ZORE-X goes beyond the gun safe and biometrics
Seasoned gun advocates often concede that the most difficult part of any debate over gun safety comes when the conversation turns to the frequency with which children are killed or maimed by loaded weapons belonging to a parent or guardian. Once discovered, it’s an even bet that the gun will quickly morph from an instrument of protection to the lethal toy that kills about one kid per week while leaving countless other lives in shambles.
A gun safe offers a reasonable degree of protection – if the safe is nearby when the weapon is needed, or the gun owner actually returns it to the safe.
A handgun outfitted with a biometric grip is an effective safety device – unless the gun owner’s hands are wet or greasy at that critical moment of life or death.
A new mechanism developed in Israel by a pair of army Special Forces veterans is proving to be an undeniable alternative to chain locks, safes, biometrics and even careful handling. The ZORE X core rapid dial gun lock – named from the Hebrew word for ‘flintstone’, the stone used to fire muskets of yore –has a cartridge shaped lock that fits into the gun’s chamber like a round of ammunition. When the need arises to activate the pistol, the mechanical locking mechanism that had been chambered is unlocked by a battery-operated element that unlocks the gun, ejecting the lock assembly while replacing it with a round of ammunition, all in one action. The manufacturers insist the entire procedure for disabling the locking mechanism to firing the weapon is about 2 to 3 seconds.
Ohad Levi, a 31-year old lawyer and gun owner who was introduced to the ZORE X by his wife who heard about it and thought it sounded like a reasonable way to protect children, told The Media Line that after using a prototype provided by the company for three months as part of its testing program, “It was exactly as advertised…easy to use and easy to manipulate.”
Levi seemed most excited about the possibilities of uninterrupted access to his weapon the ZORE X allows. He described to The Media Line how he is able to keep a gun under the kitchen table or even better: “You can have a fully-locked non-operational, non-threatening piece of metal on the table for all to see and a second later you can have a gun with a round in the chamber ready to fire.”
ZORE founding partner Yonatan Zimmerman explained that while in the army, his best friend was almost killed while cleaning his gun. “I was a commander in the army,” he told The Media Line, “and saw many accidents related to gun safety.”
After leaving the army, Yonatan dedicated himself to finding a way to quickly access a defensive weapon that allowed the gun owner to keep guns as accessible as possible but also secured.
Now that the first incarnation of ZORE X is on the market, CEO Bruno Escojido, Zimmerman and partner Yalon Fishbein are looking to the future to build on their initial success. Financed by Israeli investors to the tune of $2.5 million, $500,000 of which is crowd funding, and armed with the difficult-to-obtain approval for authorization from the state of California along with other approval ratings including safety standards, Electro-magnetic standards and FCC standards, the start-up will be releasing a version of the ZORE X that notifies the gun owner if someone tampers with his/her weapon.
According to Zimmerman, with interest from law enforcement and security-related fields, the ZORE X is on the fast track from lock to loaded.