World’s First ‘Smart Gun’ With Fingerprint Technology Hits Market

An American company unveiled the world’s first “smart gun” this week featuring advanced fingerprint unlocking and facial recognition technology.

Biofire Technologies put its futuristic 9mm handgun on the market, and it is designed to prevent tragic incidents involving firearm misuse by those who should not have access. Only the owner and those approved by the owner will be able to fire the weapon.

The $1,499 9mm handgun is a timely addition to the market, according to Biofire CEO Kai Kloepfer. “Right now it seems like the entire country is always processing a new tragedy involving children and guns.”

He added that the Colorado-based company offers a genuine solution “at a time when solutions seem very hard to come by.”

Kloepfer does not harbor delusions that all firearm misuses may be prevented by the Biofire Smart Gun. He does believe, however, that the advanced weapon could help “prevent some suicides, accidents, and injuries from occurring.”

He noted that if one child’s life is saved, the effort will be worthwhile.

In 2012, Kloepfer was a high school student living near Aurora, Colorado. It was then that a shooter opened fire during a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” and killed 12.

Kloepfer was struck by the tragedy, and in 2013 he submitted the idea of creating a safer firearm to a local science fair. Three years later he founded BioFire.

Mike Corbett, a former Seal Team 6 member and a BioFire advisor, described the Smart Gun as made for “real gun owners who want a quality home-defense firearm that cannot be used by children or criminals.” It will be the choice of many households in just a few years, he believes.

The Aurora shooter would not have been prevented from carrying out that massacre as he had purchased his firearm legally. But the school shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy used his mother’s weapon and theoretically could have been stopped.

The weapon features an integrated capacitive fingerprint sensor and a 3D facial recognition system. It also has LED indicators to show the user when it is searching for the authorized user’s biometrics.

It comes with a portable dock charger that uses a high-resolution screen to add or remove authorized persons.