The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports:
“Autonomous Ballistics, a team from New York University Tandon School of Engineering, took home the $1 million prize in a Smart Gun Design Competition funded by Borough President Eric Adams. And the winning team’s design is not a gun — but a smart holster …”
The idea of a “smart” gun has been around for probably close to 50 years. All attempts to produce one have failed. Knowing this I will give these guys credit for trying a different approach.
“… The smart holster uses fingerprint ID, RFID and voice identification to keep out everyone but the legal owner (and up to 200 other users), Cohen and Raj Kumar said. A small fingerprint reader is embedded into the wall of the holster. The beauty of their design is that you “don’t have to change your gun at all. It’s just a holster similar to the one you have except this is maneuvered so that it’s almost inherent that you put your finger [on the fingerprint reader] when you pull it out,” Cohen said …”
I’d guess the idea came from the retention-type holsters police use. The problem here is any system is only as reliable as the least reliable part of it. Electronics are less reliable than mechanics so their idea has an inherent flaw. How could you market such a product? Would trail lawyers consider the liability aspects of marketing a product with a known “defect”?
“… The concepts were evaluated based on their adaptability into the market, feasibility, flexibility, potential impact on public safety and potential for other uses. So far no word has come in on the design from gun manufacturers on the idea …”
Their silence says enough.
Notice too, the NYPD isn’t jumping on this. If Adams, who is a former officer, believes in the concept so much why isn’t he promoting it to Commissioner O’Neill?