Tag Archives: gun violence

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

Could the NICS appeals backlog be next?

Posted on by Leave a comment

With signs that a historic swell in gun sales and associated background checks may be tapering, the federal government may soon tackle a logjam of denial appeals.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System is currently working voluntary appeals dating back to August 2015 — for individuals denied 18 months ago. However, it hasn’t always been like that. In September 2015, the average delay was three months.

The change came when the nearly 70 examiners dedicated to appeals were reassigned to assist in running initial criminal background checks because of surges in gun sales in October 2015. Since then the delay has grown, despite executive action to expand NICS’s workforce to meet increasingly robust sales figures, leaving appeals to stagnate.

But that could all be changing.

More in my column at Guns.com.

When things are so bad that you have to send it to the people

Posted on by Leave a comment

So in California, which has had an assault weapon ban going all the way back to 1989 and yet still have mass-shootings with California-compliant firearms, lawmakers tried to pass over 20 legislative actions on increased gun control this session.

A baker’s dozen of these made it through the legislature in Dem-heavy votes of which Gov. Jerry Brown signed 7 into law and returned five with vetoes.

Since gun rights groups and Republican lawmakers couldn’t derail these, a group of gun owners on a gun forum (Calguns) got together and decided, “Let’s try for a ballot referendum to repeal these…”

And that’s exactly what they are doing.

With a pressing deadline of Sept.29, they are trying to get 450,000 signatures on 7 different propositions. Of course, California has 13 million gun owners, which by definition should all be capable of registering to vote, so it’s not far-fetched.

I’ve spoken with the man behind the effort, a San Diego tech company executive, and it’s a hail Mary play with a lot of spunk behind it.

More over in my column at Guns.com here and here.

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

A chat with a controversial sheriff

Posted on by Leave a comment

So I write a lot of shit. I do fiction (zombie, military sci-fi books and short stories), non-fiction (firearms and history pieces and books), intelligence analysis, and other papers, articles ad nausea. Well I also write a lot of gun politics/legislation/litigation stuff as well– mainly for Guns.com where I have published, according to WordPress, some 1,042 articles since 2012 .

I typically don’t reblog my Guns.com articles over here as I try to stay non-political on LSOZI but decided to make an exception with a story I covered this week.

You see, in Milwaukee there was a horrible double murder after a tragic accident last weekend. In a nutshell, the a 40-year old man, Archie Brown Jr, with his 15-year old nephew in the car accidentally hit a child with his car at a birthday party. When he stopped to tend for the stricken youth, he and his nephew were shot at close range by a party goer and killed. Three people dead. Just like that.

Then the mayor and police chief of Milwaukee jumped in the issue with both feet and decried how lax gun laws in Wisconsin led to this, to which Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke–  a champion of gun rights– took exception.

In the meantime, when the long arm of the law caught up with the birthday party assassin who was hiding out (ironically) in Chicago which has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, he self-terminated. This guy has been in and out of jail since he was 17, was a felon (bank robbery, sexual assault) on parole and prohibited from possessing guns. I guess he didn’t want to go back to Boscobel for the rest of his life and live in a 12×7 with a stainless steel toilet.

So I caught up with Sheriff Clarke and talked to him for 20 minutes or so to get his take on the fall out, and I thought he was very candid.

The article is here.

And if you live in Wisconsin you can donate at your local Associated Bank to the Archie Brown Jr Memorial Fund to help cover funeral expenses.