Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:

Well, I had to come up with a catchy title, but of course it’s not funny how many people are injured by accidental shootings every year. Password-protecting the ammo would not only keep the gun from firing, but keep stolen ammo from working in other guns.

The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle of Germany, is to password-protect the ammunition itself.

Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge. [Source: New Scientist]

Patent here.

We Say: OK, this sounds like a good idea. Interesting how the gun could be set to lock the ammo after a certain idle time… kind of like similar things on PDAs. I know people who simply can’t remember things. For example, set a BIOS password, and have to get it reset. I wonder if they will end up having to take the ammo back and ask the retailer for a password reset… and if it would be doable?

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[tags]password ammo,patent pending,herbert meyerle,password gun,bios pass[/tags]