CROWING ABOUT his record on crime at a community center in Boston the other day, President Clinton unveiled a proposal to spend $ 10 million on research into "smart gun" technology. This hightech approach to gun safety is the newest weapon in the fight to bring down gun manufacturers.
Smart guns are designed to allow only their specified users to fire them. A number of models are on the drawing boards, including combination locks, fingerprint-recognition technology, and radio-controlled locks requiring the user to wear a transmitter ring to fire the gun. Each design has its drawbacks. If the user forgets the ring or the combination or isn't recognized by the gun because he's wearing gloves, he may be endangered. But supporters say the benefits outweigh the risks. Smart guns, they claim, will prevent police officers from being shot with their own weapons, desperate teens from committing suicide, and children from accidentally shooting themselves.
The new technology has other implications, as well. Once smart guns reach the market, they will set the standard for gun safety, and older technology will be by definition unsafe. This will create an opening for gun opponents to sue the manufacturers of "unsafe" products, and possibly drive them out of business, without coming up against the Second Amendment.
City governments, emboldened by the states' landmark settlement with the major tobacco companies, are primed to hammer the gun makers in court. Even without the safety issue, 30 cities have already filed lawsuits against gun manufacturers to recover the costs of emergency services linked to gun violence. Meanwhile in Washington, the president has said his Department of Housing and Urban Development may initiate a federal lawsuit against gun makers to recoup the cost of gun crimes in public housing.
In nearby Maryland, attorney general Joseph Curran, too, is speaking the language of litigation. "In addition to death and injury, we also pay [for gun violence] in economic terms," Curran wrote in a report entitled "A Farewell to Arms: The Solution to Gun Violence in America." "As this tragedy has unfolded, how has the gun industry responded?" Curran asked. "By creating new products with greater killing power." According to one "scholar" he cites, "Lethality is the nicotine of the gun industry."
Maryland governor Parris Glendening (who last year distanced himself from Curran's goal of banning handguns for non-law-enforcement uses) has made smart guns a priority for the General Assembly. Like President Clinton, Glendening requested funds -- $ 3 million over three years -- to finance research into personalization technology and develop a smart-gun model.
But Glendening has upped the ante by asking the legislature to mandate smart-gun features in all guns sold in Maryland by 2003 if the technology is commercially available. According to the governor's spokesperson, "The state has to mandate the technology to drive the technology."
So far Maryland's Democratically controlled legislature is unenthusiastic. Critics and some proponents argue that the technology won't be ready anytime soon. Even the special commission Glendening established to craft a strategy for reducing gun violence couldn't agree on a smart-gun timeline. While the commission's final report recommended imposing the mandate in 2003, its technology subcommittee said reliable smart guns wouldn't be available until 2005.
In pushing for the earlier date, the full commission noted that Colt Manufacturing has created a research division devoted to developing a smart gun. But Colt's program is funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, and "is directed solely at the law enforcement market." The $ 500,000 grant has produced one prototype smart gun and a request for more funding. The NIJ insists that it could be up to five years before a smart gun is available for law-enforcement use.
Oxford Micro Devices, a computer-chip maker, has sought NIJ funding to apply fingerprint-recognition technology to guns. CEO Steven Morton believes smart-gun technology could come to the market in as little as two years, despite the attitudes of gun manufacturers. They are fostering suspicion about the reliability and feasibility of the technology, Morton says, out of fear of lawsuits and government interference. And they don't want to take a financial risk. Oxford made smart-gun proposals to several manufacturers but found no takers. According to Morton, the typical response was, "We'll wait until the government funds it."
An unsigned position paper from Colt expresses similar concern that manufacturers will be dissuaded from marketing a smart gun by the potential liability associated with a new gun technology. Although the company has recently downsized and is happy to take federal money, the paper reiterates that "there must also be liability protection for 'smart gun' pioneers if they are going to be required to bring smart gun technology to the market before it is fully developed and adequately tested."
Attorney General Curran is dead set against such protection. He testified to Governor Glendening's gun commission that citizens "should be permitted to persuade the courts that any gun without a child-proof design or personalization technology is unreasonably dangerous." With rhetoric like that in high places, gun makers can hardly be blamed for their hesitation about developing new products.
Edmund Walsh is a staff assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.