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One of the hallmarks of bad ideas is they never die.  Another is they’re always unnecessary, brilliant solutions to non-existent problems.  A third is their implementation offers political advantage, power and money to their cheerleaders.  So it is with microstamping, which I last addressed in June of 2023.  There haven’t been any real attempts to resurrect this particularly bad idea of late—Joe Biden is still pushing an “assault weapon” ban—but it’s always a good idea to be forewarned and up to date on reality.  First, however, we visit Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms:

Last June, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers made New York the second state in the country to approve a measure requiring microstamping technology — in which a small, unique code is etched into bullet casings when they’re fired — in new semiautomatic pistols. The bill’s passage came amid worries over instances of gun violence statewide.

But the law came with a major caveat: Four years before the measure takes effect, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services must certify whether microstamping is ‘technologically viable.’ Under the law, that was supposed to happen within 180 days of Hochul’s signature — which put the deadline in December 2022.

But DCJS missed that deadline and continues to study the technology— which means the four-year clock for the law to take effect hasn’t started yet.

Janine Kava, the DCJS spokesperson, said the division’s Office of Forensic Services has convened a working group to make the microstamping determination. The group’s goal is to finish its work and make a final decision before the end of the year, according to Kava.

‘To date, this working group has compiled and reviewed scientific materials, held discussions with various stakeholders, and requested additional information,’ she said in a statement. ‘However, given the scope of the inquiry and the volume of data to review, DCJS is continuing to determine whether such technology is viable.’

I can help Ms. Kava: no, the technology is not viable, and it’s absolutely unnecessary.  You’re welcome.  California, always the leader in anti-liberty activism, has experience:

Not only has California’s law not resulted in any new models of handguns produced with microstamped features, its constitutionality was questioned by a federal judge who granted an injunction against that requirement and several other features of the Safe Handgun Act earlier this year.

‘In his ruling, [U.S. District Judge Cormac] Carney pointed out that California’s requirements have a ‘devastating impact’ on Californians’ ability to acquire ‘new, state-of-the-art’ handguns; noting that no new models of handguns have been made available for sale in the state for the past ten years thanks to the microstamping requirement. The judge went on to declare that the challenged provisions of the UHA are ‘not consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation’ and excoriated the state for preventing residents from accessing commonly owned firearms available in almost every other jurisdiction across the country.

Judge Cormac is actually applying the law, particularly the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision.  Microstamping surely runs afoul of Bruen.  Let’s dispassionately consider the issues.

Microstamping is a gun control—not public safety or crime fighting–-measure that would require every firearm, when fired, leave a unique, identifiable imprint on the primer, and/or brass, aluminum or steel case of a fired cartridge. There are various schemes to accomplish this, such as laser engraving the tip of a firing pin.  No microstamping technology has succeeded, nor will it in the foreseeable future.

Technology: The state of the art, circa 2024, is laser engraving the tip of a firing pin. Some schemes demand two imprints, one on the primer and one somewhere on the fired case. Both schemes are technical non-starters.

Merely firing a gun wears down the laser engraving in short order, rendering it useless. One can also cheaply and quickly change a firing pin, or, with a few minutes of minor effort, file away the laser etching.

The metals used in primers are not of consistent hardness. What might work with one batch of ammunition from the same manufacturer may not work with another. The mere mechanical variability in the mechanism of a handgun also causes primer strikes of varying force. A dirty gun may make a light primer strike or none.  The situation is even worse when an imprint is required on a case. They’re made of brass, aluminum or steel. The technology for such imprints is not nearly as advanced as the laser engraved firing pin technology, as weak as it is. It is virtually impossible to produce an affordable technology that would have a reasonable possibility of working.

Of course, actually working and being affordable are not among anti-liberty/gun cractivist’s goals.

For any microstamping scheme to work, there would have to be an insanely powerful national computer network with imagery of fired casings/firing pins from every gun in America. Yes. That’s really what microstamping is about: registration, and making guns too expensive and inconvenient for Americans to purchase.  There is no such national computer database for fingerprints, a technology in existence more than a century.  There are some small-scale systems, but computers can only flag some number of possible matches, which must be pulled and examined by people, and there is no single standard for fingerprint identification: a match declared by one examiner may be invalidated by another.  In all my years in law enforcement, I never solved a case by fingerprints, nor was I ever aware of one that was.

There are, by conservative estimates—Americans are leery of telling strangers whether they own guns or how many–as many as 600 million firearms in circulation, and more being manufactured all the time.  Properly maintained, guns can last for centuries.  Due to the abysmal credibility of our justice and political systems, we are setting new records for firearm sales to first time buyers—many women and D/S/Cs–-now approaching more than a million per month for 60 consecutive months.  It would be impossible to retrofit every gun in circulation prior to or after the passage of any law, even if every gun could possibly be found.  There would be mass refusal—already common to New York gun laws–-to comply with any such scheme.  No comprehensive database would be possible.  Only guns made after such a law went into effect would be included.  

Microstamping schemes to date, particularly those requiring two imprints, are written to apply only to semiautomatic handguns, not revolvers, shotguns or rifles.  This is an example of anti-gun/liberty hypocrisy, as they try to ban “assault weapons” such as AR-15s, but don’t include them in microstamping schemes in obvious recognition of their rare use in crimes.

Crime Fighting: The most powerful arguments against microstamping schemes are not technological. Americans have been conditioned to think all law enforcement agencies are like those on TV cop dramas. Brilliant investigators are assisted by even more brilliant and dedicated forensic scientists with advanced degrees, working out of high-tech glass and stainless steel labs with scientific equipment, such as enormous 3D holographic displays, one would expect to find in A-list sci-fi movies. These god-like actors, finding a fragment of a single hair, can conclusively prove guilt, and quickly talk a criminal into a confession.

In the real world of police work, virtually all crimes are solved the old-fashioned way: by cops talking to people.  That doesn’t mean forensic evidence is useless, merely that it’s not magic.

Let’s examine a best-case scenario. An incredibly stupid criminal uses his own microstamping gun to shoot someone in a downtown alley, and leaves behind two fired casings. He’s been careful enough to avoid being seen committing the crime, so there is no video. Crime scene technicians, who don’t exist in most law enforcement agencies, and who do not have gleaming stainless steel and glass labs full of miraculously hi-tech equipment, find the casings and run them through the all-knowing, all-powerful central government computer and discover they were fired by a gun purchased by John Q Criminal of 1234 Crook Lane, Felony, New York two years ago. Case closed within 40 minutes!  Not so fast there, Supercop.

First, crime scene technicians never interview suspects.  Virtually everywhere, they are not certified law enforcement officers.  All the police have, at that point, is potential proof someone with an ID identifying himself as John Q Criminal bought the gun that fired those cartridges two years earlier.  In order to convict John Q. Criminal of the crime, they’ll still have to prove he bought that gun, had it in his exclusive possession until the encounter in the alley, was actually present in that alley, and actually fired the gun.

All the computer-generated match proves is someone with ID in that name bought that gun two years earlier. In the intervening two years, the gun could have been lost, stolen or sold. Someone knowing Criminal could have “borrowed” the gun without his knowledge and replaced it after committing the crime.  Or someone could have picked up two casings left at a shooting range Criminal visited.

Reality is very different from TV cop shows.  Few criminals are stupid enough to link themselves to a gun. They buy them on the black market or steal them, and the smartest crooks dispose of them after crimes like murder.  By simply using a revolver, which does not eject fired casings unless and until the shooter chooses–no casings will be left behind. Or a criminal can simply take the few seconds necessary to pick up any fired casings.  Even better, a crook can visit a shooting range and pick up a variety of microstamped cases, leaving them at the scenes of his crimes, sending the police on a variety of lengthy and expensive wild goose chases, and that’s only if there is a massive state or federal computer database–-there are no such things–-that will quickly and easily link a fired case to a specific gun.

That’s all they can do.  They can’t put that gun in the shooter’s hand when and where the murder took place.

All microstamping schemes are, of necessity, gun registration and tracking schemes.  Remember, even if a microstamped case leads to a specific person, the police still have to prove they were present and fired the gun, which is a just a bit more difficult.

Even if a crook legally bought a gun, a few minutes with a fingernail file or other abrasive would erase the laser engraving on a firing pin, or it could simply be replaced. But the law would prohibit that!  Right. Criminals don’t care. They violate all laws. That’s what makes them criminals. Would a criminal plotting armed robbery or murder say: “Oh no!  The microstamping law prohibits me from filing down this firing pin.  Curses!  Foiled again!”  Do we really want to get into registering small, inexpensive gun parts?  Anti-gun/liberty cracktivists certainly do, but sane, free people don’t, because it wouldn’t make anyone even a little safer, while simultaneously diminishing liberty.

Murders where there is no relational connection between those involved often go unsolved.  Murders where the people involved have a relationship are easier to solve. In either case, it’s highly unlikely microstamping would play any part in catching and convicting the shooter.  Just talking to people tends to solve most crimes.  That’s why having experienced, smart, competent cops allowed to actually enforce the law is so important.

But if it saves a single life, isn’t it worth doing?  Getting rid of motor vehicles would unquestionably save huge numbers of lives, and motor vehicles are not expressly mentioned in the Constitution.  Are we ready for that? The old “if it saves a single life” argument is fundamentally unserious, deceptive and manipulative.  When a politician trots it out, it’s an admission they have no reasonable, logical grounds for what they’re proposing.  It has no place in real world policy making.

Intent: The true intent of people proposing microstamping has nothing to do with fighting crime or public safety. They want to disarm the law-abiding. They know they can’t disarm crooks, and they don’t want to: criminals are their natural constituents, birds of a feather.  Anyone paying attention is aware of the national movement to emasculate or eliminate the police, to eliminate bail and to avoid prosecuting criminals in the first place.  If by some miracle some are arrested, prosecuted and jailed, D/S/C politicians want to release them.  New York is among the states pushing such irresponsible and deadly, pro-criminal schemes.

Disarming the law-abiding is absolutely necessary for Democrats/Socialists/Communists to enact their utopian schemes. If Normal Americans have arms, D/S/Cs can never realize their despotic utopia. Their fundamental transformation of America can never become reality.  That’s why they scream in faux outrage whenever anyone–-usually those with actual knowledge of the writings and intentions of the Founders–-observes the Second Amendment’s primary purpose is to enable Americans to overthrow a tyrannical government. For them, the Second Amendment exists only to give government–-the self-imagined political and media elite–a monopoly on armed, deadly force, to keep Normal Americans in their rightful, low place for their own good, a good they are not intellectually or morally capable of recognizing.

Thomas Jefferson
Credit: Biography.com

Even though the Supreme Court, through the Heller, McDonald and Bruen cases affirmed the Second Amendment as a fundamental, unalienable, individual right, it is not in effect in some D/S/C-ruled parts of the country. D/S/Cs will never stop trying to rid America of the primary means of stopping their imposition of tyranny, which is the primary purpose behind the Second Amendment.  That’s revealed most accurately by the screams of anti-gun/liberty cracktivists whenever that historical fact is mentioned.  As Thomas Jefferson may have said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Microstamping, and all the other D/S/C plots, are like movie zombies: they always come back and they’re hard to kill.  But kill them we must if we’re to live free and retain our constitutional republic.