Tech Crunch – by Sarah BuhrColorado has a history with gun violence so it’s only appropriate that 17-year-old Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder, would want to apply biometric user authentication to firearms. Kloepfer just won the $50,000 Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge for his smart gun prototype.
Angel investor and gun reform advocate Ron Conway became the main backer of the $1 million Smart Tech prize to spur gun safety solutions earlier this year. “Let’s use innovation to bring about gun safety. Let’s not rely on Washington,” Conway told the SF Examiner in January. According to the Smart Tech Foundation, a total of 15 innovators will receive a part of that million dollar prize. Kloepfer is the first to get the award.
The gun works by creating a user ID and locking in the fingerprint of each user allowed to use the gun. The gun will only unlock with the unique fingerprint of those who have already permission to access the gun. The clearly brainy teen tells me he has an interest in information security. According to him, all user data is kept right on the gun and nothing is uploaded anywhere else so it would be pretty hard to hack. This potentially makes it ideal for military use as well.
Kloepfer came up with the idea two years ago when he needed something for his high school science project. “The idea came to me right as I was falling asleep. It was kinda in the back of my mind because of the shooting,” said Kloepfer, alluding to the Aurora, Colorado shootingthat had been on everyone’s mind at the time. The shooting was just an hour’s drive from his home. “I scribbled it down before I went to bed and fell asleep and then in the morning I began my research,” He explained.
Kloepfer’s parents helped him in monetary increments to get the parts needed for each improvement. It would eventually cost $3000 for the whole thing to come together. “At first it was just a concept on paper,” he tells me. The gun went from phase to phase with each science fair. “Right now it’s a prototype on a plastic model. Its not entirely there but it works,” he says.
Some of the $50,000 has already been used to purchase a 3D printer to create new parts for his prototype. Kloepfer, who will graduate from Fairview High School this year, plans to use the rest of it toward the integration of a fingerprint scanner.
“Every 30 minutes in the U.S. a kid dies from a gun. I want my gun to help reduce accidental deaths and injuries, and to prevent tragedies,” said Kloepfer (Note: 1500 kids die from a gun and many more are seriously injured every year, according to the Center for Injury and Research Policy).
He spoke about his biometric smart gun tech at the TEDx Mile High: CONVERGENCE this week in Denver, Colorado.
How does a 17 year old acquire the knowledge to create a fingerprint identification device?
Exactly.
“The clearly brainy teen tells me he has an interest in information security.”
And I’m sure Big Brother has an interest in hiring this young, Common Core, indoctrinated sheeple in order to do it.
You know, I’m getting real sick of everything having to be technological regulation in this world. It’s waaaayy past time to just let things be. But of course, the Communist don’t want that and that is why they keep doing it.
If we don’t stop this, we could have a future technology or currency type system that will regulate our life according to how much TIME we purchase or have recorded in our bodies like the movie, “In Time”.
My guns all have similar technology,
As soon as I pick them up they will function, as soon as I put them down they stop. Huh, dont ned any extra investment for that do we!
NOMI
Haha! Now that would make too much sense.
How about the parents just teach their kids gun safety and proper use and just maybe this wouldn’t be necessary. Then if you can’t trust your kids or maybe they are on some kind of mind altering drugs the government likes them to take, then just try a gun safe, the key word here is SAFE.
usual jewish plaguarism.
Metal Storm owns a patent on this, and a similar system with a ring you wear.
i think it was called the O’Dwyer VLE
anyone who believes this propaganda also believes the zuckerberg story….
‘Smart’ guns are stupid, and will come with a government ‘kill’ switch.
Or, the gun may not function when needed.
Another disarm america tactic.
-flek