The transparent goal of Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey’s ‘‘Handgun Trigger Safety Act of 2014’’ is the utter destruction of the handgun market in the United States, including prohibiting the sale, trade, transfer, shipping, leasing or distribution of handguns already in circulation.

If you think I’m being hyperbolic, please read on, as it is very easy to prove.

The proposed bill (PDF) would require all future handguns to be equipped with technology that restricts “only an authorized user of the handgun to fire the handgun.” This technology must “be incorporated into the design of the handgun” and “cannot be readily removed or deactivated.”

The technology would be required on all new handguns sold in the United States within two years of the bill being passed into law, meaning all future handguns would have to incorporate this technology… technology that doesn’t currently exist in any credible, reliable form.

In announcing his bill, Markey cited the Aramatix iP1 as a role model of his vision. It is the “best of breed” of current smart-gun technology.

The Aramatix iP1 uses “active RFID technology” which requires the handgun to be in constant communication with a specific watch within a ten-inch range. That means that watch must be worn on the shooting hand.

Read that again.

If the authorized user finds his watch hand injured or disabled, or if he needs to switch hand due to tactical considerations or any other reason, the gun fails to work 100% of the time, even for the authorized user.

Remember, this is supposed to be the “best of breed” technology.

Even worse is that under optimal conditions with the iP1 being used by the watch hand, the system works just 90-percent of the time:

The state’s biometric gun law, signed by former Gov. James McGreevey, requires all guns sold in the state to be equipped with biometric technology that allows only their owners to fire them. But the law has remained unenforceable because, until now, no such guns have existed. Enter Armatix, which has developed a firearm that can determine, with 90 percent accuracy, whether a gun was being held by a person wearing a watch meant to pair with the firearm.

A firearm that operates with “90 percent accuracy” (on the watch hand only, remember) is a firearm that has a ten-percent failure rate (not including the 100% failure rate for the authorized shooter on the non-watch hand).

In a pistol that has a 10-round magazine like the Aramtix iP1, that is a failure to fire every single magazine.

Please keep in mind that the Aramatix has such a high failure rate even when using anemic .22LR rimfire ammunition.

.22LR ammunition that has very little appreciable recoil because it pushes a small bullet at comparatively slow speeds. While useful for shooting paper targets and small game animals, it is not recommended by any credible expert as a viable self defense cartridge. A technology this fragile chambered in any recommended centerfire self-defense cartridge the generates even a moderate amount of recoil would likely shake itself to pieces—rendering the gun inoperable—within several boxes of ammunition.

To draw a comparison with another common commercial product, Markey is essentially demanding that the citizens of the United States be restricted to owning cars with engines too small to be effective for their primary purpose, with steering wheels that only turn left, and even then, only manage to turn left 90-percent of the time.

Markey is demanding required product failure in a so-called “Safety Act.”

As pathetic and shocking as this is, the Aramatix iP1 is the best of the current generation of smart gun technology, after over 50 years of smart gun research.

But it gets worse.

Not only is Markey demanding that this disastrous technology be implemented by every manufacturer just two years after the bill becomes law for the sale of all new guns—effectively and completely shutting down the sales of all new handguns since this is a practical impossibility—but he’s demanding that it also be retroactively applied to all existing handguns within three years. He purposefully stipulates that like the newly manufactured guns, that for existing firearms, the technology “cannot readily be removed or deactivated.”

This is an intentional Catch-22.

There are literally thousands of models that make up the more than 100 million handguns in the current U.S. market. Each one is designed to very tight tolerances, measured to within hundreds of an inch.

There is no way to implement such technology to existing firearms with some sort of external “bolt-on” mechanism, which necessarily defies the “cannot readily be removed or deactivated” mandate. All handguns that would fail to meet this impossible standard. As a result of failing to meet this impossible standard, existing guns could not be “sold, offered for sale, traded, transferred, shipped, leased or distributed.”

Senator Markey’s bill is nothing more or less than an attempt to completely shut down the production of new handguns in two years, and then completely shut down the trade of all other non-antique, non-military handguns the following year.

This is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to destroy the entire handgun market of the United States.

It is nothing more, and certainly nothing less.