Three months after President Obama directed several government agencies to investigate the viability of smart guns, his administration announced Friday that the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security will publish smart gun standards for federal, state, and municipal law enforcement.

The requirements are expected to be finished by October, and the administration hopes they will jumpstart the real-world deployment of smart gun technology in the private firearms market as well. The announcement comes as part of a joint report from DOD and DHS that outlines a strategy to promote gun safety technology.

In development for years, the technology uses electronics to ensure that only certain people can fire a gun. They include fingerprint sensors and RFID tags, according to the report, that identify the authorized owner and disable the gun if someone else tries to shoot it. That would limit the misuse of police officers' guns, whether they're seized by a suspect resisting arrest or accidentally discharged by a member of the officer's family.

Obama has been pushing the technology since 2013, but progress has been incremental. The Department of Defense has a testing program at a Maryland facility that helps manufacturers test their smart firearm designs under real-world conditions, according to a blog post on the White House website.

But some major American gun manufacturers have shown little interest in pursuing smart gun research. In 2014, gun makers Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger Co. slammed a California law requiring semiautomatic pistols to be equipped with technology called microstamping, and said it could result in fewer of their weapons available for sale in the state.

The National Rifle Association said it isn't against smart gun research, but it will oppose any future law prohibiting Americans from acquiring or possessing firearms that don't have the technology.