This is a nightmare. From the Firearm Blog:
The latest issue of the European gun magazine Gun Trade World quotes Chiappa’s Cinzia Pinzoni saying “The information on the microchip can be rewritten several times” and “the chip is very difficult to remove … accompanies the weapon forever providing all the information gathered regarding its production … and the registration of the gun and the owners details.”. Scary, very scary!
It would be remarkably easy for gun thieves to steal guns if all they had to do was drive down any given street and get an inventory. That’s not even mentioning that it surely could be abused by hostile authorities. Chiappa has clearly never heard of Joe’s Jews in the Attic test. This is major fail.
All this is doing is giving our opponents ideas. They know we don’t like this. The only thing I sincerely hope prevents them from taking this awful idea and running with it is what a boon it would be to gun thieves.
More and better gun thieves equal more and better media PSH.
To a gun banner, there’s nothing but upside in any crime involving a gun, unless he suffers from it personally.
“It would be remarkably easy for gun thieves to steal guns if all they had to do was drive down any given street and get an inventory.”
If it was that easy, they’d already be doing it with RFID credit card numbers. Also, wouldn’t any full-enclosed steel gun cabinet act as a faraday cage?
Not that I like the idea of RFID tags on guns mind you.
A safe should be a Faraday cage, but I keep a few guns out of the safe unless I’m leaving the house for a while. So they’d at least be able to tell there were guns in the vicinity, and with the right equipment could tell which house. Would be even easier with personal information encoded on the chip.
A bit about CC RFID. I doubt Chiappa is doing anything this sophisticated. And even with this sophistication, it looks like it can still be played.
To a gun banner, there’s nothing but upside in any crime involving a gun, unless he suffers from it personally.
Are you kidding? To an anti-gun advocate, being personally affected by a “gun crime” is like winning the lottery!
Something tells me that Chiappa will be exiting the U.S market, just like Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and Lancia. When no one buys your overpriced and under quality product, you tend to pack up and go home.
This idea has some merit. Like all new ideas, it should be tried on government officials first, before being inflicted upon the public. Microchip all government owned guns, post the data to a public webpage in real time. Just the idea of being subject to a particular law helps government agents think about the unintended consequences.
First time an undercover cop gets his cover blown because of an RFID tag on his gun, you can bet there would be an exception made.
And anyone with an RFID scanner could tell if you’re carrying, concealed or not.
On a more positive note, they make wallets now that block RFID signals. Do I smell a market for an RFID-blocking holster. :D
The link does mention -not- doing the permanent hidden chip for US imports, using a customer-removable, visible tag.
That may or may not work out but it’s worth noting they are not ignoring the concerns.
Not so much of a story. It appears to be someone who would not recognize a joke if it hit him in the head’s idea of a joke.
Physics is physics, as my professor used to say, and a wide range RFID “chip” in a gun does not compute.
An RFID setup is basically a challenge and response system. The interrogation transmitter sends out a challenge pulse. The antenna in the RFID response “chip” picks up enough signal to be rectified, and power the chip for a one squawk response. The intensity of both signals is subject to the square cube law, which means they fall off fast – and the operating frequency is in the 13.56 MHz ISM band, just below the Amateur Service’s 20 Meter band. Which means a very large antenna if any sort of range is needed.
While I do not have a Chiappa to check out for available space, a Beretta 92F has just enough room for one of the tiny “75 mm” RFID chips. If the street is 18 feet wide and the houses are set back 30 feet, pick up slide rule, move the cursor; er, ah…
A 10 watt interrogation transmitter driving a parabolic antenna 68 feet in diameter would provide enough energy to elicit a response. And then there is the problem of actually hearing that sub-microwatt response buried under the many echoes such a beam would create.
For more, go to rfcafe.com and search for RFID makers. Most of the manufacturers web sites will explain what is possible in far more detail than I have room for here.
Stranger
wouldn’t a few seconds in a microwave take care of the RFID tag in the gun?…..kind of like the CD-rom in a microwave
The last time this issue surfaced, didn’t it turn out to be a governmental directive from the IT government for domestic manufacture, and that Beretta would be affected as well, at least for their “domestically” produced guns?