Maryland Bill Would Require Embedded Tracker on Most Guns

Handguns in a store in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 9, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

A bill introduced in the Maryland General Assembly would prohibit sellers from transferring 10 or more firearms in a single transaction unless each of the firearms includes an embedded tracking device that can’t be removed without rendering the firearm permanently inoperable.

Maryland House Bill 704, introduced by Democrat Del. Pam Queen, would establish a requirement that if one party transfers 10 or more firearms to another party, each of those firearms must have a tracking device embedded in the frame or receiver. The bill requires that each tracking device “is not readily capable of being removed, disabled, or destroyed without rendering the firearm permanently inoperable or destroying the frame or receiver.”

The bill states a seller or transferrer must provide this tracking information to the Maryland secretary of state police. A seller who does not embed these specified tracking devices in a bulk firearms transfer or does not report this tracking information to the state is guilty of a civil offense punishable with a fine of up to $2,500.

Critic Says Technology ‘Doesn’t Exist’

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry advocacy group, described the tamper-proof embedded tracking technology as “sci-fi technology.”

“Someone needs to figure out what in the wide world of dystopian Buck Rogers in the 25th Century sci-fi fantasy world is going on in Maryland’s legislature,” wrote Larry Keane, the foundation’s general counsel and senior vice president for government and public affairs.

Keane said retailers, including gun shops, have radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies as an internal inventory tracking tool, but those devices are designed to be turned off and removed at the store.

An embedded tracker would have to be powered, which raises the question of how tamperproof it could feasibly be, Keane said. He said a technology that relies on passive emissions like RFID would still be impossible to affix to the frame or receiver of a gun in a way that would make it tamperproof.

“The technology doesn’t exist and there’s no foreseeable way to create this sort of reliable embedded tracker that could withstand the pressures and energy created and harnessed by a firearm,” he wrote.

NTD News, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times, reached out to Queen to ask whether she was aware of any existing technologies or services that could fulfill the tracking requirements described in the bill.

In her response, Queen referred to a 2013 example of RFID inventory tracking technology being used at a gun industry show and examples of military units adopting RFID inventory systems for their armories. The technologies she referenced don’t appear to include an ability to render a firearm permanently inoperable or to destroy its frame or receiver if removed, as is stipulated in her bill.

Queen didn’t respond to a follow-up question about this aspect of the technology by press time.

Keane compared the concept of tracking devices that could disable the gun if removed to “smart gun” technologies that only allow the weapon to be fired by authorized users. Gun manufacturers have been developing such smart gun technologies for years, and in 2016, then-President Barack Obama announced that the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense had been studying the feasibility of the technologies and had been testing prototypes.

Several companies have been working to bring such guns to the general market. In 2014, a German company called Armatix created a smart gun product, but hackers figured out a way to block its user verification technology to render the gun operable for unauthorized users.

Gun rights activists have also been wary that smart gun technology could create a justification for requirements that the technology be imposed on all firearms. They have also raised concerns about introducing additional user verification steps in situations where seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

User verification systems for smart guns, such as fingerprint readers, won’t work if the user is wearing gloves, his hands are sweaty, or it’s raining. Fingerprint identification features on products like smartphones don’t always work reliably either.

Gun Owner Registry

HB 704 requires the secretary of state police to keep and manage a database of gun tracking information. The bill states that in order to complete a bulk firearms transfer, the seller not only has to include the embedded firearms tracking systems, but also obtain and pass along the names and addresses of the recipients of those firearms.

Even if the tamperproof gun-tracking technology described in the bill doesn’t work, the bill could potentially create a database of firearms owners.

“Those exercising their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms would be required to forfeit their Fourth Amendment Constitutional right to privacy and their right protecting them from illegal search-and-seizure, since the state would automatically collect and store this information in real time,” Keane wrote.

Queen said the requirements created by her bill are “not the same as an owner registry.”

From NTD News