be fired.”

Mauch believes the iP1 provides an additional level of protection because it cannot be fired without the code if it falls into the hands of the bad guys. If it works as advertised, only the weapon’s owner would be able to fire it. Some gun owners have expressed concern that in a dire situation – say, if someone breaks in your home – it would take far too long to “turn on” the gun.

“In short, the gun is yours alone,” Mauch wrote. “It is personalized.”

Others say the fact that a gun potentially can be disabled by someone else, thousands of miles away, is frightening and even eerie.

The Washington Post is now demanding that New Jersey start enforcing the law mandating the sale of smart handguns. The Garden State’s smart hand gun law has been on the books since 2002 but it has never been enforced because no smart weapons actually existed.

“If the law (takes effect), you’ll see every model with these features,” Bryan Miller, a gun control advocate who helped get the law passed, told The South Jersey Times.

“It’s a very stupid law that was passed in haste by legislators who didn’t know what they were talking about when they passed it,” gun store owner Bob Viden Sr. said. Viden noted that the legislation has no provision for target practice and weapons that are not used for self-defense.

" made it clear decades ago that overreliance on technology can kill people. "We were defeated by one thing only – by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat – by the inferior science of our enemies." The story’s lesson is that, when national security or human safety depends on a product, that product has to work 100 percent of the time. This applies particularly to defensive firearms, cell phones, gun safes, and automobiles.

Nothing in this article constitutes engineering advice, but common sense says that smart guns, smart cars, smart phones, and indeed anything else that relies on electronics can be disabled electronically. There is already an electromagnetic pulse projector with which police can disable fleeing vehicles, or at least those with modern electronics. Criminals and terrorists could easily adopt the same technology to, for example, shut down traffic on a bridge, close a highway, disable police vehicles, or take down airplanes. It has already been proven that EMP weapons can wipe out computers and other electronic products. They can conceivably be built for well under $1,000.

If smart gun technology were such a good idea, the police would be first in line to demand it. Estimates of the fraction of police officers who are murdered with their own weapons range from eight to forty-three percent. (That is, of every 100 officers who are murdered, 8 to 43 are shot with their own sidearms.) Smart gun technology would indeed make it impossible for criminals to use officers’ weapons, and for prison inmates to use those of corrections officers. It would also enable sophisticated criminals to render police weapons unusable during, for example, a looting and rioting spree. The police know this, and that is why they are not adopting so-called smart guns. The same considerations apply to smart phones, smart cars, smart gun safes, and smart anything else that affects human safety.

Read more: http://www.disclose.tv/news/New_Technology_Could_Allow_Government_To_Turn_Off_Your_Gun/104209#ixzz32rMnqQlt