Hey internet, Lara and Brian here. We co-produced A Smarter Gun, Motherboard's new feature documentary on the decades-long struggle to create what's come to be known as a "smart gun," which would only fire in the hands of an approved users. Proponents of smart guns see the technology as a potential failsafe against unauthorized gun usage, yet the players behind the movement to develop and market a viable smart gun face a legacy of opposition from pro-gun lobbying groups, policymakers, and everyday gun owners.
But first, a bit more about us: We have both been with Motherboard since 2011. In that time, the site's gun coverage on video and editorial fronts has been a core beat in the Motherboard worldview. A profile we ran in 2012, of a twentysomething law student named Cody Wilson, brought the 3D-printed gun movement (and its public face) to public consciousness. Two years later, we went to Texas to see about a high-end robo-rifle that promised to allow even a novice shooter like Motherboard's executive editor-at-large, Derek Mead, hit a target at 1,000 yards with single-shot accuracy. In 2016, we spent time with a biohacker who built the world's first implant-activated smart gun in his garage outside Seattle, and who we'd visit again a few months later to see his prototype gun test fire for the first time. This scene is featured in A Smarter Gun, but, no spoilers.
Back to the doc: A Smarter Gun was shot and cut over roughly two years. Along the way, before we revisited the garage biohacker, the two of us toured the ATF's massive gun reference vault and test range in West Virginia, where among 19,000 some-odd items from around the world, including pretty much every kind of firearm one could think of, you won't find a single smart gun. The trip also took us to Washington DC, where a legendary Austrian firearm designer who could be called a godfather of the smart gun, granted us a rare on-camera interview; to MIT, where a 19-year-old freshman runs a biosecure smart gun startup out of his dorm room; to a cemetery in upstate New York with the grieving mother of an 12-year-old boy who was accidentally shot and killed by a friend in 2010. We stopped by a traditional gun store elsewhere in New York, to hear from the owner, a staunchly anti-smart gun gun purist, and finally to meet two leading public health experts at Harvard who take a data-driven approach to studying gun violence.
The film tells the story of what happens when we try marrying a time-tested analog mechanical technology with electromagnetic or digital activation platforms and why integrating the two is a deep point of contention when it comes to guns. The question is: In a world where seeming everything else is high-tech, from teddy bears to refrigerators, why aren't we working toward a safer, "smarter" type of gun?
We want to know: what do you think? We'll be around for the next few hours, taking your questions about the making of the film and really anything having to do with guns and technology and where it's all going in the future. The floor is open.
You can find us both on Twitter @laragheintz @thebanderson
[While we've got you, do check out (and subscribe to!) pluspluspodcast, a Motherboard show about the people and machines that are building our future.]
Proof: http://ift.tt/2mx9yXm
Submitted March 24, 2017 at 12:36AM by brianMB http://ift.tt/2nWdLko IAmA
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