App Meant to Help Find Missing Guns Presents Issues

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Far too many times, people come up with ideas that they don't thoroughly think through. 

I was notorious for that in my younger years, so I'm not judging those folks too harshly in most cases. Sometimes, it's people who are just too impulsive. That was my issue.

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Other times, they so well-meaning that they don't consider the ramifications of their actions.

Then we have those people who didn't think things through simply because they didn't care about those ramifications--and that's assuming that the ramifications aren't the goal.

Which camp this guy falls into is impossible for me to say for certain.

Carl Lanore grew up in Brooklyn, but now he lives in Prospect. He said the United States has a big problem with lost and stolen guns. According to Gun Leash, there have been more than 215,057 guns stolen or lost this year. 

In 2020, he misplaced his gun.


"I thought I had lost my gun," Lanore said. "And it was very scary because all I kept thinking was some kids find it and kills his baby brother. And then I'm screwed for the rest of my life. I'll be in and out of court and this is going to destroy my life. And it was, look, I grew up in Brooklyn. Very few things rattle me. This rattled me like nothing before the thought of losing a gun."

Lanore saw a problem and came up with the Gun Leash. Gun Leash is a recently patented device that uses a beacon attached to a firearm and paired to a mobile app. The mobile app runs silently and notifies the gun owner when their weapon is no longer with them. The beacon is a proximity sensor, not a GPS.

After you download his Gun Leash app and stick the sensor on your gun, it will send a notification to your phone if you were to walk away and get a certain distance away from your gun.

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Now, the fact that this isn't a GPS is probably a good thing. The downside, however, is that there are still serious problems.

First, let's look at the censor itself.

The report says you stick the sensor to your gun, but that's not entirely true. If you look at their site, they show it attached to the magazine. Magazines are removable. They're not truly part of the gun but are a separate component needed to turn a semi-automatic firearm into something other than a glorified single-shot pistol.

Because of that, it's really helping you find a magazine, not a gun. That's pretty easy for a thief to defeat.

Now sure, if the mag is seated in the firearm, there's not a problem. However, because it protrudes from the magazine, it's not difficult to imagine that it'll provide some discomfort if you try to seat the magazine with the palm of your hand.

And that's just the small stuff.

One concern of many gun owners is gun confiscation. We've also seen how Big Tech is in the pocket of the federal government, doing their bidding over and over again. So I'm more than a little worried about buying a product with my own money that would make gun confiscation that much easier for the feds.

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After all, there's going to be a customer database, which alone would be helpful for an anti-gun government. Then you would have a tool that the feds could use going door-to-door looking for our guns.

Look, I respect what I think Lanore is trying to do. I really do think he's a well-meaning individual who wants to help reduce lost or stolen guns. I respect the hell out of that.

But this isn't likely the great idea he thinks it is.

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