Safety Unlocked: The Bipartisan Political Potential and Legal Limits of Smart Gun Policies in the United States – N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation & Public Policy

By Ilana Cohen

April 20, 2026

I. Introduction

On October 13th, 2025, a six-year-old boy in Sumter, South Carolina, accidentally shot himself in the face with a Glock pistol that his father had left unsecured on a nearby dresser.¹ Far from an anomaly, the incident is one of hundreds of accidental shootings by children that occur annually, primarily when firearms are left unlocked and loaded, within children’s reach.² These largely preventable tragedies illustrate a pervasive national problem: all too often, legally owned guns fall into the wrong hands, causing irreparable harm.

Despite only recently becoming available to many American consumers, smart guns have been touted since the 1990s as one innovative solution to this problem.³ Smart guns, also called “personalized” guns, offer a crucial advantage over their traditional counterparts: personalized unlocking technology renders these guns inoperable in the hands of an unauthorized user, whether a child or a gun thief.⁴ For example, the Biofire Smart Gun, which is the first of its kind to be made available in all 50 states, combines 3D facial recognition and capacitive fingerprint identification technology (similar to that of iPhones) to offer two personalized and biometric unlocking mechanisms for designated authorized users.⁵ Other non-biometric smart gun models connect to wearable devices, like rings, activated by radio frequency identification technology.⁶

By denying access to unauthorized users, smart guns may prevent multiple sources of harm. First, they may reduce accidental shootings of third parties, especially by and of minors, for whom firearms are a leading cause of death.⁷ In 2024 alone, 361 accidental shootings by children tracked in the #NotanAccident Index resulted in 136 deaths and 232 injuries.⁸ Second, smart guns may inhibit firearm suicides among household members of gun owners, including other adults and young people, especially amid mental health crises.⁹ Youth firearm suicides claim over 3,400 lives annually and overwhelmingly involve the use of a parent or relative’s gun.¹⁰ Third, smart guns may help impede school shootings perpetrated by youth, which also largely involve the use of a family member’s gun.¹¹ Fourth, smart guns may reduce the incidence of shootings involving stolen guns: 380,000 guns are stolen each year from private owners, often from owners’ cars, and many of these guns end up being trafficked illegally and/or used in violent crimes.¹²

In this paper, I argue that laws compelling the use of smart guns through a broader firearm safe storage mandate or incentivizing such use through tax breaks, particularly at the state level, could garner bipartisan political support and not only prove politically viable but also pass constitutional legal muster. As a baseline, smart guns can garner support from both gun control advocates and gun owners as a tool for mitigating harms caused by unintended gun users. Smart guns can meet gun owners’ needs for self-defense adequately, resolving this group’s principal concern. Lawmakers can translate broad support into policy change by either mandating or incentivizing the use of smart guns. A mandate for safe storage that incorporates smart guns as an option for consumers could survive constitutional legal challenges if proponents make a sufficiently robust case for an analogous historical national tradition of gun safety laws. Yet, given the difficulties in establishing this tradition and the potential for an anti-mandate backlash, establishing tax breaks for smart gun purchases may offer a more politically palatable and legally secure alternative.

The paper proceeds as follows. Section II identifies key areas of ideological convergence and divergence on smart guns, taking seriously the concerns of key constituencies across the political spectrum. I illustrate how gun owners’ primary concerns may be resolved, enabling wide-ranging support for pro-smart gun policies. Section III analyzes the constitutional legal barriers to a broad safe storage mandate encompassing smart guns. First, I demonstrate how Congress could invoke its commerce powers to enact this mandate without violating the Tenth Amendment. I then address how either a federal or state mandate may overcome a Second Amendment challenge through its relation to past gunpowder and firearm storage laws. Section IV explores using tax breaks, modeled on those currently provided for safe storage devices, to incentivize smart gun purchases as a likely less politically contentious and legally complex path forward for smart gun proponents.

II. The Promise, Pitfalls, and Politics of Smart Guns

Even as many gun control advocates and gun owners have expressed support for smart guns, both camps also voice concerns. This section addresses such concerns and focuses mainly on gun owners, who appear more reluctant to embrace certain pro-smart gun policies.

A. Addressing the Concerns of Gun Control Advocates

Some gun control proponents argue that making more guns available on the market, even if those guns incorporate state-of-the-art safety features, not only fails to prevent gun-related harms but also, perversely, could exacerbate them. Research has shown that higher rates of gun ownership correlate with higher gun deaths.¹³ Against this backdrop, public health researcher Daniel Webster has warned that smart guns could lead to more rather than fewer deaths by enticing non-gun owners to purchase smart guns, thereby inevitably increasing gun fatalities and violence.¹⁴ Whether this claim proves true remains to be seen. The extent to which smart guns are embraced by consumers who would otherwise opt for traditional guns, relative to consumers who would otherwise never own a gun or have one in the home, could affect impacts on total gun-related harms, especially as smart guns cannot prevent intentional harms inflicted by authorized users. Still, smart guns have clear life-saving potential regarding unauthorized users.

For the foreseeable future, however, because one-third of adults personally own a gun and the gun lobby remains a moneyed and influential political force, eliminating gun ownership seems politically and practically infeasible.¹⁵ As I will discuss later, the state of Second Amendment jurisprudence also makes this proposal legally infeasible. Major gun control advocacy organizations, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords Law Center, and the Center for American Progress, adopt the more widespread position of seeking commonsense gun laws to enhance public safety: they have promoted smart guns as a more secure alternative to traditional firearms and called for the technology’s development, with Everytown calling personalized smart guns “a game-changer for keeping guns out of the hands of children and criminals” if widely implemented.¹⁶ Health policy experts and prominent Democratic officials, including former Presidents Biden and Obama, have similarly expressed hopes for smart gun use, with the latter indicating crucial center-left support for smart guns.¹⁷

B. Addressing the Concerns of Gun Owners and Gun Rights Groups

Far more than gun control advocates, gun owners and pro-gun groups seem skeptical of smart guns. Securing their political buy-in to certain policies promoting smart guns, namely mandates limiting consumer choice, requires addressing three main concerns about smart guns: (1) adequacy for self-defense, (2) suitability for concealed carry, and (3) cost. For policies that leave open or expand consumer choice, like voluntary tax incentives, these concerns may affect the extent of gun owners’ participation in resulting programs but are unlikely to inhibit policy enactment.

1. Self-Defense: Self-defense overwhelmingly motivates American gun ownership. Seventy-two percent of U.S. gun owners cite protection as a major reason for owning a gun.¹⁸ This motivation heavily influences their resistance to embracing safety technology; gun owners cite concerns over firearm access speed as a primary obstacle to adopting safe storage.¹⁹ Perceptions of delayed smart gun access thus pose a fundamental barrier to garnering gun owners’ support. In a 2021 article critiquing smart guns, for instance, an executive of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a firearm industry trade association, wrote, “There is no room for a second attempt at a fingerprint match or battery failure” in a “life-or-death” scenario.²⁰ Such mechanisms could seem prone to technological imperfections in adverse external conditions. Some gun owners also fear that smart gun technology is vulnerable to hacking.²¹

In theory, smart guns should meet self-defense needs as much as typical guns. Biofire, for instance, claims its model can unlock without delay “in any situation,” including when the authorized user wears gloves or a face covering and in the dark.²² Although its website does not specify an exact lifetime, Biofire suggests that battery life should not hamper typical uses, and the gun can be stored in a charging port to prevent failures during emergencies.²³ Regarding security, Biofire maintains that a government or third party could not remotely deactivate its model, in part because its guns are designed not to connect to the internet or wireless networks outside their docks, and that the guns store biometric data in an encrypted form.²⁴ A lack of independent reviews, however, makes verifying these claims difficult.²⁵

To the extent that the Biofire model or any smart gun delivers on such promises and fully realizes the technological potential, smart guns could offer greater protection in conventional self-defense scenarios. Consider, for instance, what would happen if a homeowner grabbed a smart gun for self-defense amid a home break-in. If the invader managed to disarm the homeowner in a struggle, the smart gun should lock and become useless in the invader’s hands.²⁶ Some smart gun skeptics might worry that if a good actor disarmed an attacker of the latter’s smart gun, the good actor could not use the smart gun against the attacker. The seeming infrequency of this scenario, however, makes it unlikely to deter many gun owners from supporting smart guns.²⁷

2. Concealed Carry: Smart guns raise further, though also potentially resolvable, challenges for gun owners who engage in concealed carry. As of 2023, almost 22.9 million Americans had concealed carry permits, and as of 2025, 29 states have adopted laws letting individuals carry concealed handguns without permits.²⁸ For these individuals, guns must be suitable for physical carrying or daily wear (e.g., in a holster or purse). Some states require that concealed carriers keep their guns completely concealed, possibly without the outline of the gun being visible through clothing.²⁹ Any additional weight or bulk due to smart guns’ battery or design could complicate this process. While the Biofire smart gun weighs 2.6 pounds unloaded, the Glock 19 handgun, including a loaded magazine, weighs only 1.9 pounds; the former is also wider, taller, and more than an inch longer overall than its traditional counterpart.³⁰ Concealed carriers may further worry about delays in use from having to unlock a cumbersome smart gun upon removal.

Yet these concerns do not seem insurmountable. Absent circumstances constraining their choice of dress, gun owners could adjust their carry methods to accommodate a smart gun, including using a larger purse or jacket. As the technology advances and demand increases, moreover, improvements in design could also reduce the weight and bulkiness of smart guns. And, despite the concern, potential use delays may prove no greater with smart guns than with typical guns, as concealment alone can introduce such delays and use requires touching the trigger either way.

3. Cost: Although the relative cost of a smart gun as compared to a traditional gun could dissuade consumers, this issue may become less salient over time. The Biofire model starts at $1,499, whereas typical handguns range from around $400-$800.³¹ Even factoring in any added cost of safe storage devices (roughly $150-$500 for a basic gun safe), a safely stored conventional handgun still costs roughly $200-$950 less than its Biofire counterpart—an appreciable price gap.³² A 2016 survey found that only 19% of gun owner respondents were very or somewhat likely to purchase a personalized gun if safety features added $300 to the original price, with respondents already engaged in safe storage behaviors being disproportionately likely to do so.³³ If that finding holds true today, most gun owners might refrain from buying smart guns based on cost alone. Yet even purchases of smart guns by a limited fraction of gun owners could mean millions of smart guns being adopted over traditional guns, and thus have an impact.³⁴ As the smart gun market grows, increased competition could also drive prices down and make smart guns more cost-competitive with traditional firearms and safe storage options.

C. Finding Common Ground

Notwithstanding the above concerns, smart guns already have attracted gun owners and rights advocates. According to a 2023 survey, 60% of gun owners expressed interest in purchasing a smart gun, including 52% of Republican gun owners polled, and 75% supported the development of smart guns.³⁵ Gun rights groups also have shown more openness to smart guns, with NSSF’s logo appearing on Biofire’s website.³⁶ Their endorsement could help assuage concerns from gun manufacturers and sellers about entering the smart gun market.

Crucially, both these stakeholders and gun control advocates largely favor further development and availability of smart guns. Although they may disagree over the permissible scope of restrictions on gun rights, neither camp wants to see more harm result from the accidental and unauthorized gun uses described previously. Legislators seeking to leverage smart guns as a public safety tool could tap into this cross-cutting support to pass public policies accordingly.

III. A Mandate to Make Gun Ownership Safer

This section analyzes whether state or federal policymakers can legally mandate the adoption of smart guns as part of a broader mandate for safe storage use, which owning a smart gun could satisfy. I refer to this policy as the “Inclusive Mandate.” The Inclusive Mandate would require gun owners to employ at least one or a combination of options from smart guns to gun safes, but leave them free to choose which one(s). I first argue that an Inclusive Mandate would prove more feasible politically at the state level than at the federal level. Then, I reveal how this policy could be consistent with the Second Amendment, illustrating its potential legal viability.

A. The Political Feasibility of an Inclusive Mandate

Smart gun proponents might argue that the most direct policy to increase smart gun use as a safer alternative to traditional guns is to mandate that all new firearm purchases be of smart guns, but such a policy is a political non-starter. In response to a novel 2002 New Jersey law that enacted a smart gun mandate in hopes of driving the technology’s development, gun rights groups launched fierce boycotts of stores and companies seeking to offer smart guns, compelling the law’s rollback in 2019.³⁷ That the NSSF has consistently and staunchly opposed pure smart gun mandates makes the likelihood of backlash even clearer.³⁸ Moreover, to prove fully effective, a pure smart gun mandate would require taking action to address the millions of non-smart guns already in circulation.

As a less contentious alternative, a broader safe storage mandate would allow gun owners to use smart guns as one way to satisfy requirements for storing guns securely in circumstances in which unauthorized users could access them. This Inclusive Mandate would capitalize on broad support for safe storage laws. A 2025 survey of U.S. voters found that 74% of respondents, including majorities of Republicans and Democrats, favor laws requiring gun owners to lock up their guns at home when not in use.³⁹ Another 2023 poll found that 80% of voters surveyed, including 77% of Trump voters, supported such requirements in homes with children.⁴⁰

The more an Inclusive Mandate resembles existing safe storage laws, the more support this policy might garner. Today, 26 states have safe storage and/or child-access prevention laws requiring gun owners to lock up their firearms in some form.⁴¹ The most stringent laws, in places like California, impose safe storage requirements whenever owners are not carrying or in ready control of their firearms, whereas laxer versions, such as in Iowa, only apply safe storage requirements when minors are present in households.⁴² Policymakers could draw on these varied models to craft an Inclusive Mandate bill aligning with the federal or state-specific political context. Adding smart guns as a permissible safe storage method to current safe storage laws could expand options for compliance without imposing any new burden on gun owners. In states without safe storage laws, the bill could still gain credibility from innovating on established models, and may gain greater support with a narrower scope of application, such as only applying to guns left unattended in homes with minors and/or in parked cars. The flexibility of an Inclusive Mandate could thus prove essential for its political success at the federal or state government level.

B. Legal Feasibility: The Commerce Clause and the Tenth Amendment

At the federal level, Congress could enact an Inclusive Mandate through legislation. Historically, Article I commerce or taxation and spending powers have underpinned major national gun laws.⁴³ Congress likely would invoke its authority to regulate interstate commerce to pass an Inclusive Mandate, framing the policy as impacting the firearms market nationwide. Although the Supreme Court has set some bounds on this authority, the commerce power remains broad.⁴⁴ In United States v. Lopez, the Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act (“GSZA”) of 1990 for lacking a sufficient connection to commerce.⁴⁵ Congress later addressed the Court’s concern by amending the GSZA to apply only to firearms that “moved in or that otherwise affect[] interstate or foreign commerce”—a fairly easily met standard, as most guns “move in” commerce through transactions one way or another.⁴⁶ Moreover, the Court later “rejected a commerce power challenge to a provision of a federal statute that made the simple possession of marijuana a crime,” with this restriction being justified “as a means to make its broader regulation of the interstate market in that commodity more effective.”⁴⁷ The Court thus affirmed Congress’s power to regulate even local instances of economic classes of activities, where there exists a rational basis for concluding that those activities substantially affect interstate commerce.⁴⁸ So long as an Inclusive Mandate applies only to guns that have moved in interstate commerce or that otherwise fit into Congress’s regulation of the interstate firearms market and economic activities affecting it, the mandate would most likely fall within Congress’s powers.⁴⁹

The Tenth Amendment places a further constraint on Congress. This amendment reserves powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution to the states or the American people.⁵⁰ Interpreting this amendment, New York v. United States established that the federal government cannot “‘commandeer’ state governments into the service of federal regulatory purposes.”⁵¹ Nor can the federal government “compel the States to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program” by “conscripting” its officers—including by having state officials carry out background checks to enforce a federal gun law.⁵² Thus, a federal Inclusive Mandate could not force states to adopt specific laws or use their apparatuses for its execution. However, Congress could avoid this issue by imposing requirements on gun owners directly. For instance, the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act requires enhanced background checks for gun purchasers under age 21.⁵³ The provision relies on enforcement by federal agencies, namely the Department of Justice, with voluntary collaboration from state and local law enforcement.⁵⁴

**C. Legal Feasibility: Navigating Bruen and Second Amendment Challenges**

i. Relevant Second Amendment Jurisprudence

Regardless of whether an Inclusive Mandate arose at the federal or state level, opponents could allege a conflict with the Second Amendment based on four pivotal Supreme Court cases.

District of Columbia v. Heller first called into question the legality of safe storage mandates. In this landmark 2008 case, the Court struck down a Washington, D.C. policy banning unregistered handguns and requiring gun owners to keep their guns unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock when not located in a place of business or in use for legal recreational activities.⁵⁵The Court stated that the policy undermined the capacity for self-defense at the core of the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”⁵⁶ Simultaneously, the Court held that this right “is not unlimited,” providing a non-exhaustive list of “presumptively lawful” gun regulations.⁵⁷ The Court did not list safe storage laws and remained silent on their legality generally. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, the Court ruled in McDonaldv. City of Chicago that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause incorporates the Second Amendment right to bear arms recognized in Heller.⁵⁸ Consequently, Heller applies equally to any state or local regulations as to federal ones.

The pivotal 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen established a more exacting test for determining whether gun laws are constitutional. The test applies when a law regulates individual conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, granting the conduct a presumptive legal protection that must be overcome to justify the law.⁵⁹ Under this test, “the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the [Nation’s] historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”⁶⁰ The Court left the test’s application fairly unclear, including regarding the number of past laws and the extent of similarity required to show that the modern law falls within a national regulatory tradition.⁶¹ Nonetheless, to satisfy Bruen, an Inclusive Mandate could not merely comport with self-defense but rather would need clear historical roots.

In response to confusion and divisions among courts on how to administer what is far from a bright-line test, the Court provided limited but crucial guidance on applying Bruen in the 2024 case United States v. Rahimi.⁶² In Rahimi, the Court upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which permits the disarming of domestic abusers.⁶³ The Court deemed this statutory provision “relevantly similar” to past surety and “going armed” laws, which reflected a norm from the nation’s founding of “provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”⁶⁴ Together with this shared underlying justification, the adoption of those past laws by numerous states and jurisdictions made them adequate historical analogues to § 922(g)(8).⁶⁵ The Court also focused on the extent of these laws’ application, stating that not only “why” but also “how” a modern law burdens the right to keep and bear arms is central to the historical inquiry.⁶⁶ While the past laws would not support “a broad prohibitory regime,” the Court held, they could offer “an appropriate analogue for a narrow one” like § 922(g)(8).⁶⁷ The more a modern law resembles proposed past analogues in both nature and scope, it seems, the greater its chance of being upheld.

ii. The Case for a National Historical Regulatory Tradition

Although numerous federal and state courts have employed the Bruen test in challenges to gun safety regulations, they have rarely addressed the legality of safe storage laws, providing limited insight into the potential legality of an Inclusive Mandate.⁶⁸ Two recent examples from Massachusetts are particularly relevant.

First, Commonwealth v. McMickle illustrates the significance of the analysis preceding the Bruen test. In this 2025 case, the Middlesex County Superior Court of Massachusetts held that the state’s firearm safe storage statute does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, after determining that the Second Amendment’s plain text “does not cover storage of a shotgun that a person does not have under their immediate control.”⁶⁹ By cutting off analysis at this stage, the court sidestepped the Bruen test entirely. Yet courts often do and, indeed, must apply the test upon making the opposite determination.⁷⁰ Thus, Inclusive Mandate proponents could not simply rely on a plain text strategy to evade Bruen. They likely would also struggle to argue that the Second Amendment does not plainly cover a policy altering consumer choices and affecting the use of guns even under owners’ immediate control, as smart gun restrictions apply at any moment.

Second, in Granata v. Campbell, a federal district court in Massachusetts affirmed the need to anticipate a Bruen inquiry. In this 2025 case, plaintiffs challenged regulations banning the sale of firearms that do not “have a ‘safety device’ that prevents unauthorized use of the firearm.”⁷¹ Like the McMickle court, the federal district court concluded that the law does not implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment.⁷² Nonetheless, the court imagined having reached the opposite conclusion and contemplated the ensuing application of the second stage of the Bruen test; upon this application, the court found that the law was consistent with multiple historical regulations, including firearm and gunpowder storage laws, which are discussed in more detail below.⁷³ While the district court’s reasoning could prove promising for an Inclusive Mandate, the case is currently on appeal in the First Circuit. Furthermore, other district courts have rejected similar historical arguments in defense of gun safety laws.⁷⁴ Thus, how safe storage or similar laws will ultimately fare after Bruen remains uncertain.

Inclusive Mandate proponents would thus need to prepare a robust case presenting the policy as part of a national historical regulatory tradition, incorporating insight from Rahimi and Bruen. Namely, proponents would have to identify strong historical legal analogues. Crucially, a modern-day regulation need not be a “dead-ringer for historical precursors” to prove “analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.”⁷⁵ Consequently, the fact that smart guns and certain safe storage options did not exist before the 20th century does not preclude policies involving them from passing the Bruen historical inquiry. Proponents could relate the Inclusive Mandate to many state laws enacted from the late 1700s onwards regulating the storage and transport of gunpowder, which limited how much gunpowder one could possess at a time and how one could store it.⁷⁶ They could also point to direct, though less abundant, past laws on firearm storage. After the American Revolution, states “retained the right to pass safe storage laws prohibiting citizens from keeping loaded firearms in their homes.”⁷⁷ A 1782 Massachusetts law, for instance, forbade citizens from “depositing of loaded Arms in the Houses of the Town of Boston” at the risk of facing fines and forfeiture.⁷⁸ Both past gunpowder storage and firearm storage laws constrained how gun owners maintained dangerous devices when not in use to prevent accidents, protecting public safety.⁷⁹ Unlike the provisions in Rahimi, these laws often applied to all individuals and businesses within the relevant jurisdiction.⁸⁰ An Inclusive Mandate would thus resemble such laws not only in form and function, but also in its broad scope.

Proponents would need to further establish the national prevalence and persistence of these early storage policies for them to constitute a regulatory tradition, which the Inclusive Mandate would embody. In addition to expressing skepticism around a limited quantity of historical legal examples, the Court made clear that “not all history is created equal” for the purposes of the Bruen test, as “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.”⁸¹ Accordingly, proponents would emphasize that safe storage laws continued to exist and were newly enacted after the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791. One analysis shows that the number of safe storage laws and the number of states with such laws in place, though small overall, increased threefold between the periods 1607–1790 and 1791–1867.⁸² Such laws also persisted after the 1868 enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment,⁸³ which, per McDonald, extended the Second Amendment to the states.⁸⁴ These laws were not, therefore, one-off occurrences or passing regulatory trends. To the extent that a judge would still perceive an Inclusive Mandate as notably distinct from these early analogues, proponents could frame the policy’s use of smart guns as emblematic of the “dramatic technological changes” that the Court recognized “may require a more nuanced approach” in the Bruen test’s application.⁸⁵

Legal challenges to an Inclusive Mandate would likely attack the extent of this policy’s likeness to past gunpowder and firearm storage laws and whether the scope of these past laws suffices to indicate a national regulatory tradition. Opponents might argue that gunpowder storage laws, though well-established, are not sufficiently representative of this modern policy.⁸⁶ They could contend that gunpowder storage laws restrained gun owners only in their possession of an accessory to firearm use, distinguishing the “how” (even if not the “why”) they burdened Second Amendment rights from an Inclusive Mandate.⁸⁷ “Allowing gunpowder, but not too much gunpowder at one time” could seem more akin to munitions restriction laws allowing “bullets in magazines, but not too many bullets in a magazine at any one time” than to having constant biometric locks on one’s gun.⁸⁸ Yet this arguments rests on a shallow distinction: as gunpowder was essential for firing most guns in the 1700s, gunpowder storage laws could affect individuals’ ability to operate their firearms at any given moment.⁸⁹ Past laws regulating firearm storage directly provide more direct historical Inclusive Mandate analogues. Still, opponents could maintain that such laws were too uncommon to satisfy the Bruen inquiry. Finally, they might posit that, relative to societal developments like electricity, smart guns do not represent so vast a technological change as to require a more nuanced approach in applying the Bruen test.

In sum, reasonable arguments exist for the constitutionality of an Inclusive Mandate, though any such legal challenge could turn on the given court’s persuasions and future Bruen-related jurisprudence. While advocates could make a compelling case for the policy’s likeness in purpose and function to sufficiently abundant and similar past gun laws, therefore, their success would be far from a surefire outcome, limiting the strategic appeal of an Inclusive Mandate.

IV. An Incentive System for Safer Gun Ownership

Relying on incentives could plausibly be a less politically and legally fraught alternative to a mandate for increasing smart gun uptake. Smart gun-related incentive structures can motivate safer gun ownership without imposing any constraints on gun owners that could provoke backlash or court challenges. Tax breaks offer an opportunity to encourage voluntary smart gun uptake. The impacts of tax incentives for firearm safe storage remain under-researched.⁹⁰ Yet studies have found that financial incentives spur positive behavioral change broadly, including making healthier choices.⁹¹ Given that cost has been shown to inhibit gun owners (especially those facing financial hardship) from practicing safer storage, offering tax breaks for smart gun purchases could help remove this barrier to mitigate harms from unsecured guns.⁹² Such tax breaks could take two forms: sales tax exemptions and income tax credits. Sales tax exemptions would reduce the purchase price of a smart gun “by removing the sales tax at the point of sale.”⁹³ Income tax credits would “reduce an individual’s overall tax liability” post-purchase by reducing the amount owed at the time of state income tax filing.⁹⁴ Through building on existing bipartisan political support around tax breaks for safe storage, legislators could enact policies that would make smart guns more affordable as a gun safety option.

A. The Political Feasibility of Smart Gun Tax Incentives

In recent years, various states have enacted sales tax exemptions or income tax breaks to support the use of firearm safety devices, providing a crucial foundation for extending these existing policies or creating new ones applicable to smart guns. As of late 2023, 12 states had one of these two tax incentives in place for gun safes and qualifying forms of safe storage.⁹⁵ Although the federal government has not enacted a law providing for such incentives to date, federal legislators have repeatedly introduced bills to do so, most recently including the 2025 “Prevent Family Fire Act” (H.R. 169).⁹⁶ At the state level, tax incentives around devices to increase gun safety are a more familiar concept for many lawmakers and voters.

To the extent that a bipartisan basis of legislative and public support for firearm safe storage policies already exists, amending current safe storage tax breaks or creating new ones to spur the adoption of smart guns as an innovative means to enhance public safety seems possible. Unlike stricter gun laws, tax breaks do not constrain gun use or conflict with libertarian notions that the government should not interfere with individuals’ gun rights. For this reason, state tax breaks for safe storage have already made strange bedfellows, aligning ideologically right-wing gun rights groups like the NRA with ideologically left-wing gun control groups like Moms Demand Action.⁹⁷ Given their ability to attract typically opposed interest groups, safe storage tax breaks have appealed to a variety of states. The 12 states with such laws in place include a mix of blue, red, and “swing” states.⁹⁸ This diverse composition indicates the broad range of political and geographic support for financial incentives for gun safety, as the sponsorship of such laws also reflects. Although Democrats have led the charge in some states and Republicans in others, several safe storage tax break laws originated from bills co-sponsored by members of both parties and/or passed with bipartisan support.⁹⁹ The Virginia law, for instance, passed with nearly unanimous votes in the legislature.¹⁰⁰ At the federal level, a bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives co-sponsored H.R. 169.¹⁰¹ Going further, a special commission including Democrat and Republican elected officials recommended sales tax exemptions to encourage the purchase of personalized firearms to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts General Court in 2025.¹⁰² This dynamic reveals how tax breaks can represent a unique “point of unity” in the fiercely contested arena of gun policy.¹⁰³

Yet for some gun control advocates, supporting tax incentives for firearm safe storage devices may seem crucially different from supporting tax incentives for actual guns. While the former might appeal only to consumers already in possession of guns, the latter could seem to risk contributing to gun harm from the perspective of an advocate like Webster.¹⁰⁴ Invoking the well-documented association between gun ownership and increased gun harm, such an advocate might fear that encouraging consumers to buy smart guns will merely increase gun ownership, including among consumers who might not otherwise purchase guns in the first place.¹⁰⁵ It is unclear whether organizations and lawmakers who have supported firearm safe storage tax breaks and generally embraced smart guns would fall into this camp, which could have a significant effect on any such legislation’s prospects.

Furthermore, even if smart gun tax breaks would amass broad political appeal, proponents of this policy would need to address the costs of implementation and demonstrate its societal net value as a public safety tool. Critics might highlight how tax breaks can decrease or eliminate a source of government revenue that could, at least theoretically, otherwise fund public programs, even including anti-gun violence initiatives. Sales tax exemptions and tax credits for safe storage are estimated to cost up to $3.7 million (for Florida’s exemption) and $500,000 (for Louisiana’s credit) in a fiscal year.¹⁰⁶ Adding smart guns to existing tax break schemes or creating new schemes could increase those costs. Yet, such costs pale in comparison to the $557 billion the U.S. loses to gun violence annually.¹⁰⁷ Regardless, to address cost concerns, proponents would need to conduct a full cost-benefit analysis (CBA), estimating whether incentivizing smart gun use could prevent loss of life and yield indirect quality-of-life improvements and economic savings.¹⁰⁸ Policymakers could also take steps to reduce policy costs, such as capping the total amount of smart guns tax breaks provided, though doing so might diminish safety gains.¹⁰⁹

B. Legal Feasibility of Smart Gun Tax Incentives

As compared to the Inclusive Mandate, tax incentives likely raise fewer legal challenges. Both the federal and state governments have clear legal authority to enact such legislation. Putting political will aside, at the federal level, enacting federal income tax credits for smart gun purchases would almost certainly fall within the power of Congress under the Spending Clause of the Constitution.¹¹⁰ Congress might be able to expedite the passage of such measures by including them in a larger bill for the budget reconciliation process.¹¹¹ By comparison, state governments could provide smart gun tax breaks based on their authority over state taxes, including sales taxes—typically set at the state and local levels—and income taxes.

Unlike with an Inclusive Mandate, tax breaks are not subject to any particular Second Amendment issues. Opponents would have to argue that the tax breaks infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. Yet on their face, these breaks would not constrain, but actually enhance the options available to consumers. They would neither restrict freedom of choice nor impose any penalty on gun owners who do not embrace such technology. Tax breaks for smart guns thus offer multiple advantages in terms of their legal viability.

V. Conclusion

Fortunately, the six-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in Sumter survived.¹¹² Yet many victims of accidental and unauthorized gun use do not. Without policy change, such incidents may continue to shock the conscience if and when they make headlines, but otherwise remain a pervasive and tragically preventable source of societal harm.¹¹³

With current federal politics proving increasingly hostile toward gun control, states may represent the most promising sources of opportunity for bipartisan, evidence-based, and public opinion-aligned policy change to address the harms of unintended and unauthorized gun use for the near-term future.¹¹⁴ Voluntary tax breaks, though they may also face some political opposition, likely have a broader political appeal than mandates and should not provoke arduous constitutional legal challenges. An Inclusive Mandate could face comparatively greater political opposition and become enmeshed in court battles over the exacting Bruen test. Unless and until this test becomes clearer, tax incentives—especially at the state level, in times of Congressional gridlock—may represent a more feasible path forward. While both of these prospective policies merit further research and consideration, their promise is clear.

Ilana Cohen, J.D. Class of 2027, N.Y.U. School of Law.

Suggested Citation: Ilana Cohen, Safety Unlocked: The Bipartisan Political Potential and Legal Limits of Smart Gun Policies in the United States, N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol’y: Quorum (2026).

Notes

1
See Eric Rush & Brooke Ashton, Deputies: 6-Year-Old in Stable Condition After Accidental Shooting in Sumter County, WIS10 (Oct. 15, 2025), https://www.wistv.com/2025/10/14/deputies-6-year-old-hurt-after-accidental-shooting-sumter-county/ [https://perma.cc/37N2-QZFZ].
2
See Ten Years of Preventable Tragedies: Findings from the #NotAnAccident Index of Unintentional Shootings by Children, Everytown for Gun Safety [hereinafter Everytown], https://everytownresearch.org/report/notanaccident/ [https://perma.cc/BJY4-BTD2] (last updated June 30, 2025).
3
See Stephen Teret et al., Making Guns Safer, Issues Sci. Tech., Summer 1998, https://issues.org/teret/ [https://perma.cc/MSK4-HK7X]; Champe Barton, New Jersey’s Effort to Pave the Way for Smart Guns Hits Another Bump, The Trace (May 31, 2023), https://www.thetrace.org/2023/05/new-jersey-childproof-smart-handgun-law/ [https://perma.cc/SST4-LGAS] (explaining how resistance by major pro-gun groups has hindered smart gun uptake).
4
See Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/faq [https://perma.cc/84C6-N6LY] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (explaining how Biofire technology works). See generally Smart Guns and Gun Safety Features, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/solution/smart-guns-and-gun-safety-requirements/ [https://perma.cc/7F5R-SQ4Y] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (providing an overview of smart guns’ functionality).
5
See The Biofiire Smart Gun Available in All 50 States After Addition to Massachusetts Roster, Biofire (Feb. 14, 2025), https://smartgun.com/explore/the-biofire-smart-gun-available-in-all-50-states-after-addition-to-massachusetts-roster [https://perma.cc/K6YY-M249]; Biofire, https://smartgun.com/technology [https://perma.cc/A946-2KLU] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025); Ryan Lucas, The First Smart Gun with Facial and Fingerprint Recognition Is Now for Sale, NPR (Apr. 29, 2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172284298/smart-gun-biofire-biometrics [https://perma.cc/XX4K-9MYG]. This paper in no way constitutes an endorsement of the Biofire Smart Gun or of any other gun products or companies mentioned. Given the widespread availability of the Biofire model to U.S. consumers and the emerging nature of biometric gun technology, which represents evolution from the use of radio frequency identification technology, this paper utilizes the Biofire Smart Gun as a crucial example and test case for the reception of smart guns marketed today by consumers and policymakers. To this end, the scenarios considered in Section II thus largely contemplate biometric guns. However, the broader arguments made in this section and in subsequent sections are not limited to purely biometric guns, but rather apply to smart guns and smart gun technology more broadly.
6
See Survey: Most Gun Owners Support Sale of ‘Smart’ Guns But Aren’t Likely to Buy Them, Johns Hopkins Univ. (June 10, 2019), https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/06/10/smart-guns-personalized-firearms-unlikely-to-boost-gun-safety/ [https://perma.cc/HYY5-JDYQ].
7
See Rebecca F. Wilson et al., Unintentional Firearm Injury Deaths Among Children and Adolescents Aged 0–17 Years, 72 Morbidity and Mortality Wkly. Rep. 1338 (2023), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a1.htm [https://perma.cc/K9Y9-L2BK].
8
#NotAnAccident Index, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/maps/notanaccident/ [https://perma.cc/AW2Q-8PKY] (last visited Apr. 2, 2026).
9
See David Hemenway, Comparing Gun-Owning vs Non-Owning Households in Terms of Firearm and Non-Firearm Suicide and Suicide Attempts, 119 Preventive Med. 14, 15–16 (Feb. 2019), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743518303785 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.12.003]; Lindsay Culli, Nearly 1 in 10 Adults in the U.S. Experienced a Mental Health Crisis Last Year, Johns Hopkins Blooomberg Sch. of Pub. Health (Aug. 29, 2025) https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/mental-health-crisis-hits-nearly-1-in-10-us-adults [https://perma.cc/NQ8F-XBZK]; Youth Mental Health: The Numbers, Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention (Nov. 29, 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/mental-health-numbers.html [https://perma.cc/DWS4-NHV6].
10
Too Many, Too Soon: Youth Firearm Suicide in the United States, Everytown (Aug. 25, 2025), https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-rise-of-firearm-suicide-am,ong-young-americans/ [https://perma.cc/RT9N-7ZDZ]; see Child Access Prevention & Safe Storage, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/child-consumer-safety/child-access-prevention-and-safe-storage/ [https://perma.cc/U5NU-MECB] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (“Up to 90% of guns used by minors in suicides, unintentional shootings, and school shootings are found in the child’s home or the home of a relative.”).
11
The potential safety utility of smart guns in this context may be affected by varying minimum ages for gun purchases and possession across states, as well as other factors unique to mass shootings that fall outside this paper’s scope.
12
Stolen Guns Fact Sheet, Everytown (Apr. 3, 2019), https://everytownresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/03/Stolen-Guns-FACT-SHEET-030619B.pdf [https://perma.cc/HBK5-UMMP]; see Jay Szkola et al., Gun Thefts from Cars: The Largest Source of Stolen Guns, Everytown (May 9, 2024), https://everytownresearch.org/report/gun-thefts-from-cars-the-largest-source-of-stolen-guns-2/. [https://perma.cc/Y6U6-XFFP] (“On average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every nine minutes in the United States.”).
13
See Daniel Semenza, More Guns, More Death: The Fundamental Fact that Supports a Comprehensive Approach to Reducing Gun Violence in America, Rockefeller Inst. of Gov. (June 21, 2022), https://rockinst.org/blog/more-guns-more-death-the-fundamental-fact-that-supports-a-comprehensive-approach-to-reducing-gun-violence-in-america/#_edn12 [https://perma.cc/MR6L-B5D3]; see also Firearm Violence in the United States, John Hopkins Bloomberg Sch. of Pub. Health, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/research-reports/gun-violence-in-the-united-states [https://perma.cc/5UR5-STC8] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (documenting the association between gun ownership and permissive firearm laws, and increased gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional firearm deaths, and also highlighting that, despite this association, many Americans believe that having a gun in the home increases their family’s safety).
14
See Teresa Carey, Smart Guns Exist. Why Aren’t They on the Market?, PBS (May 24, 2018), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smart-guns-exist-why-arent-they-on-the-market [https://perma.cc/RF89-X644].
15
See Katherine Schaeffer, Key Facts About Americans and Guns,Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 24, 2024), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/ [https://perma.cc/G3QH-LWLC]; US Gun Control: What Is the NRA and Why Is It So Powerful? BBC News (Apr. 13, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35261394 [https://perma.cc/E6M4-YQHF]; infra Part III(c)(i).
16
Smart Guns and Gun Safety Features, Everytown, https://www.everytown.org/solutions/smart-guns-and-gun-safety-requirements/ [https://perma.cc/7SUJ-MMBX] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025); see also, e.g., Smart Guns, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/child-consumer-safety/smart-guns/ [https://perma.cc/7J2S-SUET]; Marissa Edmund, Smart Guns: Technology That Can Save Lives, Ctr. for Am. Progress (Mar. 29, 2022), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/smart-guns-technology-that-can-save-lives/ [https://perma.cc/7GWV-JS8P].
17
See Carey, supra note 14; Alex Yablon, Obama Counts on Law Enforcement to Popularize Smart Guns, The Trace (Apr. 29, 2016), https://www.thetrace.org/2016/04/obama-smart-guns-plan-law-enforcement/ [https://perma.cc/P8SY-4RYV]; Ginger Gibson & John Whitesides, Factbox: Democratic Presidential Candidates Back Gun Restrictions After Mass Shootings, Reuters (Sep. 10, 2019), https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-democratic-presidential-candidates-back-gun-restrictions-after-mass-sho-idUSKCN1VV2BG/ [https://perma.cc/BHK5-RBJS].
18
See For Most U.S. Gun Owners, Protection Is the Main Reason They Own a Gun, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Aug. 16, 2023), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/08/16/for-most-u-s-gun-owners-protection-is-the-main-reason-they-own-a-gun/ [https://perma.cc/MH6X-4J3Y].
19
See Michael D. Anestis et al., Assessment of Firearm Storage Practices in the US, 2022, JAMA Network Open, Mar. 1, 2023, at 5–6 tbl. 2, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2801915 [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.1447].
20
Larry Keane, Smart Guns? Dumb Policy, Nat’l Shooting Sports Found. (Feb. 18, 2021), http://nssf.org/articles/smart-guns-dumb-policy/ [https://perma.cc/WSP61-66ZS].
21
Id.
22
See Biofire, supra note 5; Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
23
See Devin Coldewey, Biofire Aims to Reduce Tragic Accidents with a Gun Only Its Owner Can Use, Tech Crunch (May 11, 2022), https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/11/biofire-aims-to-reduce-tragiccompetent and safe-enhancing in emergency scenarios, as-accidents-with-a-gun-only-its-owner-can-use/ [https://perma.cc/7U6D-EVET]; Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
24
See Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
25
Gun rights advocates have criticized Biofire for a lack of independent reviews of its product. See Lee Williams, Biofire Refusing to Allow Independent Reviews of Its ‘Smart Gun,’ Second Amend. Found., https://saf.org/biofire-refusing-to-allow-independent-reviews-of-its-new-smart-gun/ [https://perma.cc/23MN-M4KN] (last visited Jan. 21, 2025). A few gun-focused websites suggest a positive experience and/or significant interest from reviewing gun owners. See e.g., Philip Massaro, The Biofire Smart Gun, Guns Digest (May 12, 2023), https://gundigest.com/handguns/personal-defense/biofire-smart-gun [https://perma.cc/F7NF-MYCP]; Levi Sim, Are You Going to Buy Biofire’s Smart Gun? – Shot Show 2025, GunsAmerica (Jan. 20, 2025), https://gunsamerica.com/digest/would-you-buy-biofires-smart-gun-shot-show-2025/ [https://perma.cc/KM9J-BW5W].
26
See Biofire, supra note 5.
27
There is no comprehensive database revealing how often good actors disarm bad actors and subsequently use the perpetrators’ guns for self-defense, but a review of news coverage of gun-related incidents and gun violence databases suggests this scenario be fairly uncommon. To provide one indication of this infrequency, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, only 5% or 22 out of 433 total active shooter attacks (“in which one or more shooters killed or attempted to kill multiple unrelated people in a populated place”) in the United States over the course of 2000 to 2021 ended when bystanders shot the attacker. Larry Buchanan & Lauren Leatherby, Who Stops a ‘Bad Guy with a Gun’?, N.Y. Times (June 22, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/22/us/shootings-police-response-uvalde-buffalo.html# [https://perma.cc/XS8D-9DZA].
28
Gun Ownership by State, U.S. Concealed Carry Ass’n (June 12, 2024), https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/the-most-armed-states/ [https://perma.cc/UCV7-VZLG]; Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2024,Crime Prevention Rsch. Ctr. (Dec. 2, 2024), https://crimeresearch.org/2024/12/concealed-carry-permit-holders-across-the-united-states-2024/ [https://perma.cc/8RY8-MULK].
29
See Wayne Fletcher, Is Printing Illegal Concealed Carry?, The Gun Zone (Feb. 29, 2024), https://thegunzone.com/is-printing-illegal-concealed-carry/ [https://perma.cc/LG47-KXD9].
30
See Features and Specifications, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/tech-specs [https://perma.cc/7GPW-TFH8] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026); G19, Glock, https://us.glock.com/en/products/law-enforcement/pistols/g19 [https://perma.cc/KQ6S-U5RH] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026).
31
See Build Your Smart Gun, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/build [https://perma.cc/37X7-WAAN] (last visited March 2, 2026); Gary McCloud, How Much Do Typical Guns Cost?, The Gun Zone (May 10, 2024), https://thegunzone.com/how-much-do-typical-guns-cost/ [https://perma.cc/W5U3-N8P3].
32
As the pricing of safe storage mechanisms varies, this range is based on prices the author encountered most often when researching gun safes, including biometric models. The above calculation assumes that most gun owners would buy safe storage devices within this range, rather than very expensive or much cheaper models. For price data, see, e.g., William Taylor, How Much Does a Gun Safe Cost, The Gun Zone (Feb. 5, 2025),https://thegunzone.com/how-much-does-a-gun-safe-cost/ [https://perma.cc/TG5X-YCMC].
33
See Crifasi et al., Desirability of Personalized Guns Among Current Gun Owners, 57 Am. J. of Preventive Med. 191, 193–95 (Aug. 2019), https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30155-2/abstract [https://perma.cc/MGW4-TE99].
34
19% of the roughly 85 million American adults who personally own guns today would translate to approximately 16.2 million gun owners interested in buying smart guns. For background data, see Total Population by Child and Adult Populations in United States, Annie E. Casey Found. (Sep. 2025), https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/99-total-population-by-child-and-adult-populations [https://perma.cc/MY2V-CQMT] (reporting 267 million total U.S. adults); Schaeffer, supra note 15 (reporting that 32% of U.S. adults own guns). How these projects compare to actual U.S. smart gun uptake remains unclear, as given the recent entry of smart guns into the national U.S. market, it remains difficult to find concrete data around their consumption. BioFire raised over $38 million in funding by late 2024, providing some indication of market value. See Biofire, CB Insights, https://www.cbinsights.com/company/biofire/financials [https://perma.cc/Z978-AFQR] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026). Providing another potential indication, the global smart gun market was valued at $330.7 million in 2024. See Smart Guns – Global Strategic Business Report, Mkt. Glass Inc., https://www.researchandmarkets.com/report/global-smart-gun-market?srsltid=AfmBOopJfRS9FLxpcUenrl7by6Enqdgk3AKx3gvLW1mGJ3bnMNwdb5ZR [https://perma.cc/SJ74-8FCM] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026).
35
Sarah Julie Niderost, Premise Poll Reveals 60% of Gun Owners Interested in Purchasing Biometric Smart Guns, Premise (Apr. 25, 2023), https://premise.com/blog/premise-poll-smart-guns/ [https://perma.cc/8HC5-8UC8]. It is worth noting that this survey did not test for whether the cost of a smart gun affected people’s desire to purchase.
36
See Biofire, supra note 5.
37
See Barton, supra note 3.
38
See Keane, supra note 20.
39
2025 Survey Results: National Survey of Gun Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Sch. of Pub. Health (2025), https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/national-survey-of-gun-policy [https://perma.cc/KW7P-MDX9].
40
Majority of Trump Voters Support Gun Safety Policies, Brady United, https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/research/trump-voters-support-gun-safety [https://perma.cc/8SRH-XJAE] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026) (reporting results of poll commissioned from Morning Consult).
41
Which States Have Child-Access and/or Secure Storage Laws?, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/secure-storage-or-child-access-prevention-required/ [https://perma.cc/V6GU-WRMA] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
42
See id.
43
See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1, 3; see also Federal Powers, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/other-laws-policies/federal-powers/ [https://perma.cc/K3TJ-AB9R] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
44
See Alisa B. Klein, Right Diagnosis, Wrong Cure: Reconceptualizing the Commerce Clause Basis for the Federal Prohibition on Felon Firearm Possession, 104 Tex. L. Rev. Online 225, 227–28.
45
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 566-67 (1995).
46
S. 890, 104th Cong. § 2 (1995). Note, however, that the Supreme Court has not weighed in on the amended GSZA.
47
Klein, supra note 44, at 228–29 (discussing Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005)).
48
Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 22–24 (2005).
49
See Klein, supra note 44, at 234; Michael A. Foster & Jordan B. Cohen, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF11038, U.S. Gun Policy: Framework and Major Issues 2 (2025).
50
See U.S. Const. amend. X.
51
See New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 175 (1992).
52
Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 935 (1997).
53
See Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Pub. L. No. 117-159, § 12001, 136 Stat. 1313, 1323 (2022).
54
See Implementing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act: One Year In, Giffords L. Ctr. (June 26, 2023), https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/implementing-the-bipartisan-safer-communities-act-one-year-in [https://perma.cc/3K2B-6RVU] (discussing federal collaboration with state and local law enforcement).
55
See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630, 635 (2008).
56
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 635.
57
See Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27, 627 n.26; see also Joseph Blocher & Eric Ruben, Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudication, 133 Yale L.J. 99, 125–27 (2023), https://yalelawjournal.org/article/originalism-by-analogy-and-second-amendment-adjudication.
58
McDonald v. City of Chi., 561 U.S. 742, 791 (2010).
59
See N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 US. 1, 24 (2022).
60
Id.
61
But see id. at 38, 58, 67–68 (suggesting, though never explicitly declaring, that as a baseline, a mere handful of past laws or isolated examples would not suffice to establish a national historical tradition).
62
See United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 691–92 (2024) (explaining how “some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases,” which “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber”); see also Eric Ruben et al., One Year Post-Bruen: An Empirical Assessment, 110 Va L. Rev.1, 24 (2024), https://virginialawreview.org/articles/one-year-post-bruen-an-empirical-assessment/ [https://perma.cc/U8S4-F4GR]; Clara Fong et al., Judges Find Supreme Court’s Bruen Test Unworkable, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (June 26, 2023), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/judges-find-supreme-courts-bruen-test-unworkable [https://perma.cc/7CDD-HZGJ] (explaining how judges have called the Bruen test unworkable and ambiguous, necessarily producing inconsistent results).
63
See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 702 (holding that federal law can constitutionally prohibit individuals under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms).
64
Id. at 698, 690. For an explanation of surety and “going armed” laws, seeid. at 695–98.
65
See id. at 696.
66
Id. at 692 (“Why and how the regulation burdens the right are central to this inquiry. … Even when a law regulates arms-bearing for a permissible reason, though, it may not be compatible with the right if it does so to an extent beyond what was done at the founding.”).
67
Id. at 700.
68
The author’s review of 140 post-Bruen federal and state court cases that mention “storage” revealed only one case focused purely on safe storage, and a handful of cases that mention, but do not engage with the constitutionality of, these requirements. This finding is based on a targeted search of decisions that have invoked Bruen and “storage” or “safe storage” in the years since Bruen, conducted using LexisNexis. In the vast majority of the 140 cases reviewed, “storage” was merely mentioned in passing, but was not a subject of legal debate and did not feature in the holding. Further review of post-Bruen legal decisions in a database created by the Gun Violence Data Hub (the “Court Decisions Based on Bruen” database) confirmed this finding. See Gun Violence Data Hub, Court Decisions Based on Bruen, The Trace (Oct. 30, 2025), https://datahub.thetrace.org/dataset/court-decisions-based-on-bruen/ [https://perma.cc/2YKZ-6LDK]. The author’s review of the database found that two-thirds of the cases logged were limited to challenges to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), a federal statutory provision barring people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year of imprisonment from possessing, transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm or ammunition. Among the one-third of cases not focused only on this provision, only one case was tagged as involving a “storage requirement” law. This case, Koons v. Att’y Gen. N.J., actually focused on sensitive place restrictions. 156 F.4th 210, 219 (3d Cir. 2025). Findings were additionally checked against databases from various advocacy groups, including the 2nd Amendment Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Giffords Law Center. See Second Amendment Litigation Tracker, 2nd Amend. L. Ctr., https://www.2alc.org/second-amendment-case-tracker [https://perma.cc/4R7S-6GRP] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Recent Decisions, Everytown, https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/3PQP-ZGC3] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Earlier Decisions, Everytown (Nov. 11, 2025), https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/earlier-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/WUY4-CJ7D] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Second Amendment Courtwatch, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/litigation/second-amendment-courtwatch/ [https://perma.cc/P4VX-APBT] (last updated Sep. 30, 2025).
69
Commonwealth v. McMickle, No. 2481CR00232, 2025 Mass. Super. LEXIS 291, at *4. (July 16, 2025).
70
Only 10 of 86 selected Second Amendment cases from June to December 2025 (roughly 11.6% of the total) involved courts making decisions at the “plain text” stage of post-Bruen analysis without engaging in historical analysis. See Earlier Decisions, Everytown, https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/earlier-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/WUY4-CJ7D] (reporting decisions between June 13, 2025 and December 8, 2025).
71
Granata v. Campbell, 798 F. Supp. 3d 46, 51 (D. Mass. 2025), appeal docketed, No. 25-1918 (1st Cir. Sep. 26, 2025).
72
Id. at 55.
73
Id. at 60.
74
See, e.g., Boland v. Bonta, 662 F. Supp. 3d 1077, 1080, 1086 (C.D. Cal. 2023), appeal docketed, No. 23-55276 (9th Cir. Mar. 27, 2023) (rejecting proposed historical analogues—including “‘proving’ laws and gunpowder storage laws”—to a California law that “seeks to prevent accidental discharges by requiring handguns to have particular safety features”).
75
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30; see also Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691–92 (explaining that “the Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791. Holding otherwise would be as mistaken as applying the protections of the right only to muskets and sabers”), 705–06 (Sotomayor, J. concurring) (explaining that the Rahimi majority rejected the dissent’s “exacting historical test” holding that for a societal problem which existed historically, the means of addressing it by law could not be “materially different” today than it was back then, and warning that “a rigid adherence to history, (particularly history predating the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity), impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hamstrings our democracy”).
76
Saul Cornell & Nathan DeDino, A Well Regulated Right: The Early American Origins of Gun Control, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 487, 510–12 (2004), https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol73/iss2/3/ [https://perma.cc/8XAC-584K].
77
Id. at 512; see also United States v. Nutter, 624 F. Supp. 3d 636, 643 (S.D. W. Va. 2022).
78
Cornell & DeDino, supra note 76, at 512.
79
See id.
80
See id.
81
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 34 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. 570, at 634–635).
82
See Robert J. Spitzer, Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights, 80 L. Contemp. Probs. 55, 59–60 tbl. 1 (2017), http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol80/iss2/3 [https://perma.cc/8UGT-MGVH]. Crucially, this finding does not account for gunpowder storage laws because they were so abundant in the periods mentioned, which speaks to the power of these laws as a possible historical analogue. Id. at 61.
83
See id. at 59–60, tbl. 1 (reporting two storage laws in two states in 1868–1899).
84
See McDonald, 561 U.S. 742, at 791; U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
85
Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, at 27.
86
The Bruen test does not require identifying a “historical twin” for the modern policy at issue, but does require “that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue.” Id. at 30.
87
See Rahimi, supra note 62. Opponents might also contest the “why” component of the proposed analogy. See, e.g., Boland, 662 F. Supp. 3d at 1088 (rejecting gunpowder storage laws as an appropriate historical analogue for the modern firearm safety requirements at issue because these historical laws aimed mainly to prevent gunpowder from catching fire in the course of manufacture, sale, and storage, not “inadvertent discharge or firing of [a] firearm”).
88
Vt. Fed’n of Sportsmen’s Clubs v. Birmingham, 741 F. Supp. 3d 172, 201 (D. Vt. 2024) (maintaining that restrictions on ammunition do not violate the Second Amendment, which does not protect large-capacity magazines).
89
See Daniel Sweeney, When America Was Last in the Arms Race, Invention Tech., Spring 1995, https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/when-america-was-last-arms-race-1 [https://perma.cc/F6NS-Y46R]. It is worth noting that while loose “black” gunpowder was commonplace and “muzzle loading” was essential for firing many guns in the 1700s, this norm changed over the course of the 1800s. See id. The rise of rapid-fire weapon technology, which involved using “smokeless” gunpowder in prepackaged forms (i.e., metallic cartridges), made the original loose gunpowder-loading process eventually obsolete for the average citizen firearm owner. See id. Opponents could argue that gunpowder storage laws essentially became irrelevant with this transition, since the public safety issue of too much loose gunpowder being left around resolved, and thus reflect a dead legal tradition unable to satisfy the Bruen inquiry. This argument would merit further consideration by proponents of an Inclusive Mandate, though it does not seem insurmountable.
90
There is a dearth of research, as well as publicly available data, around existing state tax incentives for safe storage generally, including how many consumers take advantage of them and whether those consumers would otherwise invest in safe storage, which makes evaluating their efficacy very difficult.
91
See generally Emma L. Giles et al., The Effectiveness of Financial Incentives for Health Behaviour Change: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Database Abstracts Revs. Effects, Apr. 24, 2014, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK195314/ [https://perma.cc/QX2D-8BTE].
92
See Tarang Parekh et al., Social Drivers of Health and Firearm Storage Practices, JAMA Network Open, June 2, 2025, at 7-9, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12131096/ [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.13280]; Alexander Testa et al., Material Hardship and Secure Firearm Storage: Findings from the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 11 Injury Epidemiology 1, 3–5 (Dec. 19, 2024), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40621-024-00549-7 [https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-024-00549-7].
93
Are Gun Safes Tax Free? State Credits and Exemptions, Legal Clarity (Aug. 31, 2025), https://legalclarity.org/are-gun-safes-tax-free-state-credits-and-exemptions/ [https://perma.cc/X28W-YKS3].
94
Id.
95
See Andrea Jimenez & Anne S. Teigen, Nat’l Conf. of State Legislatures, Sales Tax Exemptions on Firearm Storage Devices, Presentation to the Oklahoma Senate Finance Committee (Oct. 5, 2023), at 7, https://oksenate.gov/sites/default/files/2023-10/Firearm%20Safety%20Devices%20Tax%20Exempt.pdf [https://perma.cc/G4BL-ACG8]; see, e.g.,Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-358 (2024) (exempting firearm safes and other firearm safety devices from a sales tax); La Stat. Ann. § 47:297.24 (2025) (establishing a tax credit for firearm safety devices).
96
See H.R. 169, 119th Cong. (2025).
97
See Ivan Pereira, Ohio Bill Aims to Incentivize Safe Gun Storage with Sales Tax Waiver, ABC News (Oct. 6, 2023), https://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-bill-aims-incentivize-safe-gun-storage-sales/story?id=103789707# [https://perma.cc/KR6P-EZ57].
98
These states, as of 2023, include Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. See Jimenez & Teigen, supra note 95; What Are the Current Swing States, and How Have They Changed Over Time?, USA Facts (May 14, 2025), https://usafacts.org/articles/what-are-the-current-swing-states-and-how-have-they-changed-over-time/ [https://perma.cc/TY4U-MQKH].
99
See, e.g., S.B. 7085, 113th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., § 67-6-358 (Tenn. 2023–2024) (passing Senate with 25 voting yes and 6 not voting, and passing House with 77 voting yes, 9 voting no, and 4 not voting), https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default?BillNumber=SB7085&ga=113 [https://perma.cc/592V-YVAU]; HB 247 – Establishes a $500 Tax Credit for Individuals to Purchase Firearm Safety Devices – Louisiana Key Vote, Vote Smart, https://justfacts.votesmart.org/bill/36023/96249/66464/establishes-a-500-tax-credit-for-individuals-to-purchase-firearm-safety-devices [https://perma.cc/2D9P-J49D] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
100
See H.B. 2387, 2023 Sess., § 58.1-339.14 (Va. 2023), https://legacylis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+sum+HB2387 [https://perma.cc/823E-PUPS] (passing House of Delegates with 91 “yes” votes, four “no” votes, and one abstention, and passing Senate with 40 “yes” votes and zero “no” votes).
101
See H.R. 169, 119th Cong. (2025).
102
Commonwealth of Ma. Special Legis.. Comm’n on Emerging Firearm Tech., Final Report 12 (2025), https://malegislature.gov/Commissions/Detail/656/Documents [https://perma.cc/UBQ6-XBWH] (“The Commission finds that personalized firearms offer a significant possibility of reducing firearm accidents and deaths. Given the higher price of these firearms, the Commission recommends that the Massachusetts General Court pursue sales tax exemptions to encourage their purchase” that would sunset after five years and “study the rate of personalized firearm purchases during the sales tax exemption period.”); see also id. at 3, 14–15 (naming commissioners and recording their votes on the proposal at issue).
103
Marsha Mercer, Gun Storage Tax Break Is Rare Point of Unity in Firearms Debate, Stateline (Feb. 23, 2022), https://stateline.org/2022/02/23/gun-storage-tax-break-is-rare-point-of-unity-in-firearms-debate/ [https://perma.cc/9NPK-C6NU].
104
See Carey, supra note 14.
105
See Firearm Violence in the United States, supra note 13.
106
See Jimenez & Teigen, supra note 95, at 5–6.
107
The Economic Costs of Gun Violence, Everytown (July 19, 2022),https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-economic-cost-of-gun-violence/ [https://perma.cc/5VJE-XSNW].
108
See generally id.
109
See, e.g., Firearm Safety Device Credit: What to Know Before Applying,Va. Dep’t of Tax’n (Dec. 14, 2023), https://www.tax.virginia.gov/news/firearm-safety-device-credit [https://perma.cc/DJ29-59WV].
110
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” U.S. Const. Art. I. Sect. art. I, § 8, cl. 1.
111
See Richard Kogan and David Reich, Introduction to Budget “Reconciliation,” Ctr. on Budget Pol’y Priorities (May 6, 2022), https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/introduction-to-budget-reconciliation [https://perma.cc/JA96-STBG]. It is worth noting that the Byrd Rule, a procedural rule of the U.S. Senate that defines six categories of “extraneous” provisions that may be struck from reconciliation bills, might pose an obstacle to this approach. See Bill Heniff Jr., Cong. Rsch. Serv., RL30862, The Budget Reconciliation Process: The Senate’s “Byrd Rule” (2025). Though not at issue in this paper, in theory, Congress could also invoke its authority over federal excise taxes on firearm manufacturers and importers to reduce such taxes for smart guns. See Jane G. Gravelle, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF12173, Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax (2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12173# [https://perma.cc/MFT2-W7XY].
112
Rush & Ashton, supra note 1.
113
Relative to other forms of gun use, some of these incidents often make fewer headlines. See Michelle Degli Esposti et al., The U.S. Media Should Rethink Coverage of Firearm Violence, 9 Nature Hum. Behav. 234, 234 (2025), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11912226/ [https://perma.cc/4LJL-DJ5C]; Michael Luo and Mike McIntire, Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll, N.Y. Times (Sep. 28, 2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html [https://perma.cc/ZQ2D-9DZ9].
114
See Nick Wilson, Trump’s DOJ Prioritizes Gun Lobby Profits Over Reducing Violent Crime, Ctr. for Am. Progress (May 1, 2025), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-doj-prioritizes-gun-lobby-profits-over-reducing-violent-crime/ [https://perma.cc/WBT6-HFAS].

1
See Eric Rush & Brooke Ashton, Deputies: 6-Year-Old in Stable Condition After Accidental Shooting in Sumter County, WIS10 (Oct. 15, 2025), https://www.wistv.com/2025/10/14/deputies-6-year-old-hurt-after-accidental-shooting-sumter-county/ [https://perma.cc/37N2-QZFZ].
2
See Ten Years of Preventable Tragedies: Findings from the #NotAnAccident Index of Unintentional Shootings by Children, Everytown for Gun Safety [hereinafter Everytown], https://everytownresearch.org/report/notanaccident/ [https://perma.cc/BJY4-BTD2] (last updated June 30, 2025).
3
See Stephen Teret et al., Making Guns Safer, Issues Sci. Tech., Summer 1998, https://issues.org/teret/ [https://perma.cc/MSK4-HK7X]; Champe Barton, New Jersey’s Effort to Pave the Way for Smart Guns Hits Another Bump, The Trace (May 31, 2023), https://www.thetrace.org/2023/05/new-jersey-childproof-smart-handgun-law/ [https://perma.cc/SST4-LGAS] (explaining how resistance by major pro-gun groups has hindered smart gun uptake).
4
See Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/faq [https://perma.cc/84C6-N6LY] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (explaining how Biofire technology works). See generally Smart Guns and Gun Safety Features, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/solution/smart-guns-and-gun-safety-requirements/ [https://perma.cc/7F5R-SQ4Y] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (providing an overview of smart guns’ functionality).
5
See The Biofiire Smart Gun Available in All 50 States After Addition to Massachusetts Roster, Biofire (Feb. 14, 2025), https://smartgun.com/explore/the-biofire-smart-gun-available-in-all-50-states-after-addition-to-massachusetts-roster [https://perma.cc/K6YY-M249]; Biofire, https://smartgun.com/technology [https://perma.cc/A946-2KLU] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025); Ryan Lucas, The First Smart Gun with Facial and Fingerprint Recognition Is Now for Sale, NPR (Apr. 29, 2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172284298/smart-gun-biofire-biometrics [https://perma.cc/XX4K-9MYG]. This paper in no way constitutes an endorsement of the Biofire Smart Gun or of any other gun products or companies mentioned. Given the widespread availability of the Biofire model to U.S. consumers and the emerging nature of biometric gun technology, which represents evolution from the use of radio frequency identification technology, this paper utilizes the Biofire Smart Gun as a crucial example and test case for the reception of smart guns marketed today by consumers and policymakers. To this end, the scenarios considered in Section II thus largely contemplate biometric guns. However, the broader arguments made in this section and in subsequent sections are not limited to purely biometric guns, but rather apply to smart guns and smart gun technology more broadly.
6
See Survey: Most Gun Owners Support Sale of ‘Smart’ Guns But Aren’t Likely to Buy Them, Johns Hopkins Univ. (June 10, 2019), https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/06/10/smart-guns-personalized-firearms-unlikely-to-boost-gun-safety/ [https://perma.cc/HYY5-JDYQ].
7
See Rebecca F. Wilson et al., Unintentional Firearm Injury Deaths Among Children and Adolescents Aged 0–17 Years, 72 Morbidity and Mortality Wkly. Rep. 1338 (2023), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a1.htm [https://perma.cc/K9Y9-L2BK].
8
#NotAnAccident Index, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/maps/notanaccident/ [https://perma.cc/AW2Q-8PKY] (last visited Apr. 2, 2026).
9
See David Hemenway, Comparing Gun-Owning vs Non-Owning Households in Terms of Firearm and Non-Firearm Suicide and Suicide Attempts, 119 Preventive Med. 14, 15–16 (Feb. 2019), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743518303785 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.12.003]; Lindsay Culli, Nearly 1 in 10 Adults in the U.S. Experienced a Mental Health Crisis Last Year, Johns Hopkins Blooomberg Sch. of Pub. Health (Aug. 29, 2025) https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/mental-health-crisis-hits-nearly-1-in-10-us-adults [https://perma.cc/NQ8F-XBZK]; Youth Mental Health: The Numbers, Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention (Nov. 29, 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/mental-health-numbers.html [https://perma.cc/DWS4-NHV6].
10
Too Many, Too Soon: Youth Firearm Suicide in the United States, Everytown (Aug. 25, 2025), https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-rise-of-firearm-suicide-am,ong-young-americans/ [https://perma.cc/RT9N-7ZDZ]; see Child Access Prevention & Safe Storage, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/child-consumer-safety/child-access-prevention-and-safe-storage/ [https://perma.cc/U5NU-MECB] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (“Up to 90% of guns used by minors in suicides, unintentional shootings, and school shootings are found in the child’s home or the home of a relative.”).
11
The potential safety utility of smart guns in this context may be affected by varying minimum ages for gun purchases and possession across states, as well as other factors unique to mass shootings that fall outside this paper’s scope.
12
Stolen Guns Fact Sheet, Everytown (Apr. 3, 2019), https://everytownresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/03/Stolen-Guns-FACT-SHEET-030619B.pdf [https://perma.cc/HBK5-UMMP]; see Jay Szkola et al., Gun Thefts from Cars: The Largest Source of Stolen Guns, Everytown (May 9, 2024), https://everytownresearch.org/report/gun-thefts-from-cars-the-largest-source-of-stolen-guns-2/. [https://perma.cc/Y6U6-XFFP] (“On average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every nine minutes in the United States.”).
13
See Daniel Semenza, More Guns, More Death: The Fundamental Fact that Supports a Comprehensive Approach to Reducing Gun Violence in America, Rockefeller Inst. of Gov. (June 21, 2022), https://rockinst.org/blog/more-guns-more-death-the-fundamental-fact-that-supports-a-comprehensive-approach-to-reducing-gun-violence-in-america/#_edn12 [https://perma.cc/MR6L-B5D3]; see also Firearm Violence in the United States, John Hopkins Bloomberg Sch. of Pub. Health, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/research-reports/gun-violence-in-the-united-states [https://perma.cc/5UR5-STC8] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025) (documenting the association between gun ownership and permissive firearm laws, and increased gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional firearm deaths, and also highlighting that, despite this association, many Americans believe that having a gun in the home increases their family’s safety).
14
See Teresa Carey, Smart Guns Exist. Why Aren’t They on the Market?, PBS (May 24, 2018), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smart-guns-exist-why-arent-they-on-the-market [https://perma.cc/RF89-X644].
15
See Katherine Schaeffer, Key Facts About Americans and Guns,Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 24, 2024), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/ [https://perma.cc/G3QH-LWLC]; US Gun Control: What Is the NRA and Why Is It So Powerful? BBC News (Apr. 13, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35261394 [https://perma.cc/E6M4-YQHF]; infra Part III(c)(i).
16
Smart Guns and Gun Safety Features, Everytown, https://www.everytown.org/solutions/smart-guns-and-gun-safety-requirements/ [https://perma.cc/7SUJ-MMBX] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025); see also, e.g., Smart Guns, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/child-consumer-safety/smart-guns/ [https://perma.cc/7J2S-SUET]; Marissa Edmund, Smart Guns: Technology That Can Save Lives, Ctr. for Am. Progress (Mar. 29, 2022), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/smart-guns-technology-that-can-save-lives/ [https://perma.cc/7GWV-JS8P].
17
See Carey, supra note 14; Alex Yablon, Obama Counts on Law Enforcement to Popularize Smart Guns, The Trace (Apr. 29, 2016), https://www.thetrace.org/2016/04/obama-smart-guns-plan-law-enforcement/ [https://perma.cc/P8SY-4RYV]; Ginger Gibson & John Whitesides, Factbox: Democratic Presidential Candidates Back Gun Restrictions After Mass Shootings, Reuters (Sep. 10, 2019), https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-democratic-presidential-candidates-back-gun-restrictions-after-mass-sho-idUSKCN1VV2BG/ [https://perma.cc/BHK5-RBJS].
18
See For Most U.S. Gun Owners, Protection Is the Main Reason They Own a Gun, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Aug. 16, 2023), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/08/16/for-most-u-s-gun-owners-protection-is-the-main-reason-they-own-a-gun/ [https://perma.cc/MH6X-4J3Y].
19
See Michael D. Anestis et al., Assessment of Firearm Storage Practices in the US, 2022, JAMA Network Open, Mar. 1, 2023, at 5–6 tbl. 2, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2801915 [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.1447].
20
Larry Keane, Smart Guns? Dumb Policy, Nat’l Shooting Sports Found. (Feb. 18, 2021), http://nssf.org/articles/smart-guns-dumb-policy/ [https://perma.cc/WSP61-66ZS].
21
Id.
22
See Biofire, supra note 5; Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
23
See Devin Coldewey, Biofire Aims to Reduce Tragic Accidents with a Gun Only Its Owner Can Use, Tech Crunch (May 11, 2022), https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/11/biofire-aims-to-reduce-tragiccompetent and safe-enhancing in emergency scenarios, as-accidents-with-a-gun-only-its-owner-can-use/ [https://perma.cc/7U6D-EVET]; Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
24
See Frequently Asked Questions, Biofire, supra note 4.
25
Gun rights advocates have criticized Biofire for a lack of independent reviews of its product. See Lee Williams, Biofire Refusing to Allow Independent Reviews of Its ‘Smart Gun,’ Second Amend. Found., https://saf.org/biofire-refusing-to-allow-independent-reviews-of-its-new-smart-gun/ [https://perma.cc/23MN-M4KN] (last visited Jan. 21, 2025). A few gun-focused websites suggest a positive experience and/or significant interest from reviewing gun owners. See e.g., Philip Massaro, The Biofire Smart Gun, Guns Digest (May 12, 2023), https://gundigest.com/handguns/personal-defense/biofire-smart-gun [https://perma.cc/F7NF-MYCP]; Levi Sim, Are You Going to Buy Biofire’s Smart Gun? – Shot Show 2025, GunsAmerica (Jan. 20, 2025), https://gunsamerica.com/digest/would-you-buy-biofires-smart-gun-shot-show-2025/ [https://perma.cc/KM9J-BW5W].
26
See Biofire, supra note 5.
27
There is no comprehensive database revealing how often good actors disarm bad actors and subsequently use the perpetrators’ guns for self-defense, but a review of news coverage of gun-related incidents and gun violence databases suggests this scenario be fairly uncommon. To provide one indication of this infrequency, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, only 5% or 22 out of 433 total active shooter attacks (“in which one or more shooters killed or attempted to kill multiple unrelated people in a populated place”) in the United States over the course of 2000 to 2021 ended when bystanders shot the attacker. Larry Buchanan & Lauren Leatherby, Who Stops a ‘Bad Guy with a Gun’?, N.Y. Times (June 22, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/22/us/shootings-police-response-uvalde-buffalo.html# [https://perma.cc/XS8D-9DZA].
28
Gun Ownership by State, U.S. Concealed Carry Ass’n (June 12, 2024), https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/the-most-armed-states/ [https://perma.cc/UCV7-VZLG]; Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2024,Crime Prevention Rsch. Ctr. (Dec. 2, 2024), https://crimeresearch.org/2024/12/concealed-carry-permit-holders-across-the-united-states-2024/ [https://perma.cc/8RY8-MULK].
29
See Wayne Fletcher, Is Printing Illegal Concealed Carry?, The Gun Zone (Feb. 29, 2024), https://thegunzone.com/is-printing-illegal-concealed-carry/ [https://perma.cc/LG47-KXD9].
30
See Features and Specifications, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/tech-specs [https://perma.cc/7GPW-TFH8] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026); G19, Glock, https://us.glock.com/en/products/law-enforcement/pistols/g19 [https://perma.cc/KQ6S-U5RH] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026).
31
See Build Your Smart Gun, Biofire, https://smartgun.com/build [https://perma.cc/37X7-WAAN] (last visited March 2, 2026); Gary McCloud, How Much Do Typical Guns Cost?, The Gun Zone (May 10, 2024), https://thegunzone.com/how-much-do-typical-guns-cost/ [https://perma.cc/W5U3-N8P3].
32
As the pricing of safe storage mechanisms varies, this range is based on prices the author encountered most often when researching gun safes, including biometric models. The above calculation assumes that most gun owners would buy safe storage devices within this range, rather than very expensive or much cheaper models. For price data, see, e.g., William Taylor, How Much Does a Gun Safe Cost, The Gun Zone (Feb. 5, 2025),https://thegunzone.com/how-much-does-a-gun-safe-cost/ [https://perma.cc/TG5X-YCMC].
33
See Crifasi et al., Desirability of Personalized Guns Among Current Gun Owners, 57 Am. J. of Preventive Med. 191, 193–95 (Aug. 2019), https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30155-2/abstract [https://perma.cc/MGW4-TE99].
34
19% of the roughly 85 million American adults who personally own guns today would translate to approximately 16.2 million gun owners interested in buying smart guns. For background data, see Total Population by Child and Adult Populations in United States, Annie E. Casey Found. (Sep. 2025), https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/99-total-population-by-child-and-adult-populations [https://perma.cc/MY2V-CQMT] (reporting 267 million total U.S. adults); Schaeffer, supra note 15 (reporting that 32% of U.S. adults own guns). How these projects compare to actual U.S. smart gun uptake remains unclear, as given the recent entry of smart guns into the national U.S. market, it remains difficult to find concrete data around their consumption. BioFire raised over $38 million in funding by late 2024, providing some indication of market value. See Biofire, CB Insights, https://www.cbinsights.com/company/biofire/financials [https://perma.cc/Z978-AFQR] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026). Providing another potential indication, the global smart gun market was valued at $330.7 million in 2024. See Smart Guns – Global Strategic Business Report, Mkt. Glass Inc., https://www.researchandmarkets.com/report/global-smart-gun-market?srsltid=AfmBOopJfRS9FLxpcUenrl7by6Enqdgk3AKx3gvLW1mGJ3bnMNwdb5ZR [https://perma.cc/SJ74-8FCM] (last visited Feb. 1, 2026).
35
Sarah Julie Niderost, Premise Poll Reveals 60% of Gun Owners Interested in Purchasing Biometric Smart Guns, Premise (Apr. 25, 2023), https://premise.com/blog/premise-poll-smart-guns/ [https://perma.cc/8HC5-8UC8]. It is worth noting that this survey did not test for whether the cost of a smart gun affected people’s desire to purchase.
36
See Biofire, supra note 5.
37
See Barton, supra note 3.
38
See Keane, supra note 20.
39
2025 Survey Results: National Survey of Gun Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Sch. of Pub. Health (2025), https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/national-survey-of-gun-policy [https://perma.cc/KW7P-MDX9].
40
Majority of Trump Voters Support Gun Safety Policies, Brady United, https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/research/trump-voters-support-gun-safety [https://perma.cc/8SRH-XJAE] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026) (reporting results of poll commissioned from Morning Consult).
41
Which States Have Child-Access and/or Secure Storage Laws?, Everytown, https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/secure-storage-or-child-access-prevention-required/ [https://perma.cc/V6GU-WRMA] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
42
See id.
43
See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1, 3; see also Federal Powers, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/other-laws-policies/federal-powers/ [https://perma.cc/K3TJ-AB9R] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
44
See Alisa B. Klein, Right Diagnosis, Wrong Cure: Reconceptualizing the Commerce Clause Basis for the Federal Prohibition on Felon Firearm Possession, 104 Tex. L. Rev. Online 225, 227–28.
45
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 566-67 (1995).
46
S. 890, 104th Cong. § 2 (1995). Note, however, that the Supreme Court has not weighed in on the amended GSZA.
47
Klein, supra note 44, at 228–29 (discussing Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005)).
48
Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 22–24 (2005).
49
See Klein, supra note 44, at 234; Michael A. Foster & Jordan B. Cohen, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF11038, U.S. Gun Policy: Framework and Major Issues 2 (2025).
50
See U.S. Const. amend. X.
51
See New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 175 (1992).
52
Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 935 (1997).
53
See Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Pub. L. No. 117-159, § 12001, 136 Stat. 1313, 1323 (2022).
54
See Implementing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act: One Year In, Giffords L. Ctr. (June 26, 2023), https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/implementing-the-bipartisan-safer-communities-act-one-year-in [https://perma.cc/3K2B-6RVU] (discussing federal collaboration with state and local law enforcement).
55
See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630, 635 (2008).
56
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 635.
57
See Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27, 627 n.26; see also Joseph Blocher & Eric Ruben, Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudication, 133 Yale L.J. 99, 125–27 (2023), https://yalelawjournal.org/article/originalism-by-analogy-and-second-amendment-adjudication.
58
McDonald v. City of Chi., 561 U.S. 742, 791 (2010).
59
See N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 US. 1, 24 (2022).
60
Id.
61
But see id. at 38, 58, 67–68 (suggesting, though never explicitly declaring, that as a baseline, a mere handful of past laws or isolated examples would not suffice to establish a national historical tradition).
62
See United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 691–92 (2024) (explaining how “some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases,” which “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber”); see also Eric Ruben et al., One Year Post-Bruen: An Empirical Assessment, 110 Va L. Rev.1, 24 (2024), https://virginialawreview.org/articles/one-year-post-bruen-an-empirical-assessment/ [https://perma.cc/U8S4-F4GR]; Clara Fong et al., Judges Find Supreme Court’s Bruen Test Unworkable, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (June 26, 2023), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/judges-find-supreme-courts-bruen-test-unworkable [https://perma.cc/7CDD-HZGJ] (explaining how judges have called the Bruen test unworkable and ambiguous, necessarily producing inconsistent results).
63
See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 702 (holding that federal law can constitutionally prohibit individuals under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms).
64
Id. at 698, 690. For an explanation of surety and “going armed” laws, seeid. at 695–98.
65
See id. at 696.
66
Id. at 692 (“Why and how the regulation burdens the right are central to this inquiry. … Even when a law regulates arms-bearing for a permissible reason, though, it may not be compatible with the right if it does so to an extent beyond what was done at the founding.”).
67
Id. at 700.
68
The author’s review of 140 post-Bruen federal and state court cases that mention “storage” revealed only one case focused purely on safe storage, and a handful of cases that mention, but do not engage with the constitutionality of, these requirements. This finding is based on a targeted search of decisions that have invoked Bruen and “storage” or “safe storage” in the years since Bruen, conducted using LexisNexis. In the vast majority of the 140 cases reviewed, “storage” was merely mentioned in passing, but was not a subject of legal debate and did not feature in the holding. Further review of post-Bruen legal decisions in a database created by the Gun Violence Data Hub (the “Court Decisions Based on Bruen” database) confirmed this finding. See Gun Violence Data Hub, Court Decisions Based on Bruen, The Trace (Oct. 30, 2025), https://datahub.thetrace.org/dataset/court-decisions-based-on-bruen/ [https://perma.cc/2YKZ-6LDK]. The author’s review of the database found that two-thirds of the cases logged were limited to challenges to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), a federal statutory provision barring people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year of imprisonment from possessing, transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm or ammunition. Among the one-third of cases not focused only on this provision, only one case was tagged as involving a “storage requirement” law. This case, Koons v. Att’y Gen. N.J., actually focused on sensitive place restrictions. 156 F.4th 210, 219 (3d Cir. 2025). Findings were additionally checked against databases from various advocacy groups, including the 2nd Amendment Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Giffords Law Center. See Second Amendment Litigation Tracker, 2nd Amend. L. Ctr., https://www.2alc.org/second-amendment-case-tracker [https://perma.cc/4R7S-6GRP] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Recent Decisions, Everytown, https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/3PQP-ZGC3] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Earlier Decisions, Everytown (Nov. 11, 2025), https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/earlier-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/WUY4-CJ7D] (last visited Apr. 14, 2026); Second Amendment Courtwatch, Giffords L. Ctr., https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/litigation/second-amendment-courtwatch/ [https://perma.cc/P4VX-APBT] (last updated Sep. 30, 2025).
69
Commonwealth v. McMickle, No. 2481CR00232, 2025 Mass. Super. LEXIS 291, at *4. (July 16, 2025).
70
Only 10 of 86 selected Second Amendment cases from June to December 2025 (roughly 11.6% of the total) involved courts making decisions at the “plain text” stage of post-Bruen analysis without engaging in historical analysis. See Earlier Decisions, Everytown, https://everytownlaw.org/everytown-center-for-the-defense-of-gun-safety/recent-decisions/earlier-decisions/ [https://perma.cc/WUY4-CJ7D] (reporting decisions between June 13, 2025 and December 8, 2025).
71
Granata v. Campbell, 798 F. Supp. 3d 46, 51 (D. Mass. 2025), appeal docketed, No. 25-1918 (1st Cir. Sep. 26, 2025).
72
Id. at 55.
73
Id. at 60.
74
See, e.g., Boland v. Bonta, 662 F. Supp. 3d 1077, 1080, 1086 (C.D. Cal. 2023), appeal docketed, No. 23-55276 (9th Cir. Mar. 27, 2023) (rejecting proposed historical analogues—including “‘proving’ laws and gunpowder storage laws”—to a California law that “seeks to prevent accidental discharges by requiring handguns to have particular safety features”).
75
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30; see also Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691–92 (explaining that “the Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791. Holding otherwise would be as mistaken as applying the protections of the right only to muskets and sabers”), 705–06 (Sotomayor, J. concurring) (explaining that the Rahimi majority rejected the dissent’s “exacting historical test” holding that for a societal problem which existed historically, the means of addressing it by law could not be “materially different” today than it was back then, and warning that “a rigid adherence to history, (particularly history predating the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity), impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hamstrings our democracy”).
76
Saul Cornell & Nathan DeDino, A Well Regulated Right: The Early American Origins of Gun Control, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 487, 510–12 (2004), https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol73/iss2/3/ [https://perma.cc/8XAC-584K].
77
Id. at 512; see also United States v. Nutter, 624 F. Supp. 3d 636, 643 (S.D. W. Va. 2022).
78
Cornell & DeDino, supra note 76, at 512.
79
See id.
80
See id.
81
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 34 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. 570, at 634–635).
82
See Robert J. Spitzer, Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights, 80 L. Contemp. Probs. 55, 59–60 tbl. 1 (2017), http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol80/iss2/3 [https://perma.cc/8UGT-MGVH]. Crucially, this finding does not account for gunpowder storage laws because they were so abundant in the periods mentioned, which speaks to the power of these laws as a possible historical analogue. Id. at 61.
83
See id. at 59–60, tbl. 1 (reporting two storage laws in two states in 1868–1899).
84
See McDonald, 561 U.S. 742, at 791; U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
85
Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, at 27.
86
The Bruen test does not require identifying a “historical twin” for the modern policy at issue, but does require “that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue.” Id. at 30.
87
See Rahimi, supra note 62. Opponents might also contest the “why” component of the proposed analogy. See, e.g., Boland, 662 F. Supp. 3d at 1088 (rejecting gunpowder storage laws as an appropriate historical analogue for the modern firearm safety requirements at issue because these historical laws aimed mainly to prevent gunpowder from catching fire in the course of manufacture, sale, and storage, not “inadvertent discharge or firing of [a] firearm”).
88
Vt. Fed’n of Sportsmen’s Clubs v. Birmingham, 741 F. Supp. 3d 172, 201 (D. Vt. 2024) (maintaining that restrictions on ammunition do not violate the Second Amendment, which does not protect large-capacity magazines).
89
See Daniel Sweeney, When America Was Last in the Arms Race, Invention Tech., Spring 1995, https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/when-america-was-last-arms-race-1 [https://perma.cc/F6NS-Y46R]. It is worth noting that while loose “black” gunpowder was commonplace and “muzzle loading” was essential for firing many guns in the 1700s, this norm changed over the course of the 1800s. See id. The rise of rapid-fire weapon technology, which involved using “smokeless” gunpowder in prepackaged forms (i.e., metallic cartridges), made the original loose gunpowder-loading process eventually obsolete for the average citizen firearm owner. See id. Opponents could argue that gunpowder storage laws essentially became irrelevant with this transition, since the public safety issue of too much loose gunpowder being left around resolved, and thus reflect a dead legal tradition unable to satisfy the Bruen inquiry. This argument would merit further consideration by proponents of an Inclusive Mandate, though it does not seem insurmountable.
90
There is a dearth of research, as well as publicly available data, around existing state tax incentives for safe storage generally, including how many consumers take advantage of them and whether those consumers would otherwise invest in safe storage, which makes evaluating their efficacy very difficult.
91
See generally Emma L. Giles et al., The Effectiveness of Financial Incentives for Health Behaviour Change: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Database Abstracts Revs. Effects, Apr. 24, 2014, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK195314/ [https://perma.cc/QX2D-8BTE].
92
See Tarang Parekh et al., Social Drivers of Health and Firearm Storage Practices, JAMA Network Open, June 2, 2025, at 7-9, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12131096/ [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.13280]; Alexander Testa et al., Material Hardship and Secure Firearm Storage: Findings from the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 11 Injury Epidemiology 1, 3–5 (Dec. 19, 2024), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40621-024-00549-7 [https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-024-00549-7].
93
Are Gun Safes Tax Free? State Credits and Exemptions, Legal Clarity (Aug. 31, 2025), https://legalclarity.org/are-gun-safes-tax-free-state-credits-and-exemptions/ [https://perma.cc/X28W-YKS3].
94
Id.
95
See Andrea Jimenez & Anne S. Teigen, Nat’l Conf. of State Legislatures, Sales Tax Exemptions on Firearm Storage Devices, Presentation to the Oklahoma Senate Finance Committee (Oct. 5, 2023), at 7, https://oksenate.gov/sites/default/files/2023-10/Firearm%20Safety%20Devices%20Tax%20Exempt.pdf [https://perma.cc/G4BL-ACG8]; see, e.g.,Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-358 (2024) (exempting firearm safes and other firearm safety devices from a sales tax); La Stat. Ann. § 47:297.24 (2025) (establishing a tax credit for firearm safety devices).
96
See H.R. 169, 119th Cong. (2025).
97
See Ivan Pereira, Ohio Bill Aims to Incentivize Safe Gun Storage with Sales Tax Waiver, ABC News (Oct. 6, 2023), https://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-bill-aims-incentivize-safe-gun-storage-sales/story?id=103789707# [https://perma.cc/KR6P-EZ57].
98
These states, as of 2023, include Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. See Jimenez & Teigen, supra note 95; What Are the Current Swing States, and How Have They Changed Over Time?, USA Facts (May 14, 2025), https://usafacts.org/articles/what-are-the-current-swing-states-and-how-have-they-changed-over-time/ [https://perma.cc/TY4U-MQKH].
99
See, e.g., S.B. 7085, 113th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., § 67-6-358 (Tenn. 2023–2024) (passing Senate with 25 voting yes and 6 not voting, and passing House with 77 voting yes, 9 voting no, and 4 not voting), https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default?BillNumber=SB7085&ga=113 [https://perma.cc/592V-YVAU]; HB 247 – Establishes a $500 Tax Credit for Individuals to Purchase Firearm Safety Devices – Louisiana Key Vote, Vote Smart, https://justfacts.votesmart.org/bill/36023/96249/66464/establishes-a-500-tax-credit-for-individuals-to-purchase-firearm-safety-devices [https://perma.cc/2D9P-J49D] (last visited Dec. 10, 2025).
100
See H.B. 2387, 2023 Sess., § 58.1-339.14 (Va. 2023), https://legacylis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+sum+HB2387 [https://perma.cc/823E-PUPS] (passing House of Delegates with 91 “yes” votes, four “no” votes, and one abstention, and passing Senate with 40 “yes” votes and zero “no” votes).
101
See H.R. 169, 119th Cong. (2025).
102
Commonwealth of Ma. Special Legis.. Comm’n on Emerging Firearm Tech., Final Report 12 (2025), https://malegislature.gov/Commissions/Detail/656/Documents [https://perma.cc/UBQ6-XBWH] (“The Commission finds that personalized firearms offer a significant possibility of reducing firearm accidents and deaths. Given the higher price of these firearms, the Commission recommends that the Massachusetts General Court pursue sales tax exemptions to encourage their purchase” that would sunset after five years and “study the rate of personalized firearm purchases during the sales tax exemption period.”); see also id. at 3, 14–15 (naming commissioners and recording their votes on the proposal at issue).
103
Marsha Mercer, Gun Storage Tax Break Is Rare Point of Unity in Firearms Debate, Stateline (Feb. 23, 2022), https://stateline.org/2022/02/23/gun-storage-tax-break-is-rare-point-of-unity-in-firearms-debate/ [https://perma.cc/9NPK-C6NU].
104
See Carey, supra note 14.
105
See Firearm Violence in the United States, supra note 13.
106
See Jimenez & Teigen, supra note 95, at 5–6.
107
The Economic Costs of Gun Violence, Everytown (July 19, 2022),https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-economic-cost-of-gun-violence/ [https://perma.cc/5VJE-XSNW].
108
See generally id.
109
See, e.g., Firearm Safety Device Credit: What to Know Before Applying,Va. Dep’t of Tax’n (Dec. 14, 2023), https://www.tax.virginia.gov/news/firearm-safety-device-credit [https://perma.cc/DJ29-59WV].
110
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” U.S. Const. Art. I. Sect. art. I, § 8, cl. 1.
111
See Richard Kogan and David Reich, Introduction to Budget “Reconciliation,” Ctr. on Budget Pol’y Priorities (May 6, 2022), https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/introduction-to-budget-reconciliation [https://perma.cc/JA96-STBG]. It is worth noting that the Byrd Rule, a procedural rule of the U.S. Senate that defines six categories of “extraneous” provisions that may be struck from reconciliation bills, might pose an obstacle to this approach. See Bill Heniff Jr., Cong. Rsch. Serv., RL30862, The Budget Reconciliation Process: The Senate’s “Byrd Rule” (2025). Though not at issue in this paper, in theory, Congress could also invoke its authority over federal excise taxes on firearm manufacturers and importers to reduce such taxes for smart guns. See Jane G. Gravelle, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF12173, Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax (2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12173# [https://perma.cc/MFT2-W7XY].
112
Rush & Ashton, supra note 1.
113
Relative to other forms of gun use, some of these incidents often make fewer headlines. See Michelle Degli Esposti et al., The U.S. Media Should Rethink Coverage of Firearm Violence, 9 Nature Hum. Behav. 234, 234 (2025), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11912226/ [https://perma.cc/4LJL-DJ5C]; Michael Luo and Mike McIntire, Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll, N.Y. Times (Sep. 28, 2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html [https://perma.cc/ZQ2D-9DZ9].
114
See Nick Wilson, Trump’s DOJ Prioritizes Gun Lobby Profits Over Reducing Violent Crime, Ctr. for Am. Progress (May 1, 2025), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-doj-prioritizes-gun-lobby-profits-over-reducing-violent-crime/ [https://perma.cc/WBT6-HFAS].