I just received an email from someone who is positively outraged by the idea that the government (in several states) is trying to pass a law that requires all ammunition to have identification numbers on it. This ammo will be managed by both manuacturers and dealers, evidently in much the same way gun identification is managed:
I realize it has been proposed and not passed, but I really want to know what the objection is, on either side of the gun argument. In my opinion, this is not even remotely threatening to the 2nd amendment. If you feel it is, please elaborate.
The .pdf wont load for me but the first thing that pops into my mind is the same one when people start talking about outlawing guns. Do you really think criminals get their guns or ammo at the local gun store or the Wal-Mart down the street? No, they don’t. They either steal it or buy it on the black market. So now we have a situation where the crime scene will contain unmarked bullets and casings or where the bullets and casings can be traced back to gun owner who had the ammunition stolen from him. All this does is place the burden where it does not belong, the honest, law-abiding gun owner.
Are you saying that innocent people are going down for crimes committed with their stolen weapons? I’m sure it happens, but it’s not the norm. Nor would it be for ammo. Additional proof is usually required before an arrest is made. I can’t see this as being anything but beneficial in solving some crimes. I also think more accountability is a good thing. It’s pretty obvious that the current Most Urgent Issue with regard to gun control is not the fear that the militias can’t form and defend against the government; it’s far more important to reduce the crimes committed by criminals (or at least increase our chances of catching them when they do).
No, I am saying this really doesn’t do anything to actually catch the criminal or at least not much more than we have now. The criminal does not leave behind a paper trail with their illegally gotten guns and ammunition, honest gun owners do.
Any scheme to imprint a bullet (not the casing, the actual bullet) with a serial number that is unique and will be readable after firing is a practical impossibility.
Many bullets do not survive intact enough after hitting the target, and in fact are designed not to, such as hollowpoint and frangible ammunition.
Despite what you see on CSI, you’re not going to get a perfect, pristine bullet out of a wall, a body, a car door, etc and be able to read the serial number off it.
Beyond the obvious problems with the physical practicality, this would also be a monumental expense to design (if hypothetically it could be designed), and it, like the ballistic fingerprinting programs that have been devised, would eventually prove to be a waste of money, as there is no indication whatsoever that it would actually be useful in solving crimes.
There are millions of guns in this country that are completely unregistered and not on the radar of the government, and even more ammunition than that already in circulation. If someone really did want to murder another person with an un-serial-numbered bullet, it would be very very easy to obtain thousands of such bullets.
I agree, this is not the earth shattering answer to gun crime. However, it will help with some crime, and will possibly help with evidence, in some cases. The email I received is concerned that “they’re taaakinnng our bulllllets!” which is just fucking idiotic.
Are you sure that criminals don’t buy ammo from normal stores? I can certainly give it to you about the gun stuff, but hell, it seems like a lot of trouble to waste to make your own bullets or to import them when you can go get them at the store? If said criminal doesn’t buy them directly from the store then someone has to. Seriously, I doubt that criminals are making bullets or importing them for standard caliber weapons.
I like the idea. Bullets are dangerous and you should be responsible for them. If you buy bullets and they wind up in the hands of the wrong person, why shouldn’t you be investigated? The Second Amendment never mentioned your right to shoot something / someone and be anonymous about it. I’m not saying that if a bullet you bought kills someone then you ought to be held liable for murder, but someone should try to get to the bottom of it. I think people would be a lot less likely to shoot someone if they knew their calling card would be on it.
The result might be that criminals might go get black market bullets. But where would these come from? They’d have to come from abroad or home-made. It’s an impediment that is useful. We have a lot of laws that make it difficult to get handguns and the like now, and people always cry that it only makes it difficult for normal folks to get handguns, because the bad guys get them through black markets and the like. Sounds better than letting any criminal buy a gun at a pawnshop with no limitations. It’d kill the black market, but I bet we’d have more bad guys with guns running around.
I am unsure how much it would help at solving crimes but they claim the technology is reliable and cheap ($0.005/bullet). The cost addition is cited in the OP’s link. As for the tech:
Yeah I know…just them saying it. I’d like to see the study they are basing their numbers off of but there FWIW.
ETA: Note they also want to imprint the code on the inside of the shell casing which will survive just fine and would be readable if it is left behind.
The real motivation behind this is, in fact, to deprive us of ammunition. It works several ways:
If it is mandated by law that ammo must be serialized, but there is no practical way to do it, no ammo can be manufactured or sold.
Unless the machinery for serialization (if it even exists) is so cheap that its price is negligable, many of the smaller manufacturers will say “fuck it” and close up shop.
Unless it can be done for nothing, or close to it, it will drive the price of ammo up by some amount; for the people proposing this, it is actually desirable for it to drive up the price of ammo A LOT (See the Chris Rock routine quoted upthread).
Relatively inexpensive sources of ammo, like military surplus imports, since they are not serialized may be ineligable for import or sale depending on how the law is written.
As a crime control tool, this is little more than a joke. It is nothing but an obvious attempt to enact gun control by tools who know they don’t have the support for what they really want…which is to outlaw guns in general.
It will greatly increase the price of ammunition. Bullets are mass produced. Stamping or laser etching a unique ID number on every one will mean retooling lots of assembly lines. The website claims this isn’t true. I don’t believe them.
It will be ineffective, for several reasons. (1) Recovering an intact bullet is problematic. (2) There are literally hundreds of millions or billions of rounds of ammo currently existing in the USA. Stocking up on non-ID ammo will be trivial. (3) Unless all states pass the law, getting new manufacture non-ID ammo will also be trivial.
It will place yet another ridiculous burden on gun dealers. Every ammunition purchase has to be recorded & stored for 7 years? What about states where you aren’t required to currently provide any proof of identity to purchase ammo? Will they all of sudden be required to do so? Hell, I live in one of the most restrictive gun states in the nation, and I’d still be pissed if I had to be recorded every time I bought a brick of .22 for pistol matches.
The proposed bill mentions “assault weapon” ammunition. Given that many, if not most, of the “assault weapon” ammo sold in the USA is military surplus .223, will this market then become illegal? This will also greatly increase the cost of this ammunition. Commercial .223 is a lot more expensive than milsurp.
The bill calls for dealers and private individuals to get rid of all their non-ID ammo by 2011. I really, really, really hate laws that require me to get rid of something that I currently legally own. So should you.
As I just noted they want to imprint the casings as well as the bullets. So as long as all casings were sold with a number you are halfway there. Of course people could try to collect their spent casings after committing a crime but not always.
Other items are serialized and no one else seems to be complaining. What is so difficult about this particular industry that they wouldn’t be able to follow suit?
Oh well…it won’t be the first time a product went up in price in order to accommodate a change.
Then they need to start serializing.
That may be true, but no one is taking away your bullets, so why would a law-abiding citizen even care?
Assuming that the claims are correct (price of half a cent per bullet and 99% successful identification), and assuming that the proposed bill were changed to allow existing ammunition to be grandfathered indefinitely, would there still be an objection? The former is just a matter of fact, and will be confirmed one way or the other eventually, and the second is a change to a part of the bill which is almost impossible to enforce and probably not necessary anyway (how common is it to keep ammunition for years at a time, anyway?).
Quoth Amp:
Yes, but they still have to steal or buy it from somewhere. If a legitimate gun owner gets robbed of some ammunition, why would they not report it to the police, same as if anything gets stolen? And those black market sellers… Either they’re getting their ammo legitimately, in which case they can get in trouble when the ID codes trace back to them, or they’re getting it illegally, too, which just pushes the question back one level. Sure, there would still be homemade or imported ammunition, so it’d still be possible for a sufficiently resourceful criminal to get untraceable bullets, but even just hindering the non-resourceful criminals would be a good thing.
Laser etching is a well established industry. Lots of machines out there for this and they are freaking fast at doing what they do. It would just be adding a step to the manufacturing process and should be doable. While doubtless such a machine sufficient for manufacturing is expensive (to our minds) on a cost/unit basis I cannot imagine it adds up to much and should be an easily recoverable cost almost unnoticed by the consumer.
Now it may not be a useful idea but I think it is a doable idea without significant burden to manufacturer or consumer.
The first two points always bug me in these debates. The “don’t start because there are already things without “X” out there”. True there is a helluva lot of ammo out there already. But it gets used and does not last forever. If (note I said “if”) this was a useful tool for law enforcement then no reason not to start now. It may be 5 or 10 years before a lot of the old ammo is gone but that does not argue against starting. Sooner or later marked ammo would dominate.
I agree on point #3. It’d have to be a national law or useless.
I’d like to think technology can handle this. No need to fill out five pages of forms. Just grab info from your credit card you use to purchase or read the bar code on your driver’s license and such. I’d hope most merchants are using a computer these days and bar code readers are cheap (as are PCs). If they are still on pen and paper and a handshake they can join us in the 21st century. Besides, as a gun dealer I presume they need to do record keeping and such already so they should be setup to some extent to comply with what is already there.
Yeah…that sucks. As an aside (I really do not know) how long of a shelf life does ammo generally have? Doubtless it is different for different shells and doubtless some are made to hang on the shelf a lot longer than others but is there a ballpark figure? Shouldn’t you be firing your oldest shells first and replace with newer stuff?
That said I would think some sort of replacement option at no cost to the consumer be in place for a bit if they did this. At least for a few months so people could comply at no cost.
Kalhoun,
It’s clear enough where you stand on the issue. Clearly, you are in favor of driving the cost of ammunition up and the availability down. There’s no point in turning this thread into another pro/anti thread as to why that is or isn’t desirable.
Well, actually, since it’s my thread, if I wanted to, I could turn it into anything I want to.
I’d like to see the stats that show how much the cost of ammunition will be driven up. And availability? You really think it’s going to be hard to find bullets in The U.S. of A? Come on.
