California and Bullet Microstamping
Regarding the new legislation that RINO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, SF Gate reports:
The Crime Gun Identification Act, by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, forces gun sellers by 2010 to use so-called microstamping technology to imprint characters that reveal a gun’s make, model and serial number on bullet casings. It applies only to semiautomatic pistols sold in California.
“This is a really positive first step, and hopefully other states will follow California’s lead,” Richmond police Chief Chris Magnus said Sunday. “This is not the total answer for the challenge of solving some of these crimes. But each of these technologies can be a piece of a solution.”
Magnus said the technology may help police trace guns to their sources - including people who buy guns for others - and connect multiple crimes where the same firearm is used.
Opponents of the measure, AB1471, said the technology was unreliable and could be countered by gun users, and they raised the prospect of criminals dropping shell casings from other weapons at a crime scene to confuse police.
Firing pins can be filed or replaced, shell casings gathered at ranges could be “planted,” and if nothing else, this will add $200 dollars to the cost of a pistol sold in California — or cause gun makers to simply withdraw from the market there. Who gets hurt? Poor people who won’t be able to afford to protect themselves and their families. Expect revolver sales to pick-up.
Worse, though, this is true gun registration since there will be a record of the gun and it’s serial number and owner on file with state officials. I guess history has already shown what that usually leads to although California already has a track record of confiscating formally legal firearms from law abiding owners.
Thugs who steal guns (the usual source of illegal firearms) could care less about microstamping. It’s not like they’re going to register anything and so this won’t have any effect on crime in the state.
Expect calls for similar legislation in NY, MD, NJ, and all the other anti-Bill of Rights states.
In Mens News Daily, in an article about how the new bill signed by the Governator requiring microstamping be in place by 2010, John Longenecker makes sense:
This week, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the Microstamping bill on the reason that it will help police trace criminal shooters. This is not possible, of course. It is too easy to substitute, plant or to (ahem) police up one’s brass at a scene such that the trail is worse than cold, it can become tragically misleading. If brass can even be found - it could too easily become a trap for innocent gun owners should the technology even operate correctly, and there are many doubts about this at this hour. How are non-compliant guns safe today, but unsafe in 2010? This is a gun ban.
[…]
Gun control is not where crime is fought: crime is fought instance-by-instance by the people most qualified to meet it as-it-happens: the target, the people with legal authority over police policy and over officials, and certainly with authority to stop a crime. Yes, the victim, the person in individual legal authority to act in self-defense with up to lethal force, and who is without first responders. Without that lethal force in hand — the lethal force secured by law — the constituent is a sitting duck. Since individuals have no constitutional right to police protection [Castle Rock v. Gonzales, Supreme Court, 2005 and before], we are entirely on our own, especially during the moments of the crime itself.
Some (not all) liberals would disagree. By empowering citizens to protect themselves, you remove any claims of “victimhood” that lefties cling to.
33 Responses to “California and Bullet Microstamping”
on 15 Oct 2007 at 6:41 am # Keith
Are they also goint to ban sales of emery paper?
Five minutes with some on a split stick and that chamber, firing pin or breech face will be such a shiny tool in their fight against the drugs gangs…
on 15 Oct 2007 at 9:20 am # Dan
I am sure there will be a portion of the bill talking about how illegal it would be to tamper with the micro-stamping part on the firiing pin, which will prevent criminals from using the firearm. So we should all not worry about this affecting the 2 A rights of the people of Kalifornia. Good thing I don’t live in that crap-hole.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 11:00 am # happycynic
What really worries me is how this could implicate innocent people. Someone grabs a handful of my brass from the range (which I usually don’t police because I don’t reload) and now I become a murder suspect for a driveby?
Insanity. Innocent people will be convicted under this law.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 1:43 pm # Scott
MD may seem to be anti-gun but it is nothing like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, et al. Yes we have many anti-gun liberals but they are all concentrated in the central part of MD along I-95 between D.C. and Baltimore. Apart from that area, our state is pro-gun. If the majority of the population didn’t live in that area our state would be more pro-gun. We can get high-cap magazines but we must go out of state to acquire them legally. There is no “assault-weapon” ban here except for fully-automatic pistols. That means we can get AK’s and AR’s just fine. There are no ammo restrictions here either so please do not shuffle in my state with the ilk of the others which have way more draconian laws than we do. On the other hand we have had attempts by our legislators (and may very well soon with this piece of legislation) to make laws similar to those of California but have been beaten back every time by people of this state who live outside of the I-95 liberal zones and even people within it.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 2:23 pm # Derek
Dan,
The law as it is written does not require Calfornians to keep the modified pin. Assuming gun manufactures want to release new handgun models to California, we’re free to replace the pin without criminal prosecution. We just have to hope that the rest of the free nation doesn’t come to this.
If anyone is curious about the discussion and ramifications of this bill, check out www.calguns.net.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 2:52 pm # Carnivore
This won’t just affect people in California. If the gun makers don’t make special guns for the California market and instead include this technology in all guns, it won’t matter if the brass they pick up at the range is from a guy in Fresno or Fargo. For that matter, it won’t matter if the crime is committed in California. If a guy at the range picks up some brass with your data on it in Miami and drops it at a crime scene in Illinois, guess who the police are going to come calling on.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 2:53 pm # R.J.
Glock has already served notice that it will write off the People’s Demokratik Republik of Kalifornia as a market. This, of course, is exactly what the gun-grabbing Legislature wants. With any luck at all, the manufacturers will also write off Kalifornia law enforcement.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 3:16 pm # Robert
Arnold is the kind of Republican that makes me nervous about Rudy.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 5:07 pm # Quentin
I would like to see every gun manufacturer refuse to sell new guns in California at all. Including and ESPECIALLY to Law Enforcement.
If companies:
Refuse to sell to Law Enforcement,
Refuse to allow their Distributors outside the state to sell to Law Enforcement under penalty of losing their Distributorship,
Refuse to honor the warranty of any guns coming from California after the date the law goes into effect,
Refuse to buy guns back from Law Enforcement,
Then just HOW pray tell will Law Enforcement get their guns?
on 15 Oct 2007 at 5:23 pm # Drew458
How long do you think it will take the bad guys to figure out how to tape a baggy over the ejection port to catch the empties? I’d say about 20 seconds.
What a stupid waste of taxpayer money this law is.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:14 pm # JohnS
|Worse, though, this is true gun registration since
|there will be a record of the gun and it’s serial
|number and owner on file with state officials.
Nothing to do with microstamping - California started requiring firearms transfers to go through a FFL dealer in 1990; the Dealer’s Record Of Sale ( DROS which is in addition to BATF’s 4473: buyers must do both ) has been recording the serial number data of handguns since then, and the data shipped to Sacramento (or, these days, just picked up in the DROS database).
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:17 pm # straightarrow
Remember a great many of the restrictive laws regarding purchase and/or possession of guns was backed financed and lobbied for by gun manufacturers to corner the market from “kitchen table” dealers and mail-order sales, etc.
If greed and short-sightedness weren’t so rampant among them this would be a perfect opportunity for them to stand up as did Barrett. But, they won’t.
Just think of the impact they could have if they refused to sell any guns in Ca. or to repair or honor any warranties on any gun not capable of microstamping if that gun was sold in Ca. No exception for law enforcement and no sales to federal law enforcement at all, as they are subject to transfer and could possibly end up in Ca.
This would be a winning proposition for them in the long haul. Alas, they are not principled or intelligent enough to see that their continued cooperation will ultimately end with their demise also. So in the interest of short term satisfaction of greed they will sell their futures and our freedom for the immediate gratification.
I would also point out that Arnold has some Austrian relatives that once supported this type of thing about 70 years ago. Apples never fall far from the tree, do they?
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:31 pm # David
R.J.,
Do you have a link to Glock’s announcement that they’re writing off California as a market? Was that in response to this bill or to something else?
A gun store in my town just changed hands and the new owner wears Glock gear, has lots of Glocks in the case, and otherwise prominently features Glock merchandise. Either he’s in for a shock or your info’s a bit off.
–David
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:36 pm # R.J.
John S, there already is a record made and kept on every legal sale. Every gun is registered at sale, unless you moved in from out of state, or have some you bought off-paper.
Microstamping will simply duplicate what markings the barrel leaves on bullets, and the crooks will get around this microstamp but quick. This isn’t about registration; it’s just meant to make guns a lot more expensive, or drive the vendors out of the PDRK atogether.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:39 pm # R.J.
Oh. I see you were answering Alphecca’s post, John S.
Nevermiiiind!
on 15 Oct 2007 at 7:48 pm # R.J.
David, I ‘ll have to search the sites I visited. I saw a copy of the letter to the California Safety Commission posted on one of them, and now I can’t remember which one it was.
BTW, are you David Codrea, from War on Guns?
on 15 Oct 2007 at 8:19 pm # R.J.
David, I found it on the blog, “Shooting the Messenger”, on one of his Oct. 14th blogs. At the end of the 2nd paragraph, he says that “Glock will have to reconsider selling to the California market.”
on 15 Oct 2007 at 8:22 pm # Daniel
Scott, you forget who’s governor now. You know, O’Malley?
He used to be Mayor of Baltimore?
Married to ex-State AG Joe Curran’s daughter?
That family is so anti-gun for individuals it is truly pathetic.
Some years back, I heard him tell a caller on WBAL Radio - who was asking how to speed up/improve the CCW process - that he’d have to move to another state if he wanted to protect himself with a gun while carrying the day’s cash receipts to the bank.
Just wait, he will turn his attention to these issues again now that he’s governor.
Then watch the crime rate rise exponentially.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 10:29 pm # jed
> Yes, the victim, the person in individual legal authority to act in self-defense with up to lethal force, and who is without first responders …
I’ve always hated the term “first responders”. Guess what, the actual first responder should be the person himself. This whole “first responders” crap is just reinforcement of the “let the only ones trained professionals handle it” mentality, that makes citizens into sheep, and victims.
Be your own first responder. Or, as a friend of mine would say, don’t call 911, call the coroner.
on 15 Oct 2007 at 10:55 pm # David
R.J.,
No, I’m not David Codrea, cool as that would be. I’m David of Random Nuclear Strikes, the ultra-long-range-pistol-shooting addict.
By the way, Derek’s advice above to check out Calguns on this topic is excellent. It appears this legislation was deliberately sabotaged with a fatal flaw that will prevent it from being implemented until 2023, if ever.
See here: http://www.softgreenglow.com/wp/?p=4635
on 15 Oct 2007 at 11:59 pm # Wai
The gun manufacturers should use an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger getting reamed in the butthole by a jackass. Did the bill stipulate what type of microstamp images are or aren’t allowed? It seems he’s pandering to his in-laws, the Kennedy’s, and doing the bidding of the jackass party. Maybe this IS their strategy - to place liberals, running as Republicans, in office (ie: Senators, Mayors, Governors) so they can get elected and then work against the constituents that got them elected.
To quote Sebastian over at Snowflakes In Hell: “Fuck you, Arnold!”
on 16 Oct 2007 at 12:31 am # Joe
This could have some really interesting results in the long run. The brady bill brought us some great innovations in small very concealable semiauto handguns. I’m thinking that the future for Kali is some really spiffy revolvers and an increase in revolver manufacturing. Can you envision a Kimber or Springfield revolver?! I love unitended consequences.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 9:20 am # mike sensei
I hate to say it, but it looks as if California has slid just a hair’s breadth away from being a totalitarian police state. The officials there have freedom on the run, and to make matters worse, the Californians keep electing power-mad liberals who promise safety in exchange for what little freedoms they have left. The question is: What are you going to do about it? Time is almost up. You have nowhere to run. Stop them at the gates or forever regret it. This is no time for complacency. Get off your lazy butts and DO SOMETHING.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 10:59 am # Ron
Out here we like to refer to Ahnold as “SchwartzenKennedy”.
In a peverse twist, the former Demo governor probably wouldn’t have signed this law for fear of alienated too much of the gun owing “middle”. But as a Republican, SK was free to do so because the right and Republicans have no other choice here.
This is a lesson to those who would vote for Rudy.
Oh yea, SK also signed bills into law prohibiting the use of mom and dad on school forms (now parent 1 and parent 2), and another banning the use of lead ammo in the range of the California Condor (not reccommended by the Fish and Game Dept.) despite no solid evidence that the birds were ingesting lead shot or bullet fragments left in gut piles.
And finally, he is riding the global warming train like a freakin’ Bronco.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 2:01 pm # Scott
Daniel, you are talking about the politicians. Yes they are the ones that are anti-gun and yes I know O’Malley is. The only reason he became governor was because 1) of the Republican scandals coming to light that made most Marylanders vote for the other party solely for that reason (Ehrlich was Republican) 2) yes Maryland is mostly liberal but like I said only along the I-95 corridor and beltways. Other than those areas the state is pro-gun and we are no way as bad as the other states like New Jersey or California. Yes we do have some restrictive laws but not as bad as them. I was saying do not put us in the category of those other liberal loony states with way, WAY, more restrictive laws than we already have.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 3:46 pm # DirtCrashr
The good news is some squirrel slipped in some verbiage in the Microstamping bill that may halt its implementation for 15+years, until the patents die-out — and as someone cleverly pointed out, if someone were to make and market competing “micro stamping” equipment that would engender a patent infringement-fight and get it tied up for even longer. “The law says it can’t be encumbered - not it might arguably not be encumbered. The CA State Government is not going to fund a patent invalidation suit anytime soon.”
The bad news is that the Federal Version of AB 1471 is being drafted by Sen. Kennedy…Less than 24 hours after the law is signed in CA, it’s expanding to the national stage. Is that a new record?
on 16 Oct 2007 at 5:49 pm # straightarrow
No, not a record. The record goes to the Patriot Act.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 5:58 pm # FUGUNLOVERS
I hope this goes well with all states. All you people worried about someone picking up your brass and being convicted of a crime are idiots. Hello? Ever heard of police checking the casing to see if it actually matches your gun? Face it people we are moving into a realm where everything we do is going to be tracked. Until you rid the world of criminals and terrorist its only going to get worse.
You guys all say Micro will just be easily defeated by criminals? Again HELLO. I’d say about 3% of the criminals have the smarts to even defeat this counter measure. Most are too dumb. 90% of criminals don’t watch the news, surf the internet or can remember their names let alone think about what a gun might have in it to track them. Watch how many stupid people they catch with this new technology.
So stop you wining you ignorant rednecks who all love President Bush. You guys need to stop living in fear.
WAKE UP PEOPLE, The media has you guys all trapped in fear thinking everyone is out to kill you. If someone wants to kill you, there is NOTHING you can do period.. So stop living in fear.
on 16 Oct 2007 at 8:24 pm # Daniel
On a lighter note, maybe they should specify this stamping to be of a size 20 Broadway font.
This would make the ammo so large no one would buy it, and no weapon could use it.
heh, I had to do it. So shoot me.
on 17 Oct 2007 at 8:22 am # Hemlock
Fungunlover says
“All you people worried about someone picking up your brass and being convicted of a crime are idiots. Hello? Ever heard of police checking the casing to see if it actually matches your gun?”
If I shoot my gun at a range and someone picks up my brass (which has been marked by my gun) and spreads it around a crime scene.
It will be an A1 match and I would be the main suspect in the crime. Do you not understand that or are you just obtuse?
on 17 Oct 2007 at 4:01 pm # FUGUNLOVERS
I think you have it wrong. All those little things you call “brass” would all have a specific marking ONLY your gun would leave. Even without Microstamping they can tell if your gun was the one that left that casing or not.
All they would need to do is fire the same type of ammo from your gun and they would know is 5 seconds it is not your gun. Next if they have the bullet, they would also determine in 5 seconds it was not you gun. And on top of that you would most likely be at a President Bush support Rally or killing some Endangered Animal in some part of the world when the crime happened. Not rocket science here.
Microstamping lets Law Enforcment know who owned/ owns the gun.
Try to understand people. You and all your NRA buddies think its ok to put a gun in every man, women, and child on this earth and people like me think your insane. You are winning the battle but every time a inocent, man women and child dies, that is blood on your hands. It does not matter if they are here in the US or in Iraq.
So go ahead and arm the whole world and then you can watch all the people fight it out. It makes for good news when we see kids shooting up schools and kids killing their whole families. Jee I wonder where kids get guns? hummm?
on 17 Oct 2007 at 6:16 pm # JohnS
Ah, FU - here’s a question for you.
How many guns are there now, that DO NOT have microstamping implemented?
Answer: In the US there are about 300 million known firearms, growing at a couple million per year. In California the number is probably 30-40 million, but BATF does not maintain state counts, and California can only provide counts of transfers from 1991 forward.
Given that
- California buys about 100 thousand semiautomatic pistols per year, and 200 thousand other guns per year (including about 50,000 revolvers), and
- guns currently available without the microstamping technology will still be for sale, and
- revolvers don’t eject cases after every shot
– What is the likelihood that a criminal will leave a microstamped cartridge behind at a crime scene?
I can’t understand why you think “You are winning the battle but every time a inocent, man women and child dies, that is blood on your hands” but you believe letting criminals have the advantage in killing ‘an innocent man, woman and child’ is a good idea. Doesn’t denying the right to defend oneself with the only effective tool available put the blood on YOUR hands?
on 18 Oct 2007 at 5:49 am # Keith
Hi FU,
Kindly explain to me, here in ireland, how microstamping in in Ca is going to save lives anywhere?
Study after study has shown that both within and between nations, more guns does not equal more: crime, murder or suicide.
Oh sure, you can be simplistic and say “people get shot therefore all guns are bad”. You can also carefully pick 2 countries, states, counties or hoods which show what you want to show, but widen the net and the thesis collapses. at its simplest there is no correlation.
Take the analysis a little further, and it can be clearly shown that the fear of a criminal encountering an armed victem has a very significant deterrent effect: ie:
more legal guns = less crime.
Now, kindly explain to me how handing my two legally held and British licenced pistols in in 1997 has saved lives or reduced crime in Britain?
Since then armed crime has doubled, Why? because the criminals don’t obey laws and they now know that their victems are unarmed.
The criminals can smuggle illegal drugs by the container load and they do the same with guns.
please explain what your poxy little stamp will do to prevent that?
Why are people getting hot under the collar about microstamping?
Because it is registration.
The Nazis invading Norway in WW2 had a nice set of police records and were able to go and demand individual firearms from the Norwegians.
In Britain, My parents (yes my mother used to shoot pistol) my brother and I all had to hand in our legally held pistols. I’ve already touched on the benefit that this has had…
-for criminals.
Registration inevitably leads to confiscation, Legislators know it, you know it and we know it.
I’ve posted this before but doing it again does no harm. Go let Mr Luty show you just how easy it is to make a micro stamp free SMG from standard pipe fittings.
www.thehomegunsmith.com
Keith