[imagesource: Columbia Pictures]

In the 2012 James Bond flick Skyfall, Q explained to Bond that his latest gun was secretly fitted with a microdermal sensor exclusively encoded to his palm print.

That essentially meant that the smart gun was for 007’s hands only, and only he would ever be able to shoot it.

It was the gun that saved his life in that film, allowing him to die another day.

The tech in the James Bond films has usually been miles ahead of anything based on reality, but still, gun manufacturers have at least been trying.

Although, there hasn’t been a successful replication of the technology which is affordable and hack-proof.

Until now.

Gun company LodeStar Works in Boise, Idaho, has just unveiled the future of guns with their 9mm smart handgun, unlockable using a fingerprint reader:

Developed by LodeStar Works, this nine-millimeter pistol is a prototype ‘smart gun,’ equipped with fingerprint reader, passcode, and a way to lock and unlock it from a mobile phone https://t.co/XW8Ac5rOpY pic.twitter.com/6pmwnhGVOH

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 11, 2022

The smart gun is in the works to become commercially available this year for $895 (just shy of R14 000), reported The Telegraph.

Not that the general firearms market, National Rifle Association, and other influential lobby groups are so stoked about it.

There is a concern from those parties that the advent of this smart gun will lead to new government regulations and bans on traditional guns.

Image: Reuters/Brian Losness

But Gareth Glaser, co-founder of the company, seems to have his priorities straight:

Mr Glaser was inspired not by James Bond movies, but by seeing news stories about children getting shot while playing with their parents’ guns.

Smart guns would mean a child being unable to fire weapons disabled for use by anyone but their parents.

The new guns could also help prevent suicides, and make criminals unable to fire stolen weapons.

It could also have safety implications for police officers as suspects grabbing their guns in a struggle would not be able to use them.

Former congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabrielle Giffords agrees that smart guns could save lives, even as the gun lobby continues to “staunchly opposed development of gun safety technology, preventing it from becoming commercially available”.

Nonetheless, Glaser reckons it’s ready, and so the LodeStar Works smart gun might just herald a new era of weaponry anyway.

[source:telegraph]