Smart facial recognition gun: game-changing firearm safety or risky innovation?

Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun that enables facial recognition technology, the latest development in custom guns that can only be fired by verified users.

But in a sign of the long and challenging road that smart weapons have faced, the prototype failed to fire twice when it was shown to Reuters this week.

Company founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer said the software and electronics had been fully tested, and the failure was related to the mechanical weapon, which was made from pre-production and prototype parts.

At other times during the demo, the gun fired successfully and the facial recognition technology seemed to work.

Biofire’s gun can also be armed with a fingerprint sensor, one of several smart gun features designed to prevent accidental shootings by children, reduce suicides, protect police officers from gun contamination, or render lost and stolen guns useless.

The first consumer-ready versions of the 9mm handgun could ship to customers who pre-ordered as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, with the $1,499 standard model potentially available in the second quarter of 2024, Biofire said.

This could make it the first commercially available smart gun in the US since Armatix briefly went on sale in 2014. At least two other American companies, LodeStar Works and Free State Firearms, are also trying to get a smart gun to market.

At a demonstration at Biofire’s headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado, Kloepfer initially fired without problems and put the gun down. Then another man, an unauthorized user, tried to fire but was unable to fire because the gun did not recognize his face or fingerprint as the safety feature intended.

Kloepfer then went back to shoot it again. At that point, the gun unexpectedly clicked twice, although it fired with subsequent pulls of the trigger. Then another prototype was brought in and that gun worked as designed.

Many gun enthusiasts have been skeptical of smart gun technology, worried that it will fail when a gun is needed for self-defense at a moment’s notice.

“I’ve built not just the product, but the whole business around: How can we build a highly reliable product that opens every time you pick it up and never opens when your child finds it,” Kloepfer said. .

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