Encoded Ammunition: Ammunition Coding Systems

The Ammunition Encoding Systems website is a source of much technical information about micro-engraving serial numbers on the base of bullets.

This is one of the companies which confidently asserts that it can micro-engrave analog information on the base of bullets, and that this information will remain readable "by simply using a good magnifying glass".

Sounds incredible, doesn't it?

Why do we care about this website?
(a) This is the first corporate website that I have found which defines the claims which have obviously influenced legislators in at least a dozen states to generate 'Encoded Ammunition' bills based on these (inflated) technical claims, and (b) based on these 'inflated' claims, it's easy to understand why ignorant legislators could confuse 'feasible' with 'practical'.

What claims does ACS make about Encoded Ammunition:
Here's the money quote from the ACE main webpage:

In an effort to provide law enforcement with modern crime fighting tools, a new patentpending bullet identification technology known as the Ammunition Coding System (ACS) has been developed. ACS assigns a unique code to every round of ammunition manufactured, and by recording sales records, law enforcement personnel will be able to easily trace the ammunition involved in a crime and have an avenue to pursue and solve even the most difficult cases. The key to ACS is the unique code that is micro-laser engraved on factory-produced ammunition. This laser engraving is etched on both the projectile and the inside of the cartridge casing. Each code will be common to a single box of cartridges and unique from all other ammunition sold. The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser. This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations. The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

Wow!
That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Practical Magic, cheap and easy and effective.

Let's take a closer look at these claims:

In an effort to provide law enforcement with modern crime fighting tools, a new patentpending bullet identification technology known as the Ammunition Coding System (ACS) has been developed. ACS assigns a unique code to every round of ammunition manufactured, ...

That sounds wonderful so far. A 'new patentpending (sic) bullet identification technology ..." -- but we're left to wonder whether a company that can't spell 'patent pending' correctly can insure that the coding is truly 'unique'.

... and by recording sales records, law enforcement personnel will be able to easily trace the ammunition involved in a crime and have an avenue to pursue and solve even the most difficult cases.

Uh, wait a minute. ACS doesn't claim to offer the technology to 'trace the ammunition'. This assumes that the 'law enforcement personnel' are able to develop the technology. There is no assurance that ACS will make this technology available. This function is left to the imagination and competency of the "law enforcement" agency, or to the sponsoring state. Any guesses who will PAY for the development of this technology?

If your guess is that "the state" will pass the costs on to you, you're probably right.

The key to ACS is the unique code that is micro-laser engraved on factory-produced ammunition. This laser engraving is etched on both the projectile and the inside of the cartridge casing. Each code will be common to a single box of cartridges and unique from all other ammunition sold.

That's the scheme as envisioned by ACS, and it bears no practical relation to the manufacturing techniques currently used by bullet manufacturers.

The folks that make bullets have a slightly different priority, which is an Industrial Manufacturing Process; this is related to a Marketing Plan.

Here's what the Marketing Plan of a bullet manufacturer looks like:

1. Identify a bullet weight/caliber/configuration which we can sell .. either to the general customer base or to a 'niche market' (which means that not a lot of folks are buying this product, but we have to cater to their preferences anyway.)
2. Build a gazillian bullets which meet these technical criteria.
3. Find people ... usually ammunition manufactures, but maybe home ammunition reloaders .. who are willing to buy this product.
4. Box the bullets in lot sizes appropriate to the customer (50, 1000, 10,000, 1,000,000) and ship them to the customer.
   

The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser. This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations. The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

But wait!

The newly introduced 'Encoded Ammunition' bills require that an unique serial number will be assigned to each 'box' of bullets. That may be as few as 20 bullets, or as many as ... 50 bullets. It doesn't matter who the bullets are actually sold to, the manufacturer must plan for as few as 20 or 50 bullets (the number commonly boxed for rifle and pistol bullets, respectively), and vary the manufacturing process according to 'special orders'.

That grinding noise you hear is Henry Ford (the originator of 'Mass Production') rolling over in his grave.

If a bullet manufacturer responds to an order for 1,000 bullets, and produces 1,000 bullets with the same serial number, that manufacturer has no control over how the bullets are actually used by the purchaser. The buyer can reload 1,000 cartridges and sell them to, say, 200 customers, and the serial number will not be unique to each individual retail customer.

'Not a problem' for the bullet manufacturer', you say?
Wrong.
While the retailer is typically subject to fines from The State if the bullet serial numbers are not unique to the 'box' of loaded ammunition, the bullet manufacturer is subject to fines of up to $10,000 'for each occurrence', even if the bullet manufacturer has no control over the ammunition manufacturer.
Not only is the Bullet Manufacturer held accountable for situations beyond his control, he is subject to significant fines if he is unable to impose these controls over his customers. Given that a thousand rounds of bullets may be sold at less than $200 per thousand by the bullet manufacture, he can be charged $10,000 for each box (50 rounds) of ammunition created using these bullets ... call it 1,000/50 = 200 boxes of loaded ammunition at $10,00 per box, or (200 x
$10,000), or a 2 million dollar fine for selling one thousand bullets.

Am I the only one who considers this excessive? Yet it may be law some day.

But wait, there's more!

Many states have introduced bills which require the serial number on the bullets to match the serial number on the cartridge case. Assuming that everyone plays nice during the manufacturing process, how likely is it that this will happen when the bullet manufacturer is not the same corporate entity as the ammunition entity? Especially when, again, the job lots are 20 or 50 rounds per unique serial number and the manufacturer is required to guarantee... GUARANTEE! .. that the serial number on the case matches the serial number on the bullet?

Think of any manufacturing process with which you are familiar, and consider that the only sure way to match serial numbers include only (a) a very expensive scanning technology, which has not yet been created, or (b) a human-inspection process ... and we ll know how fallible humans are.

EVALUATION: This may be 'feasible', but it certainly isn't 'practical'.

To continue with fisking the ACS statement:

The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser.

Again, the burdon of enforcement is placed on the controlling political division ('The State'), and ACS grandly passes over the issue as if it doesn't exist..

Well, why should they acknowledge the complication? They're trying to sell a process; they have no investment in making it work!

And their website comments are absolutely accurate: IF (problematic) their technology works, and IF (problematic) the state can establish technology to take advantage of their technology, then the SCHEME may possibly (perhaps, but not likely PROBABLY, identify the original purchaser of the ammunition.

What is the value of this?

Zero.

Criminals already steal guns from houses; how much more likely are they to target ammunition which is even less likely to be locked up in a gun safe in the home of even the much more aware and conservative gun owner?

Let's look at the rest of the undocument, unsupported, irrealistic claims of ACS:

This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations.

The vendor of this technology acknowledges the limitations, but it is buried in the contextual bullshit. How likely is this to be noticed by the Casual Reader? Answer: not.

The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

There is no evidence presented to support this outrageous claim.

Look at the image presetned at the beginning of this post. Imagine there are five strips across any axis of the bullet base. Then imagine that only one of these strips represent readable data.

Do you believe that the remaining data is sufficient to identify the owner of the bullet?

"Well, do you, Punk?"
_______________________________

There are ... uh ... ONE reason to believe the extreme claims of this vendor: because you really want to believe that it has some value.

There are an untold number of reasons why you might NOT believe the claims; among them, that the vendor is desperately trying to justify a situation which is not at ALL practical in an industrial processing context, and any profit-motivated Bullet Manufacturer is unlikely to accept the added manufacturing and quality control requirements, even disregarding the financial penalties for events beyond their control.


Any acceptance of this manufacturing process as a 'standard' can have only one effect: that ammunition and bullet manufacturers would choose to drop out of the market, rather tan to meet insupportable regulations.

These bill are based on the biased and unproven technology supposedly available from ACS.

They would have no effect in the solving of gun crimes. Rather, they are an undeclared and IPSO FACTO imposition on the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms. They would not only make the purchase of 'legal' ammunition beyond the reach of most honest citizens, but they would also impose such unmeetable regulations on the infrastructure of ammunition Manufacture that legitimate businesses would rightly choose to go OUT of business rather than to attempt to meet the unrealistic restrictions ... and pay the unrealistic penalties ... inherent in the bills which this tantalizing pseudo-technology encourages.