California Microstamping

The BBQ Pit
1

Yes, this is another gripe about what I consider a foolish law, and no, I don’t live in California, so let’s get that out of the way right now.

Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill requiring microstamping of rounds fired from a semi-automatic handgun yesterday. What this entails is placing certain information onto the firing pin of a handgun which will be transferred onto the primer of a shell casing. This information will be cross-referenced with a registry of handguns to determine where the handgun came from.

There are numerous problems with this. First, it requires that the gun stamp on the cartridge case. This is distinct from the primer, which is a component of the cartridge. For that matter, so is the bullet. Where, exactly, is the stamp supposed to be placed? The law is silent on that. So what does that mean? It means that it can be interpreted to mean anything at all. There will be an added expense to the manufacturers which will be passed onto the customers to pay for this, and who knows how long it will take to resolve this ambiguity to California’s satisfaction. In the meantime, guns tagged for this technology will not be allowed to be sold.

Second, revolvers are tacitly exempt from this because the shells do not eject. The savvy criminal will recognize this and adjust accordingly. Or maybe they’ll simply file down the markings on the firing pin, which would make the gun illegal (due to the modification of markings on a gun) but will not leave any markings. How does this affect the legal owner? Firing pins break. When they are replaced, do they have to have the same markings? If so, who will do this? If not, well, it’s easy to replace a firing pin. Is it criminal to fix your property? The law is silent.

Last, how easy would it be to go to a public range and pick up some rounds with the markings on them and scatter them roughshod at a crime scene, thus implicating an innocent man/woman in a crime? Now everybody has to pick up their brass with extraordinary care to protect themselves. A single one could conceivably get you in trouble. If the markings are on the brass, can you reload them? How can you even throw them away without concern that someone will collect a few and implicate you vis a vis identity theft?

I don’t believe that this law will be effective in catching criminals, for the reasons expressed above. It’s so easy to ignore that it will be ignored wholesale except by people who feel as I do, that laws are to be obeyed. It’s an old, tired cliche, but it nevertheless rings true: criminals do not obey laws, by definition. The Law of Unintended Consequences will almost certainly take a bite out of a few people because of this legislation. Is it worth potentially taking away the liberty of the innocent to solve some small number of crimes? That’s for you to judge. By now I’m certain you know what I think.

2

I remember the GD threads about this years ago. I believe the consensus was with you, as am I, that this was a stupid idea that cannot possibly work. How long before there’s a lawsuit challenging the law?

3

OK, I’m not following. Does the law say the markings would be transferred onto the primer (as you said first), or that it doesn’t say where it must be placed? :confused:

My semiauto firearms have the pin protruding from the bolt. The only place it could place a stamp is on the primer. Stamping onto the head (if it were possible) would be a problem because they are already stamped by the manufacturer. There’s no way to ensure a microstamp will land in a free space as opposed to over a character.

4

The technology places the stamp on the primer. The law explicitly states “cartridge case”. The confusion inherent in that is reflected quite adequately in the OP, because I have no idea one way or the other. And that’s the rub.

See for yourself.

If the interpretation is in fact the case and not the primer they have just created a gun ban, because there is no way to mark the case without totally revising the construction and function of a centerfire handgun, which no manufacturer will undertake for one state.

5

I concur that this is a moronic law. It bans not only the transfer of these dangerous non-stamping weapons (now lumped in under “unsafe handguns”), but the manufacture. Which I take to mean that if you bought a new handgun that did transfer a stamp by way of the firing pin, you would never be able to install a non-stamping firing pin, because by doing so you would be manufacturing an unsafe handgun.

6

The law doen’t take effect until 2010, which is plenty of time for it to be challenged in court and thrown out. Push comes to shove, it gives us plenty of time to buy guns before the ban, move, or elect legislators and a governor who aren’t total blithering IDIOTS!

7

Airman Doors, USAF, lets remind people as to why certain elements push these stupid laws in the first place, and use “fighting crime” as a pretext for doing so:

There are those who don’t want anyone to possess firearms. Not just handguns and “assault weapons”, I mean anything whatsoever, including single shot hunting guns.
They won’t admit to this, but they want everyone completely and totally disarmed.
They want every privately owned gun collected and melted down. Not just certain guns, EVERY SINGLE ONE!

And these people are masters at incrementalism. A little bit here, a little bit there.
Which is why we can’t give them anything!

8

I thought a law had to be in effect before it could be challenged. Who would have standing if there were no law?

9

The law is asinine.

10

They’ve been so effective that I didn’t even trouble myself to register my displeasure at the gun registry that they will use to cross-reference the markings. Apparently I’m so inured to the concept of a confiscation list after all this time that I didn’t even think to mention it.

11

I may be confuse,d but even if you did punch the stamp onto the primer, and assuming the stamp would even show up later*, wouln’t it get exploded walong with the primer? :confused:

  • Looking at this more, here’s a big issue: what the heck are you going to use for the stamp? it would have to be VERY small and VERY intricate, since it will need a serial number to identify every single individual firing pin. And it will have to be effective so that it works virtually every single time. That’s no trivial engineering challenge. I have no idea how you could even get that to work with a part which is routinely exposed to small explosions.
12

No. Here is a picture of what I’m talking about, courtesy of Wikipedia.

You may be confused about the function of the primer, also. All the primer is is softer metal holding a more volatile explosive. When the pin hits the primer and deforms it, the explosive goes off which in turn detonates the main explosive (the powder) in a controlled manner. The primer is understood to be both the cap that holds the explosive and the explosive itself. We’re talking about the cap.

13

The primer doesn’t explode; just the charge it carries. The primer is a little brass cup holding the impact-sensitive explosive mixture. The firing pin (or hammer, in a revolver) forces the end of the cup into an internal ‘anvil’ to ignite the compound.

Here is what a fired primer looks like. Microstamping could be incorporated into a firing pin. It might be microscopic; it just needs to be readable even if you have to use a microscope. I’ve heard that some cases have been solved by matching machine marks in a firing pin with the indentation in a primer. Same concept, only easier if you’re actually reading informatio (that’s in a database somewhere) instead of scratches.

EDIT: And of course Airman Doors beat me to it with a better image.

14

The law kicks in in 2010, and the Department of Justice has to certify that the technology works and is available. I suppose that it’s possible for the DOJ to abuse it’s discretion.

Really the best practice would be to wait until the technology is available and THEN pass a law requiring that it be incorporated into handguns.

Comon, most criminals are morons. Anyone who feels it’s important to hold a gun sideways isn’t gonna worry too much about using a revolver versus a semi-auto pistol.

That’s just paranoid. Anyway, criminals could do that already with other objects.

You’re envisioning criminals as some sort of James Bond like superspy. That’s just not the reality.

In my opinion, the NRA needs to get behind some of these identification procedures – once they are feasible – and attach non-discretionary CCW as the quid pro quo.

15

This is useless for so many reasons, the biggest being that the case has to be present to read the microstamp. All the bad guy has to do is be smart enough not to leave the shell case around. Use a revolver and don’t dump the cylinder at the scene or pick up your spent casings.

Also, a majority of “illegal guns” are guns that have been stolen. If Joe Lawabiding buys a gun legally in Wisconsin, has it stolen during a burglary, and said gun is used to shoot the Mayor of San Francisco, all the shell casing is going to tell you is where Joe Lawabidings gun was during the time of the homicide, not who did it.

Worthless.

16

You’ve been watching too many movies. The gun-held-sideways thing is a stereotype, nothing more. And most criminals are intelligent in a street-smart sort of way. Pathological is not the same as stupid.

It’s not paranoid. Do you protect your Social Security number? Why? You think your identity will be stolen? Oh, that’s just paranoid!

Criminals have a way of wising up, otherwise we would have eliminated crime long ago.

What for? Non-discretionary CCW has been the national trend for the last 20 years. The NRA doesn’t need to peg anything to that. If California wants to be one of the few states that is not “shall-issue”, they are entitled to. My problem with all of this is that this nonsense may be exported to where I live. “First they came…” and all that.

17

Not so, because other objects like knives or baseball bats don’t have registered markings and a paper trail leading back to the original owner [refer to my previous post].

Whats true reality is that no gun control law has ever prevented a single gun crime. The Sullivan Act, The Gun Control Act of 1968, The Brady Bill, the “assault weapons” ban, and handgun bans, to name a few, have never prevented a single crime.
And neither will this. It will not prevent any crime and it will solve so very few crimes (if any) it’s value is minute’.

18

Proof?

I mean, this sounds like the kind of thing you couldn’t possibly know. Yet you seem so certain.

19

Some do and some don’t. Much of the garbage I throw away has information on it that could be traced back to me.

I would guess that these laws have prevented some crimes, enabled others, and on balance have not had much impact.

However, how much harm has come from the fact that guns are required to have serial numbers? And don’t you think it’s possible, if not likely, that a decent number of criminals have been caught after the fact because of the fact that guns have serial numbers? Or that the serial numbers have helped in obtaining convictions of a decent number of people?

20

It’s more a philosophical thing. Someone who is not inclined to commit a crime will have no interest in doing so, whereas other people who are so inclined will do so. Criminals do not obey laws, and since gun laws are laws the are not dissuaded by them, even though they are the only people targeted by them.

Since it’s impossible to measure in either direction, it’s really a meaningless assertion, but it makes for a pretty thought-provoking discussion.