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Beretta Announces Position Concerning

"Smart Gun" Technology
 

January 4, 1999
 
 

As the leading designer and manufacturer of high-quality firearms in the

world, Beretta has recently been asked by several news organizations
about the feasibility and advisability of making handguns that include
so-called "smart gun" technology or "personalized" internal locks.
Beretta has considered this issue for several years and has concluded
that existing design concepts of this type are neither advisable nor
feasible.

Although the concept of a "smart gun" or "personalized gun" has received

public attention recently, we believe that careful consideration has not

been given to potentially dangerous risks associated with these
concepts.
In our opinion, such technology is undeveloped and unproven. In
addition,
Beretta strongly believes that "smart gun" technology or "personalized"
guns (hereinafter also referred to as "smart gun" technology) could
actually increase the number of fatal accidents involving handguns.

To understand our concern, it is necessary to first understand the
purpose of "smart gun" technology. "Smart gun" technology was first
seriously studied a few years ago in conjunction with law enforcement
use. Approximately 17% of police officers killed in the line of duty are

killed with their own firearms, usually when the gun is taken away
during
a confrontation. The Sandia National Laboratories and others have
expended significant effort and funds in studying and trying to develop
a
gun which would not function when taken away from the police officer to
whom it belongs. The resultant technology has been dubbed "smart gun"
technology because of the notion that a police officer’s handgun would
not fire unless it was being used by its owner.

The fact that "smart gun" technology was developed for law enforcement
use is significant because it is designed for a situation where the
owner
of the gun has a gun within their control and intends that it be loaded.

Beretta has grave concerns about the

suitability of such a device for home use for the simple reason that
civilian owners of such guns, who would not currently do so, might
believe that their weapon is now childproof and could leave their guns
loaded and accessible to children, trusting the "smart gun" feature to
prevent an accident.

The current storage practice recommended by Beretta and all responsible
firearm manufacturers, if a child is present or might gain access to a
gun, is to unload the gun, lock it, and store the ammunition in a
separate location. We believe that "smart gun" technology represents a
step backward from this prudent storage practice.

Devotees of "smart gun" technology have, in fact, touted the notion that

the technology allows the owner to store their gun loaded. (One company
which sells a type of mechanical lock actually prints "Lock It Loaded"
on
its packaging.) Amazingly, even the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence,
which is the legal action arm of Handgun Control Inc., argued in a
recent
court case in California that internal locks should be included in
handguns to allow owners to leave the gun locked and loaded, even if
children might gain access to the gun. Support for the notion that a
"childproof" gun could increase unsafe storage practices is found in a
recent study conducted by a gun control organization which found that up

to 11% of persons who do not now own a handgun would do so if they knew
that their handgun was "childproof."

Beretta’s concerns about this potentially risky situation might be
assuaged if we knew that "smart gun" technology was reliable, but it is
not. The Sandia National Laboratories study found that police officers
rejected "smart gun" technology because it was unreliable. Similarly,
Beretta has studied "smart gun" concepts for several years now and has
found the designs currently under consideration to be potentially unsafe

and unreliable.

Examples of "smart gun" technology include handguns which have
fingerprint sensors on the trigger which are coded to one person’s
trigger finger print, revolvers in which a magnetic ring worn on the
hand
of an authorized user de-activates an internal locking mechanism, a
semi-automatic pistol which only fires if it is in close proximity to a
radio-frequency generating transponder, a revolver which operates only
in
response to a pre-programmed pressure from the hand of an authorized
user, a handgun which is activated by voice recognition technology and
combination locks built into the gun.

If one carefully considers these devices, their limitations become
immediately apparent. A lock which depends on reading fingerprints, for
example, would not work with a gloved hand, requires exact placement of
the finger on the trigger (which might be missed in a life-threatening
confrontation), and prevents use of the gun with either hand or by more
than one authorized user. Moreover, such a device would require the
purchaser to travel to the manufacturing site in order to have the gun
personally programmed.
 

Voice recognition technology is unreliable, especially if the owner of a

gun is being attacked and must try to match the normal speaking voice
with which their firearm is familiar. Someone being stalked or a
homeowner with an intruder present may also not want to reveal their
location to a potential attacker by having to speak to their gun to get
it to function.
 

A handgun that must be programmed to an owner’s handstrength, again,
would require factory programming and might not work when the owner’s
handstrength was altered by duress or injury. Another concern is that a
child with similar handstrength could still use such a gun.

Magnetic devices are internal to the weapon. If, after use, the lock
does
not return to its "locked" position, this failure of the device is not
apparent, thus leaving the gun unlocked when the owner believes it is
locked. The magnetic rings used for these devices erase credit cards and

cassette tapes. One police department in Ohio experimented with the
devices and found that police officers routinely left their rings at
home
because they did not like them. Most troubling is the fact that the
magnetic lock is non-discriminating, meaning that any magnet can release

it. This means that a child could unlock and use the firearm using a
magnet from their kitchen refrigerator.

We understand that Colt’s Manufacturing Company has spent a considerable

amount of money and effort during the past few years attempting to
develop a "smart gun". In our opinion, that device, which is in the
prototype stage only, is conceptually flawed. The Colt invention
activates the firearm only if a radio transmitter is in close proximity.

This would require that the owner of the firearms wear a radio
transmitter at all times. Since 71% of all gun owners own more than one
gun, these owners would have to wear several transmitters at all times,
or one for each gun. If all transmitters were set at the same frequency
to avoid this problem, the locking mechanism would suffer from the same
problem as a magnetic lock, meaning that many people could activate it,
including children who might gain access to extra transmitters. For both

civilians and police, the use of a transmitter would mean that, if an
attacker obtained your firearm, your proximity to the gun would,
ironically, activate it, creating the very risk the invention was
intended to avoid. It is important to note that Colt has recently stated

to the public that their "smart gun" efforts are directed toward law
enforcement use and not for use in storing a firearm in the home.

All devices that use batteries -- whether it is the Colt device, the
fingerprint identifier or the voice-recognition device -- suffer from an

additional problem. Most homeowners who have a gun for self-defense
rarely fire that weapon. A handgun, for example, might be stored for
years before it is needed to save someone’s life. If that gun depends
upon batteries to activate the weapon, a serious question arises about
the failure mode of the device. If the batteries fail and the gun cannot

be activated, the homeowner who depends upon the weapon to save his or
her life, may find that the gun does not work. If, on the other hand,
the
failure mode of the batteries leaves the gun unlocked, a homeowner might

be relying on the batteries to keep the gun locked and safe, only to
discover that a child can now use the gun without impediment.

Internal mechanical locks, such as internal combination locks, require
activation by the owner and, in that sense, are no different than
existing externally applied locks. They suffer the disadvantage of being

a part of the firearm, which means that the owner may not notice or may
forget that the gun is unlocked and thus leave it accessible to
children,
believing it is safe.

These concerns raise a further, serious point. No "smart gun", to our
knowledge, has ever been subjected to real-life testing. It is unknown
whether these devices will cause the gun to malfunction when it should
not. It is unknown whether these devices will lock successfully every
time. It is unknown whether these devices can withstand corrosion or
exposure to the oils and solvents typically used to clean a firearm. We
do know that oil will destroy electronics and we do know that these
devices complicate the firearm in many significant ways.

We also know that people rely upon firearms to protect their lives. The
Fall 1995 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology reports that firearms
are used defensively 2.3 million times per year. (A subsequent National
Institute of Justice study places the number of defensive uses at 3
million per year and a Los Angeles Times survey placed the number at 2.5

million defensive uses per year.) Many of these defensive uses involved
warding off danger by simply displaying the gun, but in 15.6% of the
defensive uses, the person using the gun stated that they "almost
certainly" saved their life by doing so.

This means, for every life lost in a firearm-related accident in that
same year, 255 lives may have been saved through defensive gun use. (It
should also be noted that most firearm accidents are hunting accidents
or
involve the owner of the firearm shooting themselves or another person,
none of which would be prevented by "smart gun" technology or, for that
matter, any lock.) For every accidental death, suicide or homicide
involving firearms in 1994, 10 lives may have been saved through
defensive gun use.

Most importantly, these studies document the importance of firearm use
in
saving lives. A device that prevents or seriously impedes such use --
such as current "smart gun" concepts -- would cost more lives than it
might save.

It is also important to understand that every gun can already be locked.

Trigger and cable locks are effective and have been used with firearms
for decades. Lockable gun cases and cabinets have existed for centuries.

Many of these locks are inexpensive and are readily available at
sporting
goods stores, hardware stores and retail firearm dealers. In 1997,
Beretta and other major manufacturers of firearms, representing over 85%

of all such products, voluntarily chose to begin providing locks or
security devices with their handguns before the end of 1998.
 

The fatal accident rate in the United States involving firearms is at
its
lowest level since 1903. This accident rate has declined almost 40
percent in the past 25 years alone and the decline in fatal firearm
accidents has occurred in a century which has seen a four hundred
percent
increase in the number of firearms in circulation in the United States.

Notwithstanding this remarkable record of safety, gun control advocates
had urged that locks -- such as trigger locks -- be provided for guns by

firearm manufacturers (rather than through existing retail channels).
When the firearms manufacturers agreed to do so, the same advocates
declared that the very locks which they had proposed were suddenly
insufficient and that "smart gun" technology was now required. We
believe
that these proposals are not motivated by safety (they do not call for
locks on shotguns or rifles, for example, even though these weapons are
as frequently involved in accidents as handguns), but by the desire to
make private ownership of handguns more difficult. The merits of that
objective would provide the subject for a separate discussion, but
irrespective of its political purpose, the call for "smart gun"
technology suffers from technical and conceptual errors that could cost
lives.

The idea of a "smart gun" has appeal to the unwary and has been promoted

by gun control advocates who have no technical understanding of firearms

design nor, apparently, of the risks inherent in their proposals.
Beretta
trusts that politicians and voters who consider this issue carefully and

objectively will agree that such devices should not be required in
handguns.