Firearms can now be tracked, this is either bad news or good depending on which side a person is. Patent applications have been filed to incorporate GPS equipment in firearms. The GPS is attached to the firearm; the equipment costs at least $ 200 per unit according to the manufacturers. The GPS will provide location and time information anywhere there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites.
The equipment is already in use by a number of states. Law makers in Kentucky passed a law making the installation of a tracking device or Weapon RFID System. Gun owners are required to show up at predesignated locations where they pay a small fee and hand over their firearms to be implanted. The program ensures that communities are kept safer when incidents of gun violence occur. By being able to track weapons used in violent crimes the perpetrators are apprehended culprits quicker. It will also enable law enforcement to locate stolen firearms easily.
Joseph Ryles a computer engineer, stated that with GPS RFID chips in guns, it will be easy to ensure that guns don’t end up in places that they shouldn’t like schools. Ryles envisions special Wi-Fi networks placed in shopping malls, schools, libraries and other public places that work to detect the RFID signals. Once it detects the presence of a firearm, an alert goes automatically to local police providing them with the GPS coordinates of the offending firearm.
In Kenya, there are very firearms that are currently in the hands of unauthorized people who cause grave danger to the society. On Wednesday, April, 15th, 2015 in the Eleventh Parliament third session, a motion was presented by Hon. (Dr) Victor Munyaka stipulating,“ THAT aware that many innocent Kenyans have been victims of crime attributable to stolen and illegally acquired firearms; concerned that, despite the proliferation of small arms, there has not been efforts to track location, movement and use of firearms held by licensed persons and the disciplined forces; acknowledging the need to adopt a mechanism for providing real-time geophysical location and movement of firearms to facilitate recovery of stolen firearms and forensic identification of guns used in crime scenes.”
