F*ck it. I’m starting a gun company. Who’s in? (or #WhatWouldElonMuskDo)
Like most of you, I’m pissed about what happened in Orlando. And I’m pissed about the prior 984 mass shootings too. For the past few years, every time another one occurs, my Facebook feed has been filled with individuals sharing all sorts of statistics, videos, infographics and anecdotes about how dumb it is that America still has the gun control laws it does.
‘Did we learn nothing from Columbine?’ ‘Why hasn’t anything changed since Sandy Hook?’
President Obama came with very strong words on this subject yet again— essentially calling out our partisan government for essentially overreacting to the threats of terrorism, while effectively ‘under reacting’ to the continuous gun violence here on our streets.
‘Did we learn nothing from Columbine?’ ‘Why hasn’t anything changed since Sandy Hook?’
After the Orlando episode of gun violence (it sucks I can say that…), I spent an hour reading Twitter and Facebook, clicking on all the links, the videos and the infographics, and came to essentially the exact same conclusion:
This is f*cking stupid. Nothing is going to change (again).
So here’s what I decided. I am officially starting a gun company. No, I’m not calling it a company (yet) — in honor of Sam Altman, it’s a gun project. But for all intents and purposes, I think there is a massive opportunity to disrupt the gun industry AND solve the gun safety problem. And, spoiler alert, it has almost nothing to do with new, tighter gun regulations.
Why start a gun company?
We let ourselves get all worked up each time another massacre happens, and then don’t do shit. I’m so happy to see the bevy of Facebook posts, but I’m sure the sick individuals using weapons (most often obtained legally) don’t spend the weeks before they fire bullets at innocent children thinking “boy I should go out and read the Facebook posts of people to see their opinions on gun violence.”
Let’s start with this bold statement:
Stricter gun control laws won’t lessen mass shootings.
Think I’m alone in this statement? Listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s commentary where he postures that stricter gun control laws won’t reduce or materially affect mass shootings (but then goes on to say we still need tighter gun control laws, which reads like a big hedge if you ask me). I think Gladwell is likely right — we are approaching the problem from a regulatory standpoint rather than a technology standpoint. And there are countless articles that have and will be written about regulations don’t fix what ails us.
But let’s put policy aside, because even if more regulations would work, it has proven to be politically impossible. I’m not anti-regulation — just anti-inaction. Could policy supplement? Definitely.
I get it. You can look no further than to compare this to the outrage about climate change. A Hurricane Sandy or Katrina destroy cities and we get up in arms posting about the fact that 99% of scientists believe climate change is real. Then the reality is that we don’t do much about it — and our politicians are all to happy to let us squawk as much as we want and do nothing to improve the situation. Nothing changes.
Let’s start here… the vast majority (the supermajority, I’d say) are reasonable, rational gun owners
I sat here thinking about the issue of gun violence and its parallels to climate change. Both are issues that have become quite partisan, but seem to be issues where if you sit down and ask any person one-on-one (outside of the echo chambers), you get consistent answers.
And yet, we’ve been trying to solve each for years with limited success.
What gives?
Let’s start here… the vast majority (the supermajority, I’d say) are reasonable, rational gun owners. They have their own reasons for wanting to own a gun — hunting, safety, collecting, etc. And frankly we have a constitutional right for those people to own those guns. The balance here is that legally we are limiting the rights of the sane because of the activities of the few, irresponsible owners. My family all own guns and that’s great. I don’t own one, but I don’t have anything against guns or people who own them.
The reality is we need to go much deeper. So I asked myself… what would Elon Musk do? Yea it sounds funny, but think about his history…
- Humans aren’t taking the risks of earth’s destruction seriously (from internal or external forces). So what do you do? Create a commercial company with the mission of occupying Mars. Boom.
- Humans aren’t serious about getting off of fossil fuels? Get together with your cousins and start a solar company and lobby for tax credits to make the thing go. Boom.
- Transit systems are broken and getting worse. Publish a paper about the Hyperloop and then cheer when 20 of your best engineers leave to work on it.
- Automakers are faking emissions standards and doing nothing about cleaning up their act. So build an electric car company that uses thousands of cell phone batteries… and figure out how to tie the whole thing together (solar plus home batteries plus electric care… and a space company to mine asteroids). Triple Boom.
Now it isn’t that Elon is some master of all critical thinking, problem solving and business innovation here, but his approach to problem solving with his companies has been consistent with digging into the first principles of the problem. With Tesla, Musk realized people have expressed strong interest in electric cars but he kept asking, why are electric cars so expensive… oh right, batteries…why are batteries so expensive.. oh right, manufacturing is inefficient…I’m going to build gigafactory to make batteries 10x cheaper.
If we apply that same thought process of taking a deep dive into the first principles of the problem, Musk would probably keep asking “why” until he got to the root of the problem with current guns. Why is gun control so hard? Well, because people love their guns, and it’s a constitutional right, so check… don’t focus on banning guns. Instead, let’s focusing on making a safer gun. How do we build a safer gun? If we can’t get existing players to implement them, then we have to build it ourselves.
What would Elon Do: Build a Better Gun
So that’s why we ask what would Elon do? He would keep asking why until he got to the first principles of the problem.
And that problem is building a better, safer gun — you can’t convince the existing players, but let’s beat them at their own game with innovation that just happens to also solve the issue with guns. Safety. There’s a big business out there in guns — in the US alone we spend $6 billion annually on guns and ammo. So there’s definitely a business there.
So what next? How would you build an incredible product that our sane, rational, typical gun owners want? Well first we’d hire some of the most incredible designers from IDEO and IoT engineers who used to work at Nest. And then they’d create something that would knock our socks off. We are talking so badass it’d make Cheney add this to his man-sized safe. This shit would make John Wayne and Captain Kirk offer the side eye. It would look so sexy, people would probably want to wear them in public (unloaded of course) just to show off how sexy they are. Hunting rifles carried like a cane… pistols worn over the shoulder like a fancy purse… uzis rocked like the backpacks the cool kids wear.
And if we did it right, you’d have Apple, FB or Google style product unveilings. The CEO rocking a full camo turtleneck and the audience going crazy over the GunPro, the GunMini and the GunWatch. It sounds crazy, but not sure why it’s really that hard to imagine this becoming reality. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
My brother-in-law loves guns. Now he’s an actual collector, hunter and sportsman (he has even taken me clay pigeons shooting) But he also loves his iPhone, his iPad, his smart TV and all the other gadgets in his life. Offer the guy a smart gun? Uh, yea… pretty sure he’d line up to get one like the iPhone 4 was coming out again.
But here’s the catch… those sexy guns would have sophisticated technology that would make it impossible to be used to kill humans… impossible for mass murders… impossible for use in crimes… impossible for kids to accidentally shoot. That’s the secret of what Elon has done with each of his companies — there is always a greater good play hiding under the sexiness of the product build for today’s consumer. “You can’t be trusted to do this yourselves, so if you buy my products you’re going to automatically get what you said you’ve wanted for years… and you’re welcome.”
Imagine a gun that actually matched your fingerprints before being usable like in the movies (which does exist already but the NRA isn’t a huge fan surprisingly). Imagine the weapon automatically sensing a human and becoming a taser. Imagine the gun used satellites and GPS to ensure during a hunt you don’t accidentally shoot another hunter or a kid playing in the forest. And imagine the gun that monitors your vital signs to know if it sees spikes in stress or senses mental issues, it’ll automatically shut down and notify someone.
What if the Musket (sounds like the right name, huh?) could never be used within a mile of a location where ten or more people were gathered?
Sounds pretty cool right?
How we do it…
I’m not kidding. Why don’t we start a real company that is pro-gun? I’m not anti-NRA here. In fact, I myself really don’t care about guns personally. But I do care about protecting people and my family, and frankly I see an economic opportunity here to do something.
And here’s the reason this strategy just might work. Well remember how in 2007–2008 that the automakers laughed at Tesla? Today they are trying to copy them and unveiling their own concepts. Monkey see; Monkey do.
Remember, if we think like Musk here, we realize this isn’t a gun issue or a gun regulation issue — it’s a gun safety issue. That means you build a better, safer gun and satisfy the market. No, you may not “fix” the market overnight (Smith & Wesson are unlikely to line up behind you with support.) But if you look at the market adoption curve, Tesla’s Model 3 has now begun to smash sales records. Rather than rely on regulatory standards or sell to the automakers, you build a better product that also addresses a bigger underlying concern.
Perhaps the only way to truly reform guns in our society is to stop hoping that the NRA and gun manufacturers will change… and join the game.
Who wants to start a technology-enabled gun company with me? It’s not like I’m the first one to think of it — there is some really deep research on the subject, but most of it comes from the angle of gun safety rather than gun innovation. Build something amazing that just happens to have amazing gun safety… that’s a billion dollar company. And yes I am serious… I’d love to have a discussion about what it takes to build a Musk-style company designed to compete with today’s players. Seems just about crazy enough it might work.
I am not here to make light of what happened in Orlando or joke about the seriousness of gun violence and gun regulation. But like many of you, I’m tired of the rhetoric. Why not do something bold and different?
If you are interested in the discussion, comment here or email me: eakoester at gmail.
