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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."
Luckily I reload all shots myself that I use in crimes.
Additionally I use revolver or if I use a pistol, I use a brass catcher.
So dear murderers, get replacement firing pins now, before you have to order them in Canada.
So... file the firing pin?
Buy a gun from outside CA and bring it in?
Laser engrave some other sod's ID?
Hold a firing pin party?
It sounds like a horrendous waste of time and money, whether you want gun control or not. Ineffective legislation is the worse of all outcomes.
All responsible gun owners do.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ballistic "forensics" has already been shown to be, essentially, utter bullshit, so why should I care?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So, a well-planned criminal just needs to hang out at the local shooting range and collect someone else's brass casings before they commit a crime. After they commit their crime, they collect their own shells, and toss out the other person's shells. When police show up, there is a positive ID on the discarded casings, because of the #. This was a good idea, but it is so very easily spoofed because it's non-deterministic and can put innocent people at risk. I'd pass...
Apparently the people making laws are about as proficient with firearms as they are with technology.
Wouldn't this make it easier to frame people?
Find spent casing from either your target or some random spent casings.
Plant them at the sight.
????
Profit.
Foot placed squarely in mouth since 1983.
"Ok Vito, we're going to need you to ice Ricky Peanuts tonight. Shoot him full of holes, then chop up the body and feed it to your pet alligator. Then grind up the alligator, dissolve him in acid, and turn it into smoothies at your ice cream parlor. Then burn down the ice cream parlor with everyone inside. And don't forget to file the code off your gun."
"File off the code? Madone! That's illegal!"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
defeated by a diamond dental burr and a Dremel.
The problem with guns is the technology to kill people is very primitive and simple. We've been killing each other since before we could read and write. Guns are nothing more than a device for initiating a controlled rapid exothermic reaction resulting in a propulsive force to a projectile.
Most people have the necessary tools and items required to manufacture a simple gun in their garages, propellant included. So even in the ideal case where criminals don't just file off the microprinting in a few well-placed strokes, and in this magical world every bullet fired has a 1:1 parity with a registered gun owner, the problem isn't any closer to being solved... there's still hundreds of other ways to murder people, either with guns, or gun-like devices, or even without guns. Hell, the government routinely says tazers, water cannons, and microwaving protesters is "safe", yet people still somehow wind up just as dead.
Expecting violent criminals to care about legislation like this is like expecting a terrorist to care his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
revolvers that don't leave shell casings behind?
Will make some people very rich and send many innocent people go to jail.
Looks like it is time to replace your Personality Module. You are a bit to clingy, guess I better replace your fuser to
Ok, microstamp it. Costs to manufacturer to tool up to do that, thousands.
2 dollar file at the local Ace hardware store, file it down...defeat it, PRICELESS.
Hey idiots...instead of making NEW laws for firearms, how about ENFORCING the current ones?
IE: Fast & Furious?
Well hell, can't use that then. We all know that criminals are all well planned geniuses that think of every contingency and will counter every forensic method used to find them. I mean, seriously, what are they thinking.
Not only can you just file/sandpaper the tip of the firing pin, I personally know a forensic scientist who did a Master's Thesis on this very subject, and in his research and testing, he found that the serial numbers wear down enough in just a few shots that they aren't readable on the primers any more. Combine that with widely varying degrees of hardness of different brands of primers (some take a good print, some don't), and it's a totally unreliable way identify which firearm shot the round. The people who push this technology in the political arena hope to make tons of money on it (they own the businesses that make the products). The tech sounds good in theory, but in practice, it simply doesn't work.
Components of a gun aren't restricted. For some guns, that can be nearly all of them. Like an AR-15 the only part that is the actual "gun" is the lower receiver. Everything else, you can mail order. Gun laws are a very strange mix of shit like that, particularly since some of the regulations were implemented as tax regulations to try and get around any second amendment concerns.
At any rate, firing pins are cheap and easy to order. They are just literally little metal pins. They are also something that is prone to break in a weapon that is used often, hence they are something not uncommon to order.
As an example a new striker, which includes the firing pin, for my pistol would be $40 for a titanium upgrade (lighter than the factory steel unit). Even cheaper for something more common that uses a separate pin, an AR-15 firing pin is $6.
I guess maybe this helps catch dumb criminals but I have trouble believing it'll do much good. Getting your hands on a new firing pin is dead simple, can be done on the Internet, and is in fact not at all suspicious as people do it all the time.
This also ignores the 100 million-ish guns already in the US that don't have this feature, of course.
This is just one more attempt to make law abiding citizens criminals because they exercise a right the government thinks they shouldn't have. Criminals will ignore this law and deface their illegal guns if they have this. However, it will soon become illegal to have your firing pin defaced, and with how much som people legally shoot it will become defaced through use. Once a cop decides he doesn't like you, searches your car without a warrant, finds the gun and suspect its illegal, the law abiding citizen is now a criminal.
This is merely an attempt to make those who legally exercise their second amendment rights criminals.
I don't understand, it's enough to just graze a microscopic layer off the tip of the firing pin to render the gun "unidentifiable" ?
In terms most /. readers can understand, Gun control has very similar problems to DRM. It solves a minute percentage of the problem, affects almost none of the people it was intended to (criminals/pirates) and serves only to inconvenience the law abiding citizen. Passing gun control legislation has a nice "feel good" factor, ie "Do it for the children!", but in fact does squat to actually diminish any gun related crime at all. I give you the infamous "Crime Bill" passed in the 90's as exhibit A.
Microstamping would only work if it were 100% impossible to pick up someone else's casings at a gun range. Plan on committing a crime? Just follow these steps:
1) Go to a local gun range.
2) Shoot next to someone who has a similar gun.
3) Pick up a few of their spent casings.
4) Commit your crime.
5) Pick up your casings.
6) Toss down the casings you picked up in #3.
If law enforcement has faith in micro stamping, you have just successfully framed someone. At least with blood evidence, it is a lot harder to steal someone's blood without them noticing.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
then the bad guy will get the gun from Mexico
I know this is slashdot, where Patent FUD is King, and this may be a bit of a technicality, but the company didn't pay an "extension" fee - there is no such thing. It's called a maintenance fee. In order to keep the patent in force for the full statutory term, the holder of a patent must continue to pay fees to the USPTO. This is not some sort of fee to allow the patent to remain in force longer than the statutory term of 20 years from the earliest claimed priority date. Don't pay the fee - the term of the patent is cut short.
Just thought I'd throw that out there before someone criticizes the patent system for allowing "extensions."
Really there are multiple issues.
1. How are the criminals getting the guns?
They probably are not buying the guns through a licensed gun dealer themselves.
2. If someone else is selling guns to criminals, is there a way to find out who that is?
Maybe this laser micro etching will help in certain instances. Probably not many, though.
3. If the guns were stolen from a legitimate owner, is there a way to check the plausibility of that?
Probably. Most legitimate owners do not have their guns stolen repeatedly.
4. Is there a way to track the gun that was fired in a crime?
Not really. This might help in certain instances. But probably not with career criminals.
So, it looks like this might (emphasis on "might") help in a sub-set of instances and be totally useless in "career criminal" cases.
If it does not cause any damage to the gun and does not increase the price then I'd have no problem with this.
But I understand people who DO have a problem with it. They're worried that the government will mandate that ALL guns be marked this way. Without any "grandfathering".
As the firing pin hits the primer, and that you don't reuse, you get a new primer to put in the case. As I said in another post a more real problem would just be people getting new firing pins. You can order them online and people do. Some AR enthusiasts like to keep an extra firing pin and bolt with them since those are the most likely things to go wrong. If they do, swap them out, go back to plinking.
Years before this is actually in place there will be five movies where it's used to solve crimes and the CSI shows will have been doing it for seasons. Net result is that the bad guys will pick up their shell casings.
Net result? You'll know LESS about the gun since now there won't be any shell casings left. Amongst the good ideas will be that criminals will shift to revolvers. Guess what revolvers don't eject? Shell casings. They stay in the gun until manually removed. So good work.
Furthermore, about five seconds after this thing is released blackmarket gun dealers will know how to file the firing pin or whatever so it doesn't even put a serial number on the casing.
This is basically the whole stupid DRM argument all over again. Once I have the gun in my hands it's a lot easier for me to disable whatever stupid features were put in place then it is for anyone else to implement them in the first place.
And with the rise of 3d printers if they really want to get obnoxious with trying to code the guns they'll find home made guns coming out metal printing 3d printers that get the job done. This is a bad idea.
They're disturbing the equilibrium. Criminals have little reason to pick up shells and little reason print their own guns. Play around with this stuff and they will do both.
Net loss to law enforcement. Possibly it will make it easier to catch really dumb criminals but the clever ones will just get harder to catch.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I remember somebody proposing a similar idea of imprinting a serial in the barrel which would become imprinted on the casing when a round is fired. In theory it works because in order to remove it you'd have to damage the firearm.
If it's a revolver, perhaps. Semi-auto pistols require a barrel change that takes all of 10 seconds.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I see lots of "oh, it's easily defeatable" blah blah blah here.
Naturally, if one bothers to go out an look at the legislation and motivation behind this, one would find it's no different than the serial number stamp on firearms. You can't get a conviction based on micro-stamped brass at a crime scene, any more than you can get a conviction just on finding the murder weapon (complete with intact serial number stamped on the frame) at the scene. One still has to place the gun in an offender's hand (in either instance).
It's an aid to crime solving, in the same way serial numbers on the gun itself are an aid. It gives the police investigation a good place to start looking, nothing more, nothing less. It's not evidence that the owner committed the crime; one still has to prove that the owner fired the gun in question, just like you have to do with gun frame serial numbers . For the purpose it is intended to serve, microstamping the firing pin is a very good idea, and has roughly the same utility as gun frame serial numbers do. As such, it's actually a great investigative aid, given that brass is much more likely to be left at a crime scene than a gun itself, and that criminals are highly unlikely to be able to gather all expended brass, which means that at least some of the brass almost certainly comes from the weapon used in the crime.
Certainly there are ways to subvert this, but they're not much more likely than filing the serial number off a gun, and we all know how many guns used in crimes have them filed off (hint: not many). Gun crimes (like the vast majority of all crimes) are not well-planned by super-level-headed big brain geniuses that think of all possible outcomes, then coolly remember to execute everything flawlessly. Crime is sloppy by nature, with gun crimes even more so, so the utility of this goes up with the amount of sloppiness of the criminal. Hell, even "professional" mob hits are notoriously unprofessional.
Get a grip, people.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
If you're not planning on using the gun illegally, then why would you care if the gun has identifiable parts/imprintings/etc.? I'm all for allowing people to legally own guns. I'm not all for allowing people to try and hide traces of their usage.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Actually, no. Like most techniques that can be used to link an offender to a crime, it can be effective in the real world even if there are ways in which it can, in principal, be used to mislead.
That's true of most useful techniques in crime solving. The solution for this is not to have those techniques available, its not to have "faith" that anyone one of them, standing alone, has more meaning than it actually does. Microstamping doesn't substitute to things like witness testimony, physical evidence (DNA, etc.) of the presence of the suspect at the crime scene, evidence of motive, other existing mechanisms of tying ammunition to the weapon and the weapon to the hand of a shooter, etc. Its just one more tool on top of the others.
When are we going to get tired of the shit coming out of California and kick their asses out of the union?
Is everybody in that godforsaken state bat-shit crazy?
As for your sig-
How is "the truth" and "what really happened" different?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If guns are illegal, then anyone who has a gun is a criminal, and you can prevent crime by just arresting everyone who has guns.
paintball
I don't think it would work in a revolver. The case on an automatic moves up and seals against the barrel. There is too much head space for the barrel to imprint on a revolver casing. If he mean the bullet yes, it would only work on revolvers. But again how would you put a number on a bullet exiting a revolver and wouldn't a sabot just mess with that as well. I can see how you can mess with this imprinting in tons of ways. File off marks, put new marks, add a ton of marks so you cant tell which is which, drop a ton of reloading brass at the scene so they cant tell which was fired, get a gun from out of state, fill the marks with transparent epoxy, keep your brass, Register your marks and trade with a friend online. Put your marks in so they highlight the wrong places, so a 4 becomes a 1 an 8 becomes a 3 or 9,
Firing pins hit HARD, they have to to work. Heck the way I test to make sure a firearm is fully operational after a detail strip and reassembly is to put a pencil in the barrel and pull the trigger. The firing pin will launch it out from the force of the hit.
While firing pins are made of tough material, steel usually but you can get them in titanium, I can't imagine micro features will stand up well to repeated impacts like that.
This is just a way to impose additional burden on makers. That is all it does.
Treat with the same degree of critical thinking you apply to sales pitches for DRM.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Elected officials which put forth a bill like this should be shown the coast, and have their citizenship revoked. Everyone of the elected officials took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. What attempts at law making like this do, is the reciprocal of the oath they took.
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
An excellent organization fighting for freedom, and entertaining forums with information on safety and legal compliance in California: www.calguns.net New shooters are welcomed and generally provided with sound advice, with an emphasis on safety and training. (Though of course this is still the internet, and there are exceptions, in general I find this to be true.)
The "truth" I'm referring to is the societal sense of "truth" we seem to come to regarding a situation - that is, what we (as a society) tend to collectively assign as the "most likely probability" of what happened. Think of it as the "truth" that is arrived at in a courtroom - it's an imperfect picture at best, but one which we ascribe to as the actual event. "Truth" tends to be a social illusion, allowing us to feel confident that we understand the situation. It may or may not accurately reflect the actual event.
"What really happened" is hard to describe, but I'd say that it's what recording the entire scene, beginning to end, from all possible angles so nothing was missed would produce, plus being able to fully understand everyone's intentions and how actions reflected those intentions. That is, "what really happened" is the full, actual event.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Micro-stamping the firing pin won't be any use in the following cases
Ultimately, the only thing this law will do is lead to increased manufacturing costs for gun manufacturing companies, which raises the price of firearms. This, I suspect, is the ultimate end goal of this type of legislation. Since SCOTUS has decreed that the 2nd Amendment does allow all citizens to own firearms, anti-gun nuts are resorting to bureaucracy and cost inflation in an attempt to prevent Americans from owning firearms.
The law needs to be repealed and anyone that supported it be bounced on their butts next election.
Trying to 'combat' it this way just lends it credibility and is only a temporary measure of limiting a much larger problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you can find some that won't throw off the bullet balance (they have to be exactly symmetrical), don't add significant cost to a 3-5 cent/round .22 lr, won't be destroyed on impact when the bullet mushrooms, and can't be re-used from any jackass at a shooting range with a hand trowel.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
step 1: find someone who owns a gun to frame for the murder you want to commit
step 2: acquire several spent casings from the scapegoat's gun. this can be done before you give the gun to him/her as an anonymous gift, or by taking scapegoat to a firing range as a social outing
step 3: commit murder without being seen. swap casings from your gun with scapegoat's casings.
step 4: ???
step 5: PROFIT!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
The second-amendment-toting "oh I'm a genius and I can get around this therefore every criminal will as well" crowd need to wake up to the reality of crime which is often committed by stupid people. Just because a new method is "not a panacea" (to use another well-worn cliché) doesn't mean it is useless in the course of an investigation or compiling enough evidence to convict the perp.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
> It's an aid to crime solving, in the same way serial numbers on the gun itself are an aid.
The serial numbers on a gun doesn't aid in solving a crime at all. It's there mostly as an identification and tracking system. There aren't any effective matching systems between shell casing/bullet "fingerprint" and serial numbers. Maryland tried it. It failed.
Citation: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/marylands-ballistic-fingerprinting-system-proves-cumbersome
Maybe limits how you get a gun and who can get a gun, just an idea. No other country has even CLOSE to the amount of gun related violence as the USA. So take a tip from everyone else that might be a good first step.
I continue to be baffled at the "logic" of so many gun nuts.
As I understand it you'll get a government licence to drive a car, register the car with your state, register your HOUSE when you buy it, buy a government licence for your friggin DOG, and another to go hunt ducks, and another to get married (!) but any suggestion that guns should be regulated in the same way as cars makes people go ballistic.
Seems like guns are one of those things that any rational person would want to be licensed and regulated.
(Oh yeah - been around gun collectors, hunters, and guns more than enough to like and appreciate them. Just think a lot of people are awful paranoid.)
Three Squirrels
I didn't mean to imply that you could match a bullet to a gun to an owner via a gun's serial number. As maryland's experience shows, matching a bullet to some database of previously-fired bullets is very hard to do.
The "aid to investigation" from a gun's serial number is when the gun is actually found, the serial number gives a place to start investigating the ownership record (i.e. tracking).
That's exactly what the microstamping would do - once you found a case at the scene of a crime, police could look up the number in the database and figure out who registered the gun it was fired from, then start their investigation there as to where the gun was last seen, et al. Microstamping is significantly different than bullet ballistics matching.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
You can file or sandpaper the firing pin and breech face, possibly applying a dot of solder first to fill the engraving in.
If this becomes widely adopted, a criminal can go to a pistol range and collect others' brass to scatter around a crime scene, and sic the cops on innocent third parties instead - and if you're shooting at a pistol range with a "microstamping" pistol you'd better be paranoid about policing your own brass to keep someone else from doing that to you!
Or, as Skycraft-fu said, buy a replacement firing pin.
Or just steal the gun, or buy a stolen gun.
Gun control laws aren't intended to reduce violent crime or make it easier to solve crimes, they are intended to create a citizenry who is helpless and dependent on the government. Look at Great Britain for fsck's sake!
This is only intended to make pistols more expensive and difficult to obtain lawfully. Nothing else.
The pressure in the case makes it expand into the chamber walls temporarily. This significantly reinforces the bolt. All firearms with a cased cartridge do this, from tiny revolves up to breech-loading artillery.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They just have to get them, don't they?
Every day I hear how the government will protect us all if only we could get rid of _our_ guns, mind you not their guns.
I think most non stupid people understand why citizens must be armed at all times.
But there are lots of stupid people around these days, and that means its time for the wheel of history to turn.
We have banks in Europe that have unending what I would call legalized criminal activity that are putting untold generations not even born yet into bondage.
All of this criminality and injustice being fostered upon millions, many in countries without guns. They have no hope, and will be ground into the dust underfoot of their tyrants and task masters.
However, for all of the criminality you see around you printed on Drudge Report or other national news services in the country of the united states.
When they come for your your guns because only "they" can keep you safe know just one thing.
When your neighbor refuses and they start rounding people up and killing them, you better have a plan stan.
It happened before and you can rest assured it will happen again.
How you respond will determine how your sons and daughters either live as slaves or as free men and women.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Guns equalize a fight, and massively up the risk even for experienced gunfighters. Without legal guns, any criminal can reliably steal from anyone he can easily best in hand-to-hand combat. In other words, without guns there is no effective defense for anyone over 60 against criminals, or for (most) women (and since 25 years or so, for most men as well, I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want to anyone 25 or less). And please don't say "the police", we all know what the problem is with that, either in cities (criminal just hides in a crowd, potentially with the whole crowd in on it), or outside of cities (response time is > 30 mins, at which point they might as well do nothing).
As to why military guns are scary, ask the military. I believe the general gist of the answer would be "better them than us".
Here's of course the big crime of guns : they are a very blatant rejection of the idea that the state can take care of you. They limit state power over individuals, in fact they limit anyone's power over individuals. Which is a very good thing. And of course, it's a pretty blatant expose that "liberals" are 100% pro mob-rule, mostly intent destroying whatever the fashionable enemy du-jour is. It might make it very risky to attack a farm that's helping some university phds experiment with GMO. You see liberals like to attack others for perceived injustices, with themselves as "victims" even while physically attacking others. And like all bullies, they just won't stand for a real response. And like all non-flattering truths, this one is to be suppressed at all costs.
I do have one question : when is it your turn ? We've all been to high school, and we all know groups turn into mobs united against you. Tell me, when that happens, do you want a democrat or a republican police officer present ? Would you want to have a gun ?
To see just how peaceful liberalism is, you only need to count the bodies that their hero, Gandhi, has on his conscience. Because in real life, the tally easily surpasses the 10 million figure, in reality the guys is a monster, hiding behind the fact that he himself didn't attack, while ordering mobs of tens of thousands to loot pillage and burn. The point is about as valid as the fact that Hitler never himself harmed a single Jew, of course. But like all flawed reasoning that paints liberals as smart, tolerant and peaceful, it is accepted without question.
A better statement of this argument.
just do all your homicides with a revolver. if you need to reload, when you eject the brass from the drum take it with you. problem solved.
use a revolver. no muss, no fuss, no casings.
O.K., how many crimes have been solved because of gun registration or serial numbers?
Serial numbers aid in returning stolen and lost property. Unless you're suggesting that criminals legally purchase a gun, live in a state which requires registration, use it in a crime and then discard it at the crime scene.
I'm not opposed to serial numbers any more than I'm against any other type of personally identifying property in case it's stolen and then recovered.
Other than the usual feel-good emotions what do these requirements do to lower the rate of crime or increase the solution rate of crimes? And if they can be shown to solve either problem at what cost? Canada's gun registration costs approached $2 billion without aiding in the solution of a single crime.
The real purpose of these laws appears to be to create onerous processes in the manufacture, sale and possession of guns.
Any data will be used against you in a court of law. If the gun is stolen you will be arrested every time it's used, while a gun with a serial number only comes back to you the one time it is dropped; if you shoot someone in self-defense you'll be arrested, while a gun with a serial number can just be tossed in a river. You had to pre-prove your innocence by paying more for the registration infrastructure, but since no proof is good enough you will have to keep proving it. The vast majority of criminals are not eligible to buy guns legally so none the regulations affect them
In 2009 there were 33,808 deaths in the US from auto accidents.
In 2009 there were 31,347 deaths in the US from firearms.
The firearm deaths include
homicides 11,493
suicides 18,735
legal intervention 333 (gotta love the CDC's terminology).
unintentional 554 (I guess that's CDC speak for accidental).
I couldn't find data on the leading cause of fatal car accidents, but
for all car accidents the leading causes are:
1. Distracted Driving
2. Speeding
3. Drunk Driving
4. Reckless Driving
5. Rain
6. Running Red Lights
7. Running Stop Signs (seems like 6&7 should be combined)
8. Teenage Drivers
The list goes on.
Number one cause of distracted driving?
Nope.
Kids in the car.
more cowbell
I'd like to be the first to state that I'm worried about guns in the hands of criminals like everyone else, but I'm most certainly also worried about guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. As someone who has been mugged on multiple occasions and live in a high crime neighbourhood, the availability of guns for protection would not make me feel any safer. On the contrary, I would wonder how many potential muggers are carrying legally under the auspices of personal protection.
As a Canadian, I've never actually seen a gun outside of a museum/cops holster/docked military vessel in Lake Ontario/the odd hunting rifle. How many of you can say the same? Personally, I'd prefer it that the guy who I just accidentally cut off isn't packing heat while road rage sets in.
Whenever I hear "guns don't kill people blah blah" all I can think is "why bother with safety at all, in anything?". This argument thumbs its nose at a true cost-benefit analysis of handgun ownership and availability.
> figure out who registered the gun it was fired from
There's your first problem. There isn't a registry of guns. Some states have them. Others don't.
For example, Virginia doesn't have a registry of guns. When the police find a gun they reference it to the manufacturer and that traces back to the FFL dealer that sold the gun. The dealer then provides law enforcement with the identity of the person who purchased it. Now, after that it gets all fuzzy. In Virginia's case, private sales do not have any paper work. I could say "Yeah I sold that gun. Don't remember who I sold it to. Sorry." That'd be the end of that.
Getting states to approve a registry of guns is a bit of a challenge. Best of luck getting that done in the majority of states.
I'm a gun dealer.
Certainly there are ways to subvert this, but they're not much more likely than filing the serial number off a gun, and we all know how many guns used in crimes have them filed off (hint: not many). Gun crimes (like the vast majority of all crimes) are not well-planned by super-level-headed big brain geniuses that think of all possible outcomes, then coolly remember to execute everything flawlessly. Crime is sloppy by nature, with gun crimes even more so, so the utility of this goes up with the amount of sloppiness of the criminal. Hell, even "professional" mob hits are notoriously unprofessional.
People who get new guns (criminal or law-abiding alike) generally like to take them down to the range and fire them (or out to the desert, or in an abandoned warehouse, whatever). It doesn't take very long to wear the stamp off the firing pin -- one trip to the range can easily obliterate it. All the stamp is good for is identifying guns that have been used for the first time or nearly so. It will do nothing to identify those that actually see regular use. It sure won't do anything to catch people who use the same gun for multiple crimes, other than the first (maybe first few).
I don't know how many rounds the average person fires at the range, but I do know how many *I* fire. A typical trip will consist of three or four people and at least as many guns, which we trade off throughout the session. The cheapest to fire (the .22 rifle) usually gets used for displays of marksmanship, since a box of 500 cartridges costs a few bucks. The others still get used though, and if one of the guns is particularly sweet, it's not at all uncommon to see 50 shots run through it by EACH PERSON in the group. Even those which are inconvenient to quick-load, such as revolvers, will typically end up with 50+ shots run through them because it's better than waiting for the coveted gun to become available. Thus, if we started with four brand new guns, we'd destroy the stamp on the firing pin on ALL FOUR in just ONE shooting session.
Also, revolvers don't drop their brass unless you deliberately dump them out on the ground when reloading. What's the point of putting a number on those? As much as I prefer semi-automatic pistols, few things are as reliable as a revolver. They JUST WORK, though there is a trade-off in both power and accuracy from the gap between cylinder and barrel, and they are good choices for defense weapons that are infrequently used (thus also likely to be stolen).
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I'm not planning on leaving any of my brass at a crime scene.
Of course, with my .357 Mag, I don't usually leave any brass lying around anywhere.
The only objection I can see is any requirements imposed upon a gun owner to maintain the stamp. What happens if the firing pin in my target practice piece wears down and the stamp becomes illegible? Am I obliged to maintain it? Will this lead to my having to register my stamp with the authorities? If I buy a used gun and the previous owner has tampered with the stamp, will I have to verify its presence?
Have gnu, will travel.
I would think it would be the other way around. It's the Red states doing all the whining about the rest of the US, about DC, even threatening to secede when Obama was elected, so why not do it. Leave. "Rise again."
The last time, the Civil War, there was a great risk that the division would be exploited by European powers (particularly England) to destroy the US, as well as being a rival in the race to colonise the west, but that's hardly likely any more. Even military/economic rivals like China (or Russia) wouldn't be able to use the Confederation against the US. So this time there's no reason to stop you, and I suspect no one cares enough to try.
So go. There is literally nothing stopping you. Do it. Rick Perry for Confederate President!
You'll be happier. The remaining US states will be much happier. Win win.
Just go.
But... you won't. You never will. Not now, not in 50 years, not in 150 years. Gutless loud-mouth redneck idiots.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Yeah, but the problem is that once it passes in California, if and when there is a drop in crime you will see every other state use that as a reason to pass it. California generally does what it wants on its own and others follow. See CARB for an example of California regulations basically becoming federal (most aftermarket car parts are either CARB compliant , or not street legal anywhere.)
Now if this law primarily acts as a multiplier to other crimes (such as how weapons in robberies adds mandatory time to it) instead of using it to harass legal owners I'd support it.
And, just to be fair, things like airbags in cars could be a drop in for your complaint (minus the NRA link). It has added expense to cars, makes repairs more expensive (generally if the airbags deployed is the cutoff for repair/replacement from insurance), makes modifications harder (aftermarket steering wheels, issues w/ where the sensors are located for replacing front ends, etc.). It has made car ownership harder, but how has this impacted the used car market? 10 years from now it will be almost impossible to find a used car without airbags. Now granted you can own a car without airbags, but it is also prohibited in some areas from selling a car that came with airbags without them.
Now the serial number might add overhead to gun sellers. But as with almost every other manufacturing process, there will be improvements in the process, and I'd be surprised if 10 years from now if this adds even 1% to the overall cost of manufacturing.
RFID tags would be too easily destroyed. There are micro-tags currently used to mark equipment to aid prevent resale by thieves. (Just sprayed on, insanely hard to find and remove them all.) They could be added to the ammo, both in the projectile, and behind it (so the tags spray out over the crime-scene like microscopic confetti.)
But I doubt you could overcome the cost issue.
How about a radio transmitted embedded in the weapon itself? Triggered (and powered) by the pressure-wave of the shot, squawking an ID-code, picked up by every compatible cell tower in the area and logged. Properly designed, it could be made difficult to remove without destroying the weapon itself.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Why not pass a law which says every gun needs to drop at each discharge a piece of paper with the owner's name on it? So, any criminal can create their own magical piece of paper with somebody else's name on it? oh wait! I know, I could bribe a gun manufacturer to put the same number on every gun made on a certain day!
Foolproof. Just. Foolproof.
Sorry, I'm not American...
But how far does the protection of your 2nd amendment go?
Does it just cover "Bear Arms" ( http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001063269/bear_arms_xlarge.jpeg )
Or does every citizen have the right to join in on the fun of flying predator drones?
Or does it just stop at the right to collect AK-47's, uzi 9mm's and Motorcycle mounted Chain-Guns? ( http://i902.photobucket.com/albums/ac227/drdubbya/machete_060-535x327.jpg )
No. You are incorrect.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
There is absolutely no correlation, nor has there every been any findings of a correlation between owning a gun and shooting someone with it; compared with not owning a gun, and not shooting someone with it.
Not a shred of evidence.
[This message brought to you by GOA, who would much prefer that you never listen to Bill Hicks]
It's always the law-abiding citizen that ends up killing their ex-wife.
The focus of us liberal gun-grabbers is to remove guns from the law-abiding citizen, BEFORE they can kill their ex-wives.
The whole idea of using patents like this is just stupid. The government can just go "Ooop, hey our patent now" and the whole thing is moot, law goes right ahead. XD
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
I can see that. But again a number of revolvers come with removable chambers. First one that comes to mind is the Ruger Blackhawk.
For folks who might understand the internet a bit better:
firing pin serial # is like an IP #
identifying the # is not the same as identifying the person using it.
Often people identified with the # have their life turned upside down, regardless of guilt or innocence.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I said 1.5M minimum defensive gun uses a year, and tens of thousands of lives saved.
Infuriate left and right
" criminals are highly unlikely to be able to gather all expended brass"
Because they're too stupid to buy revolvers?
"Certainly there are ways to subvert this,"
By using a revolver?
Just like the serial number. Locks and serial numbers only keep honest people honest. This is just stupid legislation.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"There are indeed statistics on such crimes."
I can't find any actual study. Citation? or is are you just making an assumption and then say look it up because you don't actually know of any?
"which numerous studies have shown remain as numerous when guns are banned"
That's a lie.
Hear is a clue: Most suicide are spontaneous. literally, most people who decide to kill them selves do so when the right opportunity presents itself at the right moment... mostly on Wednesday.
Creepy, isn't it?
Example:
A long time ago, the favorite way for someone to kill them selves was with Coal Gas. When Britain switched from Coal Gas to a gas that wouldn't kill you, suicide rates drop buy about 30%..and didn't return.
When a research tracked down what happened to 500 people that tried to commit suicide, but where stropped by police, only 6% went on to commit suicide.
There are many studies on this .
So having an easy and mostly painless way to kill yourself in the home increases suicides.
I know, it's fucking weird, counter intuitive and unnerving.
But studies bear it out.
I mean. we are talking about average people. People who would have said earlier in the day the would never think to kill themselves, then attempt suicide.
"British gun crime went up after handguns were banned." ,(pre 2001) method of data collecting, gun violence is trending down. Which is what you would expect if gun control does reduce crimes. The redefined what light means. Pre 2005 slight mean an injury not requiring a hospital stay. In 2005 it was change so that even being threatened with a gun was considered a 'slight injury'. So you can see why the numbers would increase.
hmm. It's slight more complicated. The increase seems to have been a normal rising and falling in a longer trend. IT's not like the made it illegal and magically removed the guns.
So, does it regress to the mean? is the mean trending up or down?
Also bear in mind that the way the take statics changes. When using old
My bias is towards good data and a good policy supported by the data. The data actual shows a decrease in gun violence overall when guns are banned.
You need to understand how to look at data, and understand that the definitions of what data is collected can be changed and impact the numbers. so when A simpleton looks at the data they just see 'rise in gun violence' and concludes banning is bad. A wise person see a jump in statistics and look at the data and how is was collected and then draws there opinion.
Please be wise.
Interesting note, I want to look up the last year to add it to an overall trend, and everyplace I went to the reported an increase report the raw numbers, not per capita.
granted I only looked at a 3 or 4 sites.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The technology doesn't work. Five seconds win a nail file rendered it useless. 100 rounds at a practice range *also* render it useless. It simply does not work; it was proposed as a roundabout way of banning guns entirely. From the side, revolvers also don't leave casings at a crime scene. At best, it's going to alter gun sales, but not slow them.
As opposed to ink fingerprinting, dumbass.
California tried to get it passed years ago, but then, as now, the technology doesn't work. The numbers are so small that they get smeared off the firing pin after a few boxes of ammo. These sorts of registries have been tried in Canada and in several US states and they solve no crimes whatsoever. They also consume funding for police that would be much better spent elsewhere.
The real goal of course is to make only rich people have guns. We already have the laws needed and a bunch that we don't. Enforce what we have before asking for any new ones. I used to work the gun counter at Wal-Mart when going to school and we had plenty of people get denied or people engaging in obvious straw buying. NEVER was any one of them prosecuted. The ATF never came to get the paperwork we had with their information, they never took statements, asked for no security video, nothing. They did not care.
What say you Brutis?
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
There are almost 250 million firearms in the USA currently. New firearms are currently sold at a rate of about 4 million per year. Since this law would only apply to new firearms the folks who passed this legislation will likely be dead before even half of the firearms in the US had the microstamped firing pin. This is a great example of a law that will have no practical applications except to bolster the anti-gun resumes of some legislators.
Workaround - use a revolver. Casings stay in the revolver.
One thing I find rather striking as I browse through these comments: There are those who side with the despotic dictators of the world, and those who don't.
- X/Y -
Judging by past performance, they will jump straight from "Let's go start poking around him" to busting his neighbors door down and shooting his neighbors dog.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
" I doubt this is a real solution to the problem, however it at least attempts to deal with the problem"
Something Must Be Done!
This is something!
Therefore it Must Be Done!
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
OK, I can roll with your description. I've always taken the idea of "the truth" as some outside, omniscient overview of what happened. I see how you folding the idea of 'truth' into what we, on the inside, thing is true. So, in your terms, my idea of "truth" would be your "what really happened", right?
I may have to rethink my phrasing due to your insight of looking at an event. Very interesting.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
because I already hold the patent on the "technique of defeating the intent of legislation by controlling patents that are essential for the execution of said legislation." Now, where did I put my Cease & Desist form letter...
Seriously, not trolling. This is basic facts of the matter. That are largely ignored by the proponents of gun control.
This seems easily implemented by the common criminal.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain