Tag Archives: firearms safety

The best smart gun on the market is easily hacked

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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

Inside the CMP, and the word on M1s coming back from overseas and possible 1911s…

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To see just what the non-profit has on the shelf, I visited the Civilian Marksmanship’s South operations in Anniston. Co-located near the Anniston Army Depot — which is actually in nearby Bynum — and stores much of the Army’s stockpile of guns and items not needed for current operations, the CMP has a series of warehouses dotting the rolling hills of the area.

Unfortunately, most of them are nearly empty.

While now-retired CMP boss Orest Michaels told me back in 2010 the organization had 125,000 M1 rifles on hand including complete rifles, stripped receivers, and welded drill rifles, the group is coy about just what the numbers are today after several years of brisk sales and surging interest in U.S. martial rifles.

As Jim Townsend, CMP’s business development officer, walked me through a tour of their largest warehouse, he swept his arms over a large expanse of empty floor space and said, “When I first started here, this whole side of the building was full of M1s.” Repurposed crates that once contained M1s returning from allies in Greece and Denmark now hold everything but.

Repurposed crates that once contained M1s returning from allies in Greece and Denmark now hold everything but.

Why keep the empty space?

Check out my column at Guns.com for the answer.

Disneyland for Shooters…

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I recently had the opportunity to visit the immaculate ranges used by the Civilian Marksmanship Program to support public firearms training.

The CMP is a federally-chartered non-profit corporation tasked with promoting firearms safety training and target practice. It originated as the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship in 1903 under orders from Congress to improve the country’s marksmanship skills to minimize training in case of war.

Split off from the U.S. Army under the Clinton-administration in 1996, it still conducts training courses and holds shooting competitions and clinics nationwide but draws its primary source of funding through the sale of surplus firearms to qualifying members of the public which were donated to the organization by the Army.

With an eye to see just what all those M1 Garand sales have helped pay for, I visited the CMP’s Alabama operations to get a better idea about what they offer the public:

How about a covered 54-positon 600-yard range with targets at 100-200-600, all electronically scored with a monitor at your station…

15 different clays stands on golf-course quality grounds..

Olympic-quality 10m airgun ranges set up for 80 competitors at a time– also with electronic targets

It’s almost like they are into civilian marksmanship training or something…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Armatix, redux

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the-new-armatix-ip9-smart-gun-will-be-headed-to-the-states-in-2017

After a rocky start, the niche German firearms company specializing in personalized handguns (i.e. “smart guns”) is bringing a 9mm version and a vow they are not aiming “to replace conventional guns.”

The company’s first offering burst on to the scene in early 2014 with the iP1, a $1,300 .22LR that needed to pair to an RFID-equipped wrist watch to be able to fire. Armatix convinced firearms dealers in California and Maryland to offer the gun on a limited basis but both stores quickly recoiled after backlash from the Second Amendment community without selling any.

Although officials in states with sticky smart gun mandates held the iP1 would not trigger their dormant law, the company was left with 5,000 unsold high-dollar pistols and began to shift course towards a potentially more acceptable 9mm version marketed to police.

Then in 2015, news came that the small 30-employee company parted ways with Ernst Mauch, the engineer who helped found the thus-far unsuccessful venture and entered into Chapter 11-style corporate restructuring even as their chief executive in the U.S.  publicly gaffed on firearms safety and the National Rifle Association tested the gun and found it lacking. (No agenda there, right?)

Now, Armatix’s current CEO and President Wolfgang Tweraser is ready to move forward with their iP9 9mm gun which will be available in mid-2017 along with the legacy iP1.

More in my column at Guns.com

Every Gun is Always Loaded– Even the New Ones

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Everyone knows those most basic of all firearms handling mantras.

1. Treat every gun as if they are always loaded (there are no such thing as unloaded guns)
2. Only aim at something you are prepared to destroy and known what’s behind it
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.

However even these three simple rules are often forgotten, neglected, or just blown past by those who would and should know better. New gun owners and those who have just received a new gun see the worst violations of these rules. In the excitement and rush of this shiny new piece of steel, things can get very real very quick.

Sometimes, before you even leave the parking lot.

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

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Be a Lifesaver

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From my column at Firearms Talk

Be A Lifesaver….

If you are breathing, or know someone that is, you need to know basic lifesaving skills. If you have a firearm in your life, home, business, or know someone that does, knowing how to respond to a medical emergency involving trauma should be mandatory. These skills are just as important as any firearms training, and need to be taken seriously.