For the children (part two)

January 26, 8:50 AMGun Rights ExaminerDavid Codrea

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In part one, we talked about President Obama's plan, as stated in the official White House "Urban Policy," to "mak[e] guns childproof."  Such ambitious nationwide standards are apparently part of his promise to acknowledge the differences between Chicago and Cheyenne. Not.

"Childproof," of course, is not a legal definition, so it can have very broad meaning applied. This is intentional, you realize.  That way, all options are open, like mandatory trigger locks, or "safe storage" laws requiring that firearms be unloaded and locked away separately from ammunition.

Hey, why wouldn't you want to give a home invader a head start?

But the gold standard of child-proofing that researchers have been chasing for two decades is the so-called "smart gun," a personalized firearm that recognizes its owner and refuses to perform for anyone who steals it--kind of like the giant's harp in "Jack and the Beanstalk."

Competing  technologies like magnetic and electronic rings, fingerprint identification, etc., have been tried over the years, and at this point, it looks like a leading contender is "dynamic grip recognition."  After nine years of labor, system proponents (that would be people getting federal grant money) have managed to turn on red and green lights with it.  Most of the time.

Some aren't impressed, and it may surprise you who.  The Violence Policy Center calls "smart guns" a "false hope."

Their solution?  Make triggers harder to squeeze.  That way, old people who are incapable of fighting off an attacker, or people with arthritis in their hands, will be even more defenseless. Nah, just kidding. Their real solution is to ban guns. This is just a harassing action they find useful. At the very least, it keeps their name in the debate, so donors will think they're actually doing something .

But even if you have a personalized firearm, thieves can still make off with ammunition.  That's why we need "smart bullets," encoded ammo that will not fire unless a PIN is entered into a keypad.

I kid you not.

Can you imagine doing that in the 1.5 seconds it takes an attacker to cover 21 feet?

Look, here's the deal.  This whole nonsense actually started as a proposed solution for protecting police, who were being killed in "takeaway incidents"--one out of six  officers killed in the line of duty were reported slain with their own weapons back when this got underway. So naturally, now that New Jersey and Maryland have laws on their books that will require this technology once it's developed, guess who is exempt?  You don't think their unions are going to let this foolishness be mandated on their guys, do you?

As for eliminating "child gun deaths," we'd have a much greater societal impact were we to mandate smart swimming pools, smart cars, smart...Besides, what do we do with the hundreds of millions of guns already in private hands?  Oh...never mind.

There's a lot more to say on this subject, but I already said it 10 years ago.  Some of the circumstances and technologies discussed in "Smart Guns-Dumb Lawsuits" have changed, but the principles are still the same.  I encourage you to take a few moments to read it.

My bottom line?  If Obama wants "childproof guns," let's see him mandate them for his Secret Service protection detail first.  I'll still be against the idea, but at least we'll see he actually believes in a technology he would impose on you and me.

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Paul Valone of Grassroots North Carolina is now on board.  It's exciting to see this concept grow, and to see it being so well received.  Go check out his new column.