CA Microstamping vs NSSF

Shooting Wire:
(May 07, 2014)

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Oral arguments, originally scheduled to be heard Wednesday in Fresno Superior Court, have been postponed until May 14 in the lawsuit brought by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI) on behalf of their members against the State of California to prevent enforcement of the state's microstamping statute.
 The state statute being challenged was enacted in 2007, but not made effective until May 2013, requires that all semiautomatic handguns sold in the state not already on the California approved handgun roster incorporate unproven and unreliable microstamping technology.
 Under this law, firearms manufacturers would have to micro laser-engrave a gun's make, model and serial number on two distinct parts of each handgun, including the firing pin so that, in theory, this information would be imprinted on the cartridge casing when the pistol is fired.
 "There is no existing microstamping technology that meets the requirement of this ill-considered law. It is not technologically possible to microstamp two locations in the gun so that required information imprints onto the cartridge casing. It is not even possible to consistently and legibly imprint on the cartridge primer the required identifying information from the tip of the firing pin, the only conceivable location for such micro-laser engraving, said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel.

We have repeatedly spoken out against Microstamping since 2007, and for exactly the reasons why the NSSF is not protesting enactment of the law in California (and in New York).

All states which have imposed this illegitimate restriction on firearms are aware that the technology is unworkable.  They don't care.  Their justification is that it will 'help solve crimes'.

Bullshit.

They imposed this unreasonable restriction of firearms specifically because it would make it more difficult for legitimate and legal firearms purchasers to buy guns.

Gun makers don't want to be held accountable for the efficacy (or lack of) of the technology if they attempt to apply it to their production process.  They are aware that:

• the process will not necessarily be accurate in tracing the firearm which last fired a cartridge
• if the cartridge imprint is illegible, it will be deemed the fault of the manufacturer ... not the fault of the technology; manufacturers face legal consequences
• the accountability process may not necessarily lead to the current possessor of the subject firearm
• any unproven technology is chancy at best, misleading in general, and subject to interpretation at worst

This is just one more arrow in the quiver of anti-gun state legislatures to compromise the Second Amendment Rights of their citizens.  They sit smug in their homes tonight in the sure and certain knowledge that they have stuck it to the "purveyors of instruments of distruction" ... the people who make and sell guns.

Sneaky, underhanded charlatans that they are, they profess to know better than their constituents that what is to be done for their own good.

It makes them look good to their gun-hating constituents, and they don't care about the "shall not be abridged" thingie. 

(Just one more reason why I'm glad I moved back to Oregon from California in 1976!_