A start-up firearms manufacturer Biofire is enabling American citizens to pre-order a ‘Smart Gun’ that requires facial recognition and fingerprint technology to fire. They are producing the futuristic-looking 9mm handgun for $1,500 with orders due to ship in 2024.
The firearm contains two forms of biometric ID, an optical fingerprint sensor and a 3D infrared facial recognition system. This enables only the gun’s true owner to use and activate them thus reducing accidental fire or misusing stolen weapons.
More than 13,900 people have already been killed by guns in the U.S. in the first four months of 2023 alone, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
Biofire claims that its smart gun technology could potentially prevent two-thirds of gun deaths in the US, saving around 22,000 lives in 2018.
However, this estimate has been challenged for being exaggerated. Engineering & Technology (E&T), a publication affiliated with the Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK, conducted an analysis using data from the US Center for Disease Control and other research reports.
E&T concluded that only approximately 6,109 gun deaths could realistically be prevented annually. Regardless, the actual impact of the smart gun technology remains uncertain as it is still in development and needs to reach the market as planned.
‘Our goal is not just to start collecting orders, but to get this into full production and produce as many of these as people want to buy,’ Biofire’s 26-year-old founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer told the Denver Business Journal, ‘because it’s a great concept and one that I think is going to be a good thing for the world.’
‘It has the ability to have an incremental, immediate impact that sidesteps a lot of the gridlock politically,’ Kloepfer believes.
Biofire, along with other players in the “smart gun” industry like LodeStar Works and SmartGunz, have been proclaiming for a considerable time that their products are on the verge of hitting the market, with anticipated launch dates just within reach.
However, Lawrence Keane, the senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an association representing the firearms industry, expressed doubt last year regarding the repeated assurances made by these companies.
‘If I had a nickel for every time in my career I heard somebody say they’re about to bring us a so-called smart gun on the market,’ Keane said, ‘I’d probably be retired now.’
Regardless, U.S. customers who want to pre-order can pay a $149 deposit, about one-tenth of the smart gun’s $1,499 price tag, to reserve their weapon via Biofire’s website.