Initially, Kiyani considered technology that would require installing electronic locking equipment into the guns themselves. But as an engineer, he also understood the inherent complications of designing electronics that could withstand tremendous shock and high temperatures. “Think of the average electronic lock on a door,” Kiyani explains. “Now imagine every time it’s opened, it gets 30 some blows with a huge hammer.” To develop that type of expertise — and to ensure it would work without fail — would have taken Kiyani time and money he didn’t have, not to mention how insanely difficult it would be to convince gun manufacturers to work with him. So he built something that anyone could add to a gun.

His creation is different in three ways: it’s optional, it’s detachable, and it’s quick. Unlike biometric gun safes and other locking mechanisms, Kiyani says, the Identilock makes it as easy to access a firearm as it is to unlock an iPhone. He pitched hundreds of gun owners a variety of ideas over the course of his research, but it was the biometric lock they inevitably latched onto. “That was the key motivator for moving forward,” Kiyani remembers. “As I kept talking to people, not only did the idea get refined, but it was clear people wanted it.”

Today, the Identilock is designed using entirely off-the-shelf components that have been proven effective in other industries. The biometric sensor, for example, has been used in other security applications and is approved by the FBI. Cobbling the sensor together from existing technologies was both a cost-saving endeavor and a strategic way to prove the product’s effectiveness more quickly. “If I were to go out and get one black eye, that would be it,” Kiyani says. “The goal was to take something that has already been validated, not have to reinvent the wheel.”