A Colorado man inspired by James Bond says he's made the first biometric smart gun that uses facial and fingerprint recognition

• Futuristic guns that use facial recognition and fingerprints have long been part of the Hollywood imagination.
• Now, they may be a reality.

Over the last decade, plagued by a near-constant stream of mass shootings, a heated debate over gun safety has gripped the United States.

While lawmakers around the country argue about ways to better regulate guns, or even if they should regulate them at all, a Colorado startup has turned to technology to help solve the problem.

Biofire, which started as a high school science project in 2012, says it has now invented the first working biometric smart gun. It requires facial recognition and fingerprint verification to unlock and shoot. The company is now accepting pre-orders.

"The basic premise of a smart gun — a firearm that only works for you — is sort of obvious and uncontroversial," Kloepfer told NPR. "The challenge is nobody's ever built one that always works for you and never works for anybody else."

Biofire's smart gun is a handgun with a small fingerprint sensor on the grip and a 3-D facial recognition sensor on the back. If someone who is authorized to use the weapon picks it up, it lights green and turns on. Once they put it down, it turns off. If anyone else picks up the gun, it won't fire.

Biofire's founder and CEO, Kai Kloepfer, 26, told Bloomberg that he started working on the idea after a shooter killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, which is not far from his hometown. He wanted to offer a new innovative solution that would ensure that those who own a particular gun are the only ones who can fire it.

A few months later he saw the James Bond film "Skyfall," NPR reported. The movie features a Walther PPK 9mm pistol that is customized to only fire with Bond's palm print.

After experimenting with different prototypes over the years, Kloepfer said he eventually dropped out of MIT to focus full-time on the project. Now his company has 40 employees and $30 million in venture capital funding, NPR reported.

Gun advocates like the NRA oppose smart guns over concerns that future government regulations could require that all guns are replaced with smart guns, Bloomberg reported.

Kloepfer said he's not interested in government mandates. His objective is only to reduce gun deaths among children.

"The key thing that we are trying to solve, which I think we could completely solve, is children and teenagers gaining access to firearms," Kloepfer told Bloomberg.