forgive me if i missed this one, but i a quick glance at the last couple of days didn’t revela this debate.
I heard a blurb on NPR this morning about a proposal to test fire all guns before sale and creating an huge archive of gun “fingerprints” for future reference in the even of a crime.
The gun lobby is already steaming, and Dubya is already saying its not worthwhile. So a couple of questions…
is it possible to change the “fingerprint” of a gun in any way, thereby working around this?
How on earth is this an infringement on the right to bear arms, and why is it a bad idea?
-Assuming you pickup your empty cases, a smooth-barrel shotgun leaves no ‘fingerprint’.
-Change the barrel, extractor, and ejector, and firing pin. Depending on what is being changed, (rifles tend to be difficult, on most semi-auto pistols, it is simple), this would leave zero forensics ‘stuff’ traceable to the pistol/rifle.
-Forensics is not what it is cracked up to be. Note that the nations’s finest do not know (or maybe aren’t saying) what type of gun is being used in the DC-area attacks, yet they have bullet fragments and brass.
-The deadliest single attacks in this country used unregistered pre-ban box cutters. Not scary guns.
-There are already several million firearms out there. The silly little ‘fingerprinting’ plan would be pointless.
-And Max Torque’s second point. Probably most important of them all.
fair enough, on the #1, but i’m not sure i buy the answer to #2, in so far as you guys have explained it. a gun is an object, not a fingerprint which IDs a person. Computers have IP addresses, Cars have VIN#s, even pets get ID chips in thier ears at most shelters.
We already keep records of who owns guns, so how does a establishing a record of what SPECIFIC GUN one owns violate anybodys rights? And how is that info realistically abuse-able?
Maybe it is a dumb idea, but i don’t think i see how its a violation of anyones privacy.
And as far as what the feds know about the sniper, a friend of mine (old vietnam era rifleman) claims that its pretty easy between the shell type, the entry and exit wound, the distance etc, to figure out what kind of gun is involved, so if they aren’t telling, its probably to make life harder for potential copycats.
Again, this is second hand info, without a cite, so I’m open to being proven wrong.
and the ol boxcutter chesnutt has very little to do with what i am saying here. I’m not really interested in rehashing the generic gun control debate thats been raging since the dawn of time. I was really asking: what is the NRA opposition to this specific “thread to our civil liberties”?
No, we don’t. That’s the whole point. Even with NICS, the government record of your purchase is destroyed within 72 hours. (IAW the law) The store where you purchased your firearm keeps records, but I don’t recall if they keep “who” they sold the firearm to on record.
I am unaware that anyone is legitimately fighting “gun ID’s” from a Civil Liberties standpoint. Well I’m sure some are but I don’t really see the point. I more see it as a waste of time and money. Let’s assume that each gun manufacturer was required to send a slug and spent cartridge fired from each new gun, along with it’s serial number to some government office somewhere, what crime fighting advantage would they gain that they don’t have now?
I’m sure there would be a good number of cases where some idiot got drunk and shot his neighbor in some stupid dispute where the cartridge and slug data could indicate that the slug in the dead neighbor was a 97.8% match with the gun the eyewitnesses saw the drunk firing. But most crimes of this sort could be solved by preexisting means.
On the other hand I could go buy a brand new S&W revolver, pass the Brady checks, wait the mandated period and once home with that gun take 30 minutes to make it unrecognizable to any gun ID system. I grind off the serial #'s, slightly bend the fireing pin and run a rat tailed file down the barrel. For good measure I wrap the grip, trigger and guard with matte tape and wipe off all prints and I’d be ready for the Michael Corleone restaurant scene from the God Father. Every penny you would spend on the National Gun ID Database is thwarted by a few minutes of my time.
As with most gun laws, the ID system would be an annoyance to legitimate gun owners and would do next to nothing to stop criminals who use guns.
For the moment we’ll assume the person hasn’t just gone ahead and switched the barrel of his pistol. The first problem you run into is that guns are machined these days and not hand made. This means that one brand new Glock 17 is going to have almost exactly the same fingerprint as all the thousands of other new Glock 17 pistols out there. The next problem you run into is that every time you shoot your firearm you’re going to change the fingerprint. The amount of change will vary depending on the ammunition you use, how frequently you fire it, the conditions under which you fire it, how well you clean it, and many other factors. After a few years the fingerprint someone took of my Glock 17 is going to be useless.
Fingerprinting all those guns is going to cost money and take time. If it raises the price of firearms to much or takes to long for them to complete then an arguement could be made that it infringes on the right to bear arms.
Computers have IP addresses because they have to. You must have a unique indentifier in order for the correct data to get to the correct machine. IP addresses have nothing to do with law enforcement, except by way of coincidence. Your house has a unique address, too, becuase it must.
Cars have VINs because the also must be uniquely identified, ultimately, for the collection of taxes, some of which are used to support the infrastructure necessary to support the use of that car. Again, while VINs may be used in solving some crimes, this isn’t their primary purpose, and except in the case of stolen automobiles (and perhaps even then) they are of little use to law enforcement agencies.
Pets at most shelters get ID chips? New one on me. I thought most strays captured, or turned in to animal shelters euthanised in short order. What would be the point of ID’ing a dead dog? Anyway, at this point in time, animals have no rights.
You are suggesting we “fingerprint” firearms solely as a hedge against the possibility they may be someday used in a crime. This is a whole different story. Just how expensive, assuming one day the technology becomes available, do you think an undertaking of this would be? Also, there are far more than the “several million firearms” in circulation that Brutus has talked about; there are more than two hundred million. As he’s said, your “fingerprinting” scheme would do not a damn thing about those. Further, the useful lifetime of a well-maintained firearm can exceed 100 years, so you’re talking a) 100 years before you’ll have a “complete” registry, and b) data that must be maintained for 100 years or more.
Also, and this could be one of the “civil liberties” objections you’re seeking, what happens in the case of the inevitable errors? What happens when the cops knock on my door and say, “Come with us Mr. Beer. We’ve found that one of the guns you own was used in a shooting death last evening.” In case you haven’t noticed, government agencies do not function perfectly.
Add c) to my list of objections above:
c) ID’ing firearms themselves would do nothing. That gun must also be traced to the current owner if law enforcement would be able to do anything a gun ID. Therefore, in addition to the firearm data, you must also maintain a complete registry of gun owners and their guns. This is, again, a civil liberties objection.
And allow me to wrap up UncleBeer’s arguments with d) the end result is treating all gun owners as potential criminals. This is unethical, immoral, and at this time, illegal.
Here’s some interesting news on this subject I got from www.nssf.org, the National Shooting Sports Foundation just last night. There is currently a bill before Congress H.R. 3491 which would fund a study to be done by the National Academy of Sciences. The goal of this study would be to “determine the effectiveness of ballistic imaging technology and evaluate its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.”
Again, few people consider it a civil liberties violation to maintain a complete registry of car owners and their cars. However, your comment does bring up another sinister possibility:
If we maintain a Ballistic-Fingerprinting Firearms ID database, but don’t maintain a registry of the guns’ owners, then what will we be tracing when we do ballistic analysis on a bullet that was fired in association with a crime? I’ll tell you what we’ll be tracing. We’ll be tracing the make, model, and manufacturer of the firearm.
With all the ridiculous lawsuits facing gun manufacturers nowadays, in which the gun manufacturers are being blamed for the actions of criminals who steal their guns, this ability to tell which company manufactured a gun used in a crime can only make matters worse. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the ballistics database clearly shows that the gun used at this liquor store robbery was manufactured by Glock. This proves that Glock is to blame for holding up this liquor store. Please award the liquor store owner 5 million dollars in damages, to be taken out of Glock’s pockets.”
This is yet another registration scheme, and the gun-control wackos shot themselves in the foot (pun intended) on this issue a long time ago.
There is nothing inherently wrong with gun registration in and of itself. However, when the same people proposing it have as a stated goal abolishment of firearms ownership, it it interpreted by gun owners as handing the fascists a list of houses to visit.
This impression is bolstered by the fact that this same scenario actually happened in Nazi Germany and, very recently, in Australia and Britain.
You’ll not find many of us gun owners supporting registration now, and the gun control wackos have themselves to blame.
So by your argument guns should be free, since you are allowing infringement to be on a sliding scale. If putting up the cost raises infringement, then lowering it - ultimately to zero - must by definition lower infringement.
“Does recording every car’s VIN and requiring them to sport a license plate mean that we treat all car owners as potential criminals?”
This comparison is not valid. I have yet to hear of a group that advocates the confiscation of all cars, but I hear it all the time with guns. I don’t hear anyone saying a particular car should be banned, and then actually pass that ban, then use the VIN to round up and confiscate all cars that fit the profile, as was done in CA in regards to some semiautomatic rifles.
I’m not really sure how you reached that conclusion. I just don’t think legislators should be allowed to enact a defacto ban on new firearms by making them cost to much or getting rid of inexpensive firearms. Sort of like poll taxes that were designed to keep poor blacks from voting.
I am curious if anyone has a cite about how the rifling of the barrel changes the more it is fired. If that’s true, then that should scotch any discussion of ballistic fingerprinting as impractical, without getting into dicussions about rights.
If it costs several million a year to fingerprint all guns, only to have the rifling marks change within a few years, then it would seem an incredible waste of time.
There is a system already in place by which BF takes place on a nationwide basis, but it is used to link bullets from various crime scenes. It’s called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), and it has been used to tie a weapon to several crimes, even allowing on perp who was arrested for aggravated robbery to be linked to several murders. (No cite, but the page was headlined “Some of NIBIN’s Success Stories”).