US President Barack Obama is pushing for “smart gun” technology that would only allow the owner of a firearm to use it, the White House says.

The smart guns, which Obama called for in his January executive action on gun control, are designed to prevent accidental shootings or help find missing weapons.

The White House announced on Friday that Obama will use the power of his office to try to jump-start the technology.

“The idea is, are there a set of standards and guidelines that can be developed that would ensure that smart gun technology could effectively be used by law enforcement officers?” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

In order to move forward with the initiative of smart guns, the Homeland Security and Justice departments said they expect to complete the work of identifying smart-gun standards by October, “and will also identify agencies interested in taking part in a pilot program to develop the technology.”

“These common-sense steps are not going to prevent every tragedy, but what if they prevented even one?” Obama wrote in a Facebook post Friday.

The smart-gun technology provoked objections not only from usual opponents, but also from some police groups, which raised safety concerns about officers’ using untested smart guns in real-life situations.

Advocates, however, say using the guns would stop criminals from firing stolen guns, or children from accidentally shooting themselves or others.

Four in one owners of firearms in the United States say they are willing to buy a smart gun, according to a poll from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The survey shows that almost 60 percent of Americans prefer a smart gun or childproof handgun.

In a televised address from the White House back in January, a tearful Obama pledged to tackle gun violence, with or without the Republican-controlled Congress, which has snubbed previous efforts of his administration to tighten the nation's gun laws.

The president has also vowed to push ahead with a new policy; giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) access to mental health records of some Social Security recipients to better flag people, who might be banned from buying a gun.

Just this month, at least nine accidental shootings occurred in one week, which involved children as young as 2 years old.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in the United States every year, a number that includes accidental discharge, murder, and suicides.

The agency has put the total number of domestic gun deaths at 1.5 million between 1968 and 2014.