A federal judge on Monday blocked California from enforcing a state law requiring new semiautomatic handguns to have certain safety features, finding it violates the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The 2001 law, known as the Unsafe Handgun Act, requires new semiautomatic handguns to have an indicator showing when there is a round in the chamber and a mechanism to prevent firing when the magazine is not fully inserted, both meant to prevent accidental discharge. It also requires that they stamp a serial number onto bullets they fire, known as microstamping.
What part of that leads you object to them using the word safety?
Loaded chamber indicators and magazine disconnects are fine to call safety devices. They are comparable to cars with tire pressure lights and automatic braking. Some people will still debate them…
However microstamping is a feature that has never been economically or technologically feasible. It’d be like passing a law that in CA only cars that leave unique tire prints everywhere they go could be sold. And then Californians could only buy cars models from before the law was passed.
I’m trying to figure out how a handgun would microstamp a bullet. My understanding of guns is that the magazine pushes the ammo up and the slide pushes it in the chamber. Then, the striker sets off the powder. The only place the bullet(the projectile) might come in contact with the gun would be as it’s pushed into the chamber.
Theoretically there would have to be a printing mechanism either on:
the firing pin
the bolt face
the chamber
the extractor
the ejector
Those are the only direct contact surfaces between the gun and the cartridge I am aware of. It would be better on the firing pin so that unfired but loaded cases don’t get double stamped and obscure the print.
The problem is that all of these parts are smaller than your pinky finger and must withstand ~2500 bar of pressure, extreme temperature, and mechanical stresses. The print also must be uniquely identifiable on a thin piece of brass, hopefully for an equivalent duty cycle as the part it’s replacing (assume 5-15k cycles).
I’m not sure if anyone has actually made a device to do this in the 10 years this law has been around. But I’d be impressed just for the engineering of the thing.
It’s a proprietary technology. I’m sure Todd Lizotte hasn’t made any massive financial contributions to the politicians who want him to make money off of every handgun sold in the state.
Provide forensic evidence? Idk, it’s one of those feel good “at least we’re doing something” laws.
If CA Dems had any balls and actually wanted to solve gun violence, they’d lobby congress to amend the 2nd to ban handguns entirely. Then they’d set up a working social safety net for at risk youths and poverty stricken families. Rifles despite being scary and in CoD are something like 1-2% of murder weapons. The leading cause of homicides is gang violence driven by desperation but no one wants to talk about that.
But instead they’ll try to ban something that will get them a good sound bite: “ghost guns” “bump stocks” “binary triggers”
It would be trivial to attach something that would catch the casings to collect them.
The point of this isn’t to actually work. No company does this right now, and no company has plans to do this. The point of this law is to effectively ban guns without outright calling it a gun ban. That’s just not the right way to attempt to do it.
In defense of this awful law, it would at least help catch anyone careless enough to leave their casings at the crime scenes and get caught with the weapon.
Optimistically, maybe everyone who’s been put in jail because of the pseudoscience of forensic ballistics could get a retrial, when the state admits that actually forensic ballistics is fake and we need serial numbers stamped on the bullets in order to identify them
I believe the OPs point was that because one of the features they required is not possible, and the law required all the features to be implemented, the intent of the lawmakers was not safety.
But let’s assume that the feature is possible and that politicians always have the best of intents. Microstamping itself does not prevent malicious or accidental use. It provides a detective value for after the fact review, rather than a preventative value. So in the most technical of ways, the OP has a defendable position in my opinion.
My problem with it is basically the same as OP’s: it makes guns more expensive, which means only wealthier people can legally own them. On top of that, the technology is presently only available from a single company, making it even more expensive.
The current system has the state certifying a specific SKU, meaning to other wise identical firearms could have one legal and one illegal because the second one differentiated by what finish it was sold with & the SKU hadn’t been specifically approved.
They also implemented a policy of restricting additional firearms to the approved roster unless others were removed.
Every year pistols would have to be recertified and if fees were not paid to recertify them they would be removed from the approved list.
No cars were made with catalectic converters until laws were passed mandating them.
Every computer printer sold in the last 30 years prints an invisible code on the paper uniquely identifying the printer. None did this until a national security law was passed.
Surely a gun manufacturer would see this as a USP if they were the only ones able/willing to implement the requirement.
The technology behind microstamping is the priority work of Taclabs any company that wanted to implement it would need to pay that company in order to do so. Currently the technology isn’t mature enough to be practical used.
Plus there’s a litany of problem like the fact that any components that could be used to microstamp could be replaced with a different set of parts bearing no or different stamps.
I’m not an engineer, so take this with a grain of salt, but it would massively raise costs (think poll tax), the engraving would wear out in a few hundred rounds, we don’t even bother with rape kits so why would we bother with brass, and it can easily be defeated in about a minute by sticking a sanding stone in there. There is no benefit, only extra costs.
The 2001 law, known as the Unsafe Handgun Act, requires new semiautomatic handguns to have an indicator showing when there is a round in the chamber and a mechanism to prevent firing when the magazine is not fully inserted, both meant to prevent accidental discharge. It also requires that they stamp a serial number onto bullets they fire, known as microstamping.
What part of that leads you object to them using the word safety?
Loaded chamber indicators and magazine disconnects are fine to call safety devices. They are comparable to cars with tire pressure lights and automatic braking. Some people will still debate them…
However microstamping is a feature that has never been economically or technologically feasible. It’d be like passing a law that in CA only cars that leave unique tire prints everywhere they go could be sold. And then Californians could only buy cars models from before the law was passed.
I’m trying to figure out how a handgun would microstamp a bullet. My understanding of guns is that the magazine pushes the ammo up and the slide pushes it in the chamber. Then, the striker sets off the powder. The only place the bullet(the projectile) might come in contact with the gun would be as it’s pushed into the chamber.
Theoretically there would have to be a printing mechanism either on:
Those are the only direct contact surfaces between the gun and the cartridge I am aware of. It would be better on the firing pin so that unfired but loaded cases don’t get double stamped and obscure the print.
The problem is that all of these parts are smaller than your pinky finger and must withstand ~2500 bar of pressure, extreme temperature, and mechanical stresses. The print also must be uniquely identifiable on a thin piece of brass, hopefully for an equivalent duty cycle as the part it’s replacing (assume 5-15k cycles).
I’m not sure if anyone has actually made a device to do this in the 10 years this law has been around. But I’d be impressed just for the engineering of the thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstamping
It’s a proprietary technology. I’m sure Todd Lizotte hasn’t made any massive financial contributions to the politicians who want him to make money off of every handgun sold in the state.
The real problem is that all of those parts would print on the shell casing, not the bullet. What good would that do?
I guess they’re assuming most hoodlums don’t pick up their brass. Jury’s out on revolver users.
Provide forensic evidence? Idk, it’s one of those feel good “at least we’re doing something” laws.
If CA Dems had any balls and actually wanted to solve gun violence, they’d lobby congress to amend the 2nd to ban handguns entirely. Then they’d set up a working social safety net for at risk youths and poverty stricken families. Rifles despite being scary and in CoD are something like 1-2% of murder weapons. The leading cause of homicides is gang violence driven by desperation but no one wants to talk about that.
But instead they’ll try to ban something that will get them a good sound bite: “ghost guns” “bump stocks” “binary triggers”
It would be trivial to attach something that would catch the casings to collect them.
The point of this isn’t to actually work. No company does this right now, and no company has plans to do this. The point of this law is to effectively ban guns without outright calling it a gun ban. That’s just not the right way to attempt to do it.
In defense of this awful law, it would at least help catch anyone careless enough to leave their casings at the crime scenes and get caught with the weapon.
Optimistically, maybe everyone who’s been put in jail because of the pseudoscience of forensic ballistics could get a retrial, when the state admits that actually forensic ballistics is fake and we need serial numbers stamped on the bullets in order to identify them
Technical feasibility is a valid (but separate) issue but it does not negate my question.
I believe the OPs point was that because one of the features they required is not possible, and the law required all the features to be implemented, the intent of the lawmakers was not safety.
But let’s assume that the feature is possible and that politicians always have the best of intents. Microstamping itself does not prevent malicious or accidental use. It provides a detective value for after the fact review, rather than a preventative value. So in the most technical of ways, the OP has a defendable position in my opinion.
It is definitely possible, and has been done
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstamping
My problem with it is basically the same as OP’s: it makes guns more expensive, which means only wealthier people can legally own them. On top of that, the technology is presently only available from a single company, making it even more expensive.
The microstamping. As far as I know, no gun does this. What it effectively is, is a way to ban guns without outright calling it a ban.
The current system has the state certifying a specific SKU, meaning to other wise identical firearms could have one legal and one illegal because the second one differentiated by what finish it was sold with & the SKU hadn’t been specifically approved.
They also implemented a policy of restricting additional firearms to the approved roster unless others were removed.
Every year pistols would have to be recertified and if fees were not paid to recertify them they would be removed from the approved list.
Microstamping. No gun made has it. Afaik, no gun has ever been made with microstamping.
Its a ban by another name.
No cars were made with catalectic converters until laws were passed mandating them.
Every computer printer sold in the last 30 years prints an invisible code on the paper uniquely identifying the printer. None did this until a national security law was passed.
Surely a gun manufacturer would see this as a USP if they were the only ones able/willing to implement the requirement.
The technology behind microstamping is the priority work of Taclabs any company that wanted to implement it would need to pay that company in order to do so. Currently the technology isn’t mature enough to be practical used.
Plus there’s a litany of problem like the fact that any components that could be used to microstamp could be replaced with a different set of parts bearing no or different stamps.
I’m not an engineer, so take this with a grain of salt, but it would massively raise costs (think poll tax), the engraving would wear out in a few hundred rounds, we don’t even bother with rape kits so why would we bother with brass, and it can easily be defeated in about a minute by sticking a sanding stone in there. There is no benefit, only extra costs.
Its the NRA, but they know a lot of things I don’t. https://www.nraila.org/get-the-facts/micro-stamping-and-ballistic-fingerprinting/