The United States of America has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world and, relatively, there is not a close second. Guns are saturated within our media and culture as a whole. They are in the news, in movies, in TV shows, in video games and just about every form of media one could think of. They are used in hunting, target shooting, and competition shooting. Gun shops can be found in almost every city across the nation. Guns are a very large part of our American culture, there is no doubt about that. But, with guns comes gun violence as you simply cannot have one without the other. Gun violence includes homicide, assaults with a deadly weapon, and suicides. It also includes incidents that may be considered non-criminal such as accidental or unintentional firearm deaths. These are all big problems that seem to plague the United States in relation to all of the other developed countries across the globe. There are laws in place and gun safety features amongst other things that attempt to reduce the rates of gun violence but they are not doing as good of a job as they should. Nothing is flawless or perfect but the fact is what is in place in our current system is not doing nearly enough. So there needs to be fixes and/or more enforcement in what we already have or, something new needs to be put into action. One of these ideas to address this gun violence issue are to make guns "smart". These guns are most commonly referred to as "smart guns", but they can also be referred to as "personalized guns", "safe guns", or "childproof guns". "Smart" guns have technologies built into them that have the ability to recognize who has ahold of it. They can determine if whoever is holding it authorized to fire it or not.  The idea behind this is similar to locks on our smart phones, only the owner can access it. In theory, if some sort of lock is integrated into a gun to where only the owner or authorized user can use it, it will prevent accidental injuries and render it nonoperational if it were to be stolen or used by anyone else and in turn, dramatically reduce gun violence. With all that being said the question that arises is, can smart guns really reduce gun violence rates that the proponents of them claim they could? Or will it be ineffective?

It is without a doubt that technology has come a long way within the past century, especially within the past ten years. It seems that technology is exponentially growing across all spectrums and markets and even creating new ones along the way. These constantly and rapidly developing technologies of course are also destroying some of them at the same time which causing a lot problems, but I digress. New technologies having been changing almost everything we use from headphones to the cars we drive. Every new and/or improved technology in our world is meant to increase efficiency, safety, and overall make our things and our experience with those things, better. With that being said one thing that has not, for the most part, been technologically advancing like everything else is guns. Now, there are arguments that would say that is false and then they go and point out advancements in optics, ballistics, gas systems, etc. But outside of that, the basic functionality of guns has remained the same. Unlike almost every other personal user device like phones and computers, guns (outside a very few exceptions) do not have any user-identification/verification technologies in them. This is where smart guns come in. They have these additional technologies that traditional guns do not. As aforementioned earlier, smart guns are guns that can only be operated by the authorized user. There are multiple ways that go about doing that. The top three recognition technologies that smart guns would use are electronic, fingerprint, and magnetism-based. Electronic recognition is where the gun will only be functional within a certain distance from a transponder. When the gun gets a certain distance away from it the gun will then be turned off in a sense and rendered inoperable. The idea with this that the owner of the gun or its intended user would wear this transponder most likely on their waist or wrist or somewhere that would be within range of the gun so it could reliably work. The range of the transponder should not extend outside the wearers reach so in case of the event that the gun would be taken from them, it could not be fired. Finger print technology is exactly what it sounds like. It uses fingerprint recognition technology. The idea with this is runs right along the line with fingerprint scanners that are on smartphones. When the owner or intended user goes to use the gun, the scanner would be able to register that it is his or her hand holding the gun and it will then quickly be ready to fire. The last one is magnetic-based. This is somewhat similar to the electronic recognition technology. The owner or intended user using this type of smart gun would wear a magnetic ring(s). This magnet would then interact with the magnets in the gun to allow it to be fired. That is how each of these technologies should work, in theory (Massad).

Even though we are technologically advanced as a species, relatively speaking, we are far from being perfect or being able to create something that is perfect. Or at least without some sort of downside or flaw(s) to some sort of degree. This definitely applies here. Each one of these technologies has its downfalls. Let's begin again with electronic recognition technologies. The range of the transponder (a device that broadcasts a radio frequency) is arguably one of the main concerns regarding this. If it is too short, it may cause the gun to malfunction in the hands of the intended user which not only would cause a lot of frustration but could also could result in injury or possibly death if the user was using the gun in a self-defense scenario. If it is too far, it turns from just the intended user being able to operate it into whoever is near the intended user and has ahold of the gun. This greatly increases the chances of having one's own gun used against them since the majority of the scenarios of people being shot by their own gun are when they had it wrestled out of their hands or taken out of their holster. Which is what the main objective of this technology is, to prevent that from happening. There is also the possibility that these systems could be jammed or remotely disabled in some way allowing the criminal to commit his or her crime because they were able to disable their victims' gun. Impacts from drops and repeated shocks from the recoil could loosen or damage the electronics because they are sensitive. What about moisture? If any were to get in it would surely have a high chance of short-circuiting and in turn unable to be fired. Fingerprint recognition technologies also would have this issue as they too have electronics in them. This technology also fails if the user happens to be wearing a glove as of course their finger cannot be scanned through it. Then there is the issue if the users hand or scanner on the gun getting dirty. The mud, dust, or whatever it may be on it would more than likely prevent the gun from recognizing the user's hand causing it to fail. But perhaps the scenario the user is in has ideal weather conditions and there is nothing in the way of the scanner and the users fingerprint, the scanner still may take x amount of time to register and essentially turn on the gun costing the user time that they very well may need even if it is only fractions of a second. Our smartphone fingerprint scanners are not 100 percent reliable or always instantly able to read ones fingerprint right away so why would anybody want this on something that needs to work 100 percent of the time? Magnetic-based technologies would negate a lot of the problems that face electronics but they have their own and separate issues. While magnet technologies have worked on revolvers, specifically the Smith & Wesson K through N-framed revolvers (Massad), to a certain degree, they seem to not work nearly as reliably on semi-automatics which are used my most law enforcement departments and are quite popular with citizen consumers. Magnets also can lose strength due to different reasons. This could then cause the safety mechanism to not work properly and again prevent the gun from being able to be fired. Even though smart guns have decreased reliability over traditional guns, do their supposed benefits outweigh this fact?

Smart guns have one goal they are ultimately trying to achieve. That goal is to reduce gun violence numbers across the board but two in particular are where these technologies are focused on preventing, suicides and accidental shootings. On paper, the goals all sound great but one must look into how they will attempt to accomplish this goal and consider factors that could be overlooked. Let's first look into how smart guns would prevent suicide. As the leading cause of firearm deaths here in the United States this is an important case for smart guns to try and resolve. But one problem with that is firearm owners could still commit suicide even if their gun was a smart gun as they would be an authorized user. Then that brings up the argument regarding teen suicides. As teens are not old enough to purchase a handgun they could not have their own smart gun to use to commit suicide and if his or her parents have a smart gun they would not be able to use it. In reality though a majority of teens would have access to their parents smart gun and would be more than likely be an authorized user too in case the need to use it in a self-defense were to arise and the parents were not there or unable to get to it themselves. For those who would not be a part of the authorized users list the teens would also be likely to find a way to get the gun to work. For example, for a magnetic-based smart gun all they would have to do is acquire the ring that goes along with the gun. A fingerprint-based smart gun though would be the most effective of the technologies though, so long as they are not programmed as an authorized user. Smart guns effect on may be the most profound on accidental and unintentional shootings, especially those involving young children as they should not be an authorized user. If they were that would be on the parents for allowing them to be but those cases would be outliers. Children who get ahold of a smart gun could simple not operate it at all and thus prevent a vast majority of gunshot injuries and fatalities of or by children who just happened to find or be playing with a gun. Those are just a couple of the problems smart guns attempt to address. 

Smart guns are a miniscule part of the gun industry and market, presently. But that can change as technologies become more reliable and more affordable. Some of these technologies and smart guns are available currently, but they are not nearly as easy to buy and go and get as traditional guns. Most and practically all gun stores do not sell smart guns. There is a market for smart guns and technologies related to them so why do stores and vendors not sell them? One problem is that smart guns are almost prohibitively more expensive than traditional guns. A larger and more central problem though has to with politics and gun rights activists. Politics as with many issues plays a large role. Gun rights activists and groups like the NRA vocally express their discontent with smart guns and actively oppose all measures that promote them. Armatix, a company that introduced an electronic based smart gun in two gun stores in Maryland and California, and the gun stores that agreed to sell their gun faced heavy opposition and even threats from the gun rights lobby (Healy). Gun rights activists and the NRA have their concerns. They fear that this could lead to government mandating the use of smart gun. They point to the New Jersey law that stated that all guns for sale in the state had to be equipped with some sort of smart gun technology 30 months after a "viable" smart gun came onto the market. They also fear that this could lead to a mandated government buyback or confiscation of the millions of traditional guns that are already owned. All of the opposition from these groups has been thwarting efforts to increase smart gun technology advancements and availability here in the United States.

Instead of trying to create and/or implement new technologies into our guns, how about there be an increased use of proven, readily available, and affordable technologies. Trigger locks are very effective at preventing unintentional discharges and children getting ahold of the gun and using it. They do exactly as they name suggests, they lock the trigger. Most guns come with one when they are bought. They are, in short, locks placed on the trigger that can locked and unlocked by a key or other similar tool (Vernick). The only issue with these is that this requires the owner to unlock and relock it every time they go to use it and this can be seen as an inconvenience. It can also be seen as impractical if the owner uses it for personal protection, they would point out that in self-defense scenarios they would simply not have the time to unlock the trigger lock. That time taken to unlock it could mean life or death as well. 

In cases where they "did not know the gun was loaded" as the common phrase goes for accidental discharges of a gun, a chamber indicator and/or magazine safety may have prevented it. A chamber indicator is a feature on a gun that shows whether or not the gun is chambered. However, it does knowledge from the operator to know what the indicators message is, chambered or not chambered. A magazine safety only allows the gun to be fired when the magazine is in the gun regardless if there is a round in the chamber or not (Vernick). Sometimes the person using it thinks the gun is empty when the magazine is removed and will carelessly pull the trigger.  Which leads to the next and final point. Many of these accidents are due to improper storage and not following basic safety rules when handling guns. Proper gun storage can prevent children from ever finding or getting ahold of the gun. Following basic rules of gun safety such as never point the gun at anyone, never leave the gun chambered, keep the safety on until ready to fire, and never put your finger on the trigger, will reduce many of these accidents. 

Can smart guns reduce gun violence? Yes. Will they be as effective as proponent's claim they will? No. At least not in this point in time. The technology is not reliable enough yet. The idea that it takes the gun one more step to fire does not sit well with gun owners. That is adding more room for error in a tool that needs to work 100 percent of the time. The real effort that needs to be made to reduce gun violence needs to come from the gun owners themselves. They need to practice more proper gun safety rules, take more preventative measures, and simply be more responsible with their guns, not rely on technology to ensure their safety. 

