Posted on 06/24/2012 4:30:44 AM PDT by marktwain
Like a storm that returns stronger each time, efforts to push micro-stamping regulations onto gun-owning Americas are here again. And this time around, The New York Times is pushing it, Time magazine is pushing it and other outlets of the same political persuasion are doing their level best to show us how micro-stamping the firing pins in our firearms could reduce crime by miraculous levels overnight.
Of course, they don’t mention the gun registration, the new powers of gun taxation or the all-out gun bans associated with the scheme. Nor are they bothered with another major sticking point — micro-stamping doesn’t really work.
Micro-stamping is a way of imbedding a specific mark on the end of a firing pin so that when it strikes the primer of a bullet casing, it leaves a micro-stamp that allows police to trace spent shells back to the guns that fired them. In theory, it’s literally like putting a fingerprint on each shell casing fired. Yet ours is not a theoretical world, but a real one. And in the real world there are serious problems with this proposition.
Number one, the passage of micro-stamping legislation would require us not only to have a government-issued firing pin for each gun we own, but would also force us to list every gun we own with the government so bureaucrats can keep a list of which firing pin is in which weapon. Enter gun registration.
Number two, upon sending our weapons in or even taking them to a special, government-certified gunsmith for the micro-stamped firing pin to be added, we’d have to pay a per-gun fee. With a straight face, Time magazine contributor Adam Cohen predicts the cost for this would be between 50¢ and $6 a gun, while The New York Times pegs the cost at $12 a gun. But what both of these outlets fail to recognize is that a new “fee” to the government, regardless of how small, is nothing more than a new tax placed upon the people. Thus micro-stamping will lead to yet one more tax that gun owners must pay in order to exercise the right that “shall not be infringed.”
By the way, the National Shooting Sports Foundation has compiled data to show the cost for retrofitting a micro-stamped firing pin would be $200-plus for each gun. (Nothing is ever cheap when the government is involved.)
And what are we to do about revolvers which don’t leave shell casings behind to begin with? For instance, if someone commits a crime with a .38 Special revolver, how is a micro-stamp on the firing pin or hammer of the gun going to contribute to solving a crime?
Answer — it’s not.
So, to those who dreamed up micro-stamping to begin with, it will probably make sense to ban guns that can’t be traced via an imbedded mark on the firing pin or hammer. Seen in this light, micro-stamping opens the door for myriad guns bans and limitations.
Lastly, it’s important to note that micro-stamping doesn’t work, at least not all the time. There are proven problems with both the durability of the micro-stamps upon the firing pins and the legibility of the marks those firing pins leave on the primer of a bullet casing.
The bottom line: Micro-stamping is just another way for anti-gun bureaucrats to reach into our closets, guns safes and glove compartments to find our guns and register them, to tax us for owning them and to ban those that don’t fit their micro-stamping ideal.
The fact that the entire micro-stamping scheme has been flawed from the start will be no hindrance to these gun-grabbers once the legislative hurdle is cleared.
AWR Hawkins is a conservative columnist who has written extensively on political issues for HumanEvents.com, Pajamas Media, Townhall.com, and Andrew Breitbart’s BigPeace.com, BigHollywood.com, BigGovernment.com, and BigJournalism.com. He holds a Ph.D. in U.S. military history from Texas Tech University, and was a visiting fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in the summer of 2010. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Gun registration is effective gun confiscation.
June was the month that our commie leaders were suppose to sign us up to the UN international gun ban treaty, anyone hear anything?
Would I have to get my flintlock reworked too?
No such system yet devised survives into and through the second box of ammo.
Just another Brady Bunch wet dream.
I received this Australian Item (below) on Thursday:
Australian Gun Law Update
Here’s a thought to warm some of your hearts....
From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real
figures from Down Under.
It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to
surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own
government, a program costing Australia taxpayers
more than $500 million dollars.
The first year results are now in:
Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria alone,
homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.(Note that
while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not
and criminals still possess their guns!)
While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady
decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically
upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed
that their prey is unarmed.
There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and
assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.
Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public
safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was
expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns....’ You
won’t see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or
members of the State Assembly disseminating this information.
The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the
hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control
laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
Take note Americans, before it’s too late!
Will you be one of the sheep to turn yours in?
WHY? You will need it.
They can be changed in less than a minute.
IDIOTS.
The UN gun ban treaty, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), etc. ....... I can’t see any of these schemes getting approved by the Senate in an election year.
The lame duck session.....the period from November 7th through January 20th.....that’s the time period I worry about.
They can be changed in less than a minute.
IDIOTS.
TREATY ENDANGERS SECOND AMENDMENT AND U.S. SOVEREIGNTY
On April 16, 2009, President Obama emerged from a meeting with Mexico’s President Calderón to announce his support for the “Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms” treaty (CIFTA): an international gun control treaty signed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 but never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Unlike Clinton, Obama has no plans to let the treaty languish without ratification. Thus he promised to push the treaty through the Senate quickly as a means of curtailing the border violence and arms trafficking in Mexico’s current drug wars.... Once you get past the preamble, you see that another goal of the treaty is to ensure a special “marking" on “firearms…at the time of manufacturing.”
ARs have interchangable fireing pins that go for anywhere from a few bucks on up.
they aren’t stupid at all - they will simply make guns with interchangeable pins illegal
“Number one, the passage of micro-stamping legislation would require us not only to have a government-issued firing pin for each gun we own, but would also force us to list every gun we own with the government so bureaucrats can keep a list of which firing pin is in which weapon. Enter gun registration.”
LOL. I put the percentage of gun owners who would even participate in such nonsense at near zero.
The second messiah hilldabeast is in on this with Soros
The anti gunners are just like commies, socialists and other assorted a$$holes, they never give up and they never quit. They are in the class as cockroaches, they can never be totally gotten rid of.
they aren’t stupid at all - they will simply make guns with interchangeable pins illegal
Will they make emery cloth illegal too?
Jack
And the first thing any even half whit with bad intent will do would be to sand the stupid marking right off.
All BULLSHIT. Isn't going to happen...ever.
?
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