Colorado teenager develops a fingerprint-activated handgun

There have been a lot of debate about gun safety over the years, and there have been many suggestions that have come up. For example earlier this year gun manufacturer Armatix came up with a solution which is to pair a gun with a smartwatch, thus allowing it to fire only if the smartwatch is in range. This means that if you don’t have the watch, you can’t fire it, which would hopefully help reduce accidental shootings or gun theft. Well it looks like we now have another possible contender for smarter guns, thanks to a 17-year old by the name of Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder who won the $50,000 grand prize in the SmartTech for Firearms Challenge. Kloepfer’s answer to gun safety was to embed a fingerprint sensor on the gun, thus unlocking it only if an authorized fingerprint is detected.

Colorado has a history with gun violence so it’s only appropriate that 17-year-old Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder, would want to apply biometric user authentication to firearms. Kloepfer just won the $50,000 Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge for his smart gun prototype. Angel investor and gun reform advocate Ron Conway became the main backer of the $1 million Smart Tech prize to spur gun safety solutions earlier this year. “Let’s use innovation to bring about gun safety. Let’s not rely on Washington,” Conway told the SF Examiner in January. According to the Smart Tech Foundation, a total of 15 innovators will receive a part of that million dollar prize. Kloepfer is the first to get the award. The gun works by creating a user ID and locking in the fingerprint of each user allowed to use the gun. The gun will only unlock with the unique fingerprint of those who have already permission to access the gun. The clearly brainy teen tells me he has an interest in information security. According to him, all user data is kept right on the gun and nothing is uploaded anywhere else so it would be pretty hard to hack. This potentially makes it ideal for military use as well. Kloepfer came up with the idea two years ago when he needed something for his high school science project. “The idea came to me right as I was falling asleep. It was kinda in the back of my mind because of the shooting,” said Kloepfer, alluding to the Aurora, Colorado shootingthat had been on everyone’s mind at the time. The shooting was just an hour’s drive from his home. “I scribbled it down before I went to bed and fell asleep and then in the morning I began my research,” He explained.