You have a smart phone, maybe even a smart watch. But if you’re a gun owner, would you buy a smart gun?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 573. Here at Plain English, we talk about current events and trending topics, and we use that to help you upgrade your English—your listening, your vocabulary, grammar, all that stuff. And we go at a slower speed so you can understand every word.
JR is the producer of Plain English. He has uploaded today’s lesson to PlainEnglish.com/573. Several people have written to me lately asking: where can I find the transcripts? You find them by the lesson number. This is 573, so go to PlainEnglish.com/573. That is where you will find the free transcripts.
Coming up today: America has more guns per capita than any other country—and it’s not even close. Tragically, there are a lot of preventable gun deaths, from accidents to suicides to stolen guns used in crimes. Now, a startup in Colorado has a new product that aims to reduce gun deaths. It’s called a smart gun. And it only fires if an authorized user is holding it.
In the second half of the lesson, we’ll talk about the English phrasal verb “hold up.” And JR has a song of the week. Let’s get going.
New ‘smart gun’ aims to reduce accidental gun deaths
Love it or hate it, gun ownership is a part of American culture. A survey from a few years back estimated that there are 1.2 guns per person in the United States. So yes, it’s true: there are more guns than people. If it were any other country, you would think a civil war was underway. America has by far more guns than any other country, per capita. To put this in perspective , this is double the rate of Yemen, the next large country on the list.
Most people outside the U.S. hear about gun violence when there are mass shootings. It is a particularly American tragedy that disturbed people, usually men under 40, go to public places like schools and shopping malls and they open fire.
But this is not how most gun deaths occur—far from it . Fifty-four percent of gun deaths in America in 2021 were suicides. Forty-three percent were homicides. A smaller percentage were accidents. These are often tragic cases where children find unlocked guns in their homes.
There is another wrinkle . Hundreds of thousands of legally-registered guns are stolen each year, either from strangers or from family members. And these guns are often used in homicides and violent crime later. One of the most notorious mass shootings in American history took place at a school eight miles from where I grew up. The shooter had stolen the guns from his mother.
A lot of gun deaths, then , could be prevented with better security. Locking the guns and ammunition, preferably separately, can lead to dramatic reductions in gun accidents and theft. But people are fallible and, yes , careless.
To outsiders, America can seem like a shockingly violent place. If America could just get rid of its guns, then so many lives could be saved. This is a noble thought. But it ignores the fact that gun ownership is embedded in the culture. Over 42 percent of American households own a gun. Firearm ownership is protected by the Constitution. And politics are gridlocked, preventing any meaningful change at the national level.
Is all hope lost to reduce gun deaths? Not according to Biofire, a Colorado startup led by a 26-year-old named Kai Kloepfer. Kloepfer was fifteen years old when, just half an hour from his house, a gunman killed twelve people at a midnight screening of a Batman movie. The experience led him to experiment with ways to reduce gun violence.
Biofire has developed what it calls a “smart gun.” The gun fires only when its owner is the one holding it. It uses the same technology as modern smartphones. The gun uses facial-recognition software to know who’s holding it; there is also a fingerprint sensor on the grip. The gun will only fire if one of these systems confirms an authorized user is the one holding it.
This promises to improve safety in several ways. First, it means that a child or household member couldn’t fire the gun accidentally. Second, this can prevent older kids from using a gun owned by the parents. Older children, teenagers, sometimes find the keys to locked gun cabinets and experiment—or they take their own lives. A smart gun would prevent that. And third, it means that if the gun were stolen, it couldn’t be used in a crime later.
But does it work? Demos have shown the safety features to be reliable: the prototype correctly identifies the gun owner in milliseconds, so you don’t have to wait for it to unlock itself. This is key. Most handguns are purchased for safety. The owners don’t ever want to have to use them. But if they need them, they need them to work without fail and without delay. Previous attempts at a smart gun haven’t been reliable, and that was their downfall.
The Biofire gun is fully electric. It has a trigger, but the gun doesn’t fire as a result of mechanics, like a traditional gun, but as the result of an electric charge. It’s like the difference between turning a key or pushing a button to start a car.
Because it’s fully electric, the gun needs to be charged. The company says it can hold a charge for two months. A docking station can keep it charged all the time. Each gun can have five authorized users.
Who would buy a gun like this? I read the comments under online articles and videos and the comments are running at least 90 percent against this gun. A lot of gun enthusiasts are skeptical that fingerprint recognition would work when they need it. Many simply don’t trust a computer in their gun. Others are suspicious that the government could remotely disable their electric gun. The comments get more paranoid from there.
However, avid commenters are not the target audience for Biofire’s first product. The most likely buyer is someone who is on the fence about owning a gun. He or she is concerned about safety and is considering getting a gun for protection. But that person is also concerned about accidents. Until now, the risk of an accident or theft outweighed the benefit of protection for many people. But if the gun can only fire if the adult owner is holding it, the risk-reward calculation may change.
Smart gun features would not prevent all accidental gun deaths. However, they could go a long way toward preventing accidents among children, suicides by teens, and crimes that result from stolen guns. And if Biofire’s new smart gun holds up in real-life situations, its features may be adopted by more mainstream manufacturers.
Biofire is taking pre-orders right now and the first units might be available at the end of this year.
Why not just eliminate guns?
I think a lot of people’s reaction to this would be, there should just be fewer guns. Instead of making a deadly weapon safer, it’s best to eliminate guns entirely. Believe me: people have tried. But firearms are embedded in America’s history and culture and politics. And they’re part of a self-reinforcing cycle: the more crime there is, the more people want to own guns for self-defense. The more people own guns , the more guns get stolen, the more crime—and so on.
I realize ninety percent or more of you are shaking your heads in disbelief at how many guns are in circulation. Many people are wondering how a society can even function with so many guns out there. I don’t completely disagree. But barring a radical change in the culture, guns are here to stay. So I think gradual improvements like this can help with safety. And if this one smart gun works, then the safety features it pioneers can hopefully be more widely adopted.
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