Editor’s Note: The term “smart gun” is one that quickly evokes emotion on both sides of the gun debate. For gun control advocates, it’s another of those “common sense” steps that seems completely reasonable. For Second Amendment advocates, it’s a giant step toward government disarmament via technology. But what if the truth lies somewhere in the middle? Today, a conversation with Kai Kloepfer, CEO/Founder of Biofire Technologies. Biofire has gotten an inordinate amount of attention of late, and has supporters who have been ardent opponents of any form of mandated gun control. That’s reflected in statements made recently by Kloepfer, who has come out with strong statements against any form of mandates regarding “smart guns”.

Kai Kloepfer, Biofire’s founder and CEO

Kai Kloepfer

Overall, I'd say actually, quite positively, you know, we…I think there's two pieces here, right?

One to your point, you know, my goal is to build a product that I want to own. And I want to be an option, right? I do think there is a pretty big market, a lot of folks that would be interested in technology like this, because it solves, at least what I've heard - is the number one concern from a lot of gun owners of, hey, you know, “what, if my firearm was used by somebody? Whether it's a kid a criminal,” you know, you name it.

And at the same time, you know, there's a lot of use cases where a smart gun is probably not not a net positive, right?

It's not something that you need, it doesn't actually help. And that's great.

For the entire time I've been working on this, the goal has been this should be a choice, it should be an option, right?

And we've lobbied against mandates or requirements for the technology, because I just don't think they make any sense or they're not good for our customers.

Mandates don't actually really help us in any way.

Kai Kloepfer

Totally well…. and I'd say this is sort of the number one reason why I think mandates - even ignoring the politics side of it - just don't make any sense…because we're offering one product right now.

In the future, maybe we'll offer five right?

But we're never like one company is never going to be able to replace you know, the 1000s of different guns that are on the market that meet all sorts of different requirements and use cases and niches and things like that.

That's the biggest part why we want to build a product that we think is the best home defense handgun. A gun for folks that are excited about you know, buying a home pistol. Obviously, we'd love for them to buy our product.

But you know… it's not a concealed carry weapon…it’s not a rifle. It's not a shotgun. It's not, you know, you name it.

The really big thing here is that we want to build a product, and have customers choose to purchase it.

And yeah, we're only, you know, only building one, one flavor ice cream.

Kai Kloepfer

Yeah, I, I'd say it's designed to also, you know, be very effective in an unpredictable environment where you need to use that for self-defense. But yes, we are addressing this for a very particular use case, which is folks that are looking to own a handgun that probably they're gonna keep near the nightstand for home defense.

And I think that is an area where not only is it , like the number one way that most people get into owning firearms, especially folks that are coming in from kind of outside of the culture of firearms. But also, you know, it's a sort of very key area where, hey, we can prevent some kids from getting a hold of it, things like that.

That's a very deliberate choice on our part, right? We want to be focused, we want to ensure that we're building a really good product for core use case, as opposed to some sort of like, generic, you know, jack of all trades.

Kai Kloepfer

Oh, it's not all a marketing play. Right. We have an expert advisory council, which includes like, the two Navy Seals that are in the video. And as well as a number of other you know, FBI trainers, folks like that, that have a lot of very professional experience with firearms.

If we build a great, perfectly reliable, amazing, intuitive, smart gun, that's a shit firearm, you know nobody's gonna want it.

You know - obviously- most of our team are gun owners. We have a lot of personal experience. But you know, I would never dare compare my personal experience with guns with somebody that served in the Navy SEALs for 24 years. That's why we brought folks like that in, absolutely.

We want to demonstrate to our customers and to the firearms industry, that this is a high quality, you know, legitimate firearm that you can trust with your life.

Kai Kloepfer

What I will say is the number one reason people cite for considering to purchase a gun and then choosing not to, is the fundamental problem that we're addressing, which is they're concerned about it being taken away from them.

They're concerned about their kids finding it. They're concerned about it getting stolen and used in a crime.

So yes, absolutely. We want to build a firearm that addresses these key concerns for folks who have chosen to purchase a handgun, but maybe are uncomfortable with “Hey, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get it out of my safe fast enough when, you know, if I do actually do use it in a home defense environment” Or folks that have chosen not to own a gun- but probably will- if we do our jobs, right,. You know, they might buy our product. So absolutely.

Kai Kloepfer

Yeah, so both the front sight and what we call the rear UI, they're pretty coordinated.

So when you first pick it up, it automatically wakes up. You don't need to push any buttons or anything like that. As soon as you start to interact with it, the white light means it's trying to recognize your biometrics.

So it's looking constantly at the fingerprint and facial recognition and looking for you know, the owner or somebody the owner’s chosen to add the firearm. Once it finds one of those, it arms and unlocks and the front sights go green. By the way, that color is configurable by the user, right?

So we did we talked to over 10,000 customers throughout our research and development process. And we found the green was the color that the vast majority of our customers intuitively understood to me unlocked - even in simulated threat scenarios. If that is a color that doesn't intuitively make sense to you, you can easily just go on the dock and change that color to whatever you want red, purple, you name it.

Kai Kloepfer

Since you're clearly thinking about this, the brightness of those indicators, adjusts automatically, depending on the environment you're in. We've designed them such that let's say you're in a super dark environment, out in the country, middle of night, no lights on, those indicators set up that they won't like illuminate your face, they won't give away your position. They become very dim when you're in a dark position. And we did a lot of work to get that right in earlier prototypes. Lighting you up like a spotlight, that's obviously not what our customers need.

Kai Kloepfer

And that's the same with that visible laser. Not quite a tracer, but you know, same concept. I's something that we found more of our kind of novice or first time gun owners, they really understand. Our more experienced users, including, you know, the Navy SEALs, they pick that up and their first question was, how can I turn this off? I don't want a visible laser, I don't want a red dot floating around that I need to keep track of. So it's a simple toggle switch in the settings, you just go in, you can turn it off.

A lot of our gun is customizable. So..if you have multiple people enrolled in the gun -say you and a spouse -you can each have your own settings, and they get applied automatically

Kai Kloepfer

I don't think I'm going to directly answer that one.

Kai Kloepfer

No, I think the goal here is the core functionality. The core reason is the biometrics. But we've discovered a lot of little places where we think we can deliver incrementally better experience than anything else is on the market.

And it's all optional. It's all stuff that if you don't pay attention to if you don't care about it.

It shouldn't impact your experience in any way. You can pick it up and use it just like any other handgun - once you're enrolled. There's no new training or anything like that.

But if you do really want to get into it, we can tell you when the gun needs to be cleaned because we're looking at the how fast the slide and other mechanical components are moving every single time you shoot the gun.

The gun itself is monitoring that. We can tell you when it starting to slow down that you might need to clean it. There are things like that where some people will care, some people wont; but we think they’re pretty cool

Kai Kloepfer

There's no no camels allowed. The way we set this up is to provide value to our customers. The sensors and the diagnostic data and stuff collected inside the firearm helps us provide a better, more reliable experience to our customers, right?

One, if there is an issue with electronics, things like that, we can almost always autonomously recover from that fault without impacting the user in any way. Because of those monitoring systems and things like the mechanical system.

More novice users that might not intuitively understand when they need to clean their gun. And when they don't, we can provide a better experience.

At the same time, we want to be very, very careful that this is not some sort of, you know, slippery slope, there's no additional data that can be accessed off the firearm.

The way that we do that is all the data that is inside of the firearm is encrypted, using credentials that nobody has access to - not even Biofire. They're actually generated by the gun itself during manufacturing.

What that means is, you know, even if we were were compelled to, we would have no ability to access any user data. Most of that data is never collected in the first place, and for what is stored to provide features is all encrypted. It can't be accessed by anybody other than the owner.

Kai Kloepfer

Unfortunately, I've been asked almost every single one of these questions before.

Kai Kloepfer

Oh, boy, that's an original question.

Kai Kloepfer

Yeah, well, I think my mom dad are not, not too concerned.

Kai Kloepfer

I'm very focused. And for the last 11 years, on making this work. And we've overcome a lot of hurdles. So I don't really think this probably is going to be very relevant.

But, you know, I'm very much all in on this. You can tell by my distinct lack of a girlfriend that you know, and very much this has been, in a lot of ways, is sort of my life's work and focus here.

So I would say, I've got the opportunity as a result of this to learn a lot about both of the technology technical sides when I came into this initially as an engineer and electrical engineer, but you know, a lot of work on software, mechanical, all the different kinds of engineering that got into this I've gotten to be involved in which has been very, very useful from a skill building perspective. As well as just all the skills required to build a company, to hire people, to lead people, to build a viable business.

And so if for any reason Biofire was not to work out, like there's lots of options there. But I'll be honest, I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about that, right? Because the focus has been let's get to the next hurdle. Let's get through the next objective. You know, you're a firefighter.

Kai Kloepfer

People are buying defensive weapons to use to defend themselves and stop potential threats of their home. Right.

So I would say the short answer is “absolutely.” What I didn't want to do was go just build a firearms accessory company that was trying to, you know, sell you an accessory that oh, well, if you buy this thing and put it on your gun, it will help you shoot better, right?

I think maybe there’s a business there, but that's not the goal, right?

We wanted to start with how can we solve a real issue to start. What we're doing is putting basically a computer and an advanced sensor suite, inside of a firearm.

And that means there's a lot more we can do there to enhance experience.

Our number one objective is, you know, to build the best end gun for home defense. There's a lot that goes into that, right? Sure, you know, we can keep it safe for your kids, it'll unlock quickly. But you also, you know, especially if you're under trained, you know, because you're just woke up in the middle of night, you probably, you know, barely understand what's going on, as you're trying to wake up, you know, we want to maximize the probability that you're going to be able to use that firearm successfully.

And so thatis accuracy. Right? We've brought folks in customers who have never shot a handgun before in their life. And they can shoot a three inch group at, you know, 10 yards in their first time ever shooting with the Biofire smart gun. They're not going to win a marksmanship competition with that.

But from the perspective of is that effective for use in defense environment? I think absolutely.

And then going to your direct question. If we can help them train better, if we can help them learn how to handle that firearm, how to, you know, again, not anticipate the recoil, all the normal stuff that novice shooters do wrong, that just makes it even better, right, in terms of, they're less likely to make those mistakes when they actually use it.

And so I think we're definitely heavily invested in how can we create as much value as possible for our customers. If they're going to buy a smartphone, they're going to invest in this technology, we want them to get as much of it as much out of it as they possibly can. And I think that applies both for new owners, as well as, yeah, there's a lot of features a lot of stuff we're working on. I think that also appeals to very experienced gun owners that are looking just to get that extra edge.

Kai Kloepfer

Yeah, we're not doing quite like Aim Assist, or anything like that. That requires mechanical compensation around the barrel and some very different changes.

But first and foremost our customers have told us very, very clearly, that privacy is super important here. This is not Facebook, this is not some social media company where, you know, people you know, maybe don't pay enough attention. People are very, very aware of what they need out of their firearm. The last thing they want is to collect a bunch of data on it.

I asked you “what do you want out of your gun?” I'm pretty sure your answer is not “I want to collect a bunch of information.”

Kai Kloepfer

Good question. So, in the software that we have built right now, the answer is no. In the future, I think definitely - if we feel comfortable about our ability to ensure that that is very clearly firewalled. And that we can explain it clearly to our customers.

Because again, as you said, we can use that data to make our products better. But as of right now, we're not doing anything like that.

Okay, I'll give you a real answer…the easy answer is “absolutely not never Jim.” But if I can make a better product for our customers, we’ll look at it, assuming it is actually better for our customers.

We need to do what's right for our customers.

Our business model set up like that, because this is a choice, right?

This is not something that's going to be required.

We fight against that.

We need to build a product that our customers actually wants us to purchase -and pay a premium for. and a lot of cases, right?

We need to build a product that holistically, right, whether the data or the reliability, or the extra features or the biometrics, right you name, it all has to actually serve the needs of our customers, otherwise, they won’t choose to buy it. And I think you know that that's a pretty, that's pretty strong.

Kai Kloepfer

We've already sold out of our first couple of manufacturing batches.

Kai Kloepfer

No, no pre orders.

Kai Kloepfer

We have not shipped production units, okay, are ramping up for manufacturing. We're gonna be delivering the first units, q4 of this year. We've done lots and lots of demos and testing.

And certainly, if you're interested, coming out and demo one at our facility. Or later this year, we're going to have units available that folks like you can kick the shit out of.

Kai Kloepfer

We've, it's you're welcome to interpret it however you want.

Kai Kloepfer

Yeah, so what I would say ..we are not in production, right. We do not have final productions. You're definitely correct about that. Right.

We've done the engineering work right. We have a product that does everything I'm telling you about right now.

We're mostly just constrained by trying to build as many things as we possibly can have the final tooling for the product for the parts to do production quality, plastics, etc.

Kai Kloepfer

We're very aware of the product liability aspects of our technology, right. And we are saying to our customers, this is the technology that's going to prevent other people from using a gun, it's going to work for you. Those are claims that we stand behind.

The number one way to solve that is actually kind of going back to what I was just talking about where you have to solve a technical challenges first, right. By solving those technical challenges, we built a product that is fundamentally extremely reliable.

That is the key part. If you're talking to insurance carrier, what they want to know is, well, how much risk is there? How much risk is there was probably not going to work, that we're gonna see claims, things like that.

And the way that we've addressed those conversations is, by building actually a very good product that does actually serve as a reasonable product that our customers can trust. So we have reliable insurance, we have a good approach on that side. I feel very comfortable about where we're at with that. But that's because we built a product that does fundamentally actually work.

Kai Kloepfer

Correct. Don’t be an idiot. Learn how to use a firearm. Practice.

Kai Kloepfer

Well, I think that's the key part. I'm not expecting you to take my word on this, right? We want to prove this to our customers.

Before we're asking anybody to put non-refundable money down, or make commitments. They need to know we’re going to deliver the product. That's a big part of why we've already invited as many folks out as we have capacity for - to do demos. But I get your point…they’re in our environment, but I guarantee you, if you come out, we can prove to you that it locking and unlocking -you can test it with gloves and all that stuff.

We hope to just ramp that up over the next couple of months to you know, really prove to our customers that this is a good firearm, right? It's one that when you do shoot it, it's super comfortable. You know, that's what we've heard from from everybody. And we've actually done more research - probably than any other firearms company has on on ergonomics.

Kai Kloepfer

We’re excited about proving that we're building the the best home defense product. Love to have you come out and demo one- if you're interested Otherwise, we'll get you on the list.

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