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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.
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.
"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?
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.
This will be the problem that the next law will address.
Probably, they will ban the selling of used brass and prohibit its ownership because it renders the current law ineffective. You heard it here first.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They probably are not buying the guns through a licensed gun dealer themselves.
Almost certainly not. However, there are plenty of convicted felons that do attempt to purchase firearms from legitimate dealers/FFLs, which itself is a federal felony. The dealer has the completed Form 4473 as proof of the attempt, and these people are trivially easy to identify in most cases. Even so, there is almost no effort made to prosecute them. What exactly are more laws supposed to accomplish if they're not enforcing the ones that could very easily keep a lot of the repeat offenders in prison?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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?
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
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.
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.
Because when the firing pin has to be replaced (and it will, because it's a consumable item), you go from a $2 part to a $150 part. Furthermore, any criminal is going to file the number off the firing pin almost immediately. The law will do nothing to prosecute crime while at the same time making firearm ownership prohibitively expensive. It's yet another in a long line of back-alley legislation to infringe the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
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
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
> 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.
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 )
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.