Children getting their hands on unlocked guns can have tragic circumstances — with some reports suggesting that toddlers were involved in one shooting per week last year. New Indiegogo project Zore wants to help reverse that horrifying stat.
Zore is a startup manufacturing a smart gun lock that allows users to unlock their guns remotely using an app or PIN code, and can even alert you if a person is tampering with your weapon so long as you’re within Bluetooth range.
The Zore X lock features an electro-mechanical dial designed to provide maximum security, but also quick unlocking even in the dark. The accompanying smartphone app, meanwhile, will receive gun-movement notifications, and can send you a message for any dial movement that takes place on the lock.
So far, the project’s Indiegogo campaign has raised a massive $290,899 against its $100,000 goal — and there’s a whole month left on the clock.
“We can say that [the campaign’s success is] not a big surprise because we saw the interest in the gun community in the United States, even before we started,” Yonatan Zimmerman, co-founder and CEO of Zore, tells Digital Trends. “We knew we had an interesting product on our hands. But we’re certainly very happy with the response.”
Zimmerman says that one thing the Zore team noticed when they started the project was the number of people trying to rethink handguns by adding in features like biometric ID. To Zimmerman, this was missing the point.
“People were making solutions for a problem that doesn’t exist,” he says. “That’s because when people carry their gun on them it’s typically safe, so long as they know how to handle it. The problem comes when people try to store the gun in a way that makes it both safe and accessible. Solutions which embed biometric fingerprint readers into the gun is dangerous because you’re carrying a weapon that needs to think before it can shoot. We didn’t think that made sense. The main issue is trying to prevent people’s kids getting hold of their gun.”
Certainly people are always going to need to be vigilant around firearms — but from the sound of things, Zore is offering a distinctly 21st-century solution to an issue that has long plagued gun owners. Let’s hope it can do some good.
If you’re interested in Zore, you can check out the campaign here.
