AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File
No one is likely to mistake former Vice President Joe Biden for a member of the National Rifle Association anytime soon. He’s an anti-gunner to his core, though he’s been relatively subdued with his gun control rhetoric during this campaign. Well, he was fairly subdued.
Now, he’s taken on the anti-gun insanity that seems to infect so many other campaigns. It seems he’s going to mandate smart guns if elected.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is taking inspiration from Agent 007 in explaining his plan to curb gun violence.
“If I get elected president of the United States of America with your help, if that happens, guns, we have the capacity now in a James Bond-style to make sure no one can pull a trigger unless their DNA and fingerprint is on it,” Biden told roughly 180 donors in an Upper East Side penthouse Monday evening. “We have that capacity to do it now. You know it.”
Biden was referring to so-called “smart guns,” which require the owner’s fingerprint to be digitally verified before the weapon can be operated.
Biden also took a shot at gun manufacturers, adding, “But what happens? The gun manufacturers, when two folks started to sell some of those guns to two dealerships, they said, ‘We’re going to shut you down.’ My god, we don’t have to worry about the 2nd Amendment.”
The former vice president continued to fantasize about a world where guns can only be used by those authorized users.
Biden is very wrong, though. The technology isn’t here. What we have is a technology that’s unreliable and inordinately expensive, that creates a gun priced ridiculously high and that no one can trust to function when needed. The very fact that he invokes the name of James Bond tells you he’s not dealing with reality.
I hate to break it to him, but you can’t mandate innovation. You can’t tell companies to come up with something that will work because you want them to do so. They’re not going to cure cancer because you want it and they’re not going to create a viable smart gun either.
Even if they did, how long do you think it would be before someone figured out how to crack the biometrics? Tech companies can’t even keep their proprietary technology on a cell phone from being cracked. Why would you think guns would be immune to such a thing?
The idea that a smart gun could somehow guarantee that no one besides the authorized user could ever use it is ridiculous. It’s evidence that Biden may not have a firm grip on reality at all. It’s not just mentioning a fictional British secret agent, either. It’s that he keeps making promises that aren’t even in the realm of the possible.
And yet, Biden has a massive lead in the polls. His psychotic break is playing well with the Democratic base.
Make of that what you will.
What I do know is that even if Biden does get elected, this is something that will never come to fruition. The technology doesn’t exist, and you can’t change it with wishes and pixy dust. It doesn’t matter how much you claim otherwise.
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