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In the wake of the latest school shooting in Florida, in which 17 people, many of them children, died, the public conversation has already exploded in stories of heroism, recriminations and perhaps overly simple answers about why this is happening in America and how we can stop it. Most of the most heated conversation comes down to questions like how we could lower the risk of violence by lowering the number of guns flowing through the country. A vocal minority wants more guns, perhaps in the hands of teachers.
But there is another thread of thought, one that's based on the science of public safety: How can existing guns be safer? And what kinds of guns should be in the market? Of all the issues swirling around guns in America, the question of how to keep kids from misusing adults' guns seems the least contentious.
Though mass shootings are shockingly and too common, many more children die in accidents and suicides, about one a day, according to David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. In Florida, according to an article by the Tampa Bay Times’ Kathleen McGrory and Connie Humburg, one child is killed every 17 hours, including those killed in crimes.
The alleged shooter in Florida, Nikolas Cruz, apparently bought his gun, an AR-15, legally. But making it harder for young people to take or steal other people's guns could potentially stop other mass shootings. There’s obviously a market of millions for safer guns and ways to make guns safer: Parents who want to own guns and who want to keep their kids safe. But even those products have run into the toxic stew of politics around the issue of guns.
Enter a company founded by former members of the Israeli military, Yonatan Zimmerman, a marketing executive, and Yalon Fishbein, a mechanical engineer. ZORE hopes to sell a sophisticated gun lock into the huge U.S. market for guns without running afoul of the politics.
(The company had already launched this week, before the shooting. This article was written before the shooting, too, and revised to reflect the news)
For $179, gun owners can buy a lock that, its founders say, will keep kids from being able to access guns and can be unlocked in the dark within seconds -- and that will automatically chamber a round as it is unlocked. Parents (or others) set a series of numbers, clicks, a combination that can be achieved starting anywhere on the dial and moving in any direction.
Any gun safety technology faces a sort of existential question: If ZORE convinces more people to buy guns, but they don’t use the locks – if the locks are not convenient or easy enough to use or people still are careless – some people might not use them, and more people could be hurt, I pointed out to Zimmerman.
“Our life mission is to provide something that actually protects kids,” Zimmerman said, noting that he and his partner would hold themselves to high standards to make sure that their gun lock is doing so.
But many products that aim to make guns safer in any way have hit roadblocks. Some entrepreneurs have tried to launch “smart guns” in which embedded chips communicate with an item of jewelry (a watch or ring) worn by the owner. The point is to make it hard-to-impossible for anyone to fire a gun, except the gun owner. Another product that could help are gun locks, or trigger locks – but though there are many on the market, they are many gun owners who don’t use them because it takes a long time to remove them. If you’re worried about an intruder, you don’t want to spend minutes unlocking your gun.
The question of smart guns and gun safety measures has been incredibly politicized – to the point that one gun store owner who planned to sell smart guns received death threats. One of the early proponents of smart guns, Jonathan Mossberg, whose family owns the storied gun manufacturer O.F. Mossberg & Sons, is still searching for funding for a prototype, iGun, more than 10 years after conceiving it.
The political obstacles fall into two or three categories: Some gun owners, according to Mossberg, worry that any kind of technology in a gun could be a proxy for government monitoring and control; the NRA has said it opposes laws that would mandate gun safety technology as part of gun sales, and has argued that some smart guns have glitches. ZORE locks, its founders say, have passed California Department of Justice standards. (The highest standard, according to Mossberg, are guns that test to military specifications.)
With $3 million invested in research and development so far, the former Israeli soldiers hope to avoid those issues with their gun lock, which is launching in the United States this week.
ZORE was born three years ago, after founders realized how much of an opportunity and need there was. “Even when people are trained with firearms, they make mistakes. I saw my best friend, when he was cleaning his gun, almost blow his head off,” said Zimmerman. “He was really tired, and he thought it was unloaded.”
After the two friends left the Israeli Defense Force, they both had children. They heard of an Israeli soldier killed by friendly fire. Thinking about the dangers of guns, and looking for an idea for a company, they teamed up to create ZORE.
“My partner and I are both parents … we know children are very curious,” said Zimmerman. “There is a balance here. Am I afraid more of my kid having access … or of an intruder?”
Yedidia Ya’ari, a retired vice admiral and former commander in chief of the Israeli Navy, has just invested in the company; he is also a prominent figure in Israeli military-industrial complex. (Israel has one of the most militarized economies in the world). He was CEO of a company called RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, a state-owned Israeli company.
With 6,000 orders on the books, ZORE is manufacturing its locks in a factory in Anaheim, Calif. They are beginning to ship this week, Zimmerman said. Along with selling through its web site, it is also selling through Brownells and Optics Planet.
“Many, many people don’t lock the gun because they don’t have a solution that will provide the security and accessibility,” Zimmerman said. “They want to maintain the accessibility.”
