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What Should I Know About Guns and Microstamping?
Just this month, the professional journal of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark Examiners, the AFTE Journal, featured a peer
Just this month, the professional journal of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark Examiners, the AFTE Journal, featured a peer-reviewed study whose authors included the microstamping technology patent holder Todd Lizotte.
Among the study’s conclusions was that microstamping was “not a perfect technology.”
This assessment comes four years after Lizotte was quoted in The New Haven Register as saying that the concept warranted further research. Clearly, microstamping is a concept not ready for prime time, and may never be.
The AFTE study points out that what appears to be a simple, high-tech solution to identifying guns used in crimes is actually extremely complex. “Microstamping involves more than just ‘blasting a number onto a firing pin using a laser,’ which to the layman may seem how the technique works. [However,] for each model of firearm an optimization process must be run. The optimization process considers many physical characteristics of the area of the firing pin that strikes the primer and how the laser used for engraving interacts with this area.” Material hardness and shape, size and curvature of the firing pin are among those characteristics. “Thus optimization is a complex process . . . that must be conducted for each model firearm of each manufacturer.”
Even though the Lizotte reportedly says he wants his patent to expire and the technology to enter the public domain, he stands to reap the significant rewards as a consultant to those many firearms manufacturers that would be faced with the challenge of optimizing the microstamping process.
Optimization would not be a one-time procedure, but rather would be required each a time a company retooled because of wear and tear on parts and machinery. Legislation that would mandate and reward the use of sole-sourced, patented technology should also be closely scrutinized, and microstamping does not hold up to that scrutiny.
The Times’ article quoted divergent estimates of how microstamping would affect the retail price of firearms, with industry estimating costs would increase by $200 per firearm and microstamping advocates putting the cost at $12 per gun.
Surely, the manufacturers are in a better position to estimate their costs of implementing this process, which would require assembling firearms with a unique set of parts rather than in a batch process of interchangeable parts, as the AFTE paper points out.
Even if microstamping were adopted in New York and worked as claimed, it would not be the crime-solving solution its proponents suggest. Most guns used in crime are stolen. Many guns used to commit crimes in New York State were originally sold at retail outside the state. In New York firearms recovered by law enforcement were originally lawfully sold on average almost 14 years before being recovered by the police.
As result, even if microstamping were adopted in New York, shell casings recovered at crime scenes would be very unlikely to have microstamping marks. And it would be about 14 years before casings start showing up at crime scenes in New York with markings that would be largely illegible.
Implementing microstamping is also not without cost to the taxpayer. In order to examine the illegible micro laser engraved markings on cartridge casings New York State crime labs would be need to purchase special scanning electronic microscopes which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Learn more about microstamping by reading NSSF’s background paper.
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Comments
Microstamping is a patented
Microstamping is a patented process that micro-laser engraves the firearm's make, model and serial number on the tip of the gun's firing pin so that, in theory, it imprints the information on discharged cartridge cases. write essays
True, it's a patented
True, it's a patented process. That means that royalties would be paid to the patent holder for every micro-stamped firearm sold. But... that patent holder has NOT bothered to work out how to incorporate that patented process into the manufacturing process. It's only been "proven" using a breadboard prototype on one firearm at a time. No thought or consideration has gone into what would be required to incorporate that technology into a mass production method and mass production record keeping. But the patent holder has spent a small fortune trying to get New York and other states to require the use of his single-source, patented technology.
The article 'More About
The article 'More About Microstamping' submitted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation contains so many assumptions it can't really be thought of as demonstrating coherent logic. This view is illustrated by the article begging agreement from readers with words like 'clearly' and 'surely' rather than making the logic work.
However, I only need to illustrate this argument with one point since that is potent enough.
There is reference to a conclusion from an AFTE study that microstamping was 'not a perfect technology'. It should be noted that there is no definition given on what a 'perfect technology' is, either in the article or the downloadable fact sheet.
One key criteria for a good design derived from any technology is termed by designers 'forgiveness'. It means that the design should deal with misuse by users that either damage the product, the users themselves or others.
An example of a good design that manifests forgiveness, up to a point, is the iPad. You can do very little to damage to the product itself in using the controls and if you do manage to freeze something it's easy to reset. It's not a perfect design, but very few designs are.
As a contrast, guns are one of the worst designed type of product ever made, in that they so easily get stolen and used to accidentally shoot some people and intentionally shoot a vast number of people.
Microstamping is simply a small step towards the redesign of a product to enable it to adhere to modern design principles and should be supported. Unless of course gun proponents don't want to take responsibility for the design of the products they use.
And before anyone raises it, the National Rifle Association's refrain 'guns don't kill people, people kill people', must be one of the dumbest mantras ever thought up. Bad design kills people. If you want to follow that logic through look at the reduction in deaths on the road as cars have become safer. Or do you still want a car with no collapsible front and rear compartments, no seat belts and no air bags? It's the same logic. A desire to return to unsafe cars by chanting 'cars don't kill people, people kill people' would be equally dumb.
A question; do gun owners want a better designed gun or are the hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths they regularly cause in the USA a price worth paying for some peoples' entertainment and adherence to a mythology?
By the by, GeeryDee,
By the by, GeeryDee, microstamping will do nothing to deter crime. It will not save a single life. It will not create any barrier to the commission of a crime.
By the very standard of the design it will merely aid in the solving of crimes already committed. A crime will already have to be on the books before it can begin to work. An injury or death will have to occur before your device comes to play. So there will be no advantage for victims. There will be no deterrence to the firearms being stolen. Criminals don't care about identifying marks left by stolen firearms which cannot be traced to them; and the authorities can only say "Yep, that's the firearm which was stolen from Joe Blow on September 12, 2010, but we still don't know who stole it or committed this crime with it."
By your logic, over the
By your logic, over the nearly fifty years since I bought my first gun at age 13, I've owned an incredible number of defective guns as none of them has ever killed a human being. Several small animals and a couple of deer have fallen "victim" to them but that was intentional and they would not have been harvested had the guns been "safe" by your definition. Had those guns been "safe" by your standards they'd have been useless for either hunting or self-defense.
As for the "not a perfect technology" claim, let us start with the fact that this technology has been "proven" only in laboratory settings in test jigs marking one item at a time. It is a sole source patent, meaning that implementing it in the real world would imposing a requirement to pay royalties to the patent holder. The patent does not include any details or methodology in how this technology would be implemented in a real world assembly process. That engineering detail is left up to the manufacturers to figure out at no little expense.
You say, "[m]icrostamping is simply a small step towards the redesign of a product to enable it to adhere to modern design principles[.]" This is a lie. Modern design principles work towards making products less expensive to manufacture, to operate more efficiently, and safe for their users. Microstamping does none of these things. It would make fabrication and marketing more involved, inefficient, and expensive, and would contribute nothing towards end user safety or reliability. As such, it would be a violation of modern design principles.
Your final argument, that guns cause "hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths," comes straight from the play book of gun control organizations and ignores one very important detail, the millions of crimes prevented, the millions of intended victims defended, and tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners who use those guns for defense and sport each year with no resultant injuries. When I was first introduced to firearms in the range located in the basement of my Junior High School in 1962, I was told that shooting was one of the safest sports, with the likelihood of injury being far less than that of high school football. That is still true today yet I see no national effort to ban high school football.
In short, in spite of your efforts and that of others promoting this unproven and, to date, technologically unfeasible requirement, micro-stamping of firearms is not about safety, not about crime prevention, but only about making guns prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-to-do upper class.
First, read this:
First, read this: http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-facts/5.0/GunFacts5-0-print.pdf
YOU SAID: "As a contrast, guns are one of the worst designed type of product ever made, in that they so easily get stolen and used to accidentally shoot some people and intentionally shoot a vast number of people."
Firearms are a tool like any other tool. They have safety aspects built into them like any other tool. Chain saws are a tool and they have safety aspects built into them like any other tool.
Yet even with the safety aspects chain saws injure and maim 40,000 people every year. Here is a power Point presentation: http://www.flagsafe.ufl.edu/powerpoint/chainsaw%20safety%203.ppt
There are accidents: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/272500 AND http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/545735/man_dies_after_chain_saw_accident/
Suicides: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/woman-chain-saw-suicide.html AND http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/chainsaw-death-was-carefully-thought-through-suicide-1025503.html (note that the UK does not have handguns as they have been banned. that didn't stop this suicide.)
And murders: http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-news-roth1,0,7766213.story AND http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-man-decapitates-wife-chainsaw-cops-article-1.169858
Yet chain saws are not "the worst designed type of product ever made". They have hand guards, and chain brakes. They come with detailed instructions on their proper use and care. Yet they are still involved in 40,000 accidents, murders, and suicides every year.
Your problem is that you believe that a world without firearms would be a world without murders and woundings. There would be no misuse of other tools, like knives, baseball bats, and, yes, chain saws.
YOU SAID:
"And before anyone raises it, the National Rifle Association's refrain 'guns don't kill people, people kill people', must be one of the dumbest mantras ever thought up."
That is not a mantra of the NRA nor was it coined by them. It is a popular bumper sticker statement that started in the 1960's and has come into popular usage.
YOU ASKED:
"A question; do gun owners want a better designed gun or are the hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths they regularly cause in the USA a price worth paying for some peoples' entertainment and adherence to a mythology?"
Firearms already do what they are designed to do. They are one of the most heavily regulated products in America and the world. Microstamping would not make them safer. It would not make them less prone to theft. It would not make them any less dangerous in the hands of those who misuse them. It will not be any more effective in fighting crime than the Ballistic Imaging of bullets and casings has been. This is also called "Ballistic Fingerprinting". If it were as effective as it has been touted, they would be shouting it from every rooftop.
The upshot is this: Microstamping is unproven and expensive. The anti-firearms types have glomed onto it as a panacea; but their real motive is to price firearms off of the market. It is being lobbied for by the inventor because he wants to be involved in the development end of the technology because every unit produced has to have special development for that design or his technology will not work.
You need to do more independent research rather than simply believing the propaganda put out by the Brady Campaign.
The thing politicians never
The thing politicians never understand is that, "Anything that can be done by one man can be undone by another." As has been pointed out here, most firearms used in crimes are stolen anyway, so the entire process is rendered useless. The parts replacement, modifications, etc. will circumvent this. Also, revolvers don't eject the shell casings,
For that matter, it's easy to capture the casing with a loose bag next to the ejection port. You can even purchase those for many rifles. Making one shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.
Worst case, pick up your shell casings. Do not litter.
The actual goal of the
The actual goal of the micro-stamping is *NOT* to fight crime, solve murders and save lives.
The actual *GOAL* of the micro-stamping is to make gun ownership so odious, that the average citizen will get disgusted with jumping through all the hoops, and just say "SCREW IT!"
The Dictator wannabes of NYC, already believe their subjects, er, I mean "citizens" are too stupid to know what size soda they want to drink and so Bloomberg wishes to dictate even that. Bloomberg knows the majority of the peons are too stupid to realize, that with even a micro-stamping process that was 100% accurate, instead of the current 10% "success": *MOST CRIMINALS USE STOLEN GUNS!*
What this means to those intellectually challenged micro-stamp believers: One of Bloomberg's taxPAYER supplied bodyguards have a gun stolen, or a law enforcement officer lose his gun, and the gun is used in a murder, this same micro-stamping "triumph of technology to solve crime": Will at worst appear "Micro-stamping on shell cases PROVE that Bloomberg's got a kill team slaughtering citizens!" or that "John Everyman murdered Bob Goodcitizen!"
While many here have pointed out how easy it is to actually defeat the micro-stamping technology, let me add another thought for those who can use reason and logic: Defeating the technology isn't necessary, simply collect brass from a public range, especially a range frequented by LEOs, and collect a few pieces of brass matching your caliber each time you travel to the range,and save them, without touching them, in a baggie, Carry the baggie when prowling, and toss 8 or 10 pieces of "other" brass around *your* brass at a crime scene. Now *Which* brass was the crime brass? Can they all be processed? What's the cost?
What's a life worth? More than the cost of keeping all LEOs proficient with their firearms apparently.
"I have a dream! Where instead of reading about a cute college student left dead and naked in a vacant lot, the story reads, “Dead jackass found double-tapped and dead on the curb as his soul wings its way to HELL, because he assaulted the wrong lady.
Microstamping is symbolism
Microstamping is symbolism over substance. It does nothing. If the parts are changed the technology goes into the trash.
On top of that, this gives the bad guys a way to commit their crimes and have the blame fall on someone else. Microstamping isn't just used on the firing pin to imprint the primer. It is also used in the chamber to imprint the casing when the force of internal pressure within the casing presses the casing wall against the chamber wall.
So you go to the range to get in a little practice with your microstamping firearm and you fail to pick up your imprinted casings. The bad guys pick them up, take them home, and reload them. You are now the bad guy in his next hit.
Also, steel cased rounds do not imprint like brass cases. Microstamping is useless in the case of someone using steel cased ammunition.
Did I mention wear and tear rendering the microstamped cases unreadable as the chamber wears?
Remember the idiocy wherein every firearm has to have a round fired through it and the round and casing kept on file so the police can examine the round and case to determine the firearm from which it came? How many crimes have been solved since that money eating idea came to being? ZERO!
"The law is on hold until it
"The law is on hold until it is "practical". THEN "somebody's brother-in-law" will buy a failing machine shop and PROMISE to do the job for $12/gun. Then the bill kicks in, the cost is $2-300/gun, Remington and Kimber move out West leaving 5,000 NY State people on welfare and the Left cheers."
Exactly! And we here in the more firearms-friendly Midwest will welcome those industries and the jobs they provide.
As for practicality, there is a big difference between being able to mark a firing pin and being able to implement that process ALONG WITH THE NECESSARY PAPERWORK in the manufacturing process. Even then, it would be wasted effort. Over the years, I've personally made several firing pins for old guns for which parts were unavailable by using nails or metal plate no tools any more sophisticated than a file and an electric drill. Granted, they might not last as long as a properly heat-treated pin made from more appropriate metals but they did the job for as long as I owned those guns.
Like most liberal panacea
Like most liberal panacea ideas this is a "solution in desperate search of a problem".
Ray from Bloombergia NRA Life Soli Deo Gloria!!
The law is on hold until it
The law is on hold until it is "practical". THEN "somebody's brother-in-law" will buy a failing machine shop and PROMISE to do the job for $12/gun. Then the bill kicks in, the cost is $2-300/gun, Remington and Kimber move out West leaving 5,000 NY State people on welfare and the Left cheers.
" ... As of March 2012 the
" ... As of March 2012 the most "successful NBIN Partners" are: New York City Police Department: more than 3,000 hits. Illinois State Police-Chicago: more than 2,100 hits. Allegheny County (Pa.) Medical Examiner's Office: more than 2,300 hits. Newark Police Department: more than 1,200 hits. Santa Ana (Calif.) Police Department: more than 1,100 hits."
But even that seeming success rate distorts the true uselessness of this technology as anything but a ploy to make firearms less affordable. If the results of the California Justice Department's study are any indications, fewer than 1/6 of those "hits" was a correct identification. That was the success rate in the Calif. study and that study was conducted using new, unworn firearms and cases. The simple truth is that the entire micro-stamping idea is believable only to the sort of people who believe that the forensic science on CSI is real.
If we are too dense to
If we are too dense to understand that micro-stamping simply fails to do anything but raise the price of firearms, then we should look at what is already in place.
Since 1999 the Federal Government has spent millions on tracing shell casings through a "nationalized" database (NIBIN). This database is a compilation of images of shell casings found at crime scenes. The law creating NIBIN prohibits the capture or store ballistic information acquired at the point of manufacture, importation, or sale; nor can it be used to capture purchaser or date of manufacture or sale information. It looks like they are letting the states do it for them.
As of March 2012 the most "successful NBIN Partners" are: New York City Police Department: more than 3,000 hits. Illinois State Police-Chicago: more than 2,100 hits. Allegheny County (Pa.) Medical Examiner's Office: more than 2,300 hits. Newark Police Department: more than 1,200 hits. Santa Ana (Calif.) Police Department: more than 1,100 hits.
Not to mention the havoc
Not to mention the havoc caused by some crook going to a shooting range and picking up some stamped shell casings and depositing them at the scene.
Talk about being blind sided.............
Anyone familiar with firearms
Anyone familiar with firearms knows how to get around their identifying methods. I'll give examples, rifiling marks in the barrel, attach a lead bullet lf the proper caliber to your cleaning rod. Coat it with any type of oil and cover in valve grinding compound (available at any auto parts store)and place inside the barrel and proceed to scrub the barrel, about 100 strokes up and down will do. Changes the rifiling marks on the bullet. firing pin, polish the tip with wet/dry sandpaper. Leave it dry do it long enough and it will polish out any engravings that some nitwit figured outhow to put there. If you have a auto or semiauto don't forget to polish the face of the extractor (the face is the part that of the extractor that contacts the rim of the shell or the extractor groove of the shell. The serial number, I'm sure we've all seen on TV how you can raise a filed off serial number with a special process with acid. well if you you use a 1/16" drill bit and drill through thr numbers they are gone forever, especially if you can fill the holes with weld an not overheat and soften the metal. to any gov't official reading this remember, we are protected by the first ammendment, so kiss my A$$. Bud
As just one example of how
As just one example of how utterly useless this technology would be, consider the very popular Government model of 1911 pistol. Spare or replacement firing pins are readily available in titanium, stainless steel and traditional carbon steel as replacements or upgrades at prices ranging from $7 to $25 from a host of suppliers. As with any other mechanical part, firing pins break or wear out and are readily, easily, and frequently replaced, not just on the 1911 but any handgun. Firing pin replacement is as simple as field stripping the pistol as for cleaning, pushing in on the firing pin while pulling down on the firing pin block, dropping out the old pin and dropping in a new one, putting the firing pin block back in place, and reassembling the pistol.
Microstamping would be absolutely useless without requiring that firing pins be sold only through federally licensed dealers with each sale recorded and even then there'd be no guarantee that a given pin was actually installed in a given pistol at the time the pistol was used. An old or simply different firing pin could easily be installed and then subsequently changed out after use within a matter of a couple of minutes at most.
Even without switching the firing pins, a few strokes across a sheet of 400# grit wet/dry sandpaper would remove any etchings without affecting the performance of the firing pin.
The effect upon manufacturers' production expenses would not be nearly so inconsequential, however. This new law would require that parts currently stored loose in bins like nails or common nuts and bolts would have to instead be individually tracked and matched to the pistol in which they were ultimately installed. That's added paperwork and production expense.
On the plus side, maybe if Albany actually does pass this law we here in Missouri can have a shot at convincing Remington to relocate to a state that wants and values the jobs the company provides.
A truely useless technology.
A truely useless technology.
"In order to examine the
"In order to examine the illegible micro laser engraved markings on cartridge casings New York State crime labs would be need to purchase special scanning electronic microscopes which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."
And, let me guess, we'll need one of these in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and one for each borough of the City. I sense someone's "brother in law" is going to make out pretty well when this gets bid out. Too bad about the kids whose schools will lose money to send the brother in law on vacation.
Seriously, there are over 300,000,000 firearms in private hands in this Country. The likelihood of the criminal having one of the new 'stamped' weapons is miniscule. They will either make sure the weapon they but predates the law or alter the weapon.
The math is just not here for money that no one has.