Today in better ways to spend $30 million:

I mean, hurray? I don't know how I feel about this. Huh? What do you mean "about what?" About this, this kid, the youth, this zoomer who's come up with a gun with built-in fingerprint and facial recognition sensors so that it will only work for the owner. So a safer gun. Ish.

Although it still fires bullets so safer is relative.

Above: Kloepfer's science fair entry,
which, I mean, only in America, right?

First of all, gun safety is laudable and on that count, good on Kai Kloepferl. A 26 year old native Arizonan, Kloepfer was inspired/terrified by the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting to design a safer gun. And, I mean, ok, we'll come back to that point in a minute, but let's leave it there: Kloepfer was affected by a local shooting and entered a prototype finger-print gun into his school science fair. Wow, this is a dark timeline, isn't it? Anyway, he later won recognition for his engineering skill, and now his idea is the basis of his startup called Biofire and he's got thirty million dollars in venture capitalist funding.

"Who's got a brilliant idea I can exploit?"

-venture capitalists

And you know how I feel about startups. So the--oh, you don't? I'm ambivalent about them. Mostly because I don't understand them, but also because they just feel like billionaires gambling with terrifying sums of money. Like, they blink into existence, people are made temporarily rich and then the companies just disappear or get bought up by Google or whatever. I live in the land of startups, and it just seems like the people who get involved in them are always looking for a new job. Look, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but the point is Biofire.

The facial recognition sensor is in the
back, so at least the user has to point it 
away from their face. Because safety!

Alright, so Koepler, in the interview with NPR, admits that the weapon only combats a very specific unsafe gun situation: that is, unauthorized people using the gun. A kid who found their parent's gun wouldn't be able to fire it. And that's good. But I can't get away from the idea that maybe not having a gun in the first place would be better? The Aurora movie theater shooter wasn't an unauthorized gun owner. He just bought those guns legally because America has absurdly lax laws when it comes to firearms. Well-regulated militias, or something. 

Here, here are some kittens.

I appreciate that Koepler is trying to do something, anything to reduce the number of Americans who die because of this ridiculous hobby every year. But while some people might end up buying Biofire's guns, the technology probably won't be required in all guns and even if it were there are still more guns than Americans out there. We live in a country where a family asked a neighbor to stop firing off his guns because their baby was trying to sleep, and he murdered them. So I guess I just don't have a lot of faith that this is anything more than a very small step.

I looked it up and it sounds like the NRA spends something like three to five million a year on lobbying. Which is way less than I thought and I realize that there are other gun lobbyist groups out there, but five million? The Brady Campaign keeps track of how much senators take from the NRA, and thirty million would buy off a lot of them. Probably a Supreme Court Justice or two as well. I'm no venture capitalist, but better gun laws feel like a way better investment if the goal here is to prevent shootings.*

Oh don't look at me like that. You're only mad that you got caught...

*Yeah, I know it's not. Capitalism, venture or otherwise doesn't work that way. I'm just trying to make a point.