Tell me if this is not the biggest case cognitive dissonance you have heard of coming from the pro-gun side and then tell me if this is not another example of why we need sensible gun legislation passed. Here is a story about gun store owner and a businesswoman trying to do the "right thing" she was trying to market a smart gun and he was going to start selling the nation's first smart gun but he had to reverse his decision because the mother fucker gun-rights activists were threatening him with DEATH.
Ms. Padilla also has received death threats because she is trying to bring to market the very first smart gun.
Ms. Padilla, a fast-talking, hard-charging Beverly Hills businesswoman who leads the company’s fledgling American division, encountered the same uproar that has stopped gun control advocates, Congress, President Obama and lawmakers across the country as they seek to pass tougher laws and promote new technologies they contend will lead to fewer firearms deaths.
Now to me a logical thinker, who tries to base their major decisions they make in life using logic and reason, this makes no logical sense why anyone anywhere would be against a "Smart gun" and how selling smart guns encroaches on the Second Amendment? A gun is a gun is it not?
Maybe the typical gun-right activist is too stupid to operate a "Smart Gun", do they not realize that by issuing death threats towards people that are only trying to help only adds fuel to the fire of gun-control advocates, just proves our point, that universal background checks are an absolute must.
Maryland gun store owner Andy Raymond reversed his decision to sell the nation’s first smart gun on Thursday after receiving online death threats from gun-rights activists protesting the technological milestone as a encroachment on the Second Amendment.
Raymond, the co-owner of Engage Armament, had called the decision to sell the Armatix iP1 handgun a “really tough decision” after similar attacks against California's Oak Tree Gun Club near Los Angeles recently forced the store to back away from its association with the new smart gun.
Belinda Padilladoes not pick up unknown calls anymore, not since someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts. A few fuming-mad voice mail messages and heavy breathers were all it took.
Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too. In a crude, cartoonish scrawl, this person drew an arrow to the blurred image of a woman passing through the photo frame. “Belinda?” the person wrote. “Is that you?”
Her offense? Trying to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. Ms. Padilla and the manufacturer she works for, Armatix, intended to make the weapon the first “smart gun” for sale in the United States.
As a safeguard against accidental shootings, the smart gun's safety mechanism uses electronic chips inside the handgun to transmit arming data to a radio frequency-enabled watch, without which the weapon cannot fire.
But shortly after Armatix went public with its plans to start selling in Southern California, Ms. Padilla, a fast-talking, hard-charging Beverly Hills businesswoman who leads the company’s fledgling American division, encountered the same uproar that has stopped gun control advocates, Congress, President Obama and lawmakers across the country as they seek to pass tougher laws and promote new technologies they contend will lead to fewer firearms deaths.
Lately, there has been little standing in the way of the muscle of the gun lobby, whose advocates recently derailed Mr. Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, a Boston doctor who has expressed alarm about the frequency of shooting deaths.
And despite support from the Obama administration and the promise of investment from Silicon Valley, guns with owner-recognition technology remain shut out of the market today.
“Right now, unfortunately, these organizations that are scaring everybody have the power,” Ms. Padilla said. “All we’re doing is providing extra levels of safety to your individual right to bear arms. And if you don’t want our gun, don’t buy it. It’s not for everyone.”
Opponents of the technology, who took to online forums and Engage Armament's Facebook page to protest Raymond's initial decision to carry the gun, view sales of the iP1 as a slippery slope to Maryland's implementation of smart gun legislation similar to that passed in New Jersey in 2002.
The Garden State's law mandates that all handguns sold in the state include personalized safety features within three years after the first smart gun is approved for sale in the United States.
Smart gun advocates view the technology’s potential to reduce suicides and accidental gun deaths as a momentous development in the battle against gun violence.
According to 2013 data from the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, guns in the home are 22 times more likely to be used in accidental shootings, homicides or suicide attempts than for self-defense.
Earlier in the week, Raymond told The Washington Post he was selling the smart gun because Maryland’s gun-control laws had “already essentially put us out of business.”
Which no they have not.
Although Raymond viewed gun advocates’ opposition to the smart gun as “the antithesis of everything that we pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment people should be,” he took to the store’s Facebook page Thursday night to apologize for his decision to sell the weapon.
Which has been removed, not surprising.
“Maybe I got mislead about this. Its [sic] still my responsibility,” Raymond wrote. “I stood, I tried to stand on the ideal that we could get some fence sitters and anti gunners into our fold. Maybe Im either too young or too old to realize thats not sturdy enough [sic].”
Raymond has been mislead and mislead badly by the NRA, earlier, Raymand had said he’s on the “right-wing vanguard of gun rights” but is vehemently opposed to gun rights activists arguing against the idea of a smart gun — or any gun.
“To me that is so fricking hypocritical,” Raymond had said. “That’s the antithesis of everything that we pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment people should be. You are not supposed to say a gun should be prohibited. Then you are being no different than the anti-gun people who say an AR-15 should be prohibited.” Raymond is spot on with his assessment.
Raymond said he learned of the gun a few years ago from an Engage Armament client working as an attorney for the manufacturer. Raymond then helped the company import the gun for testing.
Andy Raymond and Belinda Padilla are awesome people in my humble opinion, Andy and Belinda are both trying to do the right thing and they have been cut-off at the knees by the lunatic's of the pro-gun side, I would imagine that both of them would be the first to agree, passing universal backgrounds checks and closing the gun show loop-hole are of the up most importance.