Smart gun can distinguish between "owner and stranger"

Smart gun unlocks with face like phone

Sasha Wiesen sleeps with his .40-caliber pistol in a safe next to his bed. The Florida real estate broker recently ordered a new gun that he hopes will eliminate the need for a safe.

This is a 9mm smart gun from Colorado startup Biofire that can only be fired when confirmed by the owner's fingerprint on the gun's grip or a facial recognition camera on the back - a form of unlocking similar to that on a phone, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Guns that use technology to ensure they can only be fired by their intended owners have been developed and debated since the 1990s. The Biofire smart gun will be the first to go on sale if it ships in December as planned.

Smart Gun

In the US, where gun ownership is still controversial, smart gun advocates hope that this will be a solution to use guns properly, safely, and reduce shootings and gun theft. On the other hand, gun manufacturers and dealers are concerned that the government may ban the sale of weapons without smart technology.

Previous attempts to bring smart guns to market have failed, largely due to pressure from gun rights activists or because they didn't work as hoped.

Just as technologies have created replacements for legacy products like electric cars, the question for smart guns is whether they can replace traditional versions and find an audience.

The Biofire smart gun costs $1,499, which is on the high side. Similar handguns without the tech typically cost between $400 and $800.

Michael Schwartz, executive director of San Diego County Gun Owners, a local gun rights group, said many gun owners remain skeptical of guns with high-tech features.

“For most of our members, the main purpose of owning a gun is for self-defense, as simple as possible,” he said. “It has to be 110 percent reliable.”

Biofire founder Kai Kloepfer, 26, has been working on the technology since he was a teenager. He says he built a facial and fingerprint recognition system so that if one function fails because your hands are wet or your face isn’t recognized, the other will compensate.

Smart gun that can be unlocked with your face

Reducing the Indiscriminate Use of Weapons in America

Biofire was founded in 2014 and has raised $30 million in funding from a variety of sources, including venture capitalist Ron Conway, who has been pushing smart gun technology since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left several students dead.

Kloepfer said thousands of people have pre-ordered the company's smart gun, which is sold only online, but declined to give specific numbers.

Biofire's gun was criticized in the media earlier this year for malfunctioning. Kloepfer said the weapon jammed - but there were no issues with the facial recognition or fingerprint systems.

In the past, firearms manufacturer Colt was one of the first companies to develop smart guns in the 1990s.

The Colt Z-40 was designed to fire only when the user wore a bracelet that emitted a coded radio signal. But it was rejected at the time and the Z-40 never made it to market.

A German company, Armatix, developed a .22-caliber smart pistol in the 2010s that used a radio frequency identification watch. But gun stores dropped plans to sell the device in 2014 after protests from gun rights activists.

In addition to highlighting gun thefts, smart gun advocates argue that they can prevent children from accidentally using their parents' guns or teens from using them in school shootings or suicides.

With the technology's promise, other startups are working on smart guns, although they have no plans to launch them on the market anytime soon after Biofire.

Tom Holland, president of Kansas-based Free State Firearms, said his company is using a ring that uses radio frequencies for gun users.

“When people hear about fingerprint scanning, it seems like they have some qualms about not being able to unlock their phone with their fingerprint sometimes,” Holland says of the technology Biofire uses.

Holland said the Free State plans to introduce the new gun early next year. He said the weapon is being tested by several police agencies and has already received a number of pre-orders from consumers.