More on California Gun Microstamping Law from The Captain's Journal

The Captain's Journal: s Judge Upholds California Gun Microstamping Law:

A federal court has rejected a challenge to California’s gun safety law, possibly paving the way for a requirement that new guns mark the bullets they fire so they can be traced.

The Captain's Journal doesn't go far enough in describing the Ill Effects of the California Microstamping Law.

And there are some inaccuracies there.

In the first place the Microstamping does NOT encode the BULLETS, but the base of the fired cartridge.  That's an important difference.

(Scroll down for an explanation of "Encoded Ammunition", which is not the same as "Microstamping Ammunition" .. but still is almost as impractical!)




Microstamping Ammunition:

The concept of "microstamping ammunition" is only slightly less bizarre than "Encoded Ammunition:.

"Microstamping ammunition" does not necessarily involve a major burden on the manufacturing of ammunition.   True, an identification code is emobssed on the *expended* brass fired from a pistol, but it does not require a change in the process of ammunition manufacturing.

But it does require a significant change in the process of manufacturing of a firearm which is intended for sale in the state which enacts the MICROSTAMPING law.


It requires a breach-block embossing of an unique code during the manufacturing process.

That code would be stamped into the base of every round fired in those firearms.

* (Revolvers are supposedly exempt from this law, because the "Common Logic" assumes that expended brass would not be ejected from a Revolver at a crime scene.  We can only guess at the connection with this law and 'logic'; but that is left to the student as an exercise because I can certainly not find much logic in any of this legislation!)*

The justification for these requirements is supposedly that it would permit the identification of the firearms which fired the shots which ... I don't know ,,, were the cause of some crime?  (It IS proposed as a 'crime-solving' measure.)

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THIS MEASURE:

If a semi-automatic weapon were fired at a crime scene, and  the expended brass were left on the ground, the act of firing the ammunition would result in the identifying encoding being embossed on the base of the expended cartridge case.

That would allow law-enforcement officers to identify the specific, semi-automatic firearm which fired the cartridges, and track down the criminal who owned the gun.

Well ... only if the firearm was registered.   Which is not part of current law in California .. but of course, it is a logical adjunct of the 'crime-solving' effort, so of course if you accept "MICROSTAMPING" you must also accept REGISTRATION.

And you know where that that leads.


Oh ... that seems to complete the theme.




Encoded Ammunition:
  There are movements afoot ... not currently active in state laws, but proposed ... to require that all ammunition sold should have a serial number stamped on both the cartridge and the bullet.  This requires that every single box of loaded ammunition be uniquely stamped at the factory, and that ever purchaser provide positive Identification (minimally, in the form of a driver's license) to complete the purchase.  

That would require the manufacturer to put unique identification on every bullet in every box of ammunition, the wholesaler to record every unit (box) identifier, and the retailer to record the same information.  The retailer would then require the purchaser to provide unique identification, and then submit their purchase record to some central national database.

This is a patently bizarre pipe-dream which would be bureaucratically cumbersome and and commercially impractical.  Not even Californian legislators have mandated this bizarre requirement ..... yet.