A bill before California lawmakers would require all new semiautomatic pistols sold after 2010 to have a microscopic laser that would etch a tiny stamp into bullet casings every time the gun is fired. The stamp would have the gun’s make, model and serial number in two places, which would help to track violent criminals.
Supporters of the bill say it is not likely to cause a stir among guns-rights groups, as they wouldn’t be required to turn in their weapons to be updated. Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., have announced plans to introduce their own micro-stamping bills in Congress.
Posted by Andie Clum
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47 Comments
While this has its merits, the solution may be ahead of the technology, costs, and other concerns. I found this page which lists the objections: (Yes, it’s NRA, but just read the details)http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=9500
Micro-stamping is also a technology that is easily manipulated or altered.
Micro-stamping actually may make it harder and more expensive for Prosecutors to find the facts in a case involving the firearm as they now have an extra step to link the micro-stamping to a crime case.
Micro-stamping could possibly be used in criminal cases where a shell casing could be picked up from where it was fired, regardless if it was on a crime scene and redistributed to a crime scene as a “set up.”
Micro-stamping flaws occur on guns that aren’t well maintained.
Micro-stamping may alter the groove identification usually identified by Criminalists.
Micro-stamping may be a violation of the second amendment as it violates the rights of the gun holder when additional measures of identification are not Constitutionally tested by the various laws that allow them.
Micro-stamping may inhibit gun range owners from collecting casings as they now can be identified with the owner as personal property. (Again, no Constitutional means were tested under the second Amendment.)
There are more issues, but the idea has some enormous flaws and the technology may cause more havoc than those cartridge using weapons in older models.
One more step to the government becoming an even bigger brother than it is now.
I wonder what this technology will add to the cost of a firearm. Will it be like some of the other firearm safety technology that requires the shooter to wear a special ring or bracelet?I’ve worked around some laser etching equipment and as I recall, it was very finicky. How will it perform under the conditions it will be exposed to in a weapon?
How long will the “do-gooders” leave existing firearms alone? Keep in mind, a quality weapon can last over 100 years. I have a .410 that’s over 70 years old and shoots like a gem.
Not to worry. Tiahrt and the NRA won’t let it happen. It’s something Kennedy wants, you know.
The NRA also opposed adding taggets to explosives. These were finally done and they have helped track them when used improperly.
When Ben – name one case where explosive taggets have helped solve a criminal case.
Then of course for the laser etching process to be effective, EVERY handgun and EVERY handgun owner would have to be REGISTERED by the government.
And you assume the criminal will NOT pick up his bullet casings after the crime. Probably some bullet casing “catcher” device will be invented to make sure no casings are left behind.
Instead of jut enforcing existing laws, the government continues its approach to fight crime through more lawmaking.
From my understanding of this bill, it’s not the bullet case that would be stamped – the bullet itself would be stamped as it is shot thru the barrel at anywhere from 800 to 1,200 feet per second.
Wonder how accurately this stamp is made on a bullet and how this stamp process works after several gun cleanings and hundreds of rounds are fired thru the gun?
And how often is any of the bullet fragmet recovered, much less enough of fragment to be able to read the stamp?
Brass catchers are available over-the-counter to prevent strays when range shooting… any brass that lands ahead of the bench at a firing range becomes property of the range since you can’t safely go out in the shooting area to collect your flyaway brass. The other question is reloads– people buy and sell recycled brass casings and remanufacture it as ammunition. Two microstamps on one casing. Maybe three. Four? Brass can be and is reused multiple times in a lot of cases. This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I suggest gun manufacturers simply stop selling weapons in the state of California, like Barrett rifles did when California passed a ban on the sale of .50 BMG rifles– Barrett refused to sell the LAPD SWAT team any more sniper rifles and canceled all warranties and service agreements with California law enforcement. See how a population which cannot legally purchase a new firearm can defend itself against ILLEGAL firearms already on the street. They’ll be as safe as the people in Washington, DC.
Great point Postal, reloading, hadn’t thought of that.
If you’re a criminal, you make sure you use reloads. If you’re a law abiding citizen, you use new brass only or find a way to file off any previous stamps from the casing during reloading.
If the stamp is on the casing, I guess that should end the debate on this issue, though I thought the stamp was on the bullet? The fragmented bullet will be much harder to find and to read.
Whether it’s the case or the bullet, this process won’t help solve one crime – so I’m sure California will pass it into law.
Hey, gun nuts, rapists can wear a mask and make identification impossible too.
Does that mean we shouldn’t have laws against rape?
It’s a common-sense way to track a bullet back to the weapon that fired it.
If you gun-nuts would get on the side of law-enforcement and take off the tin-foil hats, we’d be a lot better off as a society.
It would be better to make guns that read bio-metrics, that way the gun would only fire properly in the rightful owner’s hands.Tracking the gun’s make, model and serial number only applies to the original purchaser that the gun is register to.
Anti-Gun law makers are assuming that criminals do paperwork on gun transactions?I don’t think so.
Just walk on by Clarkie, just walk on by….
Just walk on by Clarkie, just walk on by….
Just walk on by Clarkie, just walk on by….
Just walk on by Clarkie, just walk on by….
Huh?
It looks like Republank has a new nic.
WS,
Since it was offline for 36 hours, it had to make up for it by repeating posts. Someone should tell it that by ineffectually trying to mock you, it only makes a mockery of itself.
Kennedy should forget worrying about guns and learn to swim
MDJ, the Senator from Massachusetts and the First Lady both have the same body count for auto accidents.
One each.
Yeah, but the first lady didn’t swim away from her victim and fail to report it for 24 hours.
This is another under-the-table attempt at grabbing the people’s guns. I am a liberal and a Democrat but this bullshit from Kennedy is getting on my nerves. They just cannot seem to get the message on how they destroyed the Democrats over this issue in the south and in places like Missouri and West Va. Hopefully the Democrats with good sense will shut this down really fast in D.C. and if Arnold, the REPUKE wants to sign it in California, we can add “gun snatching” to the other list of Repuke sins.
Gun Control is to Democrats as Abortion is to Republicans.
No LHG, she ran a stop sign and killed her former boyfriend that had dumped her that morning.
Kennedy had to sober-up before reporting the girl he killed. I wonder if he plays golf with OJ?
Right again, WSClark.
Now he’ll ask you to “prove” that it was him . . . heh, pathetic need for attention.
When I was in 6th grade, we had this kid Vernon Bartley that was stupid at everything except getting attention. He was always answering teacher questions with ridiculous answers he thought was funny just so all the other kids would say, “Vernon, shut up, you dope.”
Republican is that kid . . .
Walk.
On.
By.
Capn, that was YOU, not me.
Ah! Vernon caught Capn in a lie!
Of course he weasels out of bets too. What can you say about a man with no ethics or character. I can say he’s a hopeless fraud of a human being. :)
Capn,(bawk,bawk,bawk,bawk)
“What can you say about a man with no ethics or character.”Posted by: Republican | June 10, 2007 at 08:41 PM
You could say his nic is Republican.
(cue coward chicken noises)
Hope you and Mrs. XXX are healing up okay!
May I suggest some vitamin E capsules for your skin and for internal use as well. :)
Capn said:”Hey, gun nuts, rapists can wear a mask and make identification impossible too.
Does that mean we shouldn’t have laws against rape?
It’s a common-sense way to track a bullet back to the weapon that fired it.”
Oooooookay. #1. Much like rape, even without identification, we still have laws against:MurderAssault with intent to killAssault with a deadly weaponBrandishingIllegally carrying a concealed weaponIllegally transporting a weaponInterstate firearms commerceet. al.
The process does not mark the BULLET, it marks the CASING. Pick up your shells, useless. You will notice that in this law, revolvers are exempt from the microstamping because they don’t throw brass, they retain it, and so the technology is pointless. Marking the bullet would be a waste of time since any good defensive round is designed to deform and flatten out upon impact to effect maximum wound channel. The law is not retroactive, so any gun already in existence does not have this “upgrade.” If I put a new barrel in my Glock because it is damaged or worn, and I use a 2007 part on a 2010 gun, I am in violation of the law and could spend up to 10 years in prison for “tampering.” These microprinting stamps are easily removed with common hand tools, and will eventually erode with use, making me a felon. If I sell my used brass and some criminal uses the brass in a reload or reman ammo in a pre-stamping gun, then the crime is traced to MY legal gun, not his gun.
All gun laws are “well-meaning,” but they really only infringe the rights of the legal gun owners, since illegal gun owners and criminals rarely have the moral compunctions to follow the myriad of federal firearms regulations already on the books.
There are too many sinister possibilities for this to be a good idea. Besides, anti-gunners, Rwanda has a low incidence of handgun violence. They kill each other with machetes instead. No guns, though… safe country!
Btw, Cap’n, law enforcement does NOT support this legislation, nor are they opposed to CCW, or anything else. I had a sheriff’s officer tell me specifically that I should get my CCW license because it’s a good idea, and he wouldn’t go anywhere without his weapon.
Nothing more naive than he who has never BEEN the victim, telling other people that their rights to self-defense must be limited by their fear that they might one day be a victim.
Postal–
I have defended myself with a shotgun from a burglar already once in my life, so please don’t confuse me with a “scared-of-guns” New Yorker or something.
I just don’t see the harm in being able to trace a bullet back to the gun it was fired from.
Maybe this isn’t the BEST way to do it, but even if it only works part of the time–like fingerprints or DNA–what’s the harm?
As for your one conversation with a sheriff, I don’t have the time to research the law enforcement community’s stance on this–but I would think they would be for it.
How could they not be?
As for CCP, good for you . . . I may get one myself one of these days.
That’s wholly irrelevant to the issue of whether handguns should be designed so that the bullets can be traced.
I think they should. The only people it will cause problems for are criminals. It will make all of us, gun nuts or not, safer.
Excellent post, Postal. Very informative and I can tell your writing comes with experience.
Thanks for the insights and opinions!
What a suck up.
Really Clark?
It’s called paying someone a compliment for doing an informed, well written post. Perhaps your mama didn’t teach you such things. Oh yeah, she didn’t did she. :)
btw Clark…
(bawk,bawk,bawk,bawk)
:D
Capn–
It’s sort of like the “black boxes” in cars that are reporting all kinds of data–sometimes inaccurate–that is being used to convict people of more serious crimes in auto accidents, even though there is no standardization to prove that the readings on those boxes are even calibrated. It’s “nice” to know what the conditions were prior to an accident, with an event data recorder, but the fact is that erroneous data can and does get people convicted for things they didn’t do. Much like this microstamping… it identifies a piece of brass ejected out of a 2010-or-later semiautomatic handgun (not revolvers) to the person who fired it. Now, if I own one of these microstamping guns, if I fire it, I have to destroy the brass or reload it for my own use and pray it never gets stolen while reloaded. If I destroy it, I’m wasting valuable metal and resources, and if I reload it, and my stock of reloaded ammo gets stolen, then I have to worry that the bullets could be used in a crime and the shell casings will identify my gun.
It will take the average criminal only a few minutes to deface these markings, leaving only legal guns with the microstamping. Just like they love to file off the serial numbers on the receiver (and why California thinks that if they keep putting serial numbers on the gun in more and more places that this will stop.)
And for the less industrious, they can just go get themselves a revolver.
Nothing has ever stopped a dedicated criminal, who usually works for either the purposes of prestige and honor (gangs) or desperation and poverty (street thug, mugger, burglar) from perpetrating their crime with the best means possible, and creating a microstamping gun round about 2010 is going to have a negligible effect on crime. Considering that the average lifespan of a well-maintained weapon is almost indefinite, there’s a wealth of firearms already in existence that don’t have this and it will only increase the desire to steal a “pre-stamp” weapon rather than knock off a gun store or manufacturer for a “post-stamp” one.
Laws like this assume that criminals will abide by laws.
Brilliant!
If I were a criminal of course I would use a gun made after 2010 with this in it.
I mean, why wouldn’t I, a criminal, use a weapon with one of these in it?
I want to make things as easy as possible for the police to identify me.
Of course I would only use a gun with this system in it.
Of course I wouldn’t dismantle this system on the gun when I bought it.
Heck, I might as well just turn myself into the police to save them even more trouble.
If you honestly thing this is going to stop gun crime or help then you are naive.
This is the same old liberal anti-gun crap.
Just a different name.
“Just like they love to file off the serial numbers on the receiver (and why California thinks that if they keep putting serial numbers on the gun in more and more places that this will stop.)”
Actually if they required the serial numbers be stamped on the inside of the gun, it would be effective as you would have to destroy the gun to destroy the number on it. I don’t have any problem with that but I do have problems with lamed brained ideas like little lasers in the gun.
Anytime you put the numbers in, you have to have access. If you made sure that you would have to destroy the gun to deface the numbers, then police would have to destroy property in order to obtain the complete set of numbers. Although, I would probably allow a “probable cause” exception for destruction if a person had filed off two or three sets of serial #s to check if the fourth was in the “super secret place.” Filing serial numbers off of a weapon is a federal offense, is it not?
Pre-assembly serializing? Sure. Microstamping? No.
And Cap’n, you once again fail to make the distinction between the bullet and the casing, which together form a cartridge. The bullet kills, the casing is the delivery system, but the bullet isn’t marked and the casing is. If I pick up my spent brass, it doesn’t matter if the bullet is in your body because the bullet isn’t microstamped under this technology, the bullet casing in my shirt pocket is.
One. This is pointless; we ALREADY have it. Every firearm leaves unique marks on the casing (ejector marks, firing pin imprints, for example) that can be uniquely identified. Just as two bullets can be identified as coming from the same gun. Note that many new guns come with a fired casing just for this purpose.
And yes, Capn, this proposal is to mark the casing, not the bullet.
Two. If I’m a criminal, I don’t buy my guns from a dealer, and don’t “register” (and that’s what this is, de facto registration, and we know where that leads) that weapon. Just how will it trace to me? Duh.
Three. Remember the purpose here. The point here is not to make guns more traceable. That’s merely cover. The point is to drive up the cost of firearms and attempt to put firearms makers out of business. Why else would you mandate an expensive, easily manipulated and easy to defeat tracing system?
Once again, this is an attack on firearms makers and owners in the guise of public safety, which has little if anything to do with public safety. A cynic might say that those who push this type of system in fact don’t give a tinker’s d%#& about public safety.
A cynic might say that.
Once again: gun control isn’t about guns; it’s about control.
For those who care to and are able to read some technical details on micro-stamping:
http://www.nssf.org/share/legal/docs/microstamping/Backgrounder-Krivosta-AFTE.pdf
Course, if you don’t care to increase your knowledge and have any discussion of substance, just walk on by.
An even more detailed report can be found here:
http://www.nssf.org/share/legal/docs/AFTEVol38No1KrivostaNanoTag.pdf
Or just walk on by.