In a Sunday op-ed at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the contentious-among-idiots invention of "smart guns"—guns that (for example) fire only if a recognized fingerprint is on the trigger, or if the shooter is wearing a companion wristwatch. Recently, a 17-year-old Boulder resident named Kai Kloepfer designed a smart gun that could recognize up to 1,000 fingerprints with upwards of 99 percent accuracy, and by the fall—when Kloepfer will enter college—the gun should be licensed to manufacturers.
But there remains significant National Rifle Association opposition towards smart guns, which are not currently available in America through normal means. They used to be: Smith & Wesson, the makers of the gun that a toddler in Idaho recently deployed accidentally to kill his mother in a Wal-Mart, sold a childproof gun model in the 1880s. It is now discontinued, leaving us with a particular side effect of our gorgeous American freedom:
About 20 children and teenagers are shot daily in the United States, according to a study by the journal Pediatrics.
Indeed, more preschool-age children (about 80 a year) are killed by guns each year than police officers are killed by guns (about 50), according to the F.B.I. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read the rest of Kristof's piece here.
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