Second Gun Shop Reverses, Now Won’t Sell Smart Gun

by Warner Todd Huston | May 2, 2014 1:30 pm

Earlier this year a gun shop in California began to gear up to sell a “smart gun,” but gun enthusiasts raised such a stink about the sale that the store backed off and even claimed they never intended to sell the gun. Now a shop in Maryland has had the same experience with similar results.

The gun in question is the Armatrix iP1, a so-called “smart” pistol that cannot be made to fire unless the shooter is also wearing a wrist watch that emits an electronic signal unlocking the gun’s firing mechanism.

Pro-Second Amendment advocates are vociferously against this gun. The chief reason is that several state legislatures (California and New Jersey, for instance) have laws that once “smart gun” technology is on the market, all guns but smart guns will be banned.

So, when a California gun shop let slip it was looking to market the iP1, gun fans slammed the shop with attacks on the Internet and in person. The hate for the shop was so high that proprietors quickly claimed that they never intended to sell the smart gun and would not do so in the future.

Now a similar situation has happened[1] at a gun shop in Maryland.

Andy Raymond, the co-owner of Engage Armament, had also announced that he’d sell the smart gun. He, too, faced a broadside of Internet and store boycotts as well as in-person protests in front of his shop.

Pretty quickly, Raymond reversed his decision and apologized to Maryland, to gun owners everywhere, and to New Jersey for raising fears that the smart gun law would kick in there because he was selling the smart gun in Maryland.

Still, Raymond thought is was a bit hypocritical of gun owners to oppose the sale of a gun.

“To me that is so fricking hypocritical,” Raymond said before the attacks hit his establishment. “That’s the antithesis of everything that we pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment people should be. You are not supposed to say a gun should be prohibited. Then you are being no different than the anti-gun people who say an AR-15 should be prohibited.”

The shop owner also felt that a smart gun may encourage new people to buy a gun that otherwise may not have. He felt that was a good thing, too.

Still, despite his misgivings on working against smart gun tech, Raymond apologized to everyone and decided not to sell the gun.

Raymond is wrong to dismiss the threat that smart gun tech is to our Second Amendment rights, though. If legislatures have their way and are able to pass laws that ban all guns but smart guns, this will ultimately result in criminalizing most Americans not to mention giving the state the power to launch confiscation drives.

There is no way this won’t happen. Smart gun tech is a threat to our rights, plain and simple.

Then add to that the simple matter of its likely unreliability. Bad battery in your unlocking watch? You’re dead because your gun won’t work. Someone breaking into your home and can’t find both your gun and your watch? You’re dead because now your gun isn’t the only thing you have to look for in order to defend yourself. And you just know that someone will invent some electronic jamming device that will block your unlock signal.

But, gun fans aren’t really against smart gun tech, They are against the avalanche of legislation banning all their other guns that will result from it.

Endnotes:
  1. a similar situation has happened: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-dealer-will-defy-gun-rights-advocates-by-selling-nations-first-smart-gun/2014/05/01/564efa48-d14d-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/second-gun-shop-reverses-now-wont-sell-smart-gun/