The Brady Campaign’s attempt to require “smart guns” in New Jersey recently hit a significant hurdle.  In November,
Acting Attorney General John Jay Hoffman issued a report that concluded the allegedly available “smart gun,” the
Armatix iP1, did not meet New Jersey’s legal definition of a “personalized handgun.”   A lawsuit filed in May by the
Brady Campaign sought to force the attorney general to issue a report finding that the iP1 is a “personalized handgun”
and would therefore trigger a more than decade old New Jersey law.  Under the law, all new handguns sold in
New Jersey have to be personalized 30 months after a single production model of a personalized handgun is
delivered to a firearm dealer in New Jersey or another state. 

The officials discovered that the iP1 uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) to link the handgun to a wristwatch that
can be worn by the user.  As long as the iP1 is held within 10 inches of the watch, the electronics will not prevent the
handgun from firing.  While RFID is a suitable means of “personalization” under the law, the report concluded that the
iP1 “does not satisfy the statutory definition because, as a matter of design, the pistol may be fired by a person who
is not an authorized or recognized user.”   Since the law specifically requires that a personalized handgun can only be
used by an “authorized or recognized user”, the iP1 is not a personalized handgun because it can be fired by anyone,
authorized user or not, as long as it is held within 10 inches of the connected wristwatch. 

In fact, the attempted commercial introduction of the Armatix has floundered so badly that it remains the sole example
that Brady can cite as even approximating a “smart gun.”  Thus, were it to trigger the New Jersey law, the result would
surely collide with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.  There, the Court ruled that the Second
Amendment protects the individual right to possess arms “in common use at the time” for lawful purposes.  Even the
Brady Campaign cannot seriously argue that all handguns other than the iP1, an $1800, 10- shot pistol chambered in
.22LR, are not commonly used for lawful purposes.