Eric Holder and "Gun Bracelets"

Attorney General Eric Holder's comments before the House Appropriations Committee earlier this week related to "Smart Gun" and other technology related devices that make if harder to access firearms have gotten a lot of attention on various firearm related web sites.  The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo News claims all of that attention would never have materialized if the Washington Free Beacon had used a different headline in this story that has been shared widely, including on this blog.

 Holder was talking about things like the Gun Box, a storage device for firearms that can only be opened when the owner passes a radio frequency ID (RFID) chip over it, the sort of thing in your credit cards that lets you tap instead of swiping. The Gun Box embeds its RFID chip in a bracelet. Need your gun? Wave your hand over your storage box and it opens — but your kids and criminals can't gain access.

That's not the headline the Free Beacon put on its story, as Talking Points Memo noted on Wednesday. Instead, the site went with: "Holder: We Want to Explore Gun Tracking Bracelets." That's the headline that carried over to the conspiracy site InfoWars and to Fox News and to the NRA website. There's no tracking in what Holder referred to, unless you're worried about being tracked by your gun. But if the headline had been "Holder: Let's Make Guns Smarter," all those other sites wouldn't have picked it up.

But the Atlantic Wire is not being completely up front either.  Holder did talk about "Smart Guns" not just the "Gun Box"  And, the NRA and NSSF have pointed out the flaws in so-called smart guns on numerous occasions and it is a safe bet that the Attorney General announcing the Justice Department wants to put a significant sum of additional taxpayer money to promoting such technologies would have drawn just as much attention as the Washington Free Beacon story drew.

Fact is, the U.S. Department of Justice, through congressional earmarks, funded so-called smart gun technology research from 2008- 2010, with that last grant award closing out in 2013.   There is no conspiracy theory as the Atlantic Wire infers.  There is a certain segment of congress and the current administration that wants to make access to firearms as hard as possible for the population as a whole, not just prohibited persons.  The Free Beacon, Fox News, and the NRA was simply doing what the mainstream media won't, report the various schemes this administration cooks up to further infringe our rights.

Taxpayers to Pay for Gun Control?

Based on this Washington Free Beacon report, it appears that is what Eric Holder wants.

“I think that one of the things that we learned when we were trying to get passed those common sense reforms last year, Vice President Biden and I had a meeting with a group of technology people and we talked about how guns can be made more safe,” he said.

“By making them either through finger print identification, the gun talks to a bracelet or something that you might wear, how guns can be used only by the person who is lawfully in possession of the weapon.”

Actually this would not be the first time taxpayers would be funding such projects. As recently as 2010, the Bureau of Justice Assistance provided $1 million (thanks to a congressional ear mark) to the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) for "The Child Safe Personalized Weapons Technology" project.  Over the course of three years, NJIT received ear marks totaling $1,504,418 for this work.  That's pennies compared to what Holder wants for his pet projects:

The Justice Department has requested $382.1 million in increased spending for its fiscal year 2014 budget for “gun safety.”

The NJIT project focused on the development of an "electronic handgun disabling mechanism," which along with Grip Recognition "provides a complete child safe weapon demonstrable prototype."  That award closed in September of 2013 and NJIT claims to have developed a working platform for dry and live fire experiments as well as designed and intedgrated a disabling system.

Because congressional earmarks ended when the Republicans regained majority control in the House, NJIT's funding dried up.  Look for them to try to get a slice of Holder's wish list if the new funding materializes. Sounds like it's time to contact your congressman and let them know you oppose increased funding to push gun control schemes like "smart guns" and "gun tracking systems."

Are Firearms the New Tobacco?

Politico has the story here.

“The complexity and frequency of gun-related violence combined with its impact on the health and safety of the nation’s residents make it a topic of considerable public health importance,” said Alan Leshner, chairman of the study committee and chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He said the proposed research could lead to policies that will reduce gun violence, similar to other public health successes in “lowering tobacco use, accidental poisoning and motor vehicle fatalities.”

Much of the "zero tolerance" nonsense we have seen in the last couple of weeks is nothing more than trying to change the attitude or "brainwash" the public on the issue of firearms, much like Eric Holder suggested in the 90s.  This attempt to politicize research is more of the same.

Holder in 1995: We need to "Brainwash" People Into Disliking Guns

“We have to be repetitive about this.  We need to do this every day of the week, and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”



I expect the administration spin on this to be "there is nothing new here." And they are right, Holder has always been against firearms freedom and nothing has changed.

Hat tip to NRANews.

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