Possible new CA gun law

Great Debates
61

I never used to consider myself ‘pro-gun’. I’m jus someone that owns guns. This kind of legislation is another line drawn in the sand. Like the .50 BMG ban. The AWB ban.

We may eat our words. Perhaps there is a way to mark the bullets. But I doubt any type of marking will satisfy this legislation.

Do the people that wrote the bill care about crime? Did they do any research at all? Do they know anything about ballistics? Guns? Do they have am ulterior motive? Do they care about how this will affect honest gun owners?

Maybe. Doubtful. No. No. Possibly. No.

This is one reason why I don’t trust anti-gun, and most gun control folks. They don’t think things through.

62

:smiley: And another thing. :smiley:

Bullet / casing.

Do the legislators even know the difference? :smack: I don’t think that most of them do. They sure seem to think that they can legislate inventions and processes that don’t exist.

The idea seems reasonable. But it’s impractical and expensive. If not completely impossible.

I think, that those that support this idea don’t have any idea of how it could possibly be done. Sometimes things that sound easy aren’t. After all, we sent man to the moon. Why haven’t we sent a man to mars?

I also think that those same people would be happy if it prevented ammo from being sold in CA. Too bad, too sad. They will claim that the ammo manufacturers where given an option, when in fact, they where given an ultimatum that can’t be met.

63

He’s another reason it won’t work: The black market for unmarked bullets could be insanely lucrative. After all, your typical gang-banger only needs a handful of them probably for the rest of his life. So he’s not going to care if he has to pay $100 for them. That makes the black market bullets worth potentially 50-100 times more valuable than regular ones. As lucrative as drugs, and getting caught with them is just a misdemeanor. It’ll be a real growth industry. Any criminal with half a brain will be able to get them.

64

I mentioned reloading. I should also mention that I have personally fired WWII era ammunition with very few misfires.

Ammo has a very long shelf life when stored properly, and proper storage isn’t hard.

Given all of that, I’m wondering how anybody thinks this law could be workable.

65

I also see a problem with the reading of the serial number when a bullet is recovered. Each bullet serial number is unique, and an error in reading just one character of that serial number is going to identify the wrong owner of that round. Testing will have to be done to determine the accuaracy rate of reading the number on the fired bullet, and if that number isn’t pretty high then that evidence probably isn’t going to be uasable in court. IANAL, but wouldn’t any evidence that followed from an unreliable serial number reading also be suspect?

Then there is the issue of marking each bullet uniquely during manufacture, but the system may be somewhat more reasonable if lot numbers were on the bullet and records were kept of the buyers for each lot. The police can recover a bullet, read the lot number and get a list of several hundred or so buyers who bought that ammo. Once they have that they use good old fashioned detective work to narrow down the list of suspects.

66

Yet another issue is that bullets aren’t as stringently controlled as the guns themselves. Even if you correctly identified the person who bought the bullets, his defense is going to be, “someone must have stolen a bullet from me last time I was at the range”, or “I threw those bullets out a year ago. I have no idea how someone else got them” or “I bought them, but I didn’t kill anyone. Maybe there was a paperwork error at the gun shop?”

Since no one is about to open a box of bullets and hand-read serial numbers at the time of sale, there WILL be record-keeping errors. Bullets will get put in the wrong boxes. Boxes will be mis-labeled. No doubt there will be numerous other ways for the data to get screwed up.

Given all that, it doesn’t seem likely that a serial number match to a purchaser would stand up in court. It’s not at all the same as matching a bullet to a specific gun, which is in the posession of the accused.

So at most, the bullet match will probably only rise to the level of probable cause to justify a search warrant. So for this to work, we have to assume that A) the perp is stupid enough to shoot someone with a tagged bullet he personally purchased, B) The bullet is recovered and the serial number read, C) The crime is unsolved, D) the bullet match leads to a search warrant which uncovers more incriminating information.

And how much per year are people going to have to pay for this dubious benefit?

C) above is important as well. The type of crime where someone might shoot someone else with a tagged bullet would be your typical crime of passion - a fight breaks out and devolves into a shooting because a gun is handy. But do these types of crimes typically go unsolved anyway? Very few domestic murders go unsolved. Usually the killer is in custody almost immediately. Most unsolved murders are things like drive-bys, liquor store shootings, contract killings, or other murders by hardened criminals, and they are exactly the kinds of crimes that are least likely to involve tagged bullets anyway.

And as Mr. Moto pointed out, there are billions of rounds already in circulation. Are you going to require them all to be turned in? Most people who keep a gun for defensive use still have the bullets they bought when they purchased the gun, and 20 years from now they’ll still have those same bullets. Right now, I have about 1200 rounds of ammunition in the house, and not a single one was purchased in the last five years.

67

The bill is not there to attempt to help the Police find killers. The bill’s purpose is to stop the sale of ammo, which is a backdoor way to ban all guns.

It was rather like the original “cop killer bullet” bill, in Congress. No cop had ever been killed with those bullets, and in fact the only way to get them was to order them direct from the factory on from aPolice dept. No individual could buy them. However, the bill was originally written so that any round that could penetrate a "bullet proof vest’ would be banned. Since such vests are only designed to stop relatively lowe powered pistol rounds- the bill would have banned just about all rifle ammo from sale.

This is a similar bill. It won’t pass, and if it does, it’ll be vetoed. The Police don’t want it, nor will it really be of aid solving crimes. As other have pointed out:

  1. There are millions of “unregistered” rounds out there now.

  2. Reloading is cheap and easy.

  3. If criminals can buy a GUN and hide that purchase, getting hold of a few “untraceable” rounds won’t be hard.

Not to mention that Sam Stone makes some additional very good points right above this post.

68

I’ve called the bill stupid, because it is. It’s an impractical piece of feel good legistlation that could never realistically be implemented for reasons I have already stated, and that Una has now stated again, and that other people have stated. You have refuted not one of those practical reasons why this bill is absolute lunacy.

Note that I am not calling anyone stupid or a lunatic. I’m saying the bill, the argument before the CA state legislature, is idiotic.

It’s been done. I did it. Una did it. Read the posts regarding the ballistics, the impossibility of making these marks stand up to the deformation a bullet undergoes after it is fired.

But you don’t get to ignore all of that so that you can claim the sum-total of the opposition argument is merely calling this a ‘stupid’ bill. We’ve said why, backed by the science of lead projectiles, it is stupid.

I see. It doesn’t matter that I posted correct information. Perhaps I should’ve saved my bandwidth.

Not only are the casings typically thin pieces of brass that I really wouldn’t want to change the structural integrity of, since the firing of the projectile relies on the controlled expansion of gas, but also remember that many people ‘save their brass’ and reload.

You should also keep in mind that casings are a lot easier for the shooter to remove from the scene than the spent bullets are. Those criminals who can’t count on the time to pick them up and not leave them behind will either 1) steal ammuntion from someone else and therefore not be using any that is registered to them or 2) have their ammunition shipped in during the same black market cargo shipments as their drugs.

It also brought media attention, for the first time ever, to the fact that many police officers were wearing Kevlar vests. It made their jobs more dangerous that the ‘cop killer bullet’ non-issue was publicized because criminals then knew - aim for the head.

69

Not at all; I took (and take) your words at face value. :slight_smile: But I’m not aware of your education or technical experience, one way or another. It may have come up here on the Straight Dope, and I may have read it at one time or another, but I can’t recollect with any certainty what it may (or may not) be.

I said earlier:

Emphasis on the word know.

I’ve now taken the time to peruse your profile, and see that you’re a Computer Engineer; I’m assuming that that has a decent grounding in at least the basic hard sciences, but how much that (and your life’s experiences in “the workplace,” which I am also ignorant of) equates to manufacturing experience, I’m not sure. But as I cannot recall ever having had a substantiative dispute with anything you’ve posted (anywhere here on the Straight Dope), I can’t see how it really matters.

But Una’s knowledge and experience has come up before, and it stuck with me. That’s all.

70

Because she pretty much reiterated what I’d already said, and then she got the credit.

71

Thats simply not true. People said that it was impossible to mark a bullet and this was refuted by suggesting that the number go on the casing.

I see so the CA state legislatures aren’t stupid rather their argument is stupid and idiotic. That makes these insults so much better.

I assume you have cites to data or models that show there is absolutely no way to get a number on a bullet casing without making it dangerous to shoot?

I haven’t seen any science in this thread or any facts for that matter. What I saw in this thread was a bunch of people that saw “gun law” and came in and called it stupid without even giving it five minutes of thought. In fact you came into this thread and talked about the “outrageous and unreasonable expense” of putting serial numbers on bullets when in fact you haven’t the slightest clue at the cost.

Think about this for a second. The casing is strong enough to survive an bullet being fired from inside of it yet putting a number on it is going to be a safety hazard. Of course you have no evidence to back up this claim becuase again you haven’t the slightest idea on how they plan on putting the number on the casing.

You speak as though there are a bunch of evil geniuses running around there shooting people. In reality these criminals are not just stupid they are really freaking stupid. The fact of the matter is that rarely are shootings planned and are much more likely to be a result of a heated argument. A person who pulls a gun and shoots someone in a bar becuase they spilled their drink on them isn’t going to sit there and analyze what potential clues he is leaving behind.

Look clearly there are serious questions about the viability and effectiveness of a law like this. All I want is for people to take five minutes and think about possible solutions to their objections before raising them. It seems to me that a lot of people in this thread read ‘gun law’ and blazed into this thread spouting off about cost, practicality and effectiveness of this law without bothering to think.

72

I read the linked bill, which calls for marking bullets, not casings. So apparently marking the casing would not suffice to satisfy the requirements of the bill if it is passed.

Sometimes it is necessary to point out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

Would you like me to go out and perform my own experiments too? It’ll probably take some time for me to dig up the actual strength of a piece of brass the size of say, a 9mm casing, at the thickness they are, and then find out what happens when you deliberately make that brass surface even thinner at certain points. The gist of it is that the pressure of the expanding gases has to come out somewhere. The preferred outlet is to use them to propell the bullet out of the end of the casing and down the barrel. How deep a marking it would take to sufficiently weaken the brass so that the expanding gas punches a hole is not exactly something I can pull out of the air.

And let’s see, deformation of the lead projectile, the markings that are put upon the bullet as it travels down the rifled barrel, the fact that it is sometimes quite difficult for even a ballistics expert to determine caliber from only a badly mangled, fragmented piece of lead recovered from inside someone’s body or in a wall.

What about frangible ammunition that is designed to break apart on impact? How would a serial number survive that?

So is the barrel, until there’s a bit of rust in it. It takes a weak spot, somewhere that the pressure of the gas inside is more than what the wall can hold. Etching numbers into the side of a casing means deliberately weakening parts of it. Why does that seem like a good idea to you?

Cite?

How often does that happen? Remember that the NY ballistics fingerprinting program at a cost of $16 million has yet to actually solve a single crime, which means these ‘hot headed criminals’ must be as stupid as you think they are.

I did think about it. I came to the conclusion that it is ridiculous, unreasonable, impractical, feel-good crap.

It seems to me that thinking is exactly why they raised those issues.

73

treis, the linked article in the OP shows that the serialization of the bullet itself (you know, the part that comes out of the gun at high speed) is the goal.

Serializing the casing wouldn’t accomplish much. An awful lot of handguns arwe revolvers, and the casings do not eject when a revolver is fired. This was pointed out to you once, but you seem to have chosen to ignore it.

You want us to consider our objections for five minutes before posting them. I, for one, have put far more time than that into thinking about this issue. I’d appreciate the same consideration, and if someone points out to you that casings don’t eject from a revolver, you might want to mull that over for five minutes or so.

74

But at the time, her’s was the only one I could treat (for purposes of debate) as hard fact, even if my own background (and I was pretty sure yours as well) were “pretty darned good” informed opinion.

It was as if you and I had both been through separate divorces, and were answering questions pertaining to divorce, but Una was a specialized Divorce Attorney.

Upon reflection, I probably should have said something like, “Cat said it earlier, and Una confirmed it.” It would have been the more polite thing to do. My apologies for slighting your word, when I have no reason to doubt it (and personally agree with it). Peace?

75

No it doesn’t it calls for the serialization of ammunition. The only bullets that need to be marked are the ones sold to hand-loaders.

Then how exactly do you know if its a problem or not? If a normal casing can be shot 100 times but a serialized one can only be shot 99 times is that a big deal? The truth is that you don’t have the requisite facts to make the claim that putting a serial number on casings is a problem.

Again your interpetation of the law is incorrect.

Why do you think its a problem? I freely admit that I am not an expert on guns or ammuntion but I don’t think you are either. How much does putting a number on a casing weaken that round? How dangerous is it for a casing to fail inside a gun? This is all of course ignoring that there are other ways to put a number on a piece of metal that doesn’t damage its mechanical properties.

Deviant Behavior, Thio 7th edition

Deviant Behavior, Thio 7th edition

As to the NY program it bears little resemblence to the Ca program except that they both deal with guns.

Unless the legislature is trying to pull a fast one on us it seems that they are more concerned with the ammunition.

First off I didn’t ignore it.

Second I assume you have a cite showing that revolvers make up the majority of handguns used in a crime?

Perhaps you have been reading another thread but I have asked specific questions about most of the objections raised in this thread.

Do you know how much this program would cost? Do you know how often casings are recovered in a crime? Do you know if there is a tamper proof way of putting a number on brass? Do you know how effective knowing who purchased a bullet is in solving a crime? Do you know how often gun crimes are planned? How can you conclude its ridiculous unreasonable impractical feel-good crap without knowing the answers to these questions?

76

The bill, as I read it, also fails to address the surplus ammo market, which is freaking huge! I regularly by military surplus ammo for my Mausers and Garands by the can, thousands of rounds at a time. The idea of marking all ammo is a joke, and a poor one at that.

77

treis, that last quote was not mine.

78

I’ll take Door Number Two.

79

Yeah, a blanket universal prohibition would fix that, the same way it got rid of all the marijuana and cocaine…

80

If the number is large enough to be visible to the naked eye, it would remind crooks to file it off every time they loaded their guns. That seriously undermines the “yeah it can be defeated but some crooks are stupid enough not to bother” argument.