Gadgetory

one year after the Sandy Hook massacre public shootings are still regularly in the headlines while many look to government to pass gun control legislation one organization is taking a different approach and trying to innovate their way to a solution part of the beauty of innovation is it's a political and cuts right at the core of the American process we're believers in free markets a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is tackling gun violence with technology the smart tech foundation is lined to create for incentive challenges these can be thought of as XPrize like challenges where we foster innovation through grants and prize money the first challenge is on smarter safer firearms what does a smarter firearm look like it may resemble the spy tech seen in films what's a ppk/s a 9-millimeter short it's been coded to your palm prints only you can fire it that's it they're everything from biometrics like the gun seen in Skyfall to dynamic grip recognition turns out that how you grip a gun is rather individual similarly bullets could become smarter by placing small electronic devices micro devices with information itself it can figure out whether or not the person using the firearm is authorised the smart Tech Foundation says future challenges will focus on other areas such as Community Safety and mental health one possible application is the nature of how people play video games they're nor muscular visual coordination can detect changes in brain performance that's been shown to detect concussions initial evidence around detecting abnormal cognitive defects others in the tech industry are also exploring gun safety German company ARMA ticks has developed smart system a gun and watch pair that incorporates radio frequency identification or RFID the gun only fires when in range of the watch SST recently launched shot spotter sight secured which could be used in airports or schools it utilizes SSTs gun fire detection technology to determine the location of shots fired and then automatically notifies unfortunately not only could this shave minutes off the response time it could give first responders valuable information such as the whereabouts of a shooter gun proponents have also made technical advances in the past year in the spring defense distributed successfully fired a plastic gun made with a 3d printer tracking point integrated sensors into a rifle greatly improving a user's ability to accurately shoot a target from a thousand yards away so you can place a lock on your target it will persistently track that target as it moves and it will give you the velocity of that target up to ten miles an hour and allow you to make that shot on that target while it's moving no matter what form gun safety takes its success depends on firearm users it doesn't make sense to create a new gadget a new firearm itself that nobody wants and so understanding the existing customer needs understanding the requirements for the marketplace itself are really important and that's why we're leveraging firearm industry experts itself to help us guide and shape the nature of the innovation the smart tech firearms challenge begins in January participants will be competing for a million dollars and Counting in San Francisco I'm Sumi das Cena for CBS News