Another company wants to manufacture a “smart gun” that can be fired only by an authorized user. Another company will fail. Why? Two reasons: The influential National Rifle Association sees smart guns as a step toward stricter gun control, and the people who actually buy firearms in the U.S. don’t really want smart guns. That’s what you call serious barriers to entry.
A California company called Armatix is trying to sell a .22 pistol dubbed the iP1, which received attention from the Washington Post in February and again today from the New York Times. The iP1 contains a computer chip that enables the pistol to work only if the user enters a five-digit PIN into a watch-like device that transmits a signal to the gun. The weapon will not fire if it’s more than 10 inches from the watch.
The NRA has opposed smart guns for many years on political grounds. The group argues that given the opportunity, gun-control advocates would mandate technologically personalized firearms that government overseers could track—and even disable.
Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek