dc0de wrote:
If you like your rights... you might want to review the links in the article...

Well I didn't really want to do this, but this is as good a time as any. As someone running for public office, this issue is a complete crock. I don't agree with microstamping. It's an enormous pain, expensive to retool, but is it a "tax" on legal gun owners? Hell no. A tax means the government gets something out of it, and in either case, the government makes no money off the exchange, in fact if anything any additional costs would get passed to the buyer, with no money going to the government, so calling this a tax is garbage.

I DO agree with serialization. Is it an increase in the cost of ammo? Slightly, but marginal at most. For law enforcement, it's a boon. Suddenly you can track where the ammo was sold. You become capable of determining not just caliber, but you can start pinning locations, and that helps track down the people who used the ammo illegally.

More than that, the same people who oppose anything like this oppose things that make sense like doing ballistics checks on all new guns pre-sale. "It's too expensive. They don't mean anything." I have news for you, ballistics evidence has been getting convictions in criminal courts for close to a century. If it doesn't mean anything, millions of people are in, or have been in, jails improperly. I don't buy that, and neither do any of the lawyers of cops I know. Is it expensive? Again, no. A couple of bucks to test fire new guns is negligible at most.

I like my rights. I like them a lot. But serialization of ammo is at most a negligible cost, and a firm step in the right direction for finding and sending people who commit gun crimes to jail. Does this deal with the 100 million guns out there already? No. It addresses the 5 million new guns added to that total each year. That is significant and useful.

Congratulations on supporting the rights of sociopaths everywhere by blocking things that can lead to their capture.

Mike the Usurper wrote:

dc0de wrote:
If you like your rights... you might want to review the links in the article...

Well I didn't really want to do this, but this is as good a time as any. As someone running for public office, this issue is a complete crock. I don't agree with microstamping. It's an enormous pain, expensive to retool, but is it a "tax" on legal gun owners? Hell no. A tax means the government gets something out of it, and in either case, the government makes no money off the exchange, in fact if anything any additional costs would get passed to the buyer, with no money going to the government, so calling this a tax is garbage.

I DO agree with serialization. Is it an increase in the cost of ammo? Slightly, but marginal at most. For law enforcement, it's a boon. Suddenly you can track where the ammo was sold. You become capable of determining not just caliber, but you can start pinning locations, and that helps track down the people who used the ammo illegally.

More than that, the same people who oppose anything like this oppose things that make sense like doing ballistics checks on all new guns pre-sale. "It's too expensive. They don't mean anything." I have news for you, ballistics evidence has been getting convictions in criminal courts for close to a century. If it doesn't mean anything, millions of people are in, or have been in, jails improperly. I don't buy that, and neither do any of the lawyers of cops I know. Is it expensive? Again, no. A couple of bucks to test fire new guns is negligible at most.

I like my rights. I like them a lot. But serialization of ammo is at most a negligible cost, and a firm step in the right direction for finding and sending people who commit gun crimes to jail. Does this deal with the 100 million guns out there already? No. It addresses the 5 million new guns added to that total each year. That is significant and useful.

Congratulations on supporting the rights of sociopaths everywhere by blocking things that can lead to their capture.

Mike -
Well, you make a few good points, but completely miss on some others.

Point #1
"Is it an increase in the cost of ammo? Slightly, but marginal at most."

What about those of us who handload/reload? We can't serialize, or etch, so now it's illegal to do something we've done for years? We have to destroy our existing ammo at our own cost?

I currently reload .45cal at a COST of approximately $0.05 per round. The cheapest that I can purchase rounds today, is $0.14/round. I spent my money to purchase my reloading equipment,Legally, so that I can save money, not spend MORE. ANY COST that increases, will be MORE money out of my pocket. With these laws, it would be illegal for me to reload, cast, or other wise use my equipment. Serializing will remove my ability to SAVE money, and shoot often. No one h... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

dc0de wrote:

Mike -
Well, you make a few good points, but completely miss on some others.

Point #1
"Is it an increase in the cost of ammo? Slightly, but marginal at most."

What about those of us who handload/reload? We can't serialize, or etch, so now it's illegal to do something we've done for years? We have to destroy our existing ammo at our own cost?

I currently reload .45cal at a COST of approximately $0.05 per round. The cheapest that I can purchase rounds today, is $0.14/round. I spent my money to purchase my reloading equipment,Legally, so that I can save money, not spend MORE. ANY COST that increases, will be MORE money out of my pocket. With these laws, it would be illegal for me to reload, cast, or other wise use my equipment. Serializing will remove my ability to SAVE money, and shoot often. No one has yet talked about how this will effect the muzzle loading communities either. I would also be forced to purchase ammunition from a limited set of ammunition manufacturers, a fact that will cause bottlenecks in the supply chain, and causing ammo prices to rise even higher. Ammo manufacturers are already closing their factories in states that are requiring serialization, due to the high costs of retooling. They are also looking at refusing to sell to other states where it is a requirement. Retooling the manufacturing lines is an expensive option, and there are issues with safety where the serialization lasers and reloading systems will need to be separated, as the laser and the powder simply don't play well together. (think big boom.)

There is little proof that the this will actually help find out anything about the shooter, and less proof that the serial number will actually survive the firing, impact and forensics process. It has already been proven that the rifle calibers will NOT survive the process.

As a legislator, my position is, ammunition manufactured for sale shall be serialized as a unique stamp in the cartridge (that is, the "brass"). Serial numbers need to be tracked to point and date of sale, we don't need recorded ID on ammo sales. That covers privacy issues, but still accelerates tracking.

If you're a reloader, you're probably not selling, and even if you are, you're not manufacturing the brass. Serialization in my book would have zero effect on you, aside from maybe increasing the cost of new rounds to get new brass. For muzzle loaders it has even less effect. No brass equals no serialization, period. The way I would implement serialization applies to the brass.

Point #2
"You become capable of determining not just caliber, but you can start pinning locations, and that helps track down the people who used the ammo illegally."

This is a meaningless statement. Caliber is easily determined when you obtain a recovered slug. Go to your local range, and ask them to show you the recovered... [ Read More (0.9k in body) ]

Mike the Usurper wrote:
As a legislator, my position is...

Well as a candidate, I can tell you right now...

Are you running for an elected office?

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
As a legislator, my position is...

Well as a candidate, I can tell you right now...

Are you running for an elected office?

State legislature.

Mike the Usurper wrote:

dc0de wrote:

Mike -
Well, you make a few good points, but completely miss on some others.

Point #1
"Is it an increase in the cost of ammo? Slightly, but marginal at most."

What about those of us who handload/reload? We can't serialize, or etch, so now it's illegal to do something we've done for years? We have to destroy our existing ammo at our own cost?

I currently reload .45cal at a COST of approximately $0.05 per round. The cheapest that I can purchase rounds today, is $0.14/round. I spent my money to purchase my reloading equipment,Legally, so that I can save money, not spend MORE. ANY COST that increases, will be MORE money out of my pocket. With these laws, it would be illegal for me to reload, cast, or other wise use my equipment. Serializing will remove my ability to SAVE money, and shoot often. No one has yet talked about how this will effect the muzzle loading communities either. I would also be forced to purchase ammunition from a limited set of ammunition manufacturers, a fact that will cause bottlenecks in the supply chain, and causing ammo prices to rise even higher. Ammo manufacturers are already closing their factories in states that are requiring serialization, due to the high costs of retooling. They are also looking at refusing to sell to other states where it is a requirement. Retooling the manufacturing lines is an expensive option, and there are issues with safety where the serialization lasers and reloading systems will need to be separated, as the laser and the powder simply don't play well together. (think big boom.)

There is little proof that the this will actually help find out anything about the shooter, and less proof that the serial number will actually survive the firing, impact and forensics process. It has already been proven that the rifle calibers will NOT survive the process.

As a legislator, my position is, ammunition manufactured for sale shall be serialized as a unique stamp in the cartridge (that is, the "brass"). Serial numbers need to be tracked to point and date of sale, we don't need recorded ID on ammo sales. That covers privacy issues, but still accelerates tracking.

If you're a reloader, you're probably not selling, and even if you are, you're not manufacturing the brass. Serialization in my book would have zero effect on you, aside from maybe increasing the cost of new rounds to get new brass. For muzzle loaders it has even less effect. No brass equals no serialization, period. The way I would implement serialization applies to the brass.

Well, that's not the way the legislation reads, it will BAN reloading completely, and require not only the bullets to be serialized, but the brass be microstamped when the round is fired by the weapon.

Point #2
"You become capable of determining not just caliber, but y... [ Read More (1.1k in body) ]

dc0de wrote:

Just because you don't have the answers, doesn't mean you should follow a bad piece of legislation. Unless, of course, You have to spin to your constituents that you are actually "doing" something. Just because it's something to do, should be the prime reason for supporting it, you should instead, find out what the RIGHT thing to do is, and not destroy the rights we have, to stop something that we can stop with other methods. Instead of thinking that all weapons owners, hunters, sportsmen, and enthusiasts are the problem, take a look at what causes the crimes and deal with that. You're simply treating the symptoms.

Wow, I think you need to go back and read that again. I'm proposing something that isn't what you're complaining about, and you're screaming I'm doing that. I don't know whose legislation you're bitching about, it isn't mine. I do know what the bill is in my state, it doesn't have a chance in hell of passing, and I don't agree with it.

If you don't like MY idea, explain why, figure out ways to fix it, or propose something else. In the meantime, lumping what I'm talking about in with things like what I just read is crap, and the kind of thing I expect from Fox (pretends to be) News.

Hello I am the inventor of Microstamping (Semiauto pistols), not ammo.

Microstamping makes sense, becasue it allows law enforcement to trace firearm trafficking.

~45% of firearm related crimes go unsolved; no witnesses - just empty cartridge casings. By providing law enforcment a tool to trace the firearm, even if they do not recover the firearm is extremely important.

Comprehensive trace data provides a view of the big picture of how guns are diverted into criminal use.

This data is useful in identifying gun traffickers, straw purchasers, and scofflaw FFLs.

Criminals are creatures of habit, they tend to develop patterns, especially when they are involved in trafficking. They purchase from the same places and use the same networks. In manya cases the trafficking networks are also the same networks who traffic drugs. Social netowrk databases, known assocaite databases and existing drug trafficking route data are integrated into gun trace data to track down sources of illegal firearms.

Police work if difficult, but it is extremely difficult if you do not have data or Intel in a timely manner.

Pattern crimes are also easy to disrupt or create sting operations around, since they are somewhat predictable. as long as they can be identified sooner, rather than later.

So, why microstamping? It is passive, benign and doesn't compromise 2nd amendment rights.

You need to go an see Colt's testimony in CT. They said they are working on RFID tagging for crates, individual gun cases and in the future you can expect they will place them onto military firearms.

At that point, the indsutry better have a way of justifying why they are against RFID when they actually implemented it in the military.

I like to ask the firearm indsutry groups when I see them at hearings, if they have EasyPass - most of them do. Well, welcome to RFID tagging.

In the end, we need to help law enforcment identify firearms used in crime the first time the firearm is used, not after the seocnd or third time; once the police recover the firearm.

Real time data is critical to law enforcement. I would rather help using a passive and benign mechanical method, instead of an active electronic tagging method.

As for the technology, we are offering a royalty free license to the firearms industry in the United States.

I will answer any questions about the technology.

Best regards,
Todd

Having now seen a lot more data on microstamping and how it works, I don't have any issues with it as an addition to current rules. In may not be consistently reliable (double strikes), is defeatable with some work (manhandling the firing pin), and could cause some issues with potential false positive based on "range brass (stolen cartridges)," but the costs are negligible (under $10), it does not have any effect on the handload/reload community, has no 2nd Amendment issues, and the potential gains for tracking illegal are real.

As this is something that will be required by California as of 2010, manufacturers should have this capability either online now or coming online shortly, so this is not a retooling process, merely an extension of something they will already be doing.

Just as the 1st Amendment says there is a right to free speech, the 2nd Amendment says there is a right to bear arms. Neither of those is unlimited. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater, nor can you carry a .45 on an airplane. The Supreme Court has further decided you can have time, place, and manner restrictions on speech. I don't see microstamping anywhere near as infringing as those are, and those already exist.