The dangers posed by highly destructive, easily concealable weapons have led the courts to make specific exceptions to their search and seizure jurisprudence so as to permit searches for handguns without the rigors imposed for other searches. In doing so, the courts have been constrained by the currently available technologies; the outcomes they produced were disappointing, not because of any problems with the search doctrines they created, but rather because there were not technologies that would permit the narrow searches for weapons that the courts were permitting. This is changing. In recent years, there has been a push to create alternatives to the traditional methods of searching for weapons. These technologies hold great promise in the field. They can protect officers while conducting searches; they can minimize the intrusion upon law-abiding citizens; and they can limit the ability of law enforcement to use searches for weapons as pretenses for general contraband searches; however, the technologies are not without problems. They will present difficult problems for judges forced to determine the scope and range of permissible searches for weapons in the context of an ever-changing technology. 154 footnotes