Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@blackwolfapp
Topics: News, Crime, Technology, US News
Rachel Lang
A new ride sharing platform has dropped in the US that will allow drivers to carry guns while taking strangers from A to B.
Black Wolf, an app designed to rival Uber and Lyft, recently launched in Atlanta and is about to drop in New York.
App founder Kerry King Brown revealed he created the app as a 'necessary evil'.
"Who are mostly on the news getting robbed, getting raped? The average person," Brown told Atlanta News First.
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"What I’m creating is a necessary evil. It’s a necessity."
Brown is no ordinary driver. And he's no regular man with a plan, either.
He is a private investigator and has worked as a bodyguard for celebrities and politicians.
Now he wants to share his own brand of 'executive protection' with the world.
"I’m catering to the people who see this as a value who want to take their life seriously," he said.
His new ride-sharing app lets you request a driver who is armed and allows users to select armored or non-armored transportation options.
All drivers are legally armed with experience in the military, law enforcement, or private security and are trained in de-escalation tactics in case of disaster.
Plus, every Black Wolf App vehicle comes equipped with GPS tracking and live-streaming technology that allows riders to share with their loved ones to keep both their passengers and drivers safe.
The service has been on offer in Atlanta since 2021, but launched their app last week and will soon expand its services to New York.
And the app has been going gangbusters, with more than 79,000 downloads in just over one week, Forbes reports.
In Atlanta, the base price for an armed driver is USD$60 (AUD$90.18, £48.25), USD$50 (AUD$75.16, £40.22) if they’re unarmed, and then you pay about USD$1.75 (AUD$2.63, £1.41) per mile on top of that.
Black Wolf user Jackelyn Eckles revealed she will gladly fork out to see her armed driver get her home safe.
“I think everyone deserves to feel safe,” she told Atlanta News First.
"I just feel like there’s been too many incidents on different platforms."
American users can download the app for free on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
It offers three different services: Armed Executive Protection, Unarmed Executive Protection, and School Executive Protection.
The latter is marketed as a way to send kids to school in the safest way possible as gun crime continues to rock the US school system.
As per the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 234 mass shootings in the US this year alone.
At the time of writing, there have been 141 days so far in 2023.
The number of children killed in mass gun attacks - so kids aged from newborn babies up to 11 - currently sits at 102.
A further 242 children have been injured in said attacks.
A massive 592 teens (youths aged from 12 to 17) have been killed in 2023 in mass shootings.
A further 1,476 teens have been injured in 2023 due to mass gun violence.