Looking for technological solutions to gun violence
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Omer Kiyani
With policy makers at a stalemate over how to keep Americans safer from gun violence, entrepreneurs try their hand at a fix.
Omer Kiyani is a victim of gun violence, but that’s not what he focuses on. As a young man he was shot in the face, but when he talks about guns, he does so like a business man.
“I am a gun owner, I have children, and I’m a safety engineer,” he says.
Kiyani is the inventor of Identilock, a trigger lock that uses fingerprint technology that allows only the gun’s owner or another authorized user to fire it — picture a bear trap that closes around the trigger and trigger guard, rendering it useless, except as maybe a paperweight.
He’s in the final stages of refining the product, and getting it ready to take to market. He got help on the way from the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation — a vague name, but a specific goal, as listed on their website: “The Foundation aims to unleash the entrepreneurial energy of America to propel safety forward.”
We sat down with Omer to discuss his invention and his motivation to channel his energy into a controversial technology.
This post has been updated 10/12/15
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