Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Shannon Paulus.

Hey, everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America.

We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 13th.

On today's show, we'll talk about gun safety technology and whether so-called smart guns could help reduce firearm deaths in the U.S.

Our guest will be Cassandra Krafasi, Deputy Director at the Johns Hopkins Center for

Gun Policy and Research. She studies policies, procedures, and practices that improve safety and

prevent injury. She's also a gun owner herself. After the interview, my colleague Aaron Mack will

join me for Don't Close My Tabs, where we'll talk about the best

things we saw on the web this week. That's all coming up on if then. Now let's turn to the gun safety

debate. Today, we're exploring whether smart guns, also called personalized guns, could potentially

reduce the number of firearm deaths in the United States.

You know how fancy iPhones have facial recognition so that only their owners can unlock them?

That's kind of the idea of smart guns.

They could unlock via fingerprint, or maybe the only fire of a wearable bracelet is within a few feet.

In theory, if you have a personalized gun, no one would be able to steal it

and use it, and your kids wouldn't be able to accidentally fire it. Presidential candidates,

Joe Biden and Andrew Yang, are both calling for the use of smart guns. Here's Biden.

We should have smart guns. No guns should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could

pull that trigger.

But could technology really solve our gun violence problem?

Here to walk us through it is Cassandra Kofasi, Deputy Director at the Johns Hopkins Center for

...