Five years ago, New Jersey became the first state to limit the sale of handguns to weapons equipped with technology that prevents all but the gun's owner from firing a shot.
The controversial law, aimed at reducing the number of children killed by handguns through accidents, suicide or acts of violence, had one very big caveat: It would not go into effect until the state was convinced these futuristic "smart guns" actually work.
Today, after gun manufacturers, engineering firms and research universities have spent millions competing to perfect the weapon, the quest has wandered onto the slow track.
The federal government has all but ceased its funding, crippling research. Legal squabbles over patents shelved promising technologies. And gun manufacturers got out of the business entirely, wary of potential lawsuits and marketing guns that would cost far more.
However, one of the few remaining hopes for a "smart gun" lies in the Newark laboratories of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The school has spent nine years and $4 million in grants to develop a technology that identifies gun owners based on how they squeeze the trigger.
NJIT officials say their gun works 99 percent of the time. But they know that's not good enough. Getting it to work all the time, they say, could take years and substantially more funding than the university now gets.
"It's still very crude," said Donald H. Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at NJIT.
He said it would take "about two years of steady effort with proper funding" to develop a working smart gun prototype.
"We haven't had the steady effort or the proper funding," Sebastian said. "It's a million-dollar-a-year effort to keep people working on it full time."
Instead, the university is banking on a $250,000 federal grant -- its first in two years -- to continue working on its "dynamic grip recognition" technology.
