Brady Campaign "Smart Gun" Lawsuit Illustrates
Their Yearning to Mandate Them
By Kurt Hofmann, May 21st 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Picture, Oleg Volk
On Monday, the Brady Campaign filed a lawsuit against New Jersey Attorney General John Jay Hoffman in an attempt to enjoin him to report that a "smart gun" is now on the U.S. market, thereby starting the clock on New Jersey's 2002 law requiring that within three years of such a handgun hitting the market, only those handguns so equipped will be sold in the state.
From NorthJersey.com:
A gun control group is suing to force New Jersey's attorney general to report on the availability of handguns that fire only when held by the owner -- a requirement that could eventually lead to the so-called "smart" guns being the only kind of handgun legally available for sale in the state.
According to a 2002 law, if the state finds that "smart" guns are available on the market, a three-year timeframe begins before the technology would be required for all handguns sold in the state.
It's actually debatable that such a gun is on the market. The Armatix iP1, a .22 caliber semi-automatic handgun built in Germany, has almost reached dealer's shelves, once in California and once in Maryland, but furious backlash from gun rights advocates stopped those plans before they could be put into action.
But never mind that. Consider instead that the Brady Campaign wants for the only handgun available to New Jersey residents to be chambered in the woefully inadequate for self-defense .22 caliber. They want to force them to spend $1400 on the gun, and another $400 on the required "magic wristwatch"-- a poll tax on self-defense. They want New Jersey residents' lives to depend on keeping fresh batteries in the watch and gun, be certain to keep the watch within 10 inches of the gun (tricky, if one has to switch hands, while using the off-hand to fend off an attacker) -- and to enter a PIN number before the gun can be fired. And with all that, the gun can still be expected to fail once over the course of firing a ten-round magazine.
And it still gets worse. Armatix appears to have filed for a patent application on a provision for a "kill switch," so that others (whether government muscle, or freelance criminals) can remotely turn your self-defense off. Every aspiring American tyrant's dream -- an "off switch" for the Second Amendment. Such a device need not be particularly complicated, of course. Any system that requires a radio signal to function is rendered useless when that signal is jammed--technology that has existed for about as long as radios have. Or, a portable EMP device could just fry the gun's and watch's electronics forever.
And this is not only about New Jersey. Federal legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate that is even more insanely draconian than New Jersey's law is. The federal bills would require not only that all new handguns sold be "smart," but that manufacturers offer to retrofit all their previously - sold "dumb" guns -- for free. Pretty much a guarantee that all handgun manufacturers go out of business, in other words. The bills don't seem to require owners to get them retrofitted -- unless they ever want to resell them, and it's hard to imagine anti-gun congresscritters going very long without deciding to outlaw all "grandfathered" handguns without the technology.
Federal support for "smart guns" is not limited to Congress. United States Attorney General Holder wants to budget millions for grants to advance the technology. This is in keeping with stated Obama administration goals from the very beginning.
Actually, this could be said to be bigger than the U.S., as well. JPFO contributor David Codrea has noted that Armatix's Belinda Padilla is associated with global efforts toward forcible citizen disarmament, including the little tidbit of her touting the fact that "Armatix is a leader in smart technologies that will make weapons safer, such as wireless digital locking and other security systems . . . " (remember the "kill switch" concept?).
The Brady Campaign's lawsuit may soon become moot, because the author of New Jersey's law, Senator Loretta Weinberg, is now reportedly planning to repeal her own law mandating "smart guns," having realized that the backlash against the guns stemming from the mandate is the biggest obstacle to getting them on the market.
Still, that they are willing to spend scarce resources pushing such a lawsuit, even knowing the possibility of it soon becoming irrelevant, shows how ineffably eager they are to effectively ban armed self-defense.
And they still call us "paranoid" for noting that their ultimate goals have never really changed from the days when they called themselves "Handgun Control, Inc.," and stated that, "The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal."
(Two related links - Smart_guns_5_20_2014.pdf and, NJGunMagazineBan.pdf )
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A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He also writes the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner column.
