Fear the Stupid

[unixronin]

radarrider pointed out this sadly-misguided LA Times editorial on the proposed California microstamping law.

Dear Editor,

Your "Bullet bill right on target" editorial is so badly incorrect as to be laughable.  Small lasers inside the gun micro-engraving the gun's make, model and serial number on each bullet as it is fired?  This is the stuff of Hollywood action/sci-fi movies such as Total Recall or The Minority Report.  No such technology exists, is even under development, or is likely to exist in this century.

Here's how microstamping REALLY works:  When the gun is manufactured, the gun's serial number (and ONLY the serial number) is micro-engraved into the tip of the firing pin.  When the gun is fired, the firing pin stamps the serial number into the primer of the empty case.  IF, and ONLY IF, a criminal leaves fired cases at the crime scene, police could read the stamped serial number off the primers.  They would then have the serial number of the gun ... but not the make or model.  IF they capture the correct suspect, and find the gun, they then have evidence to link the suspect to the crime.

On the other hand, here's a short list of just a few ways a criminal can defeat microstamping:

1. Pick up his fired cases off the ground.
2. Use a revolver, which doesn't eject fired cases in the first place.
3. Take a small file or whetstone and lightly file the tip of the firing pin, removing the micro-engraved number.
4. Take a soldering iron and apply a tiny smear of solder to the tip of the firing pin, filling in the micro-engraved number.
5. Purchase and install a replacement firing pin.

And so on.  I could go on ... but by now, you should be getting the point.  Defeating microstamping isn't rocket science.

The truth is, this measure isn't being put forward because it would have any effect on crime.  It's being put forward because its originator hopes it would make it uneconomic for firearms makers to sell guns in California.  His original proposal was even more unrealistic, calling for every round of ammunition manufactured to be individually serial numbered and registered to its buyer -- which, in the best tradition of the law of unintended consequences, would have created a whole new criminal market overnight for stolen or smuggled (and therefore unregistered) ammunition.

Gun control advocates say bills like this one are "only reasonable".  The trouble with this is that to gun control advocates, ALL gun laws, no matter how extreme or pointless, are "reasonable" until no guns are left in private hands, because gun control advocates will not rest until there is no legal gun ownership in the US.  Unfortunately, criminals don't obey gun controls any more than they obey any of the other laws whose violation makes them criminals in the first place.  This is the crucial failing of gun control logic:  All gun control laws are based on the absurdly naïve premise that criminals, whose way of life centers around not obeying laws, will obey gun control laws.

It may be a cliché, but there's more truth in it than gun control advocates like to admit:  "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."  What on earth is the point of handing criminals the advantage for free?

I left California for a reason.  (Well, several reasons, actually.)  I live in New Hampshire now, and no longer have to suffer the raving idiocy that is California politics.  But that doesn't mean I have to sit idly by.

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Update:  Thanks to sierra_nevada pointing out what I should have remembered myself, I now have a "Fear the Stupid" userpic.  Dogbert to the rescue!