World News Korner

CEO of gun manufacturer comes under attack by gun nuts. Her crime? Trying to market a gun that can only be fired by its owner.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Belinda Padilla does not pick up unknown calls anymore, not since someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts. A few fuming-mad voice mail messages and heavy breathers were all it took.

Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too. In a crude, cartoonish scrawl, this person drew an arrow to the blurred image of a woman passing through the photo frame. “Belinda?” the person wrote. “Is that you?”

Her offense? Trying to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. Ms. Padilla and the manufacturer she works for, Armatix, intended to make the weapon the first “smart gun” for sale in the United States.

But shortly after Armatix went public with its plans to start selling in Southern California, Ms. Padilla, a fast-talking, hard-charging Beverly Hills businesswoman who leads the company’s fledgling American division, encountered the same uproar that has stopped gun control advocates, Congress, President Obama and lawmakers across the country as they seek to pass tougher laws and promote new technologies they contend will lead to fewer firearms deaths.

“Right now, unfortunately, these organizations that are scaring everybody have the power,” Ms. Padilla said. “All we’re doing is providing extra levels of safety to your individual right to bear arms. And if you don’t want our gun, don’t buy it. It’s not for everyone.”

Of course that was no good enough for the gun nuts, nor the NRA who said this:

The National Rifle Association, in an article published on the blog of its political arm, wrote that “smart guns,” a term it mocks as a misnomer, have the potential “to mesh with the anti-gunner’s agenda, opening the door to a ban on all guns that do not possess the government-required technology.”

Yes, of course science is always the enemy for those who traffic in people's ignorance.

Now if right about now you are suffering from some vague form of deja vu, don't worry you are not crazy.

Something about this technology has surfaced before on this blog, when Sarah Palin completely misunderstood it and took to Facebook to condemn "identifying bracelets." And then challenged Attorney General Eric Holder thusly:

Eric, you can replace my identifying bracelets with your government marker when you pry them off my cold, dead wrists.

And, Eric, "You don't want to go there, buddy."

- Sarah Palin

And that just about sums of the intellectual argument against this new technology, which even a child would recognize as potentially saving millions of American lives.

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