NSSF: Moronic Myths of Microstamping
“Microstamping” is one of the gun-grabbers’ biggest “gimmes.”
Over the years, American anti-gunners have spent a great deal of time, money, and political capital trying to get laws passed that mandate “microstamping.” It’s a technology that, even in theory, is unlikely to ever solve any crimes and will only serve as a terrible burden on law-abiding gun owners. Today, the National Shooting Sports Foundation‘s Larry Keane explains why. Be sure to bookmark this article to send to your friends the next time someone lays the old “But if it saves just one life!” line on you…
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By Larry Keane
Microstamping has reared up as gun control schemers elevate it as a sophisticated means of “gun safety,” a sly euphemism for gun control. Proponents of the unworkable, unreliable and ineffective concept keep their heads in the sand regarding the feasibility of microstamping mandates because they can’t face the truth. It doesn’t work.
Boondoggle Backstory
Microstamping is unproven and unworkable technology, using a laser to imprint a shallow unique identifying code on a handgun’s firing pin, transferring the mark to a spent cartridge casing once it has fired. Gun control politicians push the “technology” to “reduce gun violence.” In their minds, microstamping connects the dots on crime, a criminally misused firearm and the criminal. Except that’s not realistic and forcing gun manufacturers to implement microstamping on new guns, or retrofit existing firearms, only limits lawful firearm ownership.
Todd Lizotte, who holds the patent for the sole-source microstamping technology, recognized this reality in a peer reviewed study. “Legitimate questions exist related to both the technical aspects, production costs, and database management associated with microstamping that should be addressed before wide scale implementation is legislatively mandated.”
Third-party researchers agree. Forensic firearms examiner Professor George Kristova wrote, “Implementing this technology will be much more complicated than burning a serial number on a few parts and dropping them into firearms being manufactured.” The University of California at Davis, hardly a gun rights redoubt, reported, “At the current time it is not recommended that a mandate for implementation of this technology be made.”
A National Academy of Science study concluded that “the durability and survivability of markings on the bullet are still major concerns. Bullets would also be likely to suffer the corrosive effects of blood and other substances.” An Iowa State University study stated that “legitimate questions exist related to the technical aspects, production costs and database management associated with microstamping that should be addressed before wide scale implementation is legislatively mandated.”
That bottom line is microstamping doesn’t work. Lizotte himself agreed that alphanumeric codes are often illegible under even perfect conditions. Electron microscopes couldn’t detect legible codes in testing. Even under perfect conditions, it would take at least 10 spent cartridges make an “educated guess” to piece together a legible code. More practically, this technology can easily be defeated with sandpaper or a nail file as the microstamping mark is only 25 microns (half the diameter of a human hair). Criminals already obliterate serial numbers etched into a firearm frame.
Little Digits, Big Problems
California ignored these impossibilities and passed a dual-placement microstamping mandate in 2007, despite the firearm industry testifying the technology doesn’t work. Then-California Attorney General and now Vice President Kamala Harris certified the law in 2013, along with California’s Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale. Since then, firearm manufactures have introduced no new handguns to California. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2847 into law in 2020, reducing the microstamping requirement to a single place, but speeding up the number of handguns falling off the list of those approved for sale in California. For every new handgun added to California’s Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale, three older models must be removed. When the initial microstamping law took effect, there were 953 pistols on the roster. As of November 2020, there are only 497, as any modification to a model even to improve the safety and reliability of a handgun constitutes a new model requiring microstamping.
California Dreaming
California is the only state to enact microstamping, but other states are considering it. Connecticut tried once before in 2009 but the bill was defeated. Democratic state Rep. Jillian Gilchrist introduced HB 5584, trying to require the impossible technology in her state again this year.
California’s considering going back to dual-placement requirements, which it just rolled back a year ago. Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu, who wrote the single-placement law, introduced a bill just weeks ago to up the requirement back to two places on a cartridge. It’s still unworkable and the requirement to speed up the removal of handguns off the roster remains. It was never about solving crime. It has always been about eliminating handguns.
On the federal level, microstamping legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 by then-Congressman Xavier Beccera (D-Calif.), who became California’s attorney general after Vice President Harris won election to the Senate. Becerra is now President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary nominee awaiting U.S. Senate approval. He would join an administration itching to throw roadblocks in front of the firearm industry and deprive law-abiding Americans the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Bottom line is…Anti-gunners will use any means workable or unworkable, fair or foul to strip the 2nd Amendment and our rights. With a stroke of a pen they will make people who have been law abiding citizens all their lives into federal criminals. Disarming the citizen has always a top goal of the Left.
Am I the only one that picked up on this huge issue with this whole cluster of a law?
In one paragraph, the writer states, “Microstamping is unproven and unworkable technology, using a laser to imprint a shallow unique identifying code on a handgun’s firing pin, transferring the mark TO A SPENT CARTRIDGE CASING once it has fired.” (CAPS for emphasis)
Then, 3 paragraphs later, he states, “A National Academy of Science study concluded that “the durability and survivability of markings on the BULLET are still major concerns. Bullets would also be likely to suffer the corrosive effects of blood and other substances.”
Do these geniuses not know that the firing pin doesn’t touch the projectile (bullet)????
My thought, exactly. They watch too many bad TV shows, where the pathologist recovers a full, unfired bullet in the case, from a body. Genius has its limits, but stupidity knows no bounds.
What do we have to do to stop these idiot liberals? They must be forced to learn the definition of “infringe”. As in, “shall NOT be infringed”.
We can’t send them back to school to learn English and word definitions. They’ve already destroyed basic curriculum by pushing the nanny state and changing what needs to be taught in order to compete in the world; every year they change priorities. Now if they felt that advocating a different language be taught as a primary means of communication, they’d be all over that.
More stupidly from the left, if all it would take to defeat this is to sand down the area what good does it do, and if it could take 10 or more rounds to be able to guess what ID is present what happens to the person who is falsely iD?
Don’t forget the only way this would work, even if they fixed the flaws, is if every gun was in a searchable database from a firearms registry.
Which if they followed the current bills in the Senate would be made open public records. Along with the owners address, what type of firearm safe they use and psych exam results. Imagine what could be done with that data by the unsavory of our society.
Since ” gun control” doesn’t reduce crime there is always a need for more.
Auto garages often have lathes, milling machines and various welding tools. Home workshops also have such machine tools.
A h and file can make a fine gun given so time and effort.
Since destruction of USA is their goal, ” to fundamentally change the USA” they will never be satisfied until the USA is a dictatorship. Then they will kill the USEFUL IDIOTS just like USSR and NAZI Germany.
This nonsense, among a lot of other nonsense is what we get when we elect those people to the offices they hold. I have frequently read that firearms owners fail to vote in large numbers! If that is the case then we all deserve what we get in the offices of the State and the Federal Governments. We have not just Kamala Harris in high office, but Diane Feinstein has been there in the Senate for so many years that I have lost count, in her 80’s and still there. Maxine Waters has also been in office for many years, and that is just scratching the surface of the folks that are not just out to deprive you of your right to bear arms, but many of the rest of the rights that we assume that we have as well. The bad news is that we do not have those rights, we have been betrayed by our own unwillingness to stay involved in the processes and insure that those we send to those offices have our interests at heart, and that they know and understand the Constitution, its founders intent, and are willing to work to insure that those principles are supported in law and practice. We are the ones responsible, and we are the ones that are watching the United States of America become another banana republic that assigns the meaning of the Constitution in the way they see fit and want, which is not even close to what was originally intended, so the words of Benjamin Franklin are rapidly coming to fruition, when asked what we had been given, “A Republic if you can keep it”! We are not, and we are subject now to the tin pot dictators like the governors that assume power that they should not and actually if it were enforced, so not have to shut down the states that they are running as elected offices of the government! There should never be a time that a person who has reached the age of majority should have to listen to the ravings of power mad dictators that happen to have the good luck to have been elected to those offices by those that so ignorant that they don’t even understand the basic premises of the establishment of the Republic. Although of course, I am sure that there are many of them that do understand and know that they can do what they are doing with impunity because of the ignorance of the folks that put them there. Good luck folks, we are all going to need it!
The constitution doesn’t grant rights. God alone grants rights. The constitution merely enumerates rights that the government m which is made up of people, cannot take away. Any law that these scumbags pass that tries to erase any enumerated rights is void. (Marbury vs Madison)
It might be time to water the tree of Liberty
Doesn’t the Left peeing on the tree count as watering?
Obviously we need to continue fighting wasteful and totally useless legislation such as laws mandating microstamping. Years ago there was an effort to consider legislation to require guns that record the finger prints of a shooter despite knowing that no such technology exists. The idea to record the fingerprints of the owner of a gun and then enter it into a guns “memory” so that it could prevent it from being used if stolen was proposed.
https://www.wikihow.com/Fake-Fingerprints
Indeed, those that advocate such legislation absolutely know that it is ineffective in controlling crime or providing evidence against a shooter in the act of committing a crime. It is nothing more than a scam to dramatically increase the cost of gun ownership and to dramatically increase the cost of manufacturing guns, making them too costly and inaccessible to the average American citizen. It’s simply a way of circumventing the Second Amendment. Both sides of the gun control argument know this to be true.
I propose that we begin advocating for legislation of our own at both the local, state and federal level that prohibits any legislation that knowingly lacks the benefit under which it proposes to control or pursue, such as microstamping. Any gun control legislation that does not control crime or actually prevent it would be considered viable under this new legislation. Regardless of the subject matter of the legislation (such as Obama Care) or some other such similar nonsense, any legislation that is submitted by a US Senator, a member of the House of Representatives or any member of any state legislature who knowingly submits legislation to their peers that proposes ANYTHING that is found to be basically fraudulent (such as microstamping), that individual or individuals should be held accountable. They should immediately be removed from office when evidence is found and accepted by a grand jury that a crime has occurred. They should be able to be charged at the Federal, State, or local level so as to prevent a majority party from protecting their members. This law must have very, very sharp teeth in order to prevent any legislator from considering such a crime. The penalty for being convicted within the local jurisdiction where the individual is a representative should include substantial mandatory prison time, and a fine that equals 95% of the person’s personal assets. They also lose any and all retirement benefits as well. Perhaps my idea should be considered an amendment to the Constitution that includes term limitations and a balanced budget amendment. I demand that control of this country be returned to its citizens, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. I firmly believe that this country and government is indeed going in the direction of perishing soon. Half its citizens and its veterans know this to be true. I am one of those veterans
It has become increasingly clear that there are some power hungry lawmakers in our country now. It doesn’t matter what political affiliation they come from, if someone can think of an idea to keep law abiding citizens from being able to protect and defend their homes and families, the people from these crazy states, California, New York, and some of the old New England states to name a few, will go all out to pass a law to mandate it into existence, no matter how unfeasible or costly it is. If it would help law enforcement to stop crimes, so good, but it doesn’t and we are having to live with all the crimes that are and will remain in our country. YOU CANNOT LEGISLATE AWAY CRIME.
As thin as the microstamping is, I would imagine one good day at the range would obliterate it. Probably the cleaning brush would take care of any remnants after a couple of hundred rounds.
The saying that “Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it” comes to mind.
And seems the congress critters in D.C. often have totally lost touch with reality.