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This is the best they can do?
California proposes requiring barrels to be microstamped, or should I say microstampers, so as to engrave their gun's serial number on a bullet.
California Brady Campaign "strongly" endorses it. While acknowledging it may not lead to catching a criminal shooter, who "could have gotten that gun illegally," but "if we can go back to the original purchaser or the original dealer of that gun then we can stop some further trafficking of guns to prohibited purchasers."
So in most cases, they'll be able to find the dealer who sold to the person from whom it was stolen. That will be valuable, I'm sure.
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The idea is that the attack on the gun supply consists of being repeatedly forced to defend lawsuits that are unlikely to win unless you fail to show up.
The focusing on tracing ignores the fact that criminals can legally buy guns... assuming they pass the background check. Not everyone who is a criminal has a record of being prosecuted for various crimes. If NICS says it's okay to sell to the person, then the gun dealer can go ahead and do it.
They gave up on the "ballistic fingerprinting" approach after the California DOJ experts agreed with everyone else that it would be a comlete and total waste (and that analysis got out even though the AG lied and said it never existed and attempted to bury it). But does Brady learn? Of course not. They just come back with the "new! improved!" version which would be an even bigger flop than the original, since it does nothing for existing guns. Didn't somebody observe that insanity was doing the same thing over and over, expecting to get different results?
I believe that any barrel that is "microstamped" could be "microscratched" to illegibility with a few minutes work and a small piece of tool steel.
So, anyone who actually *buys* a weapon with the intent of committing a crime will obliterate the ID, and any trace they can do will be of a stolen gun.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense to me>
The point of the Brady push for nonsense like this is not to reduce crime or help law enforcement since even they are smart enough to know these sorts of things won't do that.
The point is to make it harder to manufacture guns. Some companies may choose not to participate in that market (CA) or will increase the price accordingly. Either way, the antis win by making guns unavailable or ownership more onerous.
Theyre still hoping and praying that PLCAA gets repealed/overturned or they get access to trace data.
This is just another end-run, another way for them to say (however implausibly) that "x hundred handguns used in crime were 'traced' back to this dealer." The dealer or manufacturer may have done nothing wrong, but theyre hoping they can still attack him with some novel theory of negligence or public nuisance.