Over the last week or so, so-called smart guns have been everywhere in the mainstream media. In the Second Amendment community, there’s been a ton of talk about them as well. Especially since we all know it’s just a matter of time before lawmakers try to mandate smart guns as the only guns.

However, there are problems with these kinds of firearms. We all know it. I’ve talked about a few of them.

One of the big ones is reliability. The more whizzbangs you put in a device, the higher the likelihood of failure becomes.

Firearms are a technology that has more than a century of development. While there are tweaks here and there, the core of a semi-automatic firearm hasn’t changed all that much. As a result, it’s reliable.

Smart guns don’t have that. What makes them “smart” is technology that exists elsewhere, but also has problems just about everywhere.

And, as John Boch over at The Truth About Guns notes, it seems they can’t even handle the “gun” part that well, either.

Last week, we lambasted reports of a new “smart gun” that Reuters raved about in a glowing “exclusive.” Reuters reporter Daniel Trotta wrote that the third-generation prototype fired “without issue” during a live-fire demonstration for investors and the media.

Now though, additional footage of the event has since surfaced that shows the LodeStar Works gun couldn’t manage to fire two rounds without an issue during one of the exercises.

Whoops.

…

Here’s another recording that is embeddable from a local TV reporter. It shows the LodeStar not-so-smart gun can’t even fire two rounds back-to-back.

 

https://twitter.com/Christie_Ileto/status/1483546131812519945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1483546131812519945%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetruthaboutguns.com%2Fsmart-gun-fail-new-lodestar-works-not-so-smart-pistol-couldnt-fire-two-rounds-back-to-back%2F

We can clearly see the shooter state he’s going to fire two rounds. He fires one, then pulls the trigger several more times, only the weapon does fire.

Yeah, that’s the reliability thing we were talking about.

The truth of the matter is that smart guns aren’t ready for prime time. Not by a mile. But, companies working on them know they can gin up publicity–and likely some degree of investment–by sending out a few press releases and telling the media about how awesome their new firearms are.

Yet I have yet to see one of these smart gun folks who is actually a gun person. They seem to generally be technology people who decide to build a smart gun, rather than a gun person who wants to build one.

Of course, gun folks know that there’s not really much of a market for these kinds of guns. We’ve heard about them for years. They’re always just around the corner, and yet absolutely no one seems the least bit interested in them. I have yet to find a gun person who is excited by the concept, though some such as myself are ambivalent about the technology itself. Others, however, are downright hostile to it, mostly because they figure someone will try to mandate them for everyone.

Luckily for those folks, smart guns look like they’re at least another decade out at a minimum.

If these companies think they’ve got something, they need to stop turning to the anti-gun mainstream media and start looking at the gun media instead. Let us test and evaluate the weapons. We’ll tell you if they’re ready or not.

I’m not holding my breath on that, though.