Personalized Firearms A Dumb Idea?

Earlier this year I was chased down the street by a man threatening to kill me. I had witnessed him running away from his previous assault victim and he decided I was his next target.

At 7:30 AM he chased me for about 2 blocks, hopped the security fence at my apartment complex and attempted to break down my front door, yelling about how I was going to die in my own place.

Once I made it into my apartment I tried calling 911. The problem was I was so sweaty from running that the thumb reader on my brand new Pixel smart phone couldn't read my thumbprint, refused to unlock, and I had to work past the failure to unlock notification to get put in my password while im so hopped up on fight-or-flight hormones I can barely hold still. I know that doesn't sound like much but in a situation where every half-second counts, it's a big deal.

My 9mm, on the other hand, didn't have that problem. It went “click, click”, and luckily for both of us the guy was smart enough to realize I wasn't going to be a victim, so we didn't have to hear it go “boom”.

He was so upset he went around the other side of the apartment complex and punched out the laundry room window.

The police arrived 25 minutes later, I gave them a physical description and they left. The same guy who tried to attack me attacked at least 2 other people that day, I have no idea if he was ever caught.

I will never, ever, rely on a firearm with any kind of electronic reader to function after that experience. It was bad enough that my phone delayed my 911 call. In fact, my phone won't let me put in a pin number until the fingerprint reader has already been tried and failed, which is a terrible design. If I must use it, my gun has got to work, and adding anything beyond what is required to function adds another layer of complexity that makes it more likely to fail.

Edit: Lots of comments have been made on the phone situation. I've completely shut down the fingerprint reader on my phone, so I immediately get access to the emergency call option. The point of the story is that the fingerprint reader on a piece of the latest and greatest tech failed and had to be bypassed. If my handgun was biometrically restricted using that same technology, I would have had to use it as a club.

Edit #2: I've continued to receive comments on this answer regarding how to call 911 without needing to unlock the phone and people have outright called me a liar because of it. I will explain it here in more detail as I have explained it multiple times in the comments. I am aware that on an Android phone, when you swipe past the lock screen to access the keypad to input your pin, there is an emergency button at the bottom to call 911. The issue is, when I attempted to do that during this event, the phone ignored my swipe commands because it was trying to read my fingerprint. The phone would not register any other inputs while it was also trying to read a fingerprint. After failing to read the fingerprint and denying other inputs, it produced a notification that the reader had failed, and I would need to input my pin. Frankly, this answer is old, I am tired of curating it and having people claim I am a liar about one of the worst moments of my life, so I am going to lock the comments.