‘Smart Guns’ Shoot Only For Their Owners New Technology An Alternative To Trigger Locks

High-tech guns that “know” their owners and refuse to be fired by anyone else will soon start showing up in gun stores as a possible solution to accidental shootings.

Such weapons would fire only when they detect identifying electronic or magnetic signals from rings, bracelets, badges or other items the owners would wear, industry representatives say.

Promoters of the new technologies see the personalized firearms as a logical, more convenient extension of manual trigger locks, which most gun manufacturers have agreed to start providing with new firearms.

They say such guns could greatly reduce accidental shooting deaths of children - 185 were recorded in 1994 - and the use of stolen firearms by criminals.

Kenneth Pugh, a Houston businessman who seven years ago began patenting personalized gun technologies, expects his Fulton Arms Corp. to begin marketing its “Smart Gun” early next year.

The gun is a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol that will carry in its grip an electronic mechanism that recognizes an encoded signal from a ring worn by the owner. When the grip mechanism detects the right signal, it opens a lock, allowing the gun to be fired.

The gun likely will cost about $1,000, Pugh said, adding that comparable handgun without the recognition technology would cost from $500 to $700.

A model state law developed by the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore would mandate incorporation of “personalized handgun” technology in all handguns sold in a state.

The center is a unit of the university’s School of Public Health. Its director, Stephen Teret, said the model law has been introduced in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey, and that state legislators in several other states intend to introduce it soon.

“This is a way to get around the stalemate over guns,” Teret said. He compared the technology to air bags, seat belts and other innovations that have made automobiles safer.

“We tried for decades to get people to drive prudently and carefully,” he said. “Then we changed the cars.”

But skeptics say the technology could backfire.

For example, a smart gun would refuse to fire whenever a friendly user attempted to protect the owner, said William Caruthers, manager of Old Town Armory in Alexandria, Va.

Instead of owning “smart guns,” Caruthers said, people should be “smart gun owners.”

“This personalized gun will be dedicated to one owner,” Caruthers said. “This will neutralize another member of the family’s ability to use that weapon in an emergency. And the bad guy is not going to worry about it. He’s going to bring his own gun.”

Pugh said he developed the idea after mistakenly thinking that a San Antonio, Texas, police officer who had been shot with his own gun was a friend of his. By the time he had learned that was a case of mistaken identity, Pugh said, he had worked out the plans for a service weapon that could be fired only by the policeman who carried it.

Subsequent market research convinced him that police would resist using firearms that must clear high-tech obstacles before they will fire, “even though the ammunition will probably be more likely to fail than our system.”

“Our market research shows the biggest problem is in homes where a person needs a gun, but has small kids and doesn’t want to put them at risk,” Pugh said.

He said magnets in a ring worn by the gun owner will produce a variety of magnetic fields, and each gun will respond only to the magnetic pattern generated by the proper ring.

“The rings are attractive,” he said. “They look something like class rings.”

He said he has licensed the technology to a large shotgun manufacturer, which likely will start marketing “smart” shotguns in a few years.

Several other inventors have proposed different technological approaches to the same problem:

One involves rings or bracelets that contain transponders, which detect an electronic “interrogation” signal emitted by the weapon and send back an identifying reply. The weapon then unlocks itself.

Patent Office records show that Heiko B. Adams of Morehead, Ky., obtained a patent this year for a scanning device that the inventor said is capable of reading the shooter’s fingerprint and releasing the safety only after it determines that an authorized finger is on the trigger.

A less elaborate safeguard was patented in 1994 by Robert and Ann Fuller of Helen, Ga., and Richard P. Smyth of Marietta, Ga. It would consist of an alarm that sounds whenever a manual trigger lock is disengaged.