Armatix "smart gun" (courtesy latimes.com)

Check out Belinda Padilla’s trigger finger in the image above the latimes.com story ‘Smart’ guns may help prevent violence — if they can make it on the U.S. market. She is was Armatix’s president. It’s a perfect illustration of the old adage “If you make something idiot-proof someone will make a better idiot.” Not that California is lacking in high-quality idiots, as their gun laws and gang bangers prove. Anyway, TTAG tried to get ahold of an Armatix “smart gun” to have and to hack from this day forth. The company’s gone belly-up. Next? [h/t BA]

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54 COMMENTS

  1. A gun’s only as smart as the person holding it… And this gun looks like kind of an idiot.

    • You’re assuming she wasn’t engaging a threat directly overhead.

      Rabid squirrel attacks kill 63 million Americans every day.

      • I was about to make a smart-alecky remark, but then I remembered a good friend of mine lost his uncle to a squirrel attack. He was at the park tossing peanuts to the squirrels when a big gray one wearing a pilot’s cap swooped in and clocked him on the bean; poor old guy never knew what hit him.

  3. Smart’ guns may help prevent violence — if they can make it on the U.S. market. She is (or was, if the company’s still operating) Armatix’s president. Smart guns are for dumb people.

    • “Smart guns” can do precisely nothing to help prevent criminal activity negligent discharges, and injuries or deaths as a result thereof.

      Digital or not, it’s a piece of hardware. The very name is a misnomer. The gun is not “smart.” It can’t be.

      And to those who think that we can replace common sense and responsible behavior with technology, come with me. I have a bridge I think you’d be interested in.

    • Somehow the image of a ridiculously small car with a SMART logo on the back hatch doing 75 miles an hour on an L.A. freeway comes to mind. Is this the group they were intending to market to?

  4. So people should buy a smart gun from the person who doesn’t understand proper trigger discipline?

  5. So morons can have ND’s while wearing a goofy watch.
    Well, morons can do that now with the Apple watch.

    • Now *there* is an idea…

      The Apple watch smart-gun app…

      Imagine the ‘features’ it would have…

    • Yea, the most significant and noteworthy aspect of this person in the context of this discussion is the apparent size of her hands in this picture.

      • Apparent size suggesting a wide angle lens close to her hands in order to get the background sign into the picture. Agree she probably has no idea how to hold the gun safely; or she was directed to put her finger on the trigger to emphasize that only she could shoot it.

  7. Hey, LA Times — if you want to prevent violence, you don’t need “smart” guns, you need smart people.

  8. I can see it now! Man sells friend smart gun, forgetting that you must have transmitter to activate the weapon.
    A little while later, on the way home, the man who buys gun, is confronted by robber with knife. He pulls out his new piece, muttering to himself how stupid this guy is, bringing a knife to a gun fight.
    You can guess how this ends up.

  9. Awe for shit sake didn’t we just cover this…… I would warn of a ND bur the POS doesn’t work

  10. Any time you hold a gun it makes your finger go to the trigger, then pull it, because guns are bad and blood in the streets and such. Even more so if it is an assault pistol with an assault clip or an assault rifle with the thing that goes up, of course.

  14. I’ll carry one when the police, military, and Secret Service do so also.

    Wait, I still won’t. I have a brain and know that adding multiple potential technical difficulties to a life saving tool is, in a word, stupid. The opposite of smart.

  16. Something I got to see almost every day in 30 plus years of IT…..idiots have a true genious for discovering the fastest way to break something. If you are going to be a C level officer of a gun company you should be required to demonstrate proper handling of your products by your own company. Otherwise you look stupid which makes your company look bad. Basic PR and marketing.

  17. But, but, but…Had Nancy Lanza owned a smart gun, perhaps she, her son and the 26 people he shot in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., might have lived. Right?

  20. Do I really *have* to click on the latimes.com link to find the colossal leap of logic that suggests Armatix’s products will prevent violence?

    I just can’t wrap my head around that one.

  21. We see the trigger finger, but it’s an entirely different finger that Ms Smart Gun is giving us.

  22. I am sure I will be flamed for this, but here goes. First off, I would never buy one myself. I don’t like smart cars that talk back to me, and smart phones that auto-correct incorrectly. The fingerprint reader on my iPhone is too slow for a self-defense gun and I don’t trust batteries to work when needed. The guns that I have are very manual and low maintenance, and I will keep it that way. I abhor the penchant of our useless politicians to force unwelcome technology on everyone “if it saves but one life.” Finally the article itself is worthy of California in every way with its mixed metaphors and idiotic ramblings about Sandy Hook. Crazy Adam would have whacked mumsie over the head, taken her smart watch and her smart guns, and gone about his dirty business.

    However I do believe there is a large market for smart technology in guns. Tom Lynch, the guy from Georgia quoted in the article, had it correct: “Gun owners, he said, want to be able to choose when to activate safe technology, when to turn it off and whom to designate as an authorized user. They want immediate and reliable access to their gun, with no extra steps.” If the market were left to develop a smart gun technology like this and the government were to stay out and leave it voluntary, I believe there is a huge market of parents with small children and purse-carrying women that would embrace it. Like it or not, a smart technology would prevent 3 year old Johnny from firing mom’s pistol that he found in her purse. It would prevent a banger from being able to use the pistol he grabbed from the idiot from Michigan who left in the public restroom. And if you lived in a state with draconian storage laws, but had a smart gun, maybe you would not have to disassemble it and store it in a safe. Left to its own development, the market would find buyers for acceptably priced smart guns (let’s say a $200 optional additional cost on a $500 handgun, not .22’s priced at $1,800.) I might not buy it, just like I won’t pay for a built-in nav system in a car when I can get a GPS for cheap or use the “free” one in the smart phone, but a lot of people pay big money for nav systems. I really hate that politicians have to inject their idiotic presence into every aspect of our lives and mess up the possibility of a technology that would add to the number of gun owners.

    • I have *zero* problem with smart (*cough*) gun technology.

      Provided it is *NEVER* mandatory.

      You want one?

      Waste *your* money on it.

    • “Gun owners, he said, want to be able to choose when to activate safe technology, when to turn it off and whom to designate as an authorized user.”

      This technology already exists – it’s called a gun safe. Wear the damn gun on your person, choose who you will or will not hand it to, or lock it up. It is more important for the gun owner to be “Smart” than for the gun to be smart.

  23. That bulky-ass watch is so heavy, she has to brace her wrist just to hold it upright…

    Seriously, that watch is probably heavier than an NAA mini-revolver.

  25. I’ts been said before, but it feels worth repeating: The safety is between your ears. Or in this case isn’t.

  27. Smart’ guns may help prevent violence — if they can make it on the U.S. market.

    Smart guns suck – don’t want them. Also, no piece of plastic, metal, or any other material object is going to prevent “violence.” Who comes up with this nonsense?

    Perspective

    500 negligent discharges per year in the US. – 300 million people.
    How often does one’s gun get taken from them and used against them? Almost never.

    All unintentional injury deaths
    Number of deaths: 130,557
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 41.3

    Unintentional fall deaths
    Number of deaths: 30,208
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 9.6

    Motor vehicle traffic deaths
    Number of deaths: 33,804
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7

    Unintentional poisoning deaths
    Number of deaths: 38,851
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.3

    Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm

    Or why not focus on cancer? 1 out of 2 men will get cancer in their lives. 1 of 3 for women.
    Why is gun safety and accidents an issue when there are only 500 deaths per year out of 300 million people. Priorities people?

  28. Hey, leave the California hood-rats alone. They have worked hard to become the best thieves, robbers, murderers, and rapists in the country.

    • EDIT: Hey, leave the California h̶o̶o̶d̶-̶r̶a̶t̶s̶ politicians alone. They have worked hard to become the best thieves, robbers, murderers, and rapists in the country.

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