Posted on 03/23/2005 3:20:59 PM PST by neverdem
Media General News Service
WASHINGTON - Sheriff's Deputy Nathan Hollingsworth looked down the barrel of his partner's gun, closed his eyes and started to pray.
The 24-year-old rookie's partner was mortally wounded, shot three times with his own weapon, and now the killer was pointing the .45-caliber Glock service pistol at Hollingsworth's head.
"At that point I could see the barrel. I just closed my eyes and prayed. I thought it was over," Hollingsworth testified in court last month.
A "smart gun" might have saved the life of his partner, Deputy Toney Summey, and spared Hollingsworth's arm, which was badly broken by a bullet in the 2003 shoot-out -- sparked when the two deputies tried to serve a domestic assault warrant on a Franklinville, N.C. man.
A smart gun also might have stopped the Atlanta courthouse suspect accused of killing a judge, a sheriff's deputy, a court reporter and a federal customs agent after stealing another deputy's weapon March 11.
Yet despite millions of federal dollars poured into developing a personalized handgun that only the owner can fire, there still is no magic bullet - and many law enforcement officials and gun experts are leery of the idea.
In Congress, Rep. William Pascrell, D-N.J., is pushing a bill that would require all new handguns to have "smart" technology within five years if experts deem the technology feasible.
The bill - whose chances are slim in the Republican-led Congress -- would exempt law enforcement, which also lobbied against a similar 2002 New Jersey state law.
"They haven't come up with a [foolproof] gun yet and if they do we're not sure we're interested," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the 318,000-member Fraternal Order of Police.
"Police officers need to be able to pick up [and fire] any weapon on the scene" without fear that it won't work, he said.
More than 50 law enforcement officers have been killed by their own weapons over the past decade and at least 100 police weapons have been stolen from cop-killing crime scenes, according to the latest 1994-2003 FBI statistics.
The Atlanta rampage began after rape suspect Brian Nichols, a 200-lb former college linebacker, allegedly overpowered an unarmed female deputy and took her gun out of a lockbox.
Deputy Summey's killer, Charles Polke, who grabbed the service revolver during a struggle with the deputies, was sentenced to death last month.
"It's possible that if (Summey) had a smart gun, that could have saved life," said Randolph County, N.C. chief deputy, Major Allen McNeill. "The smart gun is probably where they [researchers] need to be focusing."
Engineers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology say they are on the verge of producing a reliable smart gun, which could be on the market in two or three years.
The gun has electronically computerized sensors embedded in the handle that can recognize the strength, size and pattern of the owner's grip - and anyone else programmed to operate the gun -- during the first second when the trigger is squeezed.
The federal government has pumped about $2 million into the NJIT smart gun research, which began as a project to prevent accidental child shooting deaths.
Grants also have gone to private gun makers looking into guns that operate via a radio transmitter worn on the wrist and a gun that reads a rice grain-sized computer chip injected into the owner's hand.
None has been perfected.
NJIT researchers still need to prove the gun's "software is equally as reliable" as the gun's hardware even under crisis conditions, said Donald Sebastian, a biomedical engineer who heads the project.
Sebastian believes the NJIT prototype, when perfected, would not only convince law enforcement skeptics, but it would cost less than $50 extra.
"It would have rendered the gun inoperable in the hand of the [Atlanta] suspect," he said.
But Sebastian cautioned that no gun is foolproof.
"We have the word 'misfire' in the English language for a reason," he said.
In fact, Hollingsworth, who now works as a bailiff at the county courthouse where Polke was tried, testified that the gun pointed at his head backfired, giving him a life-saving chance to get to his patrol car and call for back-up.
The Atlanta rampage began after rape suspect Brian Nichols, a 200-lb former college linebacker, allegedly overpowered an unarmed female deputy and took her gun out of a lockbox.
Can anyone verify this part about the lockbox? This is the first that I have heard about it. Is this the same as the lockbox for airline pilots or Social Security?
Why in God's name would they exempt cops when that's where this is most likely to happen. I know why, and everyone else does too I imagine.
No smart guns until the cops have used them for 5 years. Make the cops use them mandatory. Make it optional for civilians.
maybe a barrel obstruction ???
The lockbox story has gotten a little play, although he evidently knew where the box was and which key on her ring opened it...
When "smart guns" have a failure rate of 1-in-10,000 rounds like a modern combat handgun under military test conditions, they can come talk to me. Until then, they can cram it. A defensive firearm is about reliability above all else.
Uh, huh. Unless your hand is sweaty from fear or exerrtion and your grip is "off." Or your primary hand is injured and you have to fire off-hand. Or you have to use another cop's gun. Etcetcetc.
Let the police test it first, for ten years. Starting with the bodyguards of politicians.
How's the book going?
Seems smart cops/supervisors would be more helpful.
Weapons retention training should be a basic. How would the 'smart' gun have worked with wounded cops and bloody hands? Would one cop be able to use his partner's gun? etc., etc., here we go again.....
Amd that is only HALF of a brain!
LOL, you get the idea.
Too slowly! If I'm finished during 2005, I'll be lucky.
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