|
Advanced Warning Systems, LLC |
|
|
|
|
January 25, 2016 Issue |
||
|
The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
|||
|
Revolutionary New Gun Safety Device that puts a Block in Front and Behind the Trigger and with a Functional Electronic System that sets off an Alarm in the case of an unauthorized user manipulating a firearm |
|||
|
Advanced Warning Systems, LLC
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – January 25, 2016
CEOCFO: Mr. Farr, what is the concept behind Advanced Warning Systems? Mr. Farr: InSyte is a high tech remedy for gun safety. The reason why we have done this is that we have seat belts for cars and we have smoke alarms for homes. All have saved thousands of lives. We have put that technology together to make a seat belt and an alarm for any firearm that needs to be monitored. By being monitored, we mean that it would be something outside the safe or something that you carry with you wherever you go. The idea has now come to fruition. We are ready to begin sales. We have been through different programs of monitoring the device with study groups, also sending out to clients who did not even know what they were going to get. Now after all this time we are ready to begin producing and selling.
Mr. Farr: This is a small device that weighs less than 3.3 ounces. It attaches into the trigger and trigger guard system. What it does is it puts a block in front of the trigger and a block in the rear of the trigger. InSyte the Gun Guardian is a mini computer that is programmed to accept instructions. Once you arm InSyte in your firearm; and you put your firearm down if it is moved the alarm goes off. Even though the alarm is going off you still cannot function the gun until you separate the two-piece device apart. Therefore, if you want to put it in terms of how the seat belt works; you put the seat belt on and it stays there until you get out of the car. That is basically how this new system InSyte brings functions. Once you want it to be off you can either program it to put the four digit code in and stop the alarm, but that way only you or the person who has the code can do that. However, as in cases where you have a car crash and the car starts on fire and you need to act fast and get out of the danger, InSyte the Gun Guardian fast release mechanism works in such a way that you can actually dismantle the device by hand, in less than three seconds, and your firearm is ready for use.
CEOCFO: What would prevent a child or a teenager from dismantling the device? Mr. Farr: If you listened to the Presidents speech yesterday he said that if we can build an aspirin bottle that a kid couldn’t get into why can’t we not do the same for a firearm. It is exactly what we offer. We already have it. There are two secret buttons on the device that only if you know how to engage them at the same time you can disassemble the device.
CEOCFO: What was the challenge in creating the system? Mr. Farr: The challenge was in being able to finance the research and development and the testing and all of the things that we had to go through to get it done. My background was building submarines and airplanes for thirty-three years with General Dynamics. Therefore, I was capable of designing a device that combined both the mechanical and electronic, in such a way that would enable us to create a preventative device for firearms. We have a patent that is locked in with both the mechanical part of and the electronic part as one system. Therefore, we have a good solid patent and we think we are protected.
CEOCFO: Does it work on all guns? Mr. Farr: It works on most firearms that have a trigger and a trigger guard. That is the majority of most firearms.
CEOCFO: It that the majority of weapons? Mr. Farr: We have tested infinitesimal times with all kinds of different guns. We have been to gun shops. We have been to gun owners and trial tested. It basically fits everything, even the assault rifles. There are exceptions, but I would count them as very few, and we will work so that in the future virtually all the firearms will fit InSyte.
CEOCFO: You have created this. You have patented it. People have tested it. Now what? Mr. Farr: Now we need to get people, like the Politician’s and the President and maybe Mr. Trump, to get behind it and let us see what we can do with it. There is always a challenge of cost. We want to put this on the market so that we can have it for everybody, not just people that have money, but anyone that has a firearm. We need to give them access to it. Of course, when you develop something the initial costs are quite high. We offer the basic package for one hundred and fifty US dollars. With the premium package that has the camera that will start recording whoever is picking up the gun; that is available for about three hundred dollars.
CEOCFO: Is cost more of a factor for police departments and other law enforcement when buying in bulk? Mr. Farr: You know Lynn, what we have done here is we have created a current device and the next version, InSyte 2, will be coming out after let us say another six to nine months and will have the cell phone application. With InSyte 2, you set it up on your app for your cell phone or with the police station and if anyone sets the alarm off you are notified immediately. With InSyte 2 we have also got little tiny cameras that will actually be showing who is handling the gun right on your cell phone.
CEOCFO: With all of the attention on guns and purchasing guns are you concerned that somehow the safety aspect will fall by the wayside now? Mr. Farr: No I do not, Lynn. The very basic reason is that when seat belts came out no one wanted to use them. When fire alarms for the home came out nobody wanted to use them. However, as they were evolving, somehow, either through social or police efforts of people who did not have their seat belts on, it saved thousands of lives. When I listened to President Obama yesterday, he said something that is kind of a secret, I think. It is not getting published much, but out of the thirty thousand gun deaths last year, two thirds of them were from suicide. That is a big difference between suicide being two thirds of the thirty thousand and the balance being ten thousand, which were gun related in the cities, children being killed and that sort of thing. Those are big different numbers. Our service men and women returning are having tremendous amounts of suicide. We know that. InSyte the Gun Guardian, will actually be able to help prevent suicides with the alarm system, where the person who owns the gun is actually controlling the code. Therefore, if the gun is disturbed by somebody with the intent on harming themselves and taking their firearm, it will actually help in that regard.
CEOCFO: How are you going about raising the money? Mr. Farr: We have not really been trying to raise money, because my partner and fiancé and I have a great love of children; between the two of us we have financed this project to get InSyte the Gun Guardian to market. The new application coming out is going to require additional funding and we will be seeking funding for that somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty to five hundred thousand.
CEOCFO: Will you be manufacturing? Will you be licensing? Might you be talking with the OEMs eventually? Mr. Farr: We are in the enviable stage where we have all the time that we need to launch this. We do not need to have money coming in on it. We are ready to produce right now. In fact, we have two thousand units being prepared for us. These numbers are small, but when it catches on we think it will catch on like fire.
CEOCFO: Are you able to ramp up should that happen or when that happens? Mr. Farr: Yes we are! Yes! We are quite capable, with the manufacturing that we have, to hit those numbers. But more important, is the quality control that our products are submitted to, which ensures safety. I am using the same quality control systems used in airplane and submarines manufacturing, which gives a unique part number system that provides our ability to recall, at any time if there is an issue of quality.
CEOCFO: How do you deal with some of the frustration when you have developed something so vital and it still is a struggle to get it in use and to get the attention? Mr. Farr: Honestly, we are not struggling yet. Jason has been hired recently, in the past two months, to do nothing but set up the sales. Jason, you might want to take over here and tell her what you are doing to get ready for the sales. Mr. Van Nest: We are currently on a big campaign through social media. We use a marketing company that is putting out a lot of posts for us and tying hash tags in with current events. That is one side of it; creating the demand. However, we are also currently seeking manufacturer’s representation in each of the five territories. I am already working with some of the manufacturing groups now to try and drive that business through the brick and mortar stores and then eventually to their internet sales. We are currently approaching that process in the new year.
CEOCFO: Are you looking at gun shops and gun stores? Do you start as an accessory and then maybe a necessity? Mr. Van Nest: We are in the accessory stage right now. If you look at the market set that we are competing against, the old technology, which are the gun boxes. They do not have the ability to use on different types of firearms, portability, and most importantly the ability to notify someone of unauthorized access. We are in that market set, but we offer a mechanical device that would never fail, no biometrics. It is also half of the price than other gun box and other devices plus it fits most of firearms. I think we definitely raise the bar in that set. It is an additional sale on top of the gun. However, we have also seen that there are some cities, like Los Angeles for example, and I think San Francisco has this up for legislation now; but in Los Angeles if you are a firearms owner, even if you are a law enforcement officer, when you are off duty you are required by law to secure your firearm when you come home. Therefore, we are beginning to see legislation in some of the cities that are helping push our cause for safety. Mr. Farr: My honest feeling on this whole thing is that if we get with the manufacturers and they deliver the fire arm with an InSyte unit on it, which is like if we delivered a car with seat belts.
CEOCFO: What do you see down the line? Mr. Farr: There is at least one gun in two thirds of the households in America. We really feel that we have two markets. We have got the existing market where firearms owners already have a firearm and there will be resistance to this to some extent. However, the demographics that we have looked at with NRA is thirty years old to forty five; people who have children; those are the people who will want to go ahead and buy now to make it safe for their children.
CEOCFO: Why would people be reluctant to be safe? Mr. Van Nest: It goes back to what Lynwood was speaking about, with the seat belts and the fire alarms, and why we need them. The older demographic remembers life before seat belts and fire alarms and the resistance to use them. Today it would be unfathomable to not use seat belts and fire alarms. We are seeing a younger generation that may not necessarily be hunters per se, but they may have only one firearm, one handgun that they use for protection. We are seeing more of a safety conscious demographic in that younger twenty-five to thirty-five demographic, than we would in some of the older ones. That younger demographic is more likely to own firearms and have young children in the household. Mr. Farr: We have been to go to some very interesting gun shows and I have had the opportunity to talk to, literally, a thousand people or more in those two shows. The younger generation jumps all over the idea of InSyte. They like it because it has codes for the electronic keypad and the overall electronics idea. The older generation, which are the old crusty guys walking around with a gun on their hip and when they look at it they say, “Do what? Why in the world do I need something to warn me that someone is touching my gun? I’ll just shoot ‘em!” I say, “Well, that is fine, but what do you do when your grandchildren come over and they find your gun? What about that?” They say, “You know, that is a good point! I did not think about that!”
CEOCFO: What, if anything, changed in your approach as you were working on development and as you presented it to the various people? are there differences to the product now or did you know, almost from day one, how it should work, what it would be and it was just a matter of doing it? Mr. Farr: The answer is no. We had at least four or five major changes to the product, from the time that we envisioned what we were going to do, the first coming after our trial program where we had thirty people between the ages of three and seventy; they came to our headquarters. We did not tell them what they were going to be doing, other than to find something in the drawer and bring it back to us. What happened in that case was that they would approach the drawer, they would look in it and they would find the gun and they would bring it to us, but when the touched it the alarm went off and it scared them. Then they did not know what to do. Therefore, the gun shows do give us some ideas as well. Hence, what we ended up doing was putting the keypad on the device itself. Therefore, you could have the keypad on the device or you could buy the device with the remote control and the camera. You can, with just the one device and one remote control, manage up to thirty units in one building. The unit talks to you. It tells you, “You have now armed the device. You now have unarmed the device. You batteries are low.” InSyte speaks in two languages, English and Spanish. InSyte is not only is a simple device, it talks to you. It is a mini computer with a manual override.
CEOCFO: Are you looking strictly at North America now or are you looking in other locations as well? Mr. Farr: No. Right now we are focused on the United States. That is where the major of existing gun problems. We are focused on the US, but we are patent covered in other countries. I am sure that Canada will be looking at it, Mexico could come as well. It will be international; We are just not selling it internationally yet.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to Advanced Warning Systems and InSyte today? Mr. Van Nest: In the United States there are 180 million gun owners with over 300 million guns, and that number rises greatly every year. We currently have record high numbers of returning veterans committing self-harm. The largest segment of our population, the baby boomers, becoming the oldest part of our population and the issues they face with Alzheimer’s and dementia. We have technology that will address those three categories of accidents, self-harm and theft due to unauthorized access to firearms. Unlike other products out there in our set, we are the one product that has the ability to notify others of these attempts.
CEOCFO: Final thoughts? Mr. Farr: Jason had it right with regard to the categories. Our first priority is children. We feel that that is the number one priority for us. Number two is the theft issue. We think that we can prevent firearm theft with this device. That is because by statistics, anyone hearing this alarm in the house; especially if the burglar has already cut the wires and everything. Then if the burglar hears an alarm they are gone, they are gone, fleeing immediately. The only thing is, with InSyte 1, the owner and the police will be able to see who was touching the gun and so on. The third category is self-harm and in that area we consider two categories. We consider dementia and Alzheimer’s being the issues right now with people who have owned their guns forever they mistake family members for someone breaking into the house. More and more deaths happen like that. We also have the suicide people for our Veterans returning home and people that are unstable. These are the categories that we are aiming for. |
“InSyte is a high tech remedy for gun safety … This is a small device that weighs less than 3.3 ounces. It attaches into the trigger and trigger guard system. What it does is it puts a block in front of the trigger and a block in the rear of the trigger.”- Lynwood Farr
Advanced Warning Systems, LLC
Contact: Jason K. Van Nest (844) 778-7070
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Gun Safety Technology, Advanced Warning Systems, LLC, CEO Interviews 2016, Lynwood Farr, Jason K. Van Nest, Revolutionary New Gun Safety Device that puts a Block in Front and Behind the Trigger and with a Functional Electronic System that sets off an Alarm in the case of an unauthorized user manipulating a firearm, Alarm for firearms, Handgun alarm device, Firearm security system, Gun safekeeping, Child Firearm Safety, Gun Safety, Firearm Safety, InSyte Gun Guardian, Gun Alarm, Firearm alarm, Firearm Warning System, InSyte Protect, firearm safety solutions, Technology Companies, Industrial Company, Recent CEO Interviews, Advanced Warning Systems, LLC Press Releases, News, Tech Stock, Companies looking for venture capital, Angel Investors, private companies looking for investors, gun safety technology companies seeking investors, firearms safety solutions companies needing investment capital |
|||
|
|
|||
