Under a Gibbous Moon

In this op-ed, New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg urges voters to support legislation that will require firearms to have microstamping technology. A short version, microstamping is a technology that attempts to imprint each bullet casing with some type of serial number at the moment it is fired.

First, I shall disassemble Bloomberg’s premise. He starts off by listing victims of handgun violence and then claiming that, if only the spent casing had been stamped this litany of death could have been prevented. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make any sense. If that was true, the unique markings left on a bullet as it travels through the barrel would have ended handgun violence years ago.

Secondly, unlike the rifling marks left by the barrel (which in itself is easy to change), the tiny markings on a firing pin and ejector would be trivial to remove (and as with the barrel simple to replace).

Thirdly, microstamping would make it so that legitimate shooters would leave the equivalent of easily plantable DNA evidence whenever they fired their pistols.

Finally, according to the infographic provided in the article, about 1/4 of handguns recovered by the NYPD last year were revolvers which, since they don’t eject spent casings, would render microstamping useless (and undoubtedly drive up the usage of revolvers for gun crime).

I’m not opposed to reducing crime. I’m not opposed to keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals but there is no point in spending money on a “solution” that won’t work.

Related (maybe) posts:

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2. Muzzle Breaks vs. Compensators
3. Salvador Rodriquez says he’d rather let someone be raped then be a snitch
4. Waterloo has met its waterloo
5. An unfortunate Tweet