Fortune Magazine On Smart Guns
BY Herschel Smith
9 years ago
Doug, who runs the website smartgunz.com, asks us not to use his last name or to identify the town where he works. “I’m just in Nebraska,” he says. “What’s on the website,” he continues, “that’s the information that can be given out. I just want to see where it’s going to go. Take baby steps. Move forward as it progresses.”
A lifetime National Rifle Association member, Doug earns his living as a gunsmith and licensed firearms dealer, selling pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, and machine guns to law enforcement and other qualified customers.
That’s all ho-hum. But smartgunz.com is sensitive stuff, so Doug wants to insulate his mainstream business from it.
Is he dealing in contraband? Peddling vice?
No. Doug is selling the Armatix iP1, a semiautomatic pistol developed by the renowned weapons designer and executive Ernst Mauch. During his more than 30 years with his prior employer, Germany’s Heckler & Koch …
So it starts oh so secretive, with the roll-in to H&K who supplies LEOs, armed forces, and so on. It’s breathtaking, all this secrecy, or that’s what the author intends. But remember H&K’s we hate you, no, we mean it, we really hate you attitude towards anyone but LEOs. As for Doug, I couldn’t care less what he does or what he sells. The market will determine whether he is successful or not. I didn’t know about his web site and have no reason ever to visit it.
How out of touch the author is comes clear in this paragraph:
Additionally, the hope is that smart guns could reduce the toll of murdered police officers, killed when their service revolvers are wrested away from them. (From 2004 to 2013, according to FBI statistics, 33 police officers were murdered with their own weapons.)
Now I love me a wheel gun and carry one every day, but find a LEO who still carries a “service revolver.” No, really, it’s a serious question – find me one. I bet you can’t. They all carry semi-auto plastic frame guns now. If I was a LEO they would have to grant special dispensation to carry a 1911.
If Armatix can persuade such a unit to adopt the iP9, the world will change.
“I’ve never been more optimistic about personalized guns than I am now,” says Stephen Teret, the founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy and Research, who has been pushing for safer gun designs for more than 30 years. “It’s going to happen. And the American gun companies can either get on board or they can become Kodak.”
Breathless! “The world will change!” You can read the rest of the article on your own time. The article asks of smart guns, “They’re ready, are we?” But that isn’t what they really mean. What they really meant to ask is when America will be ready to have smart guns crammed down our throats by regulation?
The reality is that if there was a demand for smart guns, they would already have a significant market share. There isn’t, and they don’t. It all has nothing whatsoever to do with the NRA or NSSF. As for whether we will allow “smart guns” to be mandated, I can’t think of a better way to foment civil war focusing on 4GW. The Fortune author wasn’t thinking about that when he asked if we’re ready, was he? So we might ask the author, are you ready?
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On April 23, 2015 at 4:57 am, Rog Jerry said:
I’m sure LE agencies will be rushing to arm their officers with a .22 pistol that works…sometimes. The Cap’n is correct: the real problem comes when this unreliable system is mandated for the rest of us by regulation.
On April 23, 2015 at 4:25 pm, Archer said:
You’re thinking the iP1. Armatix is branching out into 9mm with the iP9, so they’ll have an actual “service caliber” “smart gun”.
Supposedly, it “is being designed to meet police and military
specifications and should be available for evaluation by those forces
later this year.”
But, given the extra steps it takes to fire and the whole “sometimes works” thing, what do you suppose is the over/under probability on police and military units adopting it?
On April 23, 2015 at 8:24 pm, Anonymous said:
I personally suspect that certain departments WILL make an enormous show of purchasing the weapons, but one hopes the purchase will be for evaluation prior to general issue. The military, though? They still have (some) standards, and a sidearm with a failure rate right up there with a flintlock isn’t going to get very far in their testing, short of high-ranking politicians, who might possibly own Armatix stock, taking a personal interest in the matter.
On April 24, 2015 at 11:48 am, Archer said:
I suspect those departments will make an enormous show of purchasing some “smart guns”, and will even make a big show of “deploying” them (with a few officers, for a while, when they’re on desk duty or otherwise not patrolling), but the “street cops” will still have their standard-issue Glocks or S&Ws, complete with standard-capacity magazines.
Regardless of all the bluster, no “normal duty” officer will be required to carry a “smart gun” on patrol, and if questioned on it they’ll use the standard “There’s not enough for every officer to have one” canned response.