I first met Ginger Chandler when she was working at Smith & Wesson, in new product development and management. I came away impressed that a female mechanical engineer had a hand in the creation and marketing of iconic firearms. Recently, LODESTAR Technology contacted us at The WON to evaluate its new 9mm handgun, the LNK9 – a firearm that comes equipped with built-in security features, such as fingerprint recognition, PIN pad activation and a mobile app. I soon discovered that one of the masterminds behind this technology belongs to Ginger, who is the co-founder and CEO at LODESTAR, maker of a gun that gives you the option of added safety features.
In a phone call that went too fast (and we both agreed we could talk for hours about this new technology), here are some of the reasons and facts behind the implementation of a personally authenticated handgun and the importance of this type of technology for personal defense.
Ginger was quick to point out that she doesn’t act alone. She is a co-founder, after all. The other partner is Gareth Glaser, a leader in corporate law and the business world. Ginger started our conversation, “I left Remington in 2017 and I wanted to help inventors in firearms accessories, so I started a little company called GoGear Direct, and the first patent I bought was a speed-loader for a revolver, and we still sell it.”
She continued, “Meanwhile, Gareth Glaser had retired and he wanted to improve firearms safety and make an impact. He said, ‘I’m going to need some help.’ So they hired me to look at the patent and I wasn’t impressed … so I went home and I wrote out ideas, and I went forward and patented four ideas on how to make firearms safer.”
As a result, in 2019, LODESTAR brought Ginger onboard as a co-founder. She said the company did a “pass the hat” among family members for more funding. Even her nephew, who was at that time graduating from college, contributed. She said, “I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m a mechanical engineer and so conservative. This has been a big learning curve for me, to figure out how to believe that you’re doing something better.”
After leaving Smith & Wesson, Ginger worked at Remington running new product development for more than three years. She admits it would have been easier to add this platform to guns already developed at the other companies. She said, “I know firearms. I love striker-fired pistols … I was very careful and chose the platform of the LNK9 to go forward. … We hired an engineering firm; we didn’t need mechanical people – we needed electronics. So, we partnered with a company that worked on RFID readers. We got our first prototypes, and then we started looking for investors … and we were lucky.”
In 2024, Ginger, who is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, drove down to her nephew’s Ranger School graduation at Ft. Benning in Georgia. That weekend, she was talking to an investor and told him she could be anywhere because she traveled with the prototype, just in case. She recalled that the investor said, “I’m going to be at Ft. Moore [previous name before reverting to its original name of Benning in 2025] tomorrow!” Ginger believes that was a “God moment.”
She treated the investor and her nephew to a dinner out the next night, and she showed him the LNK9. She said, “He looked at me, and he said, ‘We got you.’”
That investment enabled LODESTAR to put the manufacturing facility in place (Chattanooga), do more engineering, build the production line, harden the design – all the things she had done for years at other companies.
Ginger said, “We based everything on the Toyota Production System. I was a consultant for 10 years, prior to the gun companies, with a company called YOMO Consulting. The president of the Toyota Supply and Support Center was also our president, and he taught us that processes are important. People don’t ever come to work to fail. They want to be successful. We want to fail fast and fix it fast. So the assembly line is modular, and we only run one shift. We designed it for 40,000 units a year. … At each station, each person must verify the quality and then, they must check the quality of the product coming to them. You try to find your failures quickly in the process and don’t build whole firearms that are wrong. I’ve been in the gun industry for a long time and there are places where they just build and build and take them to the range and they’ll find an issue with the first one. Instead, what we do is build 10, take them to the range, build 10, take them to the range. We don’t want any inventory sitting that could potentially be a quality issue.”
Ginger added, “I learned at Smith & Wesson that you don’t launch until you’re ready. … For us, it was a smaller number than Smith & Wesson, but people are buying every day and we’re shipping out. We really care about customer service, too. We are answering the phone anytime anyone calls.”
Presently Ginger is making personal visits to dealers – demonstrating the guns. Ginger says she tells dealers two things about the battery life of this firearm. First, the user decides what happens when the battery dies – they can choose to have the firearm be locked or unlocked. Second, the user controls battery life: by enabling deep sleep mode, the firearm will enter low-power mode after two hours of inactivity, allowing the battery to last for weeks.
The technology around the LNK9 includes biometric fingerprint authorization (allows up to 50 fingerprints), PIN pad authentication (chosen by user, and easily changed) and a Bluetooth-enabled mobile app that also can lock and unlock the firearm.
The gun comes equipped with InfoLights, which are LED lights at the bottom of the backstrap that indicate whether the firearm is ready to fire, along with other information – such as charging status and authentication attempts.
Designed as a compact crossover (the fusion of a compact slide and a full-sized frame), the LNK9 comes with these features: polymer composite frame, fiber optic front sight and reversible magazine release. It also has a charging station and two magazines (10 or 17 rounds). When purchasing the gun, you may order either left or right-hand pin pad and fingerprint pad access.
Ginger added, “I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the parts that we’re getting. The top end – the slide, barrel, everything – is standard parts that have been made by manufacturers forever, and we’ve known them forever. … The biometric, instead of using five points, it’s using over 300 points.” Ginger tells people that you can upload multiple fingerprints per user.
Ginger said, “The LNK9 is a purpose-built gun for a consumer.” Perhaps that consumer is a mom who doesn’t want to have to run to open a biometric or PIN-pad driven gun safe. Perhaps it’s a store owner, who wants to keep a gun nearby, or even in a holster. Perhaps that user is a truck driver who wants a gun in the glove compartment. In fact, Ginger knows truck drivers who keep the charging pad in their consoles, plugged in.
Our next installment will be taking the LNK9 through its paces on the range. In the meantime, be sure to visit the LODESTAR Technology website to learn more. MSRP: $979.99
Publisher/Editor Barbara Baird is a freelance writer in hunting, shooting and outdoor markets. Her bylines are found at several top hunting and shooting publications. She also is a travel writer, and you can follow her at https://www.ozarkian.com. View all posts by Barbara Baird
