In a recent discussion on gun violence prevention programs, Attorney General Eric Holder told the House appropriations committee that the Department of Justice is considering smart gun tracking technologies, specifically:
“…so that we can make sure people have the ability to enjoy their Second Amendment rights while at the same time, decreasing the uh misuse of, um, of weapons that lead to, uh, the kinds of things we see on a daily basis you know where people, kids especially, um are struck down…”
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Apparently these are technologies Holder says he learned about in a meeting with “technology people” that he and Joe Biden had when they were trying to pass their “common sense” gun reforms last year.
As the Washington Free Beacon reported, the DOJ has requested an increase in it’s 2014 budget not just for gun safety initiatives, but specifically for “gun safety technology” grants:
The Justice Department has requested $382.1 million in increased spending for its fiscal year 2014 budget for “gun safety.”
Included in the proposal is $2 million for “Gun Safety Technology” grants, which would award prizes for technologies that are “proven to be reliable and effective.”
President Barack Obama’s budget proposal also calls for $1.1 billion to “protect Americans from gun violence—including $182 million to support the president’s ‘Now is the Time’ gun safety initiative.”
Such smart technologies require biometric data for guns to work, including everything from triggers that scan fingerprints to RFID bracelets.
But as Western Journalism pointed out, these technologies could also easily be exploited to take a person’s Second Amendment rights away in the blink of a digital eye, as states are already on the way to requiring smart chips in guns that, when turned off, render the weapons inoperable:
Lowell Ponte makes the sobering point: “If you will soon be permitted to own or carry only firearms with a computer chip that turns them on, understand that those weapons can potentially be rendered inoperative at a distance in a variety of ways, such as degaussing cannons, compact electromagnetic pulse generators and other electronics-neutralizing devices.”
Irish smart gun manufacturer TriggerSmart “…has [developed] technology that would render guns inoperative if they approached electronic markers — for instance, near a school.” The Limerick-based company has also developed a mechanism that can block the function of a trigger on an “assault weapon” “…by a command sent from an aircraft, satellite, mobile-network tower or radio station.” Won’t it be comforting to find that your trigger has been blocked by your favorite radio station just as you’ve leveled your AR 15 at a pair who have broken into your home!
Though gun owners are rightly skeptical of the reliability of smart guns, their greatest fear must be the misuse by a tyrant of mechanisms designed to render their weapons inoperable.
A 2002 smart gun technology law passed in New Jersey will go into effect as soon as the appropriate technology has been designed and tested and ready to go. Under the law, “the technology will be required in all new handguns sold three years after the state attorney general determines a smart gun prototype is safe and commercially available.”
In addition, “Weapons used by law enforcement officers would be exempt.”
See how that works? Agents of the government will have guns that work, chip-free, while the people’s arms will be subject to the whims of government-enforced smart technology.
In the meantime, DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, is working on a project called MEMS, or Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems — tiny electrical elements that, when embedded within a gun for example, can render the weapon inoperable at a whim. For example, the gun will only be able to shoot at certain times or within a certain area. “There’s just a virtually unlimited potential,” Chris Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Bloomberg Businessweek of MEMS last August.
Back in January, President Obama signed two new executive actions establishing guidelines to quote, “keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands.” In this regard, the New American‘s Joe Wolverton points out that our president is once again acting as if he forgot the Constitution even exists:
President Obama not only assumes the right to determine who is and is not “mentally ill,” but he simultaneously robs those very people of their independence, placing them involuntarily under the protection of the government that robbed them of their rights to begin with.
The most egregious violation of the Constitution comes in a single sentence appearing a few paragraphs down in the “Fact Sheet.” The president declares,
At the same time, the Administration is committed to making sure that anyone who may pose a danger to themselves or others does not have access to a gun.
There again, President Obama has marched right over the Rubicon, declaring war on the Constitution and the timeless liberties it protects.
In two sentences, the president has given himself not only the power to declare a citizen “mentally ill” (and thus ineligible for the exercise of their right to keep and bear arms), but also the authority to withhold that same right from anyone he deems dangerous.
Even though the Second Amendment is crystal clear that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” slowly but surely, in the federal government’s burgeoning quest for ever more centralized power, Uncle Sam is finding creative new technologically advanced ways to infringe the hell out of it every chance he gets.
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