“Smart Gun” Company Regroups, Develops Police Gun Tracking

As a rule, I’m opposed to any kind of “smart gun” technology. Guns need to be kept dumb because in the world of firearms mechanics, dumb is reliable, and smart is not.

I’m also concerned that there’s a high likelihood that any kind of restrictive technology that’s brought to market can and will be used against gun owners by mandating their use, creating a financial burden as well as compromising our safety.

At this time, though, the latest from Yardarm Technology sounds pretty good. Their new Yardarm Sensor is made to be installed in police handguns and can read and send “critical event” information to trackers or dispatchers. This device can sense the location of the gun, whether it’s holstered or not, and when and in what direction it’s fired.

Let’s face it, police are powerful, and some of them abuse that power. As such, they should be subject to full accountability. Putting video cameras on all officers is a great idea, and this isn’t bad either. Just think, if the cop who left his gun in the potty and lost it had had this in his gun, it would have been easy to find and recover the piece.

This new tool can also help make police and military safer.

The Yardarm Sensor is quite small and is currently available for installation in the rear grip hole on Glock pistols. It communicates with the Yardarm Cloud to allow police, military, or private security companies to monitor their firearms in real time. It can also tell command centers when support is needed, even when officers or soldiers can’t call for help.

By instantly alerting commanders and command centers of critical events in the field, Yardarm allows organizations to respond and support officers in the field faster than ever before, greatly enhancing efficiency and officer safety.

So if a yardarm-equipped gun is drawn and fired, dispatchers immediately know about it and can send backup. That’s powerful stuff.

Last year, Yardarm was pushing a version of “smart gun” technology that would remotely disable a gun from firing. Since then, they’ve quietly dropped that feature from their offering. I think that’s a good move.

Firearms disabling technology is not perfect and would most likely lead to fatalities when a gun is erroneously disabled or when it’s purposely disabled by nefarious hackers out to disarm police.

For now, this tracking technology sounds pretty good from here if used as intended. I’ll be interested to see where it leads.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.