California proposes requiring bullet ID numbers

[Judi Lynn]

Tuesday April 26, 09:24 PM

California proposes requiring bullet ID numbers
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's attorney general introduced pioneering legislation on Tuesday that would require all bullets sold in the nation's most populous state to bear tiny identification numbers.

The bill, aimed at helping investigators solve crime, would require ammunition vendors to submit sales records to a state registry starting in 2007. Anyone bringing bullets into the state not bearing the tiny serial number etched by laser could be punished for up to a year in prison.

"We are losing too many of our young people to seemingly random shootings and anonymous killers," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a statement. The bill "will strip criminals of their anonymity and give law enforcement evidence it can use to quickly and effectively solve more gun crimes."

The legislation -- which could become the first of its kind nationwide -- calls for California to assess fees not to exceed one-half of one cent per bullet to fund the program.
(snip/...)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050426/325/fhcd1.html

[Worst Username Ever]

1. There are going to be problems with this.

But I like the concept of tracking the bullets. I would imagine that demand for non-id'd bullets will create some sort of illegal market. I also see people having bullets stolen from them unwitingly to be used in a crime, and then having to defend themselves from the blame.

[lapfog_1]

23. Ummm... isn't it easy to make your own bullets???

[Toots]

42. Only if you possess a stockpile of Brass

I am not certain but I don't believe you can buy empty brass casings...

[TX-RAT]

43. I think brass,bullets, primers and powder are available in CA

[NickB79]

48. You can buy brass casings from numerous sources

For example, I just ordered 1000 once-fired .223 Remington cases online for $20. Virtually every hunting and outdoors store nearby (Gander Mountain, Sportsman's Warehouse, Scheels, Dicks) has them as well.

Bullets, brass, gunpowder, and casings are very easy to buy.

[Canuckistanian]

185. You can re-use cases? Isn't that dangerous?

[slackmaster]

187. Not dangerous if you follow the rules

I have some 7.62 NATO cases that I have reloaded five times, and they're still just fine.

Some need to be annealed after a few firings, and any cases that show signs of overpressure like smashed case heads, expanded primer pockets, or any hint of a crack must be discarded.

[Richard Steele]

188. Not at all. Modern brass cases are designed to be reused.

For high-powered rifle rounds, most cases can easily be reused 10-20 times.

With lower-powered 'target' rounds, such as a .38 Special 'wadcutter' load, the cases will last almost forever. You are more likely to LOSE them than wear them out.

[DoNotRefill]

77. Ummm...you can buy as many truckloads of brass....

as you can afford to pay for. It's a totally unregulated item. And, if the Greens out there, spent brass is re-useable. You don't even have to melt it down, you just clean it, and run it through a reloading press, which you can get for less than 100$.

[IronHorseman]

108. Brass

Check out www.Cabellas.com or www.gunbroker.com
Brass is cheap and plentiful(both virgin and once fired) and no you can`t have my stockpile. But I have some in calibers I don`t shoot that I will trade.

9mm virgin brass $80.00 per 1000pcs
9mm once fired brass $24.00 per 1000pcs

[Zynx]

46. Rounds, yes - it's called reloading. Actual bullets, no.

The bullet is just one element of the cartridge, or "round."

It's very difficult to literally cast your own bullets to load. It can be done, but its not exactly a regular criminal capability.

[rfkrfk]

55. cast bullets, easily made from wheel weight lead

done all the time

[Zynx]

139. And you're going to make percision JHP 9mm rounds like this?

I really don't see labs for this purpose being set up in South LA.

[Name removed]

155. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DoNotRefill]

159. You can buy hollow point bullet molds....

along with SWC molds and every other kind of tip out there. True, they aren't semi-jacketed, but does that really matter regarding lethality?? After all, the "name of the game" is to dump stored kinetic energy into the target, yes? A JHP is a controlled expansion round, which gives better penetration, while a regular lead hollowpoint will dump it's energy faster.

BTW, I don't recall seeing coca farms being set up in South LA. They seem to have plenty of cocaine, though...

[Richard Steele]

190. It's NOT as difficult as you imply. An average 12yo could do it SAFELY.

Precision JHP 9mm rounds (as you mentioned) can be produced in any small workshop with less than $500 worth of tools.

I've done it myself, onceuponatime, because I was THRIFTY (translation: Poor)...
...it is NOT rocket science!
Anyone who can safely change a tire can learn to produce bullets.

I bought my tools USED for less than $200.

As far as PRECISION: I bought those USED tools from people who competed in shooting competitions.
THEY bought them because they produced a projectile that was BETTER than those available from commercial manufacturers.
MORE precise than anything they could purchase at the store!
..................................................................

Regarding your SECOND point:

The only reason you don't see any 'labs' set up yet is because there is no PROFIT in such an endeavor...YET.

Just like when Cannabis used to grow wild everywhere;
NO ONE bothered to 'set up a dope farm' until it became ILLEGAL...

BUT THEN: It DID become illegal... and TODAY it is our "Great Nation's" #1 CASH CROP.

When the day comes that AMMUNITION becomes illegal,
you will THEN start to see "unlicensed ammunition workshops" spring up.

{They are cheaper and SAFER than those complicated, expensive, chemistry-major "Meth Labs"...
... which NOBODY is setting up ANYWHERE, right?...:sarcasm:}

[DoNotRefill]

78. Come on...

individuals during the Revolutionary War ALL cast their own bullets. All you need is lead (you can get it from wheel weights or batteries), a fire, and a bullet mold. BTW, bullet molds don't wear out from use....I've got functional bullet molds from the 1820's lying around somewhere...

[d_b]

106. Indeed.

My freeper grandfather makes his own cast iron bullets. Somehow I don't see this method being pervasive among the California gangbanger cliques.

[DoNotRefill]

119. Cast iron?!?!?

Methinks you don't quite know what you're talking about...

[d_b]

120. Probably not.

But that's what he says it is. I'm inclined to believe the freakshow with a safe full of guns and dead animal heads from every corner of the Earth.

[DoNotRefill]

129. Well, I have safes (plural) full of guns...

but no animalheads. If he's casting iron bullets to fire through guns, he's a complete and total fucking idiot.

[jody]

122. He must be casting cannon balls from iron, not bullets! n/t

[d_b]

126. Haha.

I think they're just lead bullets. I don't know why he calls it that.

[Zerex71]

112. It sure is -- I've made a bunch and my dad's made thousands.

Just as a point of clarification in case any of you are wondering:

A round, unless it's a shotgun round or sabot round, contains a few parts: The bullet (slug), the casing, the primer, and the powder. Well, you can't ID the powder, and primer IDing won't do you any good. Likewise, brass IDing is useless unless the spent brass are laying around after firing for investigators to sweep up.

That leaves the bullet. And you can cast bullets out of lead at home like making cookies, so there's no enforcement there. The only way I see this being enforceable is if the bullet manufacturers imprint the IDing in the rounds they sell (you can get just the slugs by themselves, or you can buy preloaded bullets, as most people do).

[BrightKnight]

182. Lead bullet molds costs about $30

http://www.gunaccessories.com/Lee/Molds&Melters/BulletMolds.asp

Reloading machines are, cheap, legal and easy to use. A gang-banger would simply reload his own rounds or buy them from someone he knows. Reloaded bullets are cheaper than factory rounds.

There is no metal jacket on these simple lead bullets.

Reloading is very popular. Attempting to regulate reloading would not only energize the NRA wing-nuts but many more moderate gun owners as well.

------

Would a micro serial number really survive the rifling and the impact.

------

The IT infrastructure needed to link the bullets to the purchaser might be expensive. The money might be better spent elsewhere.

------

I am not opposed to putting a tracking numbers on factory bullets. This could be another useful tool for fighting gun crimes.

[wickerwoman]

37. It probably won't make a dent in premeditated crime,

but unlike Law and Order, the majority of murders are unpremeditated and sloppy- hubby or wife happens to have a gun around when they're pissed off, shoots spouse in the heat of the moment and then tries to cover it up. I think this is worth doing if it helps solve a certain percentage of unpremeditated crimes and even more so if the idea that the bullet can be traced causes someone to re-think shooting someone else, at least until they can get an untraceable bullet (unlikely, I know, but possible).

Yes, you can make your own bullets, but how many people can be bothered? And yes, there will probably be a black market, but that may also give police a chance to intercept people with bad intentions trying to buy bullets (as opposed to legitimate sportsmen who would have no reason to try to buy illegal bullets.) Say the cops pull someone over and find a gun in the car. They'd have a reason to hold someone who didn't have tagged bullets and maybe stop them from using them.

I think there are some problems with the plan, but on the other hand it's cheap, doesn't seem to do any harm, and might do some good.

[Worst Username Ever]

39. I guess to me it was the gang-banging set that I felt this was aimed at.

That is the biggest reason that CA has so many murders: the gangs and the drug trafficking. It is my feeling that these two groups will just get unmarked bullets, either through making them or through the black market, and it won't make a dent in the type of crime they are looking to prevent. Yes, for me, I would have no issue buying marked bullets, but I don't think that I am the target of this legislation...

[DoNotRefill]

79. Wrong...

Have you ever studied prohibition? Remember when they banned booze? They sold it as a way to cut down on crime and domestic violence. It had the opposite effect, and created what we today call "organized crime". Look at our STUNNING victory ( :sarcasm: ) in the War on Drugs, and the violence that it brought about, along with the scarcity of pot and cocaine in the US now.

Prohibition NEVER works. It ALWAYS causes an INCREASE in violence as long as there remains a demand, since it increases the profit motive in the black market. And a single person with a 5 or 6 cavity bullet mold can turn out literally tens of thousands of bullets a day, with EXTREMELY primitive equipment.

[Momgonepostal]

2. Sounds like an excellent idea

Am I missing anything? On the surface it seems like a wonderful idea.

Bullets are already so cheap, it's not like the extra cost will bankrupt legitimate users.

[toopers]

18. It won't bankrupt legitimate gun users . . .

but the idea is not aimed at legitimate gun users. Most crimes are committed by people who did not purchase their handguns legally.

[IronHorseman]

34. that half cent per round would add up guick.

My wife and I shoot 500 -1000 rounds per week. I`m galad we don`t live in California, the sad thing maufacurers would like mark all bullets rather just the ones going California and pass the cost on to the rest of us.If this happens I really feel sorry for my friends with full-autos that shoot thousands of rounds per range session.

[LeftCoast]

47. So you couldn't afford an extra $2.50 - $5.00 per week?

C'mon. That's just the lamest excuse I've ever heard.

[NickB79]

53. I wish that were all it would cost

You have to factor in not just the cost of the bullets themselves, but also of the licensing and paperwork to record who buys which bullets. This system would be worthless if we don't have a paper trail in which to compare a bullet's ID number and then look up who bought the box of ammunition that held that bullet. How many boxes of ammunition are fired in California every year? I know that nationwide several BILLION rounds of ammo are fired annually (no, that is not a typo). 2-3 billion rounds of .22 rimfire ammo is fired every year alone, not counting handgun and rifle ammo. I would guess several million boxes of ammo are bought every year in California, as each box holds between 20-100 rounds. Can you imagine the paperwork trying to keep up with that? And the cost to run this agency in charge of maintaining those records would have to be passed on to the consumer.

I would be surprised if they could do this and keep the cost below an extra $1 per bullet.

[slackmaster]

58. If that cost returns zero in public safety I am not willing to pay it

So far the results of efforts to track ammunition (e.g. ballistic fingerprinting in Maryland and New York) have not paid off anything material.

[Name removed]

158. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IronHorseman]

60. I alway buy at lesast 2-3 times as much ammo as I shoot.

Between guns,ammo and an expensive motorcycle habbit my budget is strethed pretty thin.
And yes I have a large stockpile of ammo as well as reloading equipment and supplies.
That tax you suggest is just money I could put in the donation box at the gun club.

[petronius]

73. I think the half cent is how much CA would collect to administer

the program. It doesn't include the additional cost of the bullet production process.

[sweetheart]

24. I agree, it is the best way

I support, and have long supported, the regulation of the explosives.
THe guns are useless without the explosives.

Granted, there are ways around it... like melting your own lead bullets
and pressing them yourself in a bullet maker thingie.. but even then,
you've got to be able to buy the explosive powder in bulk from somebody.

Perhaps they'll start using black poweder rifles to get around this...
ha! THe gang criminals of the future will walk around with civil
war rifles and pistols.... funky looking... but damn those things got
stopping power!

[Xithras]

28. I disagree, it would never work

The furnace to melt lead costs about $20. Bullet casts cost $15. An inexpensive hand press costs about $15. A primer press costs about $10. With that simple investment and about 5 minutes of training, you can make as many bullets as you want. You can even buy kits for about $150 that come with all of the parts AND instructional DVD's.

With these simple tools, a person just needs lead, powder, and primers.

You can get lead anywhere...I've personally melted auto tire weights into bullets.

Primers are cheap and available in such huge quantities at such low cost that it would take decades for all of the privately held stocks to vanish. Besides, they have legitimate uses in construction that will make banning them difficult, and even old ones can be reloaded with minimal effort.

Banning gunpowder would be extremely difficult because it's still so widely used in so many non-firearm fields. Even if you did manage to ban it, it's ingredients are readily available and the instructions for making it are http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/gunpowder.htm">all over the Internet. Banning it would simply create a new market for the underground drug dealer types...we'd see gunpowder labs cropping up the same way meth labs do today.

[sweetheart]

38. However, that's flawed

Of those who abuse guns, how many have bullet presses? Of bullets
recovered in gun-related crimes, how many were made in home bullet
making shoppes?

They can put the little pepper tags in to the gunpowder, so that even
when you press them, you'll need a microscope to find all the little
numbers. Gunpowder leaves residue... it would work a dandy.

I've shot lots of guns in my life, and only once with bullets that were
hand made. The likelihood of a crack dealer having a bullet making rig
is a bit slim. For gun persons, its maybe a normal thing, but come on,
when was the last time the average person melted some lead.

Heck, the argument you advance, is similar to "lets not enforce the
speeding laws, because do you know how cheap a good radar detector is
these days!"

I agree that there will always be ways around things, like i mentioned
in the previous post, with black powder rifles, that gangsters start
to use the old civil war hand-loaders (with mega mega stopping power!).
However, it will indeed put a pinch in gun crime over time, and locate
where the criminals are getting bullets and shut down the bad arms
sellers.

We pursue bad arms sellers with stinger missiles, why not with powder?

[Xithras]

56. But they would BUY them

Criminals do read the paper and watch the news, and they'll be as aware as anyone that their bullets are now traceable. They may not reload now, but how long do you really think it will take some enterprising lowlife to invest the $150 into a bullet making rig to start selling "clean" ammo on the streets? I don't expect the bangers to start casting their own bullets, but it's inevitable that someone WILL and this law will be rendered pointless.

Tags in the gunpowder doesn't really work either since bullets are mass manufactured using common powder hoppers. Theoretically you might be able to narrow it down to specific batches and identify which stores sold the ammo, which could help the LEO's, but it wouldn't allow you to narrow a particular bullet to a single person.

[DoNotRefill]

82. Ummm....there are millions of people in the US with reloading setups...

and most of them are gun nuts. What on earth makes you think that you wouldn't be giving a HUGE profit motive to those people to start cranking out ammo as fast as they can to supply the new black market in California???

Read up on the prohibition of alcohol. What happened? Every poor redneck in east Podunk started setting up stills and making hooch. And it's a hell of a lot easier to make bullets...

[jmowreader]

186. The field of gangsta support will be exquisitely lucrative

Of all the crack dealers walking the streets of LA, how many of them make their own crack? Or meth, in the case of meth dealers? Yet there seems to be no shortage of either product.

I expect hundreds of clean-ammo operations to be started. Whether they cast their own bullets, buy unmarked slugs across the state line and load them in LA, or just buy finished ammunition at Albertson's in Boise and truck it to California, someone out there will supply the gangbanger of tomorrow with all the untraceable ammo he needs.

[DoNotRefill]

81. Huh? Where'd you get THAT???

"but even then,
you've got to be able to buy the explosive powder in bulk from somebody."

Smokeless powder is NOT an explosive. It burns, it doesn't explode. And you can MAKE smokeless powder at home. Smokeless powder is just ground nitrocellulose. Nitrocellulose is/has been used for many things, including film. You know, film....like for a non-digital camera. Grind up old film and what do you have? Smokeless gunpowder.

[IronHorseman]

107. Gun Powder

One pound of pwder will load aprox 1500 9mm rounds.There is enough powder already out there to load billions of rounds.

[jody]

123. deleted

[zipplewrath]

52. Only effectiveness

These numbers won't regularly be visible after use. Bullets frequently are HEAVILY damaged. There are probably ways to "mark" them so that they could be decoded. But if this isn't thought out well in advance it's gonna be a loser. Stopping the trafficking of bullets is gonna be hard. You'll need to accomplish three things to make this useful. #1 collecting the info on who bought/owned the bullets. #2 databasing so that the government can access it. #3 actually read the info off the bullet. They have trouble right now with finger prints and DNA (don't believe it's as easy as they show in CSI). It won't be easy, especially in only one state.

[DoNotRefill]

80. Nobody will comply with it....

because the cost to the dealers would be outrageous. The net result would be no bullets sold legally in California.

[derby378]

3. It's a classic recipe for framing innocent gun owners

Steal a revolver, shoot someone, wipe the gun down for prints, return the gun to its rightful owner, and lay low until all nitrate traces wear off your skin while the cops arrest someone for a crime he didn't commit.

[pnutchuck]

5. watch much Law & Order or CSI??? lol eom

[pnutchuck]

4. I like it!

I propose they do what Chris Rock suggested: Charge $5000 for a bullet. "Won't be no more innocent bystanders...."

[RumpusCat]

70. Heh, I was gonna bring up Chris Rock

"I would shot your ass right now, if I could afford it!"

The bullet-ID idea seems a little silly. It wouldn't take some clever person long to figure out how to thwart that. I did like the idea of the poster upthread who envisioned gang bangers turning to Civil War era arms, tho'.

[Mugweed]

6. Where do the numbers go?

On the casing or the lead? If it's the casing, many outlets sells casing catchers so you don't leave them behind. If it's the lead, then these people are just plain idiotic and have no concept of physics.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CAcyclist]

17. I could be wrong, but I thought they didn't use lead bullets

anymore.

[Xithras]

26. You are wrong

You can buy jacketed bullets, but aside from buckshot, all bullets still have lead in them. Most hanguns still fire all-lead rounds.

[IronHorseman]

35. You`re wrong

Lots of hand loaders buy or cast their own leads bullets.

[Zynx]

45. All bullets are lead - solid "hard" metal rounds are generally illegal

All the bullets you see are basically a copper jacket around a lead core.

You can get homogonous solid rounds, but these are for hunting and generally rare, not to mention illegal in a lot of places because of their inherent armor penetrating capabilities.

[IronHorseman]

61. Wrong

Barnes makes bullets that are 99.99% copper. PMC also makes lead free ammo.

[DoNotRefill]

103. Most lead-free ammo I've seen is frangible...

which kind of completely sidesteps the entire idea of ballistic fingerprinting, since the bullet disintegrates upon contact with a hard object.

"Hey Bob, can you check the tool and die marks on this pile of dust?"

:evilgrin:

[Zerex71]

114. The Black Talons stayed intact.

The whole point of the Black Talon was to have a Neapolitan swirl of (I think) steel, copper, and lead that blossomed on impact and spun like a food processor as it burrowed through its target. If I remember correctly they retained quite a bit of their mass for just that purpose (can't make a round as devastating if it falls apart on impact). Some years ago Winchester voluntarily quit making them but you can still get them from gun dealers.

[DoNotRefill]

115. The black talon is just another hollowpoint....

with a lead core. They fell prey to their own PR. They are still manufactured, but under the SXT label.

They are not frangible, either.

[BrightKnight]

189. Black Talon == SXT (Same Exact Thing)

6 spinning blades lacerating compressed flesh.

Why shoot someone with an expanding hollow-point bullet when you can shoot them with a rapidly expanding hollow point with 6 spinning blades. You only shoot the people you want to kill. Nobody cares about that full metal jacket Geneva Convention crap. We need more well organized NRA militias.

9mm SXT has been known to defeat body armor

[Zynx]

142. I'm familiar with Barnes. Hell, I use a decent amount of it.

That doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of bullets, particularly handgun bullets, are still lead with partial copper jackets.

The homogeneous non-lead rounds are rare and primarily for large hunting rifles. As far as handguns go, outside of FMJ ammo which is of varying legality, the only interesting bullet I can think of is the Winchester Partition Gold, which is a combination of a hollowpoint and a FMJ, with the FMJ being the back half of the bullet.

Still, this is primarily lead.

I should have said 99.99999% of bullets are lead, not all. I misspoke in that regard.

[Walt Starr]

7. I can foresee a HUGE problem with this...

http://www.fmreloading.com/

Lookie here:

http://www.fmreloading.com/cgi-bin/miva?Merchant2/merchant.mv+Screen=PROD&Store_Code=FMR&Product_Code=2712000&Category_Code=Equipment

Wow, cast your own bullets! No "laser etched" ID and it wasn't imported because it was cast in state!

It'll never work. Most serious gun owners have a variety of casting and reloading equipment.

More to the point, it won't work with shotguns.

[RC]

10. Won't work on shot guns?

Ya mean they can't laser etch little numbers on each piece of buckshot? :P

[Walt Starr]

11. That'll be REALLY effective

:P

[uppityperson]

16. Maybe you can special order them with tiny smiley faces?

[DoNotRefill]

104. There was one company that sells .50 BMG rifles...

that was engraving "Fuck You Arnold!" and "Fuck Off Arnold!" on the muzzle breaks of .50 BMG rifles they were selling in California right before the ban took effect...No joke, I've seen them.

[LifeDuringWartime]

36. RFID

RFID would make more sense, but i doubt any electronics could survive being fired out of a gun.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Hm.

They don't seem to have accounted for the fact that anyone who really WANTS to can hand-load ammunition. Seems like that's a bit of a loophole. Will they ban sales of lead ingots, primers, Cordite and molds for bullet casting, too?

[0007]

13. You've convinced me this is a bad idea!

[slackmaster]

41. Even the numbered bullets could be easily defeated

Prior to using them in a crime: Pull the bullets, obliterate numbers, re-seat bullets.

:dunce:

This idea is simply another way to harass legitimate gun users by making them pay higher prices for ammunition. That's really what it's all about.

[DoNotRefill]

83. Don't forget scuba gear....

you know, those weight belt thingies...

[roughandtumble]

12. Watch the NRA whine about this...

The NRA will whine about a slipper slope. I wonder if the case can be made that ammo alone isn't a firearm.

I think NRA thugs just want to be able to kill with out the worry of being caught. Guns seems to make cowards brave.

[Richard Steele]

14. ok.....

:popcorn:

[Q3JR4]

19. You said it brother,

:popcorn:

[Richardo]

15. I love this idea.

:thumbsup:

[XemaSab]

20. Why not?

If your handgun is lying out where someone can steal it, you are a moron.

Otherwise, it seems like a good way to catch criminals without punishing law-abiding citizens.

[Sentath]

21. Hmm.. maybe not laser etched on the bullet

But what about a tiny, I mean like a flake of pepper, bit of some very durable metal w/ a http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/stack.html">2d barcode or one of the http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/260/1/1/">grain of sand sized rfid tags?

[left15]

33. would work much better, but be very expensive

Most ammuniton is sold in boxes of 20 or less, so every 20 rounds requires a new number.

With the laser etching, you just zap the bullet as it goes by in production, adding a physical item with changing numbers, whether a flake, grain to each bullet would be much more difficult.

I suppose you could etch the flake or grain with a laser as it went by, then dump it into the molten lead as each bullet is formed. That could work, so ignore this post.

[Squatch]

54. Most ammo sold in boxes of 20 rounds or less?

Here's a box of 223 that has 200 rounds in it.

Here's a box of 525.

Here's a guy who deals exclusively in bulk ammo

These measures are counterproductive and just "feel good" legislation politicians use to posture themselves as "hard on crime."

[hollowdweller]

67. I bought a 1200 round case not long ago, and I'm halfway thru it!

[DoNotRefill]

84. Feh. Speak for yourself.

the smallest box of bullets I've bought in the past 10 years had 500 rounds in it, and was less than 5 inches square (loose-packed .22LR). Normal boxes of ammo for me run 900 to 1400 rounds a box. And you'd have to INDIVIDUALLY tag EACH bullet, because how could you know where all of the rounds with the same number tag ended up?

[Name removed]

163. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dave Reynolds]

22. I am one of those so-called "gun nuts",

but since I have no plans to shoot anybody, this would not be objectionable to me.

No one should EVER confuse the NRA with moderate gun owners.

[BadNews]

72. That is exactly why I oppose this. Reject this AWFUL idea

I don't ever plan on shooting anyone either. As such, I should not have to pay more for bullets. Do you really think this will help find criminals? They only have to buy ammunition second hand to get around the law.

Also, what do you do with round like hollow points, or shotgun shells that either spread apart, or are built to obliterate themselves on impact. This is meant to jack up the price of ammunition to the point that people won't buy weapons. It will not even have that effect.

People will still own guns, but they will not practice with them as often because of the cost. Armed people without much experience using the weapons pose a greater threat to others and themselves.

[Dave Reynolds]

75. You are correct,

after reading more, this is just unworkable. I have fired many rounds, including jacketed slugs and hollow points into phone books. Gross exam of the rounds recovered showed some serious deformity.

[DoNotRefill]

85. Heh. YOU try filling out 500 ATF Form 4473s....

to buy a single 500 round brick of .22LR ammo for $10 at Wal-Mart and THEN tell me it doesn't affect you....

[Dave Reynolds]

90. Writer's cramp, yah?

I've come around in my thinking. This is not a good proposal.

My primary home defense is a very hyperprotective German Shepherd, followed by a very short 12-gauge.

[DoNotRefill]

93. They tried a limited version of this from 1968-1986...

in the US, making EVERYBODY show ID and sign for every bullet purchase. It never resulted in a SINGLE arrest. It was a HUGE nightmare. BAAAAD IDEA!!!

[Dave Reynolds]

96. THAT idea is too humorous,

because *nobody* ever had a fake ID, right?

:D

[slackmaster]

116. There was a registry for powder and primer sales too

It was dropped because it proved to be useless for law enforcement.

[Xithras]

25. Umm, lots of people make their own bullets

The equipment is cheap to buy and simple to use...you can be tought to do it in under 5 minutes, and with a little practice can make more than 100 rounds in under an hour.

All this law will do is create an underground market for privately cast rounds, or drive more frequent shooters to start reloading themselves.

In fact, it may make illegal guns MORE dangerous, since handloaders often put more grains in their bullets than you get in commercial rounds, making handloads more powerful and potentially lethal.

[Zhade]

27. All who like this idea, please see posts #1 and #3.

Consider the problems, too.

[mondo joe]

29. And a $50 tax per bullet please.

You shouldn't need more than a few.

[Worst Username Ever]

30. Although I know you are being at least partially facetious,

I have always not like the idea of putting large taxes on guns. If guns are going to be legal, they should be equally accessible to everyone (who is legally entitled to own one... no felons, etc). Putting a large $1000 dollar tax on a full-auto or a 50 dollar tax on bullets only assures that the upper classes are the only ones who have access to guns and ammo.

Also, I bet if the upper classes saw that the poorer classes had equal access to guns as them, they would likely tighten up the gun laws REAL quick :-)

[DoNotRefill]

87. What, you don't like the socio-economic Jim Crow nature of the NFA '34???

Why aren't you complaining? It's the ONLY still-enforced Jim Crow law on the books!

[Worst Username Ever]

109. I have no idea what you are talking about.

And I was under the impression that I WAS complaining.

[DoNotRefill]

117. The NFA of 1934...

is the last Jim Crow law on the books. In case you're not familiar with it, the NFA is the law covering machineguns and similar other weapons. It's the ONLY federal law where a person wishing to exercise their rights are required to take a tax document to their local cheif law enforcement officer (CLEO) and get the WRITTEN PERMISSION of the police to exercise that right. CLEOs have absolute discretion in signing off or not. They can (and routinely do) refuse to sign for minorities, while signing for whites. Think of the old "voter literacy tests" and you're on the right track...

This law is a stain on all of us, and if it involved ANYTHING but guns, Democrats as a whole would be screaming our heads off about the injustice of it. Since it involves guns, most of us keep our mouths shut about it. THAT is morally reprehensible.

[Name removed]

164. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Xithras]

31. So you want to increase accidental deaths?

A gun is only safe in the hands of a person who is trained to use it. I personally fire 100+ rounds a month through my various firearms just to stay in practice. A $50 per bullet tax would simply ensure that I stopped practicing, making it FAR more likely that I'll miss my target and kill some innocent bystander if I ever DO need to use my guns for legitimate hunting/self protection/crime suppression/national defense purposes.

[DoNotRefill]

86. Well, you see...actually the CRIMINAL only needs a few...

since the most hardened criminals only kill a couple of people in the course of their careers. Now, if you target shoot, well, you're just SOL.

[left15]

32. Never work

First is the technology, how do you stop the tiny numbers on the bullets from deforming?

Second, ammo is cheap, you can get 1000 rounds of 9mm or .223 (ar-15) ammo for under $100 dollars.

If the 13.5 million legal gun owners in CA buy $100 of ammo prior to the ban (and some will buy much much more)there will be an additionl 6-10 billion rounds in CA. depending on the price paid.

Untagged ammo will not disappear, it will just get more expensive, like high capacity magazines under the assult weapons ban.

Third, if all else fails, criminals will switch to sawed off shotguns, which do a lot more dammage than a 9mm.

[slackmaster]

40. How many crooks are going to be dumb enough to use numbered bullets?

When non-numbered ones will still be available in abundance?

For an idea like this to have any hope of working (i.e. helping to solve actual crimes) it would have to be done on a national level.

The states of Maryland and New York have had "ballistic fingerprinting" - Databases of fired cartridge cases from every handgun sold - for several years and neither has yet used the BF data to solve a single crime.

This is further proof that a full-time legislature is a waste of money.

[saigon68]

44. They need to eliminate Racism and Poverty

Then gang bangers won't have a need to make $5,000 a week selling crack.

[Endangered Specie]

49. Don't bullets deform when fired?

how would the number (which is bound to ba a particulary long one) be legible :shrug:

[NickB79]

51. Not only that, but how about when it hits?

Many times you don't recover whole bullets from a person who has been shot, but bullet fragments. The bullet often expands and tears itself apart when it hits, making this not only a task of matching bullets to shell casings, but of putting the bullet back together in the first place.

[-..__...]

50. This would effectively ban any ammo sales in CA.

Gee... what a surprise. :eyes:

I highly doubt the major ammunition manufacturers would buy the equipment necessary or deal with the record keeping and shipping problems; rather they would just halt ammo sales to CA altogether.

It would ban the sales of inexpensive surplus ammo.

I have a better solution: rather than put serial numbers on the ammo, why not tattoo serial numbers on the gang bangers who are creating the problem? It makes as much sense and is just as equally effective (that's "sarcasm" in case anyone didn't know).

[sweetheart]

57. Or more simply, end the war on drugs

The WOD is responsible for an overwhelming proportion of violent crimes
committed across the country, as well with firearms. Without the
market monopoly the government grants to illegal dealers, they'd be
bankrupt overnight and there would be no "whiskey running" along with
the associated police state gun shooters.

The WOD is the source of the problem.. .and guns (and gun crime)
are just a symptom.

[slackmaster]

59. "Tag-And-Release" for gangbangers?

I like it!

:toast:

[Bo]

62. finally a little sanity

it may be only a drop but thank you sir for taking are hearts into account

[slackmaster]

63. I'm having a little trouble parsing that pseudo-sentence

:wtf:

[NNguyenMD]

64. Ballistic's finger printing is more sound, logistically and economically

Too bad gun nuts and the NRA fights it tooth and nail.

[CarinKaryn]

65. They have a vested interest in defeating any proposal that makes sense!

[-..__...]

69. Or maybe they know idiocy and BS when they see it?

This is garbage/ineffective/pseudo/slight-of-hand legislation at it's finest.

Ohhh, and what have we here... the main culprit with his "I have mine... fuck the rest of you all".

[DoNotRefill]

91. ROTFLMAO!!!

Looks like he wants to ban the Internet too...

:evilgrin:

[NickB79]

71. How is ballistic fingerprinting more sound?

As has already been pointed out, states that have had ballistic fingerprinting for several years have yet to solve a single case using this technique.

Honestly, there are as many logistical problems with ballistic fingerprinting as there are with ID'ing individual bullets. Neither one is more sound than the other.

[NNguyenMD]

88. it seems more feasible to attach a ballistics fingerprint to every gun

sold than assigning an ID number to all the bullets sold. There are more bullets than guns, it sounds easier to database the lesser number.

[NickB79]

100. It is not that simple

For every caliber of ammunition out there, there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of types of bullets available from dozens of different ammunition providers. Different weights, different designs, different compositions, etc. The ballistic fingerprint recorded from, say, a 124-gr FMJ 9mm Winchester bullet will not be the same as that from a 124-gr hollowpoint 9mm Winchester bullet. Then you have to move on to different bullet weights offered by Winchester, and then to different manufacturers of 9mm ammo, like Remington, Federal, CCI, Hornady, S&B, Wolf, etc. Here you start the process all over again. For every gun out there that is fingerprinted, you would likely have to fire at least 50 different rounds through each gun and catalog the results to have a feasible database for comparison. Multiply that by the millions of guns sold, and your database quickly becomes so overloaded it becomes a hopeless mess to wade through.

Your other problem is that barrels wear over time. Think about what is happening when you fire a bullet down a barrel. The bullet is pushed down the barrel by what is effectively a blowtorch of burning gas at thousands of degrees F. Some high-velocity rifle cartridges need to have barrels replaced after only a few years of shooting because they burn out and become inaccurate. The ballistic fingerprint of a gun barrel that is brand-new would change over time. At 1000 rounds (about 1-2 yrs worth of normal practice shooting for a handgun) the ballistic fingerprint will be starting to change, giving false positives when run through the database.

[DoNotRefill]

102. You might read up on the NFRTR, created by the NFA '34...

It's a registry of around 250,000 NFA registered weapons. It's been estimated that it's around 50% accurate (according to Tom Busey, head of NFA Branch, and a intro lecture he gave to incoming new agents. The transcript of the video is available on the web. This was huge within the gun nut world for a while, since he in very clear terms instructed agents to commit perjury in court under oath and testify that the NFRTR was 100% accurate. He ended up being removed from his position {AKA "laterally transferred"} for this. Google for "Busey Transcript" and it'll pop up)

They've got a registry of around 250,000 guns, and it's 50% inaccurate. What makes you think that they can make a registry of 300 million guns work better, when they can't keep track of 250 thousand guns???

[DoNotRefill]

89. Ballistic fingerprinting is a load of horseshit.

It is easily defeated by simple APATHY. Fire a single round of corrosive ammo (there's lots of corrosive ammo around), let the gun sit for two weeks, and then clean it. The ballistic fingerprint will be irreparably changed by that modern miracle, oxydation (AKA "rust"). Or, you can simply swap barrels, extractors, and firing pins, which would cost less than $100 for most guns, and the parts are effectively "drop-in"...meaning you take the gun apart, remove the parts you don't want there, and reassemble with the new parts. You can do this as many times as you want to.

If you think ballistic fingerprinting is a good idea, you haven't been paying attention.

[NNguyenMD]

92. I guess I haven't really been paying much attention...

but how many crack addicts and common street thugs do you expect to invest the meticulous time in changing the parts in their guns.

And I doubt that the angry/schizo husband who shoots his cheating wife and lover is going to stop for a moment to think about that before he shoots.

Just a thought

[DoNotRefill]

94. Seriously....do you know much about guns and ballistic fingerprinting?

My background is in criminal justice (I'm a J.D., ex-LEO, et cetera). Trust me, it's bullshit. If you don't want to trust me, that's OK too, let me know and I'll give you as detailed an explanation as you want about why it's crap. I promise to quote neither pro-gun or anti-gun propaganda to explain it. :)

[NNguyenMD]

95. well what can I say, your credentials exponentially

surpass mine. If the man says he's an expert he's an expert.

Hope it feels good to be right.

[DoNotRefill]

97. Well...

You'd be a fool to take my advice on how to perform an angioplasty...if you want information in a specialized field, you should go to a specialist. I'm a specialist in this field.

When was the last time JAMA had a peer-reviewed article in it on ballistic fingerprinting?

I've been accepted in more than a handful of courts as a firearms expert. Can you say the same? Or did your Doctorate come with a Certificate of Infallability in non-medical fields?

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining, Senator..."

[NNguyenMD]

99. I think I will take you up on your offer for that explanation on why

Ballistics Fingerprinting is crap...it would be more convincing than just telling me you're an expert.

And I don't doubt your credentials, but how about educating us a little on the subject if you feel so strongly that mandatory Ballistic Fingerprinting is worthless.

[DoNotRefill]

101. Ok...want anecdotal evidence?

IIRC, both NY and Maryland currently require mandatory ballistic fingerprinting. Would you care to estimate how much their systems have cost so far, and how many crimes have been solved because if it?

"Ballistic fingerprinting" is a misnomer. Tool and die marks are NOT fingerprints. As I'm sure you're aware, fingerprints can't really be altered. If you get second degree burns on your fingertips, after you've healed, your fingerprints will still be the same. You can alter them in some ways (for example, sanding them with extremely fine sandpaper will remove the ridges for as long as it takes to wear off the rest of that layer of skin, but then they come right back. You can also mutilate them, for example if you slice them with a razor blad repeatedly and relatively deeply, so that scar tissue displaces the fingerprint), but just in the course of "normal wear and tear" you're not going to change your fingerprints. That's why they're so good for identification. Now "ballistic fingerprinting" isn't the same at all. EVERY round fired through the barrel of a gun removes some of the tool and die markings that comprise the quote ballistic fingerprint unquote. If you fire 100 round rapidly through a single gun, the heat retained by the barrel will cause the metal to expand and soften a little bit. Repeated rounds will quickly erode the microscopic tool and die marks that comprise "ballistic fingerprinting", and heat retention in the barrel itself will cause the barrel to expand. Consequently, a bullet fired through a "cold" gun will have a significantly different ballistic fingerprint than the last bullet fired seconds later from the same magazine in the same gun. Even if the gun is not fired repeatedly in a short time, each bullet passing through the bore will remove microscopic bits of the tool and die marks, which naturally obliterates the "fingerprint".

You're familiar with the concept of a worn barrel, yes? Repeated firing of the gun wears a barrel out. This can happen quickly or slowly, depending on a wide variety of factors (which include but are not limited to the composition of the bullet jacket, the case capacity, the propellant used, and the caliber of the firearm itself.) I've got guns that have not yet worn out their barrels after 100,000+ rounds downrange (a high-quality .22 target rifle) and other guns that need to have their barrels replaced on average every three hundred rounds fired to maintain accuracy (which is decreased by barrel erosion). On the gun that's had more than 100,000 rounds through the current barrel, the microscopic imperfections that comprise a "ballistic fingerprint" have long since worn away. On the gun that has the 300 round barrel life, each bullet significantly wears away those imperfections too (which is why it has such a short barrel life).

Now all of this is predicated upon no negligence or deliberate activity to alter the ballistic fingerprint. If there IS negligence or a deliberate attempt to alter the B.F., all bets are off. Why? Because mandatory ballistic fingerprinting is dependent upon the gun not being used much, and upon there being no change to the barrel. The gun is "fingerprinted" when it's new, and then it goes on it's way. Once the gun is in the end-user's hands, all kinds of things can affect the ballistic fingerprint. Rust will alter a B.F. almost immediately. And we're not talking about massive rust...we're talking very shallow surface rust, which is called "frosting" because it looks like frost crystals formed on a windowpane. Massive rust, which involves "pitting", or very small holes in the metal, is even more damaging. Then you get into other factors, such as the type of projectiles used. For example, if you use Full Metal Jacketed rounds, the hardness of the jacket wears away the tool and die marks rapidly. If you use plain-jane lead rounds, lead "fouling" (which is tiny bits of lead that are melted by both friction and the heat generated by the propellant) will fill in the little gaps that is what tool and die markings are. Then you get into cleaning the gun. If the gun is not cleaned, the dirt, debris, and various forms of fouling will fill in the tool and die marks, because they give the substances a place to attach themselves to. If you DO clean the barrel, you are cleaning it with chemicals and abrasives which are there to scrub out the fouling, and also erode the tool and die marks. Additionally, cleaning involves the use of "bore brushes", which are metal (normally either copper or stainless steel) and which microscopically scrape the barrel, which both obliterates old tool and die markings and installs new tool and die marking (in the form of microscopic scratches....for a demonstration of this, get a piece of stainless steel like a knife and scrape it across a cooking pot hard. You'll normally get visible scratches. Same process, different scale.) Then you get into things like firelapping, which is a process used to remove barrel imperfections to improve accuracy, and cryogenic barrel freezing, which is another accurizing process that alters the ballistic fingerprint by re-aligning the molecular structure of the metal in the barrel by application of extreme cold. Please keep in mind, that all of this stuff is natural, and isn't used to deliberately defeat the BF systems.

Defeating the BF systems is virtual childs play. It can be accomplished in almost infinite ways. Examples of this would be to deliberately scrape the bullet up before loading it, so that additional markings were put there, or modifying either the barrel throat or muzzle crown with something as simple as a rock or piece of steel to scrape it. A chamber brush (which is a brush used to clean the chamber, and is quite common and cheap) alone would work on the throat, and almost anything at all would work on the muzzle crown (I've seen a LOT of muzzle crown damage over the years caused, strangely enough, by people using their handguns as a hammer). Remember, under a mandatory system, people are not continually submitting bullets to update the BF, it's done once when the gun is new, and then never again unless there's a match.

Anyway, I've ranted for quite a while here, and am about to call it a night. I will, of course, check the thread later to answer any specific questions you may have. The "biggie" to remember, though, is that human fingerprints generally don't change that much, while "ballistic fingerprints" change tremendously, for a wide variety of reasons, both innocent and indicative of an evil "mens rea".

[NNguyenMD]

131. That is very convincing information.

Sorry for getting snippy with you earlier, I can see that there are a lot of doubts concerning BF.

Thanks for the information, you are very well versed in this area of fire arms and criminal justice.

It was a good discussion.

[DoNotRefill]

133. No problem...now, about this pain I have in my leg....

;) :evilgrin:

[NNguyenMD]

134. haha, as much as I would like to...I have no happy pills to offer

[DoNotRefill]

157. I know...it was just good natured joshing.

I'm sure you get just as sick of that as I get of "Hey, buddy, I know we haven't seen each other in 10 years, but my son got busted for PWID, can you go to court with him? I don't want to pay for a lawyer, and you're FAMILY!"

[DoNotRefill]

98. How many people hide the bodies?

Criminals generally DON'T want to get caught. That's why it's not infrequent to find guns with obliterated serials. It's a lot easier to swap out 3 or 4 parts than it is to obliterate serials.

[IronHorseman]

121. You don`t have to change anything to alter the"Finger Print"

I recently traded off a Walther pistol, it`s fingerprint had been changed 3 times.It was reworked in 3 steps to improve feeding no parts were changed. A file and a Dremel will change any guns fingerprint.

[Name removed]

167. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hollowdweller]

66. I am SO glad I don't live in California

That is nuts. I love to buy those big cheap cases of old military surplus ammo and shoot them. This law would pretty much rule out being able to shoot anything but new, super expensive ammo. Sounds like this would be a record keeping nightmare.

[BadNews]

74. I'll be buying mine second hand or in Nevada. n/t

[slaveplanet]

68. great idea

a.) triple the price so the good people can't afford to defend themselves

B.)Ignore the billions of rounds of current ammunition , because we know the criminals will line right up to buy these new trackable ones.

c.) make it real simple for the police to frame suspects


I'm all for it

[DoNotRefill]

76. Heh. No way in hell it would work....

Americans burn through trillions of rounds a year. It's an impossible task, especially for 1/2 of a cent, which is the maximum funding level. Hell, you can't even have a person type in the serial ONCE for 1/2 of one cent. Anybody remember from 1968-1986 WRT to paperwork on ammo sales and the result of that?

The other thing to consider is what effect this would have on LE agencies.

Remember when the LAPD brought out the Barrett .50 caliber rifles they owned while pushing for the .50 BMG ban? Remember what Barrett Inc did as a response? They are STILL refusing to sell them more guns or to service the guns they already have.

Unintended consequences have a nasty way of biting people on the ass. I can picture California police agencies literally running out of ammo and not being able to get any more from ANY source if this abomination is passed.

[CarinKaryn]

111. Hahahahahahhahhahahahah

I can picture California police agencies literally running out of ammo and not being able to get any more from ANY source if this abomination is passed.

That is such a pantload. CA's like, what, the 8th largest economy in the world? Can you imagine any gun or ammo company turning down all that cash.
Mr. Barrett sounds like a great guy. Refuse to sell weapons to the police while supplying them to the Taliban. I don't think CA will miss him.

[slackmaster]

113. The fact that CA is such a large market will be this bill's demise

And rightly so.

[DoNotRefill]

118. If they had to serialize every bullet?

Hell YES I can see it.

Gun manufacturers are not stupid. Ronnie Barrett started the "fuck them if they fuck you" movement when he refused to sell his company's guns to or repair previously sold Barrett firearms for the LAPD. The LAPD said such guns were "too dangerous" for people to have, so they're going to have to live with that decision. It's referred to as being "hoisted on one's own petard."

Remember Smith and Wesson? They STILL haven't recovered from their AW ban fuckup, and I doubt that they ever WILL recover. People have LONG memories...

[saigon68]

125. S & W can go fuck themselves

[DoNotRefill]

132. they already did...

IIRC, the British company that owned S&W ended up selling it for the grand old price of right around a million dollars. In other words, it ended up being a total write-off for them.

I live in a S&W free house now. I don't even buy or possess magazines with S&W ads in them. My wife and I got into our worst fight over this issue....her deceased father had left her a bunch of S&W logo stuff, and when this went down, I destroyed it all. I gave her a choice....she could keep it, or keep me, but not both.

[saigon68]

136. NEAR THE END IIRC was almost giving their stuff away

The sports men and women of amerika put those thugs out of business

Good Riddance. May that be a lesson to anyone who follows.

They could only suck up to police Dept's. And their crappy product was lousy anyway.

[Citizen Kang]

105. I am pro gun...

and I see nothing wrong with this. Bullets ought to have serial numbers.

[NickB79]

110. I guess you didn't really read through the thread much

There are numerous reasons why this isn't feasible outlined in the posts above.

[jody]

124. This thread demonstrates how many Democrats we have

that are grossly ignorant of all things pertaining to firearms. It is that ignorance that the Scary Brady Bunch and other gun-grabbers exploit with propaganda including outright lies to keep the Democratic Party divided and from dominating Congress and controlling the White House.

It's OK to hate guns but do so from a position of knowledge, not ignorance. :puke:

[hollowdweller]

127. You are absolutely correct.

And it truly illustrates why the Dems are strong in big cities and urban areas, but weak in rural areas. City people view guns as a threat because of criminals use them. Country folks associate guns with good things like when your were a kid and your dad took you hunting, or hanging out with your kids and a couple of .22's and shooting tin cans on Sunday afternoon.

[suigeneris]

128. Maybe a little info is in order or would folks

just like to keep guessing and knocking down the strawmen they set up?

http://www.ammocoding.com/index.php

[DoNotRefill]

130. Yup, they'll save the world, and it will be Free! FREEEE, I TELL YOU!!!!

in order for the system to work, they'd have to ban all ammo transfers other than at a retail level. Their "secure" computer system? Wanna bet what OS it runs on?

Let me think for a minute...don't I remember a registration system that was touted as being paid for almost entirely by user fees a while back up North? Wasn't it supposed to have a start-up cost of a couple of million dollars, with user fees paying the rest? Didn't I hear something about the actual cost to the Government being something silly like a BILLION dollars not being recouped through user fees? And didn't I hear something about MASS disobedience in parts of the country???

Oh, wait...you mean that firm is trying to get a law passed to give them a royalty on EVERY round of ammo manufactured or sold in the US???? Hmmm...no ulterior motive there....is there???

Oh, well, I guess I should look at the positives...if they were ever stupid enough to do this, the various monkeywrenchers out there (which wouldn't include little old ME, of course) would do fun things like pick up other people's spent and serialized brass at shooting ranges and dispose of the brass on random city streets in high-crime areas...Muahahahaaaaa!!!!!

[suigeneris]

141. Lots of points here

What OS it runs on? No compuer system is totally secure, OTOH, Fidelity Investments successfully keeps track of trillions of dollars of people's money on Microsoft systems. If it's good enough for that purpose let's bet it would be good enough for this one.

I don't know what registration system you refer to. A billion dollar cost? That seems unlikely.

A royalty? They are in business to make money by selling a valuable product. Something wrong with that?

Monkeywrenchers? I thought gun nuts were law-abiding citizens. You mean they would do something as underhanded as defeat a law whose purpose is to catch murderers? Gasp. Maybe I've missed something about these fine upstanding people.

Actually, I spend a lot of time in the West's outback where everything placed by man and half of everything put there by nature has been blown to smithereens by gun owners. I know something firsthand about "law-abiding" gun owners.

[slackmaster]

148. Canada's national gun registration has massive cost overruns

Something approaching $2 billion (Canadian). It's something like 40-50 times the projected cost, and the system is still not working.

This is one of my concerns about the California proposal. Too often costs and benefits are poorly analyzed, leaving a mess for the taxpayers and future generations to clean up.

[suigeneris]

149. Okay, but would the costs to implement this be

remotely comparable to whatever Canada is doing?

[slackmaster]

150. However low the cost, we taxpayers and gun owners deserve to know

The official analysis by the state's Senate Public Safety Committee doesn't even contain the word "fiscal".

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/sen/sb_0351-0400/sb_357_cfa_20050425_143651_sen_comm.html

It authorizes the DoJ to levy a fee of up to one-half cent per round plus $50 per year per retailer to offset its costs, but it says nothing about enforcement costs.

Here's the legislature's page for the bill. It looks to me like a lot of 'i's haven't been dotted or 't's crossed.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_357&sess=CUR&house=B&author=dunn

[suigeneris]

151. I won't argue with you. I don't think anyone of good faith would

be for a program that didn't work, or one that was extremely expensive.

We could save lives on the freeway by driving at 5 miles per hour. We aren't going to do that.

[DoNotRefill]

156. Actually, it'll be many times higher....

after all, Canada just registered a few million guns. This proposal is talking about billions of registrations a year.

[suigeneris]

169. No, all the cartridges in a box would have the same number

and I'm sure it could be scanned in.

If I were going to implement this I would make it a simple matter of using a credit card terminal to scan the serial number data and send it along with the driver license ID to the database.

I think. I haven't totally thought that through.

[DoNotRefill]

172. The problem is...

that if all the rounds in the same box have the same serial, what happens when a 1400 round box of ammo (which is the standard size I get now for my main guns) with all the same serials get parted out?

What happens when the monkeywrenchers/tire kickers spend the afternoon in Wal-mart opening boxes of ammo and swapping rounds around before they're sold?

What happens when the information itself is deemed to be inadmissable on 4th and 5th amendment grounds, and all subsequent evidence obtained by following that line of investigation is deemed to be "fruit of the poisoned tree"?

[suigeneris]

173. Well. let's see...

First off there would have to be several different serials in a box of 1400, I'd expect.

Nobody lets people play with ammo. do they? If so, you'd have to keep it locked up.

Why would the info be inadmissible? The law would be clear and promulgated. There could be no reasonable expectation or claim of privacy. It would be no different from using your DNA, fingerprints or the VIN on your car to trace it to you. I see no constitutional barrier. Why do you?

[DoNotRefill]

174. Because it's a huge privacy infringement under the 4th amendment...

Plus it couldn't apply to criminals, due to the 5th amendment (remember, being a convicted felon in possession of ammo alone is a felony, so such a system would require self-incrimination)

The problem is that what they are advocating is the equivalent of EVERYBODY being preemptively FORCED to give the Government a DNA sample to cut down on crime. There's no way in hell it would survive constitutional muster.

[suigeneris]

175. Nah, I think you are all wrong. How can we get an opinion from

a Con law lawyer?

[DoNotRefill]

177. Ummm...

never mind...

[suigeneris]

178. Don't leave the discussion yet, please.

It's an interesting topic, I approach it in good faith and the spirit of enquiry, and I don't think we've gotten to the bottom of it yet.

Perhaps you misunderstood my last post and it put you off. I intended that I disagreed with your statement and wondered aloud where we could find a lawyer expert in constitutional law for an opinion. One of my kids is an attorney, I enjoy trying to understand the law and I read a lot about constitutional law. Suggesting an expert I thought would simply lead us to a stronger analysis and opinion. But, we can do okay on our own, I imagine.

Let me see if I can state things correctly.

You've said the ID proposal can't succeed because: "...it's a huge privacy infringement under the 4th amendment..."

I'm not a lawyer but I know a little something about the Bill of Rights, which I treasure and I don't grasp your point, I think your are wrong, and so I'd like to see you amplify and support it.

The 4th amendment protects against unreasonable searches and protects against intrusions to privacy where there is a bona fide reason to expect it. So upon probable cause the cops can search my home for evidence of a crime. WRT to privacy if I am growing marijuana in my front window I can't expect a privacy right even in my own home, although the cops can't remotely sense the temperature of a room where I might be using grow lights. Neither can I expect privacy when I walk in front of surveillance cameras, speak in a public place or leave DNA behind on a soda straw.

It seems to me that if everyone knows ammunition is serialized then they have no reasonable expectation to privacy about it. Further,if they are informed when the purchase is made that records are kept there is no barrier to law enforcement's accessing that information to solve a crime that I can see. Where is the search? Where is there a right to privacy about such records?

If I am stopped by the police they can use my driver license number and name to see information on my driving record. They can also access the NCIC databases for wants, warrants, and other information stored there.

If a crime is committed they can collect identifying information I left behind such as my fingerprints or DNA samples and compare these against databases to identify me. How is their collecting a casing at the crime scene and processing it for a fingerprint any different from looking up who it was sold to based on its serial number?

You have made a strong statement here: The problem is that what they are advocating is the equivalent of EVERYBODY being preemptively FORCED to give the Government a DNA sample to cut down on crime. There's no way in hell it would survive constitutional muster."

There may be an Everest-sized political barrier but there may not be a constitutional one. You might examine this source for such an argument:http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/dnabook/Kaye_and_Smith_2.doc

So, DoNotRefill, I hope you'll have a change of heart and chat along some more. I might even surprise you with my views on the 2nd amendment, you never know :-)

[DoNotRefill]

179. Start your reading with Mapp v. Ohio....

that was from 1961, IIRC, and began to change the privacy landscape.

Most people don't store their ammunition outside of the home. So how, exactly, are the police going to be able to check up on who owns what bullet without violating their rights? And how will the police know that the person in the retailer's records is actually the person who purchased the ammo without violating their rights?

On top of that, there's the fact that the government CAN NOT constitutionally require criminals to do any paperwork or scan their driver's license for the purchase of firearms or ammunition without infringing on their 5th amendment right against self-incrimination. Surely, at some point you've heard that "gun registration only applies to the law abiding", right? That's because SCOTUS has ruled that punishing criminals for failing to register their guns violates their 5th Amendment rights, since possession of a firearm by a criminal is in and of itself a crime.

[suigeneris]

181. I will here address the first problem you raise and will leave

the case of ex-convicts for another post.

Mapp v. Ohio is a casein which evidence of a state crime was obtained in an illegal search of a premises. The state was unwilling or unable to show that a search warrant had been obtained and served on Mapp. While there were other police infractions, this was the principal error. Her conviction was overturned by a decision of the US Supreme Court, which had the additional effect of strengthening the 4th amendement's application to the states. The principal sequelae of Mapp are the application of the 4th to state actions and the greatly increased use of search warrants. Such warrants and searches and seizures are a commonplace in American criminal justice.

The fact pattern in Mapp is very different from that which can be expected by the use of bullets and casings which bear serial numbers. Such cases will proceed approximately as follows.

1. The police will collect at the crime scene or from the victim a shell casing or bullet fragment with a serial number. This is tantamount to collecting a fingerprint or VIN or weapon serial number or business card or any other identifying information at a crime scene which raises suspicion about someone.

2. The police will identify the purchaser of record for the serial number found. In some cases several purchasers might be suggested by recovery of a partial serial number.

3. Using the identification of the serial number the police will investigate the purchaser of record.

4. Such an investigation will likely include a search warrant to collect ammunition and weapons owned by the party for it is hard to imagine a judge refusing such search and seizure when evidence from a crime scene potentially implicates a specific individual.

5. As in investigation of any crime the person who purchased the ammunition will have to account for its whereabouts and his whereabouts in connection with the crime.

6. The purchase of the serial numbered ammunition used in the crime will not alone be dispositive. Other proofs will have to be developed to make a sound case.

There is no right to privacy for the bullet or casing left behind. For grins this morning I ran this past a retired FBI special agent I have coffee with from time to time and some other guys, several of which are gun nuts. On practical grounds he thought it was a dumb idea but when queried about constitutional defects he immediately responded that once the bullet and casing leave the gun and are left behind they are out of the possession of the shooter who retains no rights to them. As for consulting a database of information he saw that as absolutely routine in police work.

There is no absolute right to privacy against searches, only that the government may not undertake unreasonable searches. In a case where ammunition sold to an individual has been found at a crime scene there is no reason to believe that such will not be sufficient cause for search and seizure of ammunition and firearms for forensic examination from the individual's home and perhaps other premises.

I conclude: 1.) That Mapp in no way resembles cases that would flow from identified rounds. 2.) That the defects of Mapp are readily overcome with a search warrant. 3.) That probable cause to obtain a warrant will flow from the ammunition having been used in a crime and its purchase traced to an identified individual.

I could find no case that contradicted these conclusions, which are based on the way police work is done every day in this country.

[DoNotRefill]

183. /shakes his head....

We're not talking about the casing or bullet left at the scene, we're talking about the box of bullets left at home. Ever wonder why people aren't prosecuted more frequently for perjury after falsely filling out form 4473?

"Joe Blow at Target says he sold so and so some bullets" doesn't come CLOSE to satisfying the probable cause requirements for a warrant.

Didja notice how I said "Start" at the beginning of my "Start with Mapp v. Ohio" post? Mapp isn't the be-all end-all, it's the START.

[suigeneris]

184. Shakes his head too

You say, "'Joe Blow at Target says he sold so and so some bullets' doesn't come CLOSE to satisfying the probable cause requirements for a warrant."

That's a strawman. The secure, properly administered central database would record a legally required entry that shows that on a given date in a specified place, Joe Blow, who offered satisfactory personal ID, purchased certain ammo at Target that bore a unique ID.

At the scene of the crime a bullet is recovered that is traced to Joe Blow.

Probable cause for a search warrant "exists when under the totality of circumstances there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place."

If you would like to argue that a serial number on ammunition used in the commission of a crime and in which Joe Blow is the purchaser of record is not probable cause to pay Joe a visit and search his premises for that ammunition I would be happy to read it. Your mere unsupported assertion that it does not come "CLOSE" does not come CLOSE to cutting it.

You might consider a parallel case. Joe Blow's car is seen at the scene of the crime where someone is shooting from it and a witness obtains the license number. The police pay Joe a visit and they stop off at the judge to obtain a warrant to search the car. Argue against this scenario if you wish.

Of course the ammo might have been lost, stolen, etc., but Joe would have to talk with the investigators about that. Further, even without a search and seizure Joe would be going downtown with the detectives to discuss how ammo he bought killed somebody.

I started with Mapp as you asked and I patiently explained why a warrantless search did not apply. If you think you know enough to weave a compelling case, not just tout an air of dismissive superiority, I'm anxious to listen and it would be a service to me and our readers. If you refuse to deal with the substance of my posts and wish only to imply your vast knowledge and expert opinion then give us some reason to rely on you.

BTW, has it occurred to you that since the Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the state of California propose to use this technology that they are likely to be better informed about their chances of succeeding in court with it than you are likely to be? It seems reasonable to me unless you have some extraordinary credentials or a detailed and supported line of reasoning to prove them wrong.

[DoNotRefill]

191. Depends on whose courtroom it's in...

"BTW, has it occurred to you that since the Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the state of California propose to use this technology that they are likely to be better informed about their chances of succeeding in court with it than you are likely to be?"

If it's in a California courtroom, it might fly. Out here, it will not. It's not even close.

"The secure, properly administered central database would record a legally required entry that shows that on a given date in a specified place, Joe Blow, who offered satisfactory personal ID, purchased certain ammo at Target that bore a unique ID."

Do I REALLY need to give you a lecture on the chain of evidence, and the unreliability of such a chain of evidence that is established with a minimum wage hourly employee at a "big box" store? Do you know ANYTHING about the NFRTR and how unreliable THAT system has turned out to be, even though it only has 250,000 entries, and the number of entries does not change? You say it's a unique ID. The website says differently, indicating that under NORMAL procedure, anywhere between 20 and 50 identical serial numbered bullets would be produced. You say it's a secure system. Of course, entries into the system will HAVE to be made by hourly "big box" employees at the POS... You say that the record would show that he purchased certain ammo. Of course, that would be predicated upon scanning the serial number of every bullet in the box, not just the master barcode on the box itself, right?

"Joe Blow's car is seen at the scene of the crime where someone is shooting from it and a witness obtains the license number. The police pay Joe a visit and they stop off at the judge to obtain a warrant to search the car."

A car, as I'm sure you know, is not a house. And that's what you're talking about searching here...a house. There's caselaw in California allowing the issuance of a search warrant to search a house based upon an "alert" by a drug-sniffing dog on an automobile. Out there, such things apparently fly. Here, an affidavit for a search warrant based upon those facts and that caselaw is rightly refused.

"Further, even without a search and seizure Joe would be going downtown with the detectives to discuss how ammo he bought killed somebody."

And as soon as Joe's lawyer got involved, those detectives would be unemployed and the municipality that allowed such conduct under the color of law would be facing a hefty judgement for violating his civil rights.

But hey, what do I know?

Edited to remove some details about my employment.

[suigeneris]

192. Okay, a quick summary and we are done..

Edited for typo, bouse --> house.

o Although the 4th amendment provides a nationwide floor for search warrant criteria, California has lax rules compared to the paradise for suspects where you are.

o You could give a chain of evidence lecture on why the company selling the identification technology, the California Attorney General and the California Department of Justice are legal fools.

o Some databases have problems so this one will be useless in investigations and prosecutions.

o A sealed box of ammunition will have to be broken open and each cartridge scanned before the system would have any use and still not where you live.

o Hourly employees are smart enough to charge a credit card but too stupid to record the sale of ammo reliably.

o A car is not a house.

o Cops using the casing and bullet IDs will be fired and their agencies will lose trillions in lawsuits.

o You know best, in fact, you know all.

Right. Thanks for the carefully annotated and supported argument then.

We're done.

[DoNotRefill]

193. Two questions for you:

First, where did you go to law school?

Second, when was the last time you actually attended a probable cause hearing?

[suigeneris]

194. Q & A

As I stated elsewhere in this thread I didn't go to law school and I'm not a lawyer. So what? I'm well-educated and as capable as any lawyer of understanding the law as regards probable cause for a search, the exclusionary rule, etc. At least the SCOTUS thinks so, vide infra. Where did you got to law school, and were you a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney or a criminal court judge?

I've never attended a probable cause hearing, but when you use the phrase probable cause hearing you are not referring to probable cause for a search warrant but have in mind those jurisdictions that use post-arrest probable cause hearings, is that right?

If you wish to cite cases that demonstrate the illegality of a person or premises search based on identifiable material left at a crime scene I'd love to see it. I looked and could not find any. I already posted the SCOTUS standard and I don't see that you have offered any argument that it would be violated other than your assertions.

To review.

If I understand you, you think the case and bullet IDs are worthless because a) the recording of the buyer and IDs might have been done by an imcompetent person, b) the database might not be secure, hence subject to tampering, c) the container of cartridges might have been tampered with pre or post sale so that it contains more than one ID or its cartridges might have been disbursed to other containers not purchased by Joe Blow, d) the IDs will not survive firing and striking, and e) finding a serialized casing or bullet at a crime scene would not be probable cause for interrogating or searching any premises or property of its owner of record.

Answer these:

1. How is a fingerprint on a casing at a crimne scene different from an ID number on the casing?

2. How is an ID on a casing different from a license number on a car witnessed at a crime scene?

3. Would a righteous search warrant be issued based on the fingerprint but not the serial number? After all, there are legitimate reasons why the fingerprint would not be proof its owner did the crime just as that is so for the owner of record of the serialized casing.

4. Same with the car. Would a righteous search warrant be issued for the person and premises for the registered owner of the license plate?

If you say no to any of these how does that comport with what the SCOTUS has had to say as recently as 2003?:

"The long-prevailing standard of probable cause protects “citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from unfounded charges of crime,” while giving “fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160,176 (1949). On many occasions, we have reiterated that the probable-cause standard is a “‘practical, non technicalconception’” that deals with “‘the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.’”

"The probable-cause standard is incapable of precise definition or quantification into percentages because it deals with probabilities and depends on the totality of the circumstances. See ibid.; Brinegar, 338 U. S., at 175. We have stated, however, that “he substance of all thedefinitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground forbelief of guilt,”" - 540 US (2003)

Perhaps you think I cannot understand how a defense attorney could raise issues about the ammunition's IDs. I can, of course, it is trivial. But it is not so hard to imagine circumstances where the IDs alone are both admissible and damning. What if four rounds, bullets, were found at the crime scene and two were in the registrant's gun found at his house and the rest were in the previously sealed box in his house? It isn't far-fetched to imagine this would be the only evidence in such a case, and it would be strong.

Despite your certainties I predict this technology will be adopted and find utility. It turns out CA has studied it at length, in some cases with surprising results such as lead slugs fired at walls, flesh, car doors, two-by-fours and other common sites yield 99% recoverable IDs. Who knew?

If you care to be specific about your objections instead of simply dispensing your opinion perhaps there is another round of discussion here, but somehow I doubt it. In which case I give you the last word.

[DoNotRefill]

195. point by point

"If I understand you, you think the case and bullet IDs are worthless because a) the recording of the buyer and IDs might have been done by an imcompetent person,"

Ever hear of informant reliability? In the process as described, the clerk couldn't even testify truthfully that he or she saw a single round that was actually serialized to the label on the box.

"b) the database might not be secure, hence subject to tampering,"

It doesn't have to be subject to tampering, it's a governmental registration system. Simple incompetence is enough to throw doubt on it's accuracy. Refer to the NFRTR (which is both a much smaller system and one in which the penalties for governmental employee screwups are much more severe for the person whose entry is screwed up than can be the case here) for an example.

"c) the container of cartridges might have been tampered with pre or post sale so that it contains more than one ID or its cartridges might have been disbursed to other containers not purchased by Joe Blow,"

Once again, it doesn't necessarily have to be a matter of tampering (although that's a distinct possibility), it's a matter of automatic processing not being particularly condusive to accuracy in something like this, and you CERTAINLY can't question a machine for veracity, can you? Such a system would rely on perfect quality control, which simply isn't realistic for ammunition manufacturing equipment.

"d) the IDs will not survive firing and striking,"

I never ever said anything like that.

"and e) finding a serialized casing or bullet at a crime scene would not be probable cause for interrogating or searching any premises or property of its owner of record."

Correct. In order for a search warrant to be issued, there must be probable cause to believe that the evidence that is being searched for is in the specific placed named in the affidavit. "Sometime in the past he bought this batch of bullets at Target, so we want to search his house" doesn't cut it.

"Answer these:

1. How is a fingerprint on a casing at a crimne scene different from an ID number on the casing?"

We're not talking about a search warrant for the crime scene. We're talking about a search warrant looking for the rest of the ammo in the guy's house.

"2. How is an ID on a casing different from a license number on a car witnessed at a crime scene?"

It's not, provided that we're talking about the casing AT THE CRIME SCENE. Going into the suspect's house looking for the rest of the bullets is where the problem comes in. Of course, once you go to trial, you're going to have trouble with the chain of evidence on the serial number...

"3. Would a righteous search warrant be issued based on the fingerprint but not the serial number? After all, there are legitimate reasons why the fingerprint would not be proof its owner did the crime just as that is so for the owner of record of the serialized casing."

It's difficult for a criminal to borrow somebody's fingerprints, and not difficult to borrow somebody's ammo. If you find somebody's fingerprints at a crime scene, there are a very limited number of possibilities. Either the person was actually at the crime scene, or the person touched an object that was then transported to the crime scene. If the object is fixed in place (like a door frame or a window) then it obviously wasn't moved, placing the person at the crime scene at some point in the past. With this bullet registration system, the absolute BEST-CASE scenario for LE is that at some point the person that the system claims bought the bullets in question may have had them in his or her possession. It certainly doesn't place them at the crime scene with any degree of certainty.

"4. Same with the car. Would a righteous search warrant be issued for the person and premises for the registered owner of the license plate?"

No. The fact that a license plate was reportedly seen at a crime scene is not enough to give the police probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime was located IN THE CAR OWNER'S HOUSE. What you're talking about would be a HUGE expansion of police powers, granting them the authority to conduct routine "fishing expeditions", and violating the person's right to privacy in their home based upon a non-secure record system established at the POS.

[Romulus]

135. ammo coding = anti-environment

Right now, the trend in the ammo world is to go to lead-free frangible ammo that disintigrates on contact with something harder than itself. (www.ttiarmory.com, www.frangiblebullets.com) The lead-free movement was started due to lead poisoning issues among police recruits, police officers during training, and private shooting range employees. The use of lead-free ammo is also being pushed by the EPA-types due to the huge cleanup costs associated with lead contamination from bullets laying around shooting ranges, especially outdoor ranges like on military bases.(http://www.capecodonline.com/base/bullets.htm)

The lead-free ammo uses metals other than lead, but these metals have different properties from lead that cause them to disintigrate on impact. See www.pmcgreen.com for one example. Using non-disintegrating material other than lead may also run into the "armor piercing bullets" problem. Steel bullets are banned because of this issue.

Right now in CA, there is a competing bill to ban all leaded ammo due to concerns over lead poisoning among the California condor population. http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery If this coding bill bill passes, its implementation will conflict with the lead-free ammo bill.

[suigeneris]

143. I don't know if the mfr of ACS has addressed this.

Are frangible bullets jacketed and what happens to the jackets?

Seems like frangible bullets would have problems for hunters ruining meat. How does that work?

[Romulus]

145. not jacketed

they all appear to be "sintered" in that they are compressed metal powder that is somehow turned solid like a full metal jacketed round. (Ex: www.sinterfire.com) If they hit somthing harder than themselves (like bone, wood, concrete, etc.) then they fragment into dust (but expend their kinetic energy in the fragmentation process). Otherwise, they operate like a full metal jacketed round and penetrate soft tissue without deforming. You could use them for hunting in that regard.

Waterfowl hunters in the US use steel shot pellets in their shotgun rounds per current Fed law. But steel bullets for handguns and rifles would be classified as "armor piercing." The "armor piercing" handgun bullets would be a non-starter, and may already be banned.

[suigeneris]

147. Thanks. How come the dust doesn't contaminate a bunch of meat? nt

[DoNotRefill]

161. Because people don't often eat other people?

:evilgrin:

Seriously, though, a decent amount of meat is normally damaged/contaminated by a regular bullet along the hydrostatic shock channel. I don't know about y'all, but that part doesn't generally get eaten around here. If a sintered bullet strikes, the same amount of tissue is damaged, and you wouldn't eat that either.

[suigeneris]

166. Okay, makes sense to me. I already understand F=ma so a

sintered bullet of equal weight and velocity to a conventional one will deliver the same punch.

[DoNotRefill]

160. Sintering....

is a process where metal dust is heated ALMOST to the melting point, and then compressed. This is how Ruger manufactures it's semi-auto pistol frames, and why they're such crap.

[suigeneris]

168. Yes, thank you. I've seen sintering in filters.

I don't see why it would produce a frame that was crap though as long as it was well designed with solid parts where it was tapped, etc. Lighter, for sure.

[DoNotRefill]

171. Sintered metal is not as strong...

as forged metal is. It's a lot cheaper, but also a lot weaker.

[NickB79]

170. Frangible ammo: Bad for hunting

From personal experience, it's fine for thin-skinned varmints such as coyotes and woodchucks. However, it is absolutely a bad, bad idea for deer-hunting. The bullets I fird into coyotes from my .223 Rem disintegrated within the first few inches of impact. This is fine for a dog-sized animal where penetration more than a few inches isn't vital, but on a deer where you have to hit either the heart or both lungs many inches deep? Not a good choice, IMO.

[slackmaster]

137. Well now THAT'S reassuring

The people who sell the technology assure us the costs to retail purchasers won't be high, but they decline to estimate how much more we'd have to pay per round.

They say more crimes will be solved but decline to estimate how many.

:eyes:

[suigeneris]

138. Why make the perfect the enemy of the good?

This proposal has the potential to solve some serious crimes that go unpunished today. It doesn't have to be perfect or problem-free to offer some help in that regard.

Is paying an extra penny a round such a huge price to solve a few murders?

BTW, the California proposal would exempt hand loaders.

--

Edited for typo

[slackmaster]

140. I'll answer your question with a couple of questions and some comments

Is paying an extra penny a round such a huge price to solve a few murders?

Where did you get the penny per round figure, and how many murders are we talking about solving per year?

I'd support the bill if the following assurances were included:

1. The cost to consumers would never exceed one cent per round,

2. The state would be required to track and objectively measure the system's success, and to compare the results against numerated expected results, and

3. The system would be abolished automatically in, say, five years if it fails to achieve its goal.

[suigeneris]

144. I don't recall where the penny

per round figure came from. I was googling, but I think I can find it back if you'll be patient.

Your suggestions seem perfectly reasonable. One suggestion I read on a gun-oriented website that opposed this program proposed that a trial begin with equipping all CA cops with ACS ammo for a few years to see if it works. The thought was there would be enough multi-cop shootings of perps to find out if ID'd ammo would be useful in sorting out the shooting scene. I don't know if that would be a fair trail or not. I think your suggestions sound better.

--

Edited for typo: "trail" -> "trial"

[slackmaster]

146. Thanks - I try not to reject proposals out of hand

I recognize that some ideas that adversely affect gun owners and users might have enough offsetting merit to be worth the sacrifice, but I insist on accountability. Too often people want to jam through a gun control proposal just because it sounds good or they want to stick it to gun owners.

In this case it appears that someone has a vested business interest in making a particular technology mandatory. That raises a yellow flag for me.

[slackmaster]

152. About the company that is selling the bullet serialization technology...

It appears that Ravensforge of Seattle has pissed off and delighted a lot of skateboarders.

http://www.skateblock.com/

http://www.djc.com/special/environment2000/skateboard.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/11/18/smallb1.html

[Name removed]

153. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[suigeneris]

154. Some will, yes, but crims are not the brightest folks

around, they regularly leave their fingerprints and DNA behind. You could catch plenty of them.

[DoNotRefill]

162. We ALREADY catch the stupid ones...

trust me on this...

[suigeneris]

165. I'd like to, ME, but what if all that is left is a slug or casing? nt

[Renew Deal]

176. We don't need gun control. We need bullet control.

-Chris Rock

[Mondon]

180. This is idiotic.

Don't like gun violence? Address the reasons people are violent. Guns = banned in DC, + no restrictions in Vermont. Gun "control" only disarms or hampers law-abiding people.

Treat the disease, not the symptom. This is just another "magic bullet" (pun intended) which allows politicians to look like they are doing something when they are actually doing nothing to eradicate teh causes of gun violence: poverty, racism, drug culture, etc.