This MIT student may only be 19 years old, but he’s working on a revolutionary project that could save hundreds of lives.
Kai Kloepfer is working on the prototype of a smart gun that can only be fired by the owner. Thousands of gun-related deaths in America are either from child accidents or suicides that are committed with firearms that don’t belong to them. Using fingerprint recognition similar to the iPhone, a smart gun would prevent anyone else but the intended user from firing the weapon.
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“I started developing this technology at the age of 15 after I started to realize just how much of a problem we have with gun violence – and the lack of any feasible solution,” says Kai. “Therefore I have spent the last three years actively engaged in the smart firearm discussion as a public speaker, working with media and doing other outreach to help eliminate misunderstandings as well as to learn from my customers what they need in a smart gun.”
Kai operates his organization – known as BioFire – out of his parent’s house in Boulder, Colorado. He has received funding to develop the smart gun from Ron Conway, a “super angel” of Silicon Valley and an early investor in Facebook and Google.
“Kai is the Mark Zuckerberg of guns,” Conway said. “What Kai has done is used all of the latest technology available us to innovate a truly authenticated gun. You couldn’t do this five years ago.”
(WATCH the video below)
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