A California shop that was about to go down in history as selling the first supposed “smart gun” in America has now done a one-eighty and pulled the product, after customers and Second Amendment activists unleashed a slew of complaints.
The Oak Tree Gun Club near Los Angeles came under immediate criticism from the gun rights crowd after reportedly stocking its shelves with the Armatix iP1, a German-made .22 caliber pistol that requires the user to buy and wear a technologically connected wristwatch in order to fire it, Fox News reported. The wristwatch is sold separately.
Second Amendment supporters argued that the gun will lead to further infringements. New Jersey, for instance, passed a law that requires every handgun in the state to be personalized — with fingerprint-reading technology, or some biometric-based information — within three years of the smart gun hitting store shelves anywhere in America, The Washington Post reported.
So activists went on a rant, portraying Oak Tree as “anti-gun” and ultimately drumming up enough support that shop owner James Mitchell issued an apology and pulled the product. The Washington Post reported, too, that the gun shop is now also — inexplicably — denying that it ever offered the gun for sale, apologizing only for the confusion that generated over reports of its iP1-stocked shelves.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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