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Blocking Gun Laws With Patents
New submitter robkeeney writes "Legislators in several states are working on laws that would require certain gun manufacturers to implement 'microstamping' to help law enforcement solve gun crimes. 'Lasers engrave a unique microscopic numeric code on the tip of a gun’s firing pin and breech face. When the gun is fired, the pressure transfers markings to the shell casing and the primer. By reading the code imprinted on casings found at a crime scene, police officers can identify the gun and track it to the purchaser, even when the weapon is not recovered.' As with any gun-related legislation, many people oppose these new laws. In California, a law passed in 2007 requires that when microstamping (which is easily defeat-able) is no longer patent encumbered, all new guns in CA must use it. To fight it, an organization called the Calguns Foundation paid a fee to extend the patent in order to prevent the law from going into effect."
Besides... barrel rifling already makes a fingerprint-like marking on the shell/slug/bullet, and that's going to be a hell of a lot more useful in identifying the gun it was shot from than any other method thought up so far...
Only in TV shows and movies, fact is most handgun and rifle barrels today are mass produced on hammer forging equipment on a mandrel which makes all of them virtually the exact same on a run of tends of thousands of barrels. You can narrow down your suspect list using it, you can even match similar makes and models, but you'll never be able to prove it came out of the gun with serial number #24953 or #24954 or even #25953 for that matter.
Another thing you may not be aware of. The Center for Disease Control hates guns, and when they did a congressional mandated study on defensive gun uses, they found 1.5 million of them. Most of these were just scaring a burglar away by showing the gun or racking the slide, no actual shots fired. But at the very least, tens of thousands of lives are saved by guns every year.
Don't read much about that kind of thing, do you? Too scary to your preconceived notions, I reckon.
Infuriate left and right