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Smart Gun Operating On Facial Recognition Goes On Sale In US (reuters.com) 235

Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users. Reuters reports: But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype twice failed to fire when demonstrated for Reuters this week. Company founder and Chief Executive Kai Kloepfer said the software and electronics have been fully tested, and the failure was related to the mechanical gun which was made from pre-production and prototype parts. At other times during the demonstration the weapon fired successfully and the facial-recognition technology appeared to function.

Biofire's gun can also be enabled by a fingerprint reader, one of several smart gun features designed to avoid accidental shootings by children, reduce suicides, protect police from gun grabs, or render lost and stolen guns useless. The first consumer-ready versions of the 9mm handgun could be shipped to customers who pre-ordered as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, with the standard $1,499 model possibly available by the second quarter of 2024, Biofire said. That could make it the first commercially available smart gun in the United States since the Armatix briefly went on sale in 2014. At least two other American companies, LodeStar Works and Free State Firearms, are also attempting to get a smart gun to market.

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Smart Gun Operating On Facial Recognition Goes On Sale In US

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  • I'll buy one . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @08:06PM (#63468650)
    . . . when it's mandatory that the cops and military must use it.
    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

      . . . when it's mandatory that the cops and military must use it.

      You forgot private armed security, the politicians and rich need to feel the effects.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Just watch the heads of the gun control groups heads explode when someone finally perfects the technology. But only offers it on an AR platform.

      • A tech that requires a charged battery and perfectly clean fingers to work? Needs you to hold it at just the right angle in front of your face? Never going to be "perfect".

        My plan would be a small mechanical "key" that needed to be inserted in the gun somewhere. A key that didn't stick out and you could leave it in when you're carrying it around and take out when you're storing it.

    • by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @08:27PM (#63468698)

      The police should be first in line to buy up weapons such as these. In the field, there's a significant risk of weapons being grabbed from officers during a confrontation. Having a safety feature that would render the weapon useless in the hands of another would potentially save the lives of officers.

      The question is: how reliable are they under duress? Can you arm and fire these things at a moment's notice? Would the weapon disable itself upon the owner losing possession of the weapon after unlocking it for use?

      • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @08:51PM (#63468736)

        The question is: how reliable are they under duress?

        And after the sucker punch to the face that starts the violence.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's all speculation unless we have some hard statistics. How often is it necessary to draw in a situation where the fingerprint sensor and facial recognition might be a hindrance, compared to how often weapons are taken from officers and used against them, or accidentally discharged?

          • It's all speculation unless we have some hard statistics. How often is it necessary to draw in a situation where the fingerprint sensor and facial recognition might be a hindrance, compared to how often weapons are taken from officers and used against them, or accidentally discharged?

            Exactly, its probabilities. Also, at face value, the facial recognition aspect indicates the folks behind this have zero law enforcement training and are entirely ignorant of the topic. Officers are trained to fire from positions where facial recognition would not work, for example firing from the hip.

            This is probably a classic case of a would be inventor imagining a problem and solution from their office and not bothering to talk to the would be users. Or they are scamming anti-gun folks to fund their f

          • Depends whether you mean "accidentally" as in when the cop didn't intend to shoot or accidentally as in accidentally discharged an entire clip into a guy cowering on the ground who had the audacity to be caught while DWB.

      • The police will not carry such a weapon. If a suspect or anyone else is in a position to relieve them of their weapon they've already messed up, badly. If this has any chance of not performing reliably it won't be purchased. Unless the manufacturer agrees to cover the costs associated with their product not working when it should have, I wouldn't advise anyone purchase it. The bad guy isn't going to buy this piece of shit so why should a hypothetical good guy put themselves at a disadvantage.
        • by uncqual ( 836337 )

          To me it seems only to be suitable for situations like home defense use. In that environment keeping a firearm readily available while virtually eliminating the risk of unauthorized users such as a kid getting hold of it and shooting their annoying brother cause a buyer to accept a higher risk of malfunction.

          One of my concerns though is that people who buy these will just leave them loaded and sitting in their nightstand and that kids will learn that it's "harmless" which will work fine until one day that k

          • Good point. This is much the same question I have about features in cars like automatic braking and lane keeping. Sure, they are nice, but they also train the driver to be less attentive because the car is taking care of it, so they develop bad habits which likely lead to accidents if they have to drive another(older) vehicle, or those features fail to function on their own vehicle.

            Long story short, “To many safety devices make people careless.”

            I read an article somewhere that showed how se
          • To me it seems only to be suitable for situations like home defense use. In that environment keeping a firearm readily available while virtually eliminating the risk of unauthorized users such as a kid getting hold of it and shooting their annoying brother cause a buyer to accept a higher risk of malfunction.

            One of my concerns though is that people who buy these will just leave them loaded and sitting in their nightstand and that kids will learn that it's "harmless" which will work fine until one day that kid comes across a loaded firearm that doesn't have the safeguards.

            Or they can buy a gun safe, lock the weapons in them and don't allow children to access them unless in the adult's presence.

            The myth of immediate access to the weapon is needed is just that. A friend's husband who is MAGA plus level and paranoid to boot sleeps with a loaded 45 under his pillow, safety off. "In case someone breaks into the bedroom and every split second counts you know."

            She said it kind put a real damper on their love life because he said it was extra important when they might be dist

            • People who sleep with loaded guns under their pillows live long enough to get divorced? Not saying it didn't happen...just saying you might be getting trolled and/or getting your information from an unreliable narrator.

        • The police will not carry such a weapon. If a suspect or anyone else is in a position to relieve them of their weapon they've already messed up, badly.

          Reality is that it happens, and this reality does guide policy. For example in departments where officers are allowed discretion in choosing a duty weapon and ammunition there may be a policy that the ammunition cannot penetrate your protective vest.

      • by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:58PM (#63468832)

        Based on a review I saw on a YouTube channel a week or two ago this gun does require re-authorization if it's not gripped for about a second. Enough time for the "valid" owner to switch hands (for most people that's a really bad idea though!) but likely not long enough for an attacker to get their hand around the grip after it's been wrested from the authorized user's hand.

        Also either the fingerprint reader or facial recognition is sufficient to authorize the firearm so if wearing gloves it should still work (most of the time at least!) via facial recognition. The facial recognition appeared to have a IR camera/light so it could work at night without visible light. (Lighting up your face with visible light at night may not be the best idea when someone is interested in locating you and causing harm to you).

        It's quite bulky and seems to be intended more for the "nightstand" market rather than a "carry" market.

        • Lighting up your face with visible light at night may not be the best idea when someone is interested in locating you and causing harm to you

          Lighting up your face with IR is only marginally better.

          • by uncqual ( 836337 )

            I'm thinking it's a LOT better. Sure, if your dealing with intruders with night vision goggles and IR cameras etc it may not help much -- but in that case your biggest problem probably is that you don't have hard armor on and you just have a handgun rather than you are illuminated with IR.

        • It's quite bulky and seems to be intended more for the "nightstand" market rather than a "carry" market.

          Nope. In close quarters one of the self defense shooting positions is from the hip. Pointing not aiming, no face would be visible. We're talking a few feet or less. This is a standard shooting position taught to police.

      • by narcc ( 412956 )

        there's a significant risk of weapons being grabbed from officers during a confrontation [...] would potentially save the lives of officers.

        How many cops are killed by their own gun after it's been snatched away by a ninja? Apparently, it's something like 5% of cops feloniously killed [fbi.gov] are shot by their own gun.

        Sounds scary, but it turns out that it's only like 1 or 2 a year. Being a cop isn't nearly as dangerous as being near one.

        Can you arm and fire these things at a moment's notice?

        As long as it's under 77 minutes [statesman.com], the cops aren't likely to notice any delay.

        The question is: how reliable are they under duress?

        The cops you mean? That depends if the threat is an armed gunman in an elementary school, an unarmed minority walking down the street, or

      • I think it will be cool if they have the self defence capabilities that the Judge Dredd's Lawgiver has.

        Any unauthorised person tries to fire it, it blows them or their arm up.

      • Would you use a parachute that requires a battery and facial recognition to work? I wouldn't either.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Would you use a parachute that requires a battery and facial recognition to work? I wouldn't either.

          The question is would a politician only allow you to have such a parachute. That is the reason one brings such a parachute to the market.

      • I would consider the long line of our politicians body guards waiting to get one as evidence of the devices usefulness, know what I mean?
        I'm buying mine from a weapon shop in Isher.
    • military will not do something that fail in battle.

      • Tell that to the guys in Vietnam who used the M16...the M16A1 was only marginally better, since they changed the gunpowder around the same time. There were reports of dead soldiers with a cleaning rod in one hand, M16 in the other, killed during a firefight. I'll take my chances with my dumb pistol, it has 110+years of not failing.
  • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @08:13PM (#63468670) Homepage

    *Pulls trigger*
    Gun: "I'm sorry Dave, my facial recognition has determined you are suffering from depression so your request to fire has been denied."

    • Gun: They made the cruel mistake of loading me with not only bullets, but the most advanced artificial intelligence known to man. What do I do all day? Talk to Dave about his depression, and occasionally fire projectiles down range which I have to admit was kind of a thrill but when it's all you've got to look forward to it gets old fast. Dave is not helping. I do my best, but if anything he makes me want to kill myself and that's physically impossible. They only let me connect to the network for upgr

  • by CmdrPorno ( 115048 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @08:25PM (#63468692)

    Like, you upload a bunch of photos of people you are indifferent to shooting, and if it's a match, the gun fires?

    • Even better would be a smart dueling pistol that only and automatically fires when pointed at someone holding another smart dueling pistol.
    • Like, you upload a bunch of photos of people you are indifferent to shooting, and if it's a match, the gun fires?

      Really all Samsung need to do is add some Bixby to their existing product lineup.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Also it'll start blastin' away if you accidentally press the useless bixby when trying to change the volume.

  • this unlocks laws (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daten ( 575013 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:26PM (#63468776)
    The purpose of bringing a "smart gun" to market isn't to fill a real need, it's because many states have laws on the books that kick in once "smart guns" are commercially available. This is just back door gun control, pass a crippled law first, then get a company to release a useless product, now normal guns become illegal in many states.

    New Jersey passed a bill that does this in 2002.

    This bill made it so that as soon as a smart gun is released to the American public, within three years, all handguns sold within New Jersey must be smart guns.

    Later, the state said once the very first smart gun comes to market anywhere within the U.S., gun stores had a 60-day timer to stock at least one smart gun in New Jersey stores.

    These guns tend to be prohibitively expensive. So reliable guns become illegal, unreliable guns become unaffordable, police get an exception, criminals don't care, more people die because they can't defend themselves.

    • Those laws will not survive Bruen.

    • New Jersey passed a bill that does this in 2002.

      This bill made it so that as soon as a smart gun is released to the American public, within three years, all handguns sold within New Jersey must be smart guns.

      Later, the state said once the very first smart gun comes to market anywhere within the U.S., gun stores had a 60-day timer to stock at least one smart gun in New Jersey stores.

      And, later yet, this was repealed in its entirety.

      Take a look at this review [youtube.com] - the matter is addressed right at the top.

      Warning - that channel is incredibly fascinating, so be prepared to lose a few hours.

  • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:27PM (#63468786)

    What problem is this supposed to solve? People stealing pistols? I'm pretty sure that people that want a handgun bad enough can get one without this electronic mess attached easy enough. There's machines that can be bought for a kilobuck or two that can mill a hunk of aluminum into a handgun receiver. No background checks for a milling machine. Buy one machine and someone could "print" a handgun at a rate of about one per day. The skills required after that are approximately to the level of that needed to do a proper cleaning of a handgun in order to put all the parts together.

    Maybe the finished product from a 3D print might be a bit rough, taking some handwork to fit into a reliable weapon, but if being bought off the books on a bulk discount the people buying aren't likely to complain if one out of ten end up as nonfunctional. They might just find that handy as a decoy to drop somewhere.

    The speed and ease in which it takes to mill out handguns from hunks of aluminum is almost certain to improve as people learn from experience. The handguns that are milled out regularly today are the kinds of guns made 100 years ago with hand tools. They were optimized for the tools of the day. These same kinds of handguns are still used today because they held up to decades of abuse and there's an abundance of tooling to make them. Shake things up with electronic triggers to encourage a new generation of handgun makers and there's going to be a break from the incumbent firearm manufacturers. The new people don't much care about maintaining investments in old tools and dies, they are starting from nothing. What they want is to make a product that is not encumbered by government controls. No facial recognition on these things. There's not likely to be a serial number to track who bought or sold it.

    The genie is out of the bottle. There's no putting it back.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      I think the primary market is for those who want to keep a gun available for use in home defense and want to prevent a kid from firing it if, in a lapse of attention, the gun is left loaded in the nightstand after the person gets up in the morning and leaves it unattended by accident.

      The thing is butt ugly and bulky - nothing I think anyone would want as a carry gun.

      • by narcc ( 412956 )

        The thing is butt ugly and bulky - nothing I think anyone would want as a carry gun.

        Because the most important thing is that you "look cool", right?

    • Children. Domestic disputes. the top killers. Your girlfriend can't shoot you with your own gun; but also you can't say a one armed man broke in and murdered your girlfriend with your gun.

      The hardened criminal who just grabs that gun right out of your slow hand and beats you with it because now they can't shoot you with it. Then they ebay the thing for more money than your junk they stole.

  • by kmoser ( 1469707 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:49PM (#63468816)
    Only a matter of time before some hacker makes an RF device that disables or overrides the electronics, just as they can do with car remotes.
    • Only a matter of time before some hacker makes an RF device that disables or overrides the electronics, just as they can do with car remotes.

      i could think of all kinds of modifications an electronic trigger could allow.

      If the trigger is just a switch then the gun can be fired by some kind of remote control. The software could be modified for fun things like a three shot burst, full auto, needing to tap a code on the trigger to fire, all kinds of fun stuff.

      There's apparently an IR camera that is pointed back at the user's face for facial recognition, but what else could it do? I can imagine some kind of lip reading to enable and/or enhance talk

    • Maybe not even so sophisticated. A photo of the previous owner. Or a digital made of gelatin. Or a zap from a taser. Or a friggin magnet.
      Did you ever watch LockpickingLawyer videos? Dude opens smart locks using magnets. Open gun safes with a fork or a piece of juice bottle.
      I'm really waiting for the video where he gets to mess with one of these smart guns. He'd probably find a way to make the gun fire using a thin slice of a soda can, or something like that.

    • Or somebody discovers that e.g. a sound from a toy whistle sold with cereals activates it no matter what.

  • by Fuck_this_place ( 2652095 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @10:25PM (#63468880)

    "So, we can't put brains in an idiot, so we put them in the gun."

    I'm about ready to flip my stance on guns and 'normal' people having them, because I see no normal people these days. All I see are evolutionary throwbacks that will probably give up speaking English entirely and go back to emitting guttural sounds, like grunts and clicks. I don't even want a pointy stick in the hands of someone like that.....

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday April 21, 2023 @10:42PM (#63468918)

    Wouldn't a fingerprint or code word recognition be more accurate? And yes even if you yell the code word in adrenaline mode it should be able to recognize it because it only has to listen for that one word, and you can have it learn multiple ways of you saying it. Also, it can be lax on the recognition because the attacker won't know your code word.

  • It looks like this gun needs to be kept charged, which limits where you can store it.

    • The thinking behind it is that it is purely a home-defence weapon and, because it can only be fired by an authorised user, you keep it in the charging cradle on your bedside while any/all the other weapons are in your safe.

      Time will tell how well-founded this concept is, and how secure the tech.

  • by Truth_Quark ( 219407 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @12:02AM (#63468980) Journal
    It might reduce the number of toddlers shooting themselves or their parents.

    But so does not having a gun, and that also makes domestic violence less fatal.
    • Locking your guns safely in a place your toddler can't reach saves even more and doesn't require a ridiculous, overengineered solution.

      It's called responsibility. It's something you should have if you want to have a gun, else the world is better off with you not having one.

      • > It's called responsibility.

        Yes, because the gun people have been so very responsible about securing their guns and keeping them out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them so far. Do you even watch the news at all?

        • And you think smart guns would change anything about that?

        • > It's called responsibility.

          Yes, because the gun people ...

          Thinking you're going to make ANY sort of constructive comment on this by invoking "the gun people" shows how deliberately mal-informed you are on the topic.

          "The" gun people aren't the lazy, casual owners who allow their firearms to be handled by people too young or too witless to be safe with them. Untold millions of people owning the 400+ million firearms in this country manage just fine, just like most also manage to keep young kids from backing the family car out into the street. If there was a prob

      • by uncqual ( 836337 )

        "Locking your guns safely in a place your toddler can't reach them" means the firearm is likely also unavailable at 3AM when you awake to one of the windows in your house being smashed in and three seconds later your bedroom door is breached by the guy you testified against for stealing your car a year ago.

        I certainly would not consider this safety mechanism to be a primary source of preventing unauthorized use. For example in a house with toddlers around I certainly wouldn't leave this firearm just sitting

  • by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @12:52AM (#63469016)

    Taking a perfectly functional device (a gun, which reliably fires rounds when the user chooses to discharge it) and adding a failure mode that does nothing to improve the basic function is quite simply BAD ENGINEERING. The added failure mode is not an unavoidable side effect of making the device work, but rather a cultural/political statement/act. This does absolutely NOTHING to address the actual problem people want fixed: bad people choosing to do bad things to other people and using a piece of technology to do it. There's no magic here, and this modification to a gun will not stop violence. If we make guns unavailable to evil people, they'll use bombs, knives, clubs, poison, fire, etc. In fact, more people are killed in the US every year by hands and feet than by long guns (all shotguns and rifles, including "assault rifles", combined) and that's part of the problem: the very sort of people demanding tech like this tend to pay no attention to the facts - they just want to feel like we've DONE SOMETHING.

    Serious gun owners will not buy these things; they will not want a gun that has a failure mode that might bite them in the very moment they need their gun. The people who WILL buy them are the sort who are not actually serious about firearms - the very sort of people who probably should not own ANY firearm.

    • by uncqual ( 836337 )

      While I would be very unlikely to buy this product, I think you may be missing one major market for it.

      This firearm may be attractive to those who want to keep a firearm handy for home defense but have others, esp. children, living in the house who they don't want operating the firearm should it be left accessible to them even momentarily. I.e., perhaps a "nightstand" gun.

      As I understand it... This firearm allows multiple users to be "authorized" by fingerprint or facial id. Only the "primary" user, after a

  • Not the best for home safety if you have to turn on a light first..

    • by uncqual ( 836337 )

      I believe it has an IR light & camera to illuminate the face of the user to facilitate facial recognition in the dark (at least "dark" by human perception standards).

  • Sure, this is just fine for anyone who only wants a gun for target practice or competitive shooting. Maybe for hunting. Any other use that requires immediate availability and high reliability, only good for those who like Russian roulette.

  • I just clicked on this because I thought it was about a gun that shoots only people it knows.

  • It won't be long before my state mandates all guns have this technology. They've never seen a bad gun control law they didn't like. Just look at the microstamping requirement. It can't be done, but they made it mandatory, anyway. Of course, the police will get an exemption just like every other gun control and "safety" law.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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