All over the world there are about 875 million of firearms (civilian, law enforcement and military) in use. Approximately 650 million (roughly 75 %) firearms are owned by civilians.
The misuse of firearms, be it legally-owned civilian weapons or civilian or military weapons which have been illicitly manufactured or obtained, is a serious threat to the EU's security from both an internal and an external perspective . There hasn’t been any major evolution within the last 100 years in the development of firearms.
Initiatives within the EU (i. e. Firearms and the internal security of the EU: protecting citizens and disrupting illegal trafficking,) and the UN (Programme of action on small arms) fight the misuse and illicit trade of small arms. Therefore the new state of the art technology is exactly in line with the proposed priorities of the European Commission (1. Safeguarding the licit market for civilian firearms, 2. Licit to illicit: reducing diversion of firearms into criminal hands) to fight these challenges. It is therefore assessed that the new technology serving these security requirement will become standardized at least in the EU within the next decade.
The implementation of ICT applications means the next and more than necessary step for the weapon industry into a sophisticated and state of the art future. The overarching aim of this technology is to limit the use of a firearm exclusively to the legitimate user, preventing any diversion of a legally used firearm into the illegal market as well as to help tracking illicit firearms. This has the potential to revolutionize the small arms market.
The project focuses only on civilian applications with the general aim to improve the safety in handling of weapons for law enforcement bodies and civilian end-users.
