Newtown, Conn. -- For four decades until 1999, Volvo led the world in making safety a virtue. Its efforts paid off handsomely as sales and market share climbed. The Swedish carmaker charged a premium for its vehicles and the company eventually was sold for a cool $6.5 billion. The same could be done with guns.

Volvo's timing was good. From its introduction of a little invention that became the modern seat belt in 1958 to its sale some 40 years later to Ford Motor, public consciousness in automotive safety blossomed. Volvo's technological lead gave it an edge over rivals who showed less interest in protecting passengers than revving up horsepower.

Something similar could happen to gunsmiths following the Sandy Hook School massacre in December. After all, it took public outrage over horrific automobile fatalities, which peaked at around 55,000 in the early 1970s, to force legislative changes.


At present, most gun marketing is predicated on power and machismo. But what if the unique selling point of a weapon became safety features, like a trigger that only works in the hands of the gun's owner? That, in a nutshell, is the aim of the Sandy Hook Promise Innovation Initiative.

The initiative will pull together the tech and venture capital communities to form a Technology Committee to Reduce Gun Violence that will work to identify and foster innovations in gun and school safety and mental health research. The group will solicit proposals for the best ideas in these areas and award a prize to encourage the most promising innovations. The point is that making firearms safer could help the nation to reduce the 30,000 gun deaths a year, including nearly 19,000 that are suicides. But if that isn't incentive enough, there's the money, and the Volvo lesson, to consider.

Starting with the three-point seat belt in the late 1950s, Volvo introduced safety features, from head restraints to side impact protection systems. Sales grew tenfold. By the time the first mandatory seat belt use was enacted in New York state in 1984, Volvo's market share hit a record.

Budding gun entrepreneurs could become rich by emulating Volvo's golden years. Weapons manufacturers could first and foremost tout their products' safety features. And public policy could guide them along that path.

New Jersey, for instance, has a law that would require smart gun technology in all new handguns sold three years after the state's attorney general determines a prototype is safe and commercially available. Other states are considering similar rules.

As the Volvo story underlines, however, government action isn't the only way to reduce America's gun fatalities, which have remained stubbornly high for decades. The only thing more characteristically American than gun ownership is the impulse to create wealth in free and open markets. Let the innovation begin.

Rob Cox is a founder of Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group that Newtown citizens created after the shootings of 20 schoolchildren and six educators in their town.