Smart Gun with Smart Doc
In John Scalzi’s military science fiction series Old Man’s War, protagonist John Perry joins the mysterious Colonial Defense Forces, essentially a space force from Earth sent around the universe to fight aliens. It sounds ridiculous in almost every way, with elderly Earthlings receiving new, improved bodies, with the exception of a considerable amount of plausible technology.
Colonial Defense Forces soldiers are issued guns that can only be fired by the soldier the gun is issued to. After much fanfare and a lot of “smart gun” hype, Biofire says they have now brought this concept to life.
The Truth About Guns highlighted the announcement of the Biofire Smart Gun last week. Biofire CEO Kai Kloepfer, a gun-owner and self-described gun enthusiast, unwittingly began his career in “smart gun” development with a high school science project.
After the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, he wondered how a gun with “smart” technology could help avoid similar incidents. Over the next 11 years, Kloepfer secured investors and recruited a number of engineers to bring his idea into being.
“Smart guns” have been incredibly contentious, mostly due to a New Jersey law. The law mandated that once a “smart gun” became commercially available, all handguns sold in New Jersey would have to have “smart gun” technology. That was, of course, absolutely preposterous and a gross violation of the Second Amendment.
As such, it stifled smart gun development for years as no one wanted to trigger the law. Biofire actively opposed the mandate law as it stirred up dislike for “smart guns” and discouraged investment in their development. The law has since been repealed.
So what is a “smart gun?” There isn’t really a single definition, but the general consensus seems to be it’s a firearm with some type of biometric capability that ostensibly prevents unauthorized use. While some have tried in the past, no one has produced anything that actually worked. Until, potentially, now.
When Biofire first approached me about this product I was extremely skeptical. While I haven’t had the chance to actually examine one, I have watched a videos such as the one from Forgotten Weaponsthe one from Forgotten Weapons and seen enough to conclude the Biofire Smart Gun appears to actually work, though it still has a way to go before it’s ready for prime time.
The Biofire 9mm pistol has two forms of biometric identification – facial recognition on the rear of the slide and a fingerprint sensor. Only one of the two forms of authentication has to work for the gun to unlock.
Rather than work from an existing firearm platform, Biofire engineered their 9mm pistol from the ground up. It functions largely like a traditional striker-fired pistol with a slide, slide catch, trigger, and a traditional magazine (10 or 15 rounds).
The Biofire Smart Gun is larger than your typical 9mm with a rather futuristic aesthetic that’s similar to the SilencerCo Maxim 9 and the Hudson H9. The biometric technology runs on a rechargeable lithium-ion battery which itself poses an interesting question. Could you transport it in checked luggage? No one’s yet it tried.
The slide and 4.7” barrel are stainless steel with a glass filled nylon grip. Factory specs cite a 5 lb. trigger and weight of 2.4 pounds. The gun itself measures 8.7” in length, 5.7” in width and 1.6” in height.
The sights are non-adjustable. The front sight illuminates to indicate whether the person holding the pistol has been “authorized” to shoot it. Green indicates it’s ready to fire. The Biofire Smart Gun also features an integrated red laser which the user can program to immediately turn on when the gun is unlocked.
So how does a gun “authorize” a user? The Biofire pistol is USB-C rechargeable through any standard outlet, but a new pistol is programmable by an electronic smart dock. While there are accessories that house the pistol and dock, the dock itself isn’t a landing place for the pistol.
Think of it instead as a digital remote the size of a small notebook with a USB cord. From there you can enter your name and program certain settings. According to Biofire, “The Smart Gun and Smart Dock together are a closed system that protects personal information with defense-grade data security…Users’ biometric data never leaves the firearm, which has no onboard WiFi, Bluetooth, or GPS.”
If you want to have another person be able to shoot the pistol, you can create extra or temporary users. The gun will only unlock in an authorized users’ hand. Biofire’s media kit says that “Integrated IR sensors in the grip keep the firearm armed while an authorized user is holding the gun, removing a need to continuously authenticate their biometrics.”
Kloepfer insisted his “smart gun” needed to be reliable. It needed to unlock quickly and flawlessly for the correct user every time and it needed to function reliably.
At this point, the gun is still really just a prototype and Biofire hasn’t released accuracy numbers or malfunction rates. By the time the gun is set to ship later this year, Biofire says they expect their gun to be comparable to a GLOCK 19 or SIG P320 in terms of reliability. We shall see.
That said, the company is being realistic and doesn’t intend the Biofire Smart Gun to be a replacement for other guns currently available, just an additional option. It isn’t designed for concealed carry or match use. It’s intended specifically for people who want a quickly accessible home-defense gun.
It takes time to unlock a safe, even a biometric one, so many people choose to keep their home defense gun on their nightstand, in plain view. That poses a safety concern if you have guests or children. Biofire believes that’s the problem they’ve now solved.
My concern is this may promote unsafe habits with traditional firearms. For example, a child thinking that because their parents’ “smart gun” can’t be fired if they pick it up may assume that all guns have that feature. Ultimately, education, firearm safety, and proper training will still be incredibly important and necessary, whatever firearms a person owns.
The Biofire Smart Gun is no substitute for training and it isn’t a fix for stupidity. Still, it may be an intriguing piece of technology with noble goals in mind.
In terms of finally creating something new and bringing what has been science fiction into reality, I applaud Biofire, certainly for their persistence, and assuming the finished product works.
Again, what’s been shown to the public so far is still a prototype, if an impressive one. They’ve built a new weapon system from the ground up rather than customizing or following an existing model.
I was invited to see and shoot the current iteration. However, the amount of time I’d have with the gun, the number of rounds fired and the kind of ammunition were going to be limited. I declined the invitation. I’d rather wait until they have a finished product that’s ready for real world testing and evaluation rather than waste time on something that really isn’t quite there yet.
I am also still incredibly apprehensive about “smart gun” technology. While Biofire has assured me the gun will unlock as you grab it, I am still wary about trusting my life to something that’s so dependent on electronics.
The dual, redundant biometric system is key to its reliability in varying circumstances. Biofire says the gun has a four-month battery life on a full charge, which takes one hour. They also say they’ve tested it in temperature extremes and under a variety of conditions.
As far as the now-gone New Jersey problem, the company has publicly stated they will take a stand against any future “smart gun” mandates. They’ve said . . .
Biofire’s focus is on building better, faster, safer firearms that solve the issue of safe storage versus instant access. We believe our Smart Gun should always be a choice, not a requirement, not a mandate, not a must. Though we’re not aware of any current political conversations about smart gun mandates, Biofire will be the first in line to fight against any future mandate.
That’s reassuring, but politicians will be politicians. The very existence of a commercially available biometric gun will almost inevitably open the door for reincarnations of what New Jersey tried to do.
I’m still apprehensive because of the always uncertain political climate, but the reality is that “smart guns” were always going to happen at some point. I’d rather the first maker be an ostensibly pro-2A company like Biofire than someone else.
This pistol is currently available for pre-order at smartgun.com with a refundable $149 deposit and several color choices. It comes in both left-and right-handed versions at a cost of $1,499.
