God, I'm not even a gun nut and I can argue against pretty much every point on this article.

They could distribute their guns exclusively through dealers that sell guns responsibly, and end their relationships with the small percentage of bad-apple dealers that sell a disproportionate number of the guns used in crimes.

Hmm. Interesting. Is there a "bad-apple dealer" registry that I don't know about? With the exception of sales between two individuals, and the whole gun-show loophole, every firearm dealer has to comply with state and federal laws in order to legally sell firearms. A better proposal would be to close the gun-show loophole for one, and for two, if two people want to sell guns to each other, they need a licensed firearms dealer as an intermediary.

They could produce “smart guns” that can be fired only by authorized users, and that therefore are far less likely to be used in accidental or intentional shootings.

Criticism of the Smart Gun

An expensive, potentially clunky, and overall undesired feature among gun owners for a number of reasons. That'd be one hell of a hard sell.

First, use federal purchasing power to begin a substantive conversation with gun manufacturers. The Pentagon is in the process of selecting the provider of handguns for the United States Army. It should require all bidders to provide detailed information about their gun safety technologies and distribution practices in the civilian market. No response, no contract.

There are TONS of smaller firearm companies that don't seek government contracts. They'll be more than happy to pick up the slack if larger firearm companies start pushing undesirable features, such as ID locked firearms.

Second, work with companies to develop new models of distribution, such as through dealers certified by the industry as reputable.

See my previous point about licensed dealers. I can pretty much bet that 9 out of 10 do everything by the book 100% of the time. The consequences of not doing so and getting caught probably aren't pretty.

Third, rescue the federal government’s smart-gun research efforts from oblivion. Tens of millions of research dollars are needed to help get promising safety technologies to market.

Could it be that they stopped researching this stuff cause they found them to be a waste of time and money? I dunno. Probably?

Fourth, develop a set of metrics for measuring manufacturers’ performance. We might measure, for instance, the number of a manufacturer’s guns found at crime scenes, as a percentage of their overall sales.

I don't really see how this will help anything. Criminals use what they can get their hands on. They'll find holes in the wall one way or another.

Let’s give gun manufacturers an incentive to make more smart guns.

Ugh

To allow fewer guns into the hands of criminals.

How about we try better distribution laws first and see where that gets us?