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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.
In a demonstration at Biofire headquarters in Broomfield,
Colorado, Kloepfer initially fired a round without issue and set
the gun down. Then another man tried to shoot but was unable to
because the gun did not recognize his face.
Kloepfer then came back to fire it again. It was at that point
the gun unexpectedly went click on two occasions, though it did
fire on subsequent trigger pulls. Then another prototype was
brought in and that weapon functioned as planned.
Many gun enthusiasts have become skeptical of smart gun
technology, concerned it will fail when a weapon is needed for
self-defense at a moment's notice.
"I've not just built a product, but an entire company around:
How do we build an extremely reliable product that will always
unlock for you anytime that you pick it up, and will never
unlock when your kid finds it," Kloepfer said.
(Reporting by Matt McKnight in Broomfield, Colorado, and Daniel
Trotta in Carlsbad, California. Editing by Donna Bryson and
Jonathan Oatis)
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