Smart guns finally poised to change U.S. gun market?
Whether gun rights advocates like it or not, smart guns are the future says Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway
Oct 29, 2015
So why can't you buy a smart gun in the United States today? One reason is gun-shop owners won't sell them. When one Maryland dealer announced he would try to sell one smart gun he was immediately attacked with email and phone call threats by people who believed that he could have triggered a New Jersey ban on regular handguns that don't possess smart-gun technology.
Turns out that the sale of smart guns could actually restrict gun sales, at least in New Jersey, where a 13-year-old law mandates all regular handguns sold in the state be smart guns if and when they become available for sale anywhere else in the country. Acknowledging how this law has actually inadvertently impeded smart guns from coming onto the marketplace, New Jersey State Senator Loretta Weinberg, who sponsored the original mandate, tells 60 Minutes that as early as next week, she will ask her state's legislature to repeal the law and replace it with one mandating at least one smart gun be for sale wherever weapons are sold in her state.
But times are changing, says Conway. He believes a new generation of tech-savvy people, especially young parents, will embrace the hi-tech smart guns eventually, even overcoming the politics currently holding them back. "You cannot stop innovation. And this is an area where innovation is taking over...for technology and innovation, we have to ignore politics," he tells Stahl.