Save Lives and Prevent Crime by Biometrically Identifying Guns

 Constitutional rights should be upholded while citizen deaths should be prevented.  To make America safer while not infringing upon the rights of the 2nd amendment, the United States government should pass a federal law requiring all guns to biometrically outfitted and fund for the research to improve on such technology and make it available cheaply for the consumer market.  Such guns, smart guns, would only respond to the owner who we assume is a responsible gun owner that has passed background checks and taken safety courses before licensing his firearm.  Ultimately years from now when the technology exists, bullets too may be biometrically identified along with the guns.  Germany has already passed a "technology waiting law in 2009 that would eventually require all German manufacturers of weapons to only make smart weapons, once an acceptable technology existed anywhere in the world.  In addition, the German law would require the retrofitting of all existing German weapons with smart gun technology."  

62% of Americans feel gun laws should be stricter.  Let's take a look at other gun statistics... 8 guns are produced every minute by US manufacturers.  Out of those 8 guns, 3 are handguns.  The average number of firearm thefts that occur in the US every year are 341,000(!)  Total number of firearms in the US: 223 million. The percentage of arestees who say it is easy to get a gun illegally, 55%.  The percentage of LA high school students who say they can obtain a gun for less than $50, 25%.  68% or 13,673 of the murders commited in 1995 were with a firearm.  544,880 violent crimes with firearms were reported to police in 1994.  The easiness of obtaining a firearm is cleary a problem that has been addressed many times with stricter gun laws or passing more background checks, but besides the fact that these solutions don't work perhaps we are looking at it the wrong way.     

There has already been an innovation initiative proposed by several parents of the Sandy Hook massacre.  “Sandy Hook Promise, a group of parents of the Sandy Hook massacre, have launched an Innovation Initiative with members of the Silicon Valley technology community. This initiative will advocate for providing breakthroughs in new gun technology by providing grant and prize moneys.

The smart gun is supposed to:

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  Reduce the likelihood of unintentional injuries to children

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  Preventing teenage suicides and homicides.

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  Limit the violent acts committed by criminals using stolen guns.

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  Protect law enforcement officers from criminals grabbing their firearms during a struggle.

If chip failure occurs one of two things can happen:

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  For civilian use, the gun will be set to not fire.

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  For law enforcement use, the safety system will be bypassed, and the gun will be allowed to fire.

Obama has already mentioned in his 23 executive actions on gun control but all politicians do is talk and is time to take a stand.  So take a stand to prevent another tragedy like Newtown and sign the petition.