So what happens if someone breaks into your house when you (the gun owner) are gone and your wife and kids are there to fend for themselves? You wife pick up the gun, gets face to face with the intruder and then *click click* Nothing?

It's nice that it makes guns more expensive, but ultimately it will only effectively work for something like a hunting rifle.

I'm still waiting for a news service to do a story on the real gun problem in our country, the one that accounts for over 70% of all gun violence...ie...inner city gang-on-gang drug related gun violence with illegal handguns.

Here again is yet another story that is nothing but a placebo for the gun control lobby while ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are safe and law abiding with our current laws. Criminals do not care about laws that exist today nor tomorrow and if 'smartguns' became a requirement of legal gun ownership tomorrow, the criminals would simply use the stockpile of 300M existing weapons in our country without these controls.

Smart guns sound great on paper but at this point are more of a danger than any help.

For one electronics are unreliable. All of us have had problems with our computers or phones at some time or another and they don't have to deal with being a part of a unit that deals with 35,000 psi, the associated g-forces and the mechanical shock of a slide hitting the frame then going back into battery with every shot. Unless and until someone can come up with a smart gun that can routinely pass the same tests that our military requires of any weapon they adopt it is a fallacy.

Beyond that starting point we need to deal with the fact that a gun in the home may need to be used by any one of a number of residents. Cops get in firefights and have often has to transition to a fallen officers sidearm - how does a smart gun help then?

I am not, nor have I EVER been, a gun owner.I grew up in a military home. My father was an avid hunter as well as a semi-professional skeet and trap shooter. In my entire life, I may have fired a pistol a dozen times, if that, and always at stationary targets. I do not hunt, nor am I an advocate of hunting. The guns in our house were ALWAYS loaded, and never locked away. My siblings and I knew well enough not to touch them......there was no question about going into our parents' room and messing with anything, much less the guns. We have never had any "accidents" with guns.

That said, I agree wholeheartedly with poster #2, DanBowen. I believe that any responsible, mature adult who has not been convicted of any major crime, including drug usage, has a right to own a gun. I am not talking about assault rifles, Uzis, machine guns, grenade launchers, or other weapons of "mass destruction." It seems the real problem that NO one wants to address is the issue of who is actually committing the majority of crimes, murder and subsequent mayhem with guns, legal or otherwise. By sidestepping the blatant facts of gangs, everyone concerned can remain "politically correct," and no one gets "blamed."

who here hasn't had a cell phone run out of power in the middle of an important call?

Now imagine that happening to your gun when someone has broken in and is trying to kill your wife and children

Police and professionals would laugh if asked to carry one of these. Pull the trigger and you must be sure you'll hear "bang" not a replace battery warning.

Didn't they have something like that in the movie "Shoot 'Em Up"?

Good idea, lets tax all non-gun owners, since they are the ones who want this, to pay the extra money it will add to each gun.

The system is unworkable.

1. you are dependent on a battery which may not work when you need it

2. you are dependent on a transistor which may not work

3. If another member of your family needs to use the gun to defend themselves they CANNOT!

4. If you take that ring off at night when you go to bed, you are unarmed!

5. Nobody has made a workable system, its all experimental and retrofitting all the exsisting firearms is Ludicrous