Armatix Shills for Smart Guns in Washington Post Op/Ed

Yesterday, the Washington Post published this Op/Ed from Ernst Mauch, managing director of Armatix GmbH.  In the piece, he makes a pitch for why so called smart guns, or at least the ones his company manufactures, are in keeping with America's respect for the right to keep and bear arms and believes gun owners should have the ability to purchase them:

Respect for this freedom to protect your family as you see fit is a major reason I believe that gun owners in the United States should have the right to purchase personalized firearms using high-tech safety features. The reality is that firearm safety has not meaningfully advanced in the past century. Nearly every other industry has transformed its safety features — often multiple times — in that same period. Given how tragic the misuse of firearms can be, guns should be no different.

Most of the commentary I have seen from the firearms community on the subject of smart guns believe it should be a market decision too.  The problem is, New Jersey has a law on the books that mandates only "smart guns" may be sold in the state once such technology is available for sale.  It's the mandate that the firearms community opposes and we don't want to see the rights of our brothers and sisters in New Jersey infringed when one manufacturer comes to the market with one caliber of firearm that currently costs two to three times what a similar firearm without the personalized technology would cost.

But, this is also technology that is not ready for prime time.  As Sebastian pointed out last week:

The problem with smart guns are more fundamental than the shock sensitivity of electronics, and have more to do with the limits of biometric identification and radio frequency identification (RFID). The former is unreliable and slow, and the latter is prone to interference and jamming. There’s also inherent mechanical problems with the smart gun that make the technology very easy for a determined individual to defeat. I had a conversation with some of our opponents on this topic, who argued that automobile anti-theft systems became much more sophisticated, but aside from misunderstanding the problem, I thought it was a reasonable point.

Then, we learned yesterday that Armatix has also applied for a patent for a remote "kill switch." And some wonder why the firearms community is not warming up to the idea of "smart guns."