What, you mean the NRA itself is not a "gun safety advocate"?
Actually, what's funny about this is that the group that the reporter obliquely refers to as "gun safety advocates" is Josh Sugarmann's "Violence Policy Center" (VPC), a virulently anti-gun group that makes HCI (or whatever they call themselves these days) look tame.
The VPC's official position on "smart guns" is that they're agains them, because anything that might make people feel less paranoid about having a gun in the house could lead to an increase in gun ownership, which the VPC considers unacceptable. As they say on their website page on the topic of "smart guns":
Even more significant, making smart guns available would increase the chances of selling guns to Americans who currently do not own them. A March 1997 survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center and the Johns Hopkins Center on Gun Policy and Research found that, of respondents who were "unlikely to buy a gun in the future," 35 percent would "consider buying a handgun that would only fire for the owner of the gun." Packaged with a strong sales pitch, the technology could penetrate new markets for the gun industry, putting more families at risk from guns that they wrongly believe are "safe" or "smart."And one guess what the VPC might consider "truly effective solutions".[...]
In general, however, the smart gun falls far short of the sweeping benefits its proponents claim. Any benefits would likely be outweighed by an increase in gun-owning households. Overstating the value of personalized guns will ultimately result in public cynicism regarding policy efforts to reduce gun death and injury, and delay the implementation of truly effective solutions.
Oops! Wrong link. Here's the correct link.