Tag Archives: defensive gun use

The best smart gun on the market is easily hacked

Posted on by Leave a comment

The German Armatix iP1 pistol, a personalized handgun design (smart gun), has gotten a lot of flack since it was introduced. While I bumped into the inventor (a guy who came up with a bunch of innovations while working for HK over the years) at a range a couple years ago, and have called, written and emailed Armatix at both their California office and in Germany for months, they won’t talk to me. Also, even though I have tried my best, I have never been able to handle one.

I did talk to a guy who had one in his possession for a long time in 2015 and he wasn’t impressed– telling me with an RF detector he could find the signal, turn it on and off, replicate it and do it all remotely as well as straight up hot wire it by taking the rear portion of the grip off and bypassing the electronic lock altogether, so that if someone who steals the firearm can simply take the back strap off, splice two wires, and the entire “smart” mechanism is disabled.

Well, low and behold, fast forward two years and a security researcher told Wired he was able to jam the radio frequency band (916.5Mhz) and prevent the gun from firing when it should, extend the authentication radius of its RFID puddle, and even defeat the electromagnetic locking system altogether with a simple $15 magnet placed near the breechblock. (More on that here).

So I sent that to the trade organization for the firearms industry to find out what they thought of it.

Their response in my column at Guns.com

Bringing the Second Amendment to the hood

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Black Lives Matter movement has embraced gun control and allied with anti-gun groups while their leadership has very publicly painted the group as non-violent and non-confrontational.

Not affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, 29-year-old community leader Maj Toure is a gun owner and a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association and believes that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental. And he is bringing that message, without any outside support, to the black community through outreach and free firearms training conducted by certified instructors.

I had a chance to talk with Toure this month about his Black Guns Matter group, his vision, and why it’s needed. In short, he wants to replace more gun regulations, buybacks and rhetoric with firearms training, education, and concealed carry permits.

black guns matter

“Charlton Heston said it – you basically got to pry this out of my cold, dead hand. I’m not going down that way because we are citizens, Americans,” Toure told me. “We are citizens. We have the right to exercise the Second Amendment and anyone that’s tryin’ to infringe on that is not only in violation of the Constitution but they’re also just a dick.”

I told him he needed to put that remark on a T-shirt.

More in my column at Guns.com

So you’ve been involved in a defensive gun use, now what?

Posted on by Leave a comment

It has happened. That event that you always hoped would never occur under your watch: having to use a firearm in self-defense. Whether you had to pull the trigger or not, you now have several things to worry about. Will you be charged? Go to jail? Stripped of your guns? Sued?

As a firearms instructor for both concealed carriers, security and law enforcement over the past couple decades, I spend a lot of my time talking about the proper use of force. Now, force can be anything from just being there and looking at someone all the way up to taking a life. First off, to keep on the side of right, you are never the aggressor. By definition this puts you behind the 8-ball of having to respond to an unjust threat presented to you by no reason of your own. Yes, it sucks, but that’s self-defense.

A good test of if self-defense is justified is the old 3-legs of ability, opportunity, and intent.

Let us talk about that.

Springfield XD Sub Compact 40cal

Read the rest in my column at X  D  Forum