They regularly tout improvements in accuracy and velocity. Retrofitting them with new technology wou...

1. Let free markets and technology reduce gun violence
They regularly tout improvements in accuracy and velocity. Retrofitting them with new technology
would be costly and difficult.
A year since Sandy Hook, the debate over how to reduce gun violence remains unsettled. The group,
which takes its inspiration from Sandy Hook Promise, the non-profit I co-founded after the shootings
in my hometown of Newtown, is putting up $1 million for the inventor who comes up with the best
proposal to improve gun safety.
Though logical, none of these arguments are reason to hamper efforts to bring the firearms business
into the modern era. It's hard to imagine a better place to start than with the gun manufacturers.
Moreover, a recent New York Times review of hundreds of child firearms deaths - the second-leading
cause of death for children between 10 and 19 years of age -- showed that authorities in nearly half
the cases studied did not record them as accidents. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Lawrence G. And then there are the 19,000 gun suicides every year, including a huge number
committed by troubled individuals with weapons they do not own.
There may be a lot of problems that deep pockets and tech startup ingenuity can't help solve, but the
epidemic of senseless mass shootings needn't be one of them.
Conway's efforts led him to Sandy Hook Promise, which in addition to finding ways to help the
community heal, was established to give those most affected by what happened in Newtown a voice
in the national discussion on gun violence.
In the five years through 2010, almost 3,800 Americans died from accidental shootings, and more
than a third of them -- some 1,300 victims -- were under the age of 25, according to the Law Center
to Prevent Gun Violence. Though legislation to strengthen gun regulation failed in the Senate, a
majority of Americans support measures to ensure those who should not have firearms do not gain
access to them. To wit, one commenter on The Truth about Guns, a blog for gun enthusiasts, wrote
the Smart Tech Challenge will produce "firearms that only unicorns can use."
Like any business, gunsmiths are always looking for reasons to sell people more guns. And if anyone
should understand the human cost firsthand, it's the NSSF: it is based in Newtown.
PHOTO: People hold signs memorializing Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 26 children and
adults were killed in a mass shooting in December, as they participate in the March on Washington
for Gun Control on the National Mall in Washington, January 26, 2013. Why not make the safety of
their products -- from accidental deaths, suicides or theft -- their unique selling point? They might
even be able to charge premium prices, as Volvo and Mercedes have done with cars.
So many of these tragedies could have been prevented through the adoption of innovative
advancements not unlike the biometrics now available on one of the most popular consumer items
on Earth. Tens of millions of the new iPhones have been sold.
After all, gunmakers are extraordinary marketers. The proliferation of innovations like Apple's
biometric sensor in the gadget business makes it increasingly feasible to envision similar

2. applications for all sorts of industries, including those where there is a real potential to save lives.
Some gun owners fear that biometrics will act as a back door toward gun registration. One of his
guests that evening was former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
(Rob Cox is the co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit dedicated to reducing gun violence;
and the global editor in chief of Breakingviews, the commentary arm of Thomson Reuters.)
What was supposed to be a festive occasion turned solemn as Conway convened a prayer for the
families of Newtown, CT and exhorted the leading lights of technology and venture capital gathered
in his home to ingeniously help tackle the problem of gun violence.
Surely anything that enhances the bottom line would be something the manufacturers and trade
associations, like the NSSF, can get behind. The Smart Tech Foundation is the next iteration of this
effort.
When Apple introduced its latest iPhone in September, the company added a fingerprint identity
sensor. While not exactly Luddites, they won't be early adopters of newfangled inventions if they
fear they won't work. In fact, the industry's slow pace in spearheading safety innovation efforts
beyond features like trigger locks, which have been around for years, can be viewed as an abject
failure of capitalistic imagination.. While it is not clear the legislative debate can be resolved in one
political cycle, it is painfully obvious that technology and innovation move faster and more efficiently
than Congress.
It's not an abstract concept. That's the harrowing equivalent of 50 Sandy Hook School massacres.
Entries in the competition, from which Sandy Hook Promise derives no financial benefit, are
expected to include everything from biometrics and radio-frequency identification technology, to
features that help identify friends from foes, make gun safes smarter or reduce the lethality of
ammunition.
With Conway's help, in March the Sandy Hook Promise Innovation Initiative was launched, an effort
to foster private, free-market solutions to gun violence by connecting entrepreneurs in the mental
health, firearms, big data and community safety fields with potential investors. The new feature,
called Touch ID, makes it virtually impossible for a child to pick up a parent's iPhone 5S and dial
random contacts, play Minecraft or surf the treacherous shoals of the Internet. And they successfully
ginned up sales after Sandy Hook by stoking fears of confiscatory legislation that never materialized.
14. Imagine what this technology could do for the most lethal consumer products ever known to
mankind: firearms.

3. Ron Conway, an angel investor in some of the most
successful startups of the past decade, from Google to Twitter, was holding a Christmas party in his
San Francisco apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge on Dec. Keane, the general counsel of
the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a trade association for the gun and ammunitions
industry, says there "are good reasons to be wary of technology as a way of enhancing public
safety." For instance, a weapon whose technology fails when a homeowner or store owner needs it to
defend his life or that of others from a criminal, would lead to a tragedy of a different variety.
So what's not to like about technological innovation in the gun business? For starters, gun owners --
of which I am one -- are a suspicious bunch. A record 21 million background checks -- a proxy for
actual sales -- were conducted in the 12 months that ended in November, according to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
That's where Conway comes in. And then there's the small matter of the 300 million guns extant in
the United States. His call for safer guns has morphed into the Smart Tech Foundation's Firearms
Challenge