Colorado teenager develops a fingerprint-activated handgun

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.