Smart Guns Don't Always Make the Grade

There’s an understatement. “Smart guns” never make the grade.

The original National Institute of Justice grant to Sandia Labs to develop them was specifically justified by “takeaway” incidents where cops were killed with their own gun. But the cops don’t want to have anything to do with them—no surprise there.

"If a weapon is taken from an officer, I personally believe it is primarily a training issue. Most folks seem to try and solve most tactical problems through some sort of hardware improvement without looking at the core system. The human operator should be the primary system to be improved upon. Many departments are dangerously low in their delivery of ongoing advanced officer training. If an officer cannot be trusted to deploy and keep his or her weapon, please don't give them one in the first place!”

That was told to me by former Navy SEAL Ken Good, at the time, director of the SureFire Institute. He is an expert’s expert, providing weapons and tactics training to elite military fighting personnel, civilian law enforcement tactical specialists, and security professionals.

Training certainly seems to be the core issue in this “news report”—one cop killed with his own gun, the other closes his eyes and prays. And if the gun did “backfire,” the training deficiencies quite possibly extend to proper maintenance of issued firearms.

The creepiest line in this story: “Grants also have gone to private gun makers looking into…a gun that reads a rice grain-sized computer chip injected into the owner's hand.”

Who but a pathological government-worshipping Nazi dreams up stuff like this? And who are the industry whores turning tricks for them?

Two other questions to consider:

Has anyone not had the experience of pointing a remote control unit at a TV or garage door and having nothing happen?

And does anyone really think that once “smart guns” are mandated, an edict giving “authoritah” a shutoff switch will be far behind?