The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s (NSSF) Steve Sanetti Talks About ‘Smart Guns’ on 60 Minutes
The CBS news magazine program 60 Minutes Sunday night aired a segment on “Smart Guns” during which NSSF President Steve Sanetti answered questions from reporter Lesley Stahl and explained that the industry does not oppose the development of authorized user technology for firearms but rather that caution is warranted. “We have to be careful not to fall into the technology trap,” Sanetti said. “We’re not here saying that technology is a bad thing. Technology obviously improves our life in many ways. But I think you have to look at firearms in a slightly different way. Their mechanisms are the way they are over centuries of development. They’re at the state now that consumers want them and, in the United States, there’s a lot of tradition involved in firearms.”
Sanetti also explained that legal mandating “Smart Gun” technology, which the industry opposes, would punish the vast majority of responsible gun owners who as a matter of course secure their weapons safely away from children or others who should not be able to access them. Indeed, all guns can be secured today by means of the locks furnished by their manufacturers, or by the 37 million free locks distributed by the NSSF’s Project ChildSafe, without the reliability disadvantages posed by “smart guns.”
“Why are you trying to take my firearm and add something to it that’s going to make it more prone to failure?” he asked, referring to the possibility that the technology might malfunction.
Perhaps the only new information to be covered in the segment came from New Jersey “Smart Gun” mandate law sponsor State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, who said that she would introduce legislation to repeal that state’s current unenforced law if firearms retailers, in return, would all agree to carry at least one model of an authorized user equipped firearm in their stores’ inventory.
See NSSF Fast Facts on “Smart Guns” for detailed information on this issue.
