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https://www.foxnews.com/us/scrapped-maryland-ends-bullet-id-program-after-15-years-5m-and-zero-cases-solved

 

The technology exists but it is utterly pointless. Maryland ditched their microstamp law after it cost the taxpayers over 5 million dollars and didn't solve one crime after 15 years. The law only exists to make it more expensive and cumbersome for law-abiding citizens to purchase firearms than it already is

 

Criminals will get the guns illegally from out of state or simply file down the stamp. This does not prevent crime or help to solve any crimes.

 

Wouldn't be surprised for a criminal to take advantage of this by going to a range, picking up a few bullet casings with the microstamp of the ground and leave it at a crime scene either....

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This feeds on the "CSI Effect" where people think forensics is magical. Here's NSSF on the subject: https://www.nssf.org/articles/the-moronic-myths-of-microstamping/

There is some truth to ballistic fingerprinting in general, but it usually only works when you already have both the intact bullet and the gun it was fired from at the scene.

In this case, at best it would lead to a partial match of a registered gun to a shell casing. Shell casings don't kill people, bullets do. I don't see how this can ever work as evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The real motivation is additional handgun database/registry and driving up production costs to be prohibitive for sale or manufacture.

How do people even follow this law if you wanted to? What do you do if you need a new firing pin?

If this technology was as benign as a frame serial number, I doubt anyone would oppose it. But it isn't.

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On 6/15/2022 at 3:02 PM, Grayson6074 said:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/scrapped-maryland-ends-bullet-id-program-after-15-years-5m-and-zero-cases-solved

 

The technology exists but it is utterly pointless. Maryland ditched their microstamp law after it cost the taxpayers over 5 million dollars and didn't solve one crime after 15 years. The law only exists to make it more expensive and cumbersome for law-abiding citizens to purchase firearms than it already is

 

Criminals will get the guns illegally from out of state or simply file down the stamp. This does not prevent crime or help to solve any crimes.

 

Wouldn't be surprised for a criminal to take advantage of this by going to a range, picking up a few bullet casings with the microstamp of the ground and leave it at a crime scene either....

People need to stop perpetuating this.  CA is the ONLY state that has ever mandated microstamping. All these references are to "ballistic fingerprinting" databases. MD and NY had them, and that was why for the longest time you got two spent shell cases in the box with every pistol. Those were useless too, but for different reasons than microstamping. 

Microstamping does NOT exist. There is a patent, and it kind of works. But there is no mass manufacturing scale method to implement it. The patent rights have been waived, but there are still not practical implementations of it. It doesn't have a success rate higher than tool marks, and it is easily compromised. 

If it magically existed, it'd still be useless for the same reason the ballistic fingerprinting was. That's simply because there is seldom a need to identify a firearm to solve a crime. Identifying the firearm doesn't place anyone at the scene of the crime, and they need to prove Bob was there and did it, not that this particular gun we can't prove Bob from the hood ever owned was used. 

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29 minutes ago, raz-0 said:

Identifying the firearm doesn't place anyone at the scene of the crime, and they need to prove Bob was there and did it, not that this particular gun we can't prove Bob from the hood ever owned was used. 

You're missing the narrative - the gun did it. You can't lock up Bob. Bob's a great guy!

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2 hours ago, raz-0 said:

People need to stop perpetuating this.  CA is the ONLY state that has ever mandated microstamping. All these references are to "ballistic fingerprinting" databases. MD and NY had them, and that was why for the longest time you got two spent shell cases in the box with every pistol. Those were useless too, but for different reasons than microstamping. 

Microstamping does NOT exist. There is a patent, and it kind of works. But there is no mass manufacturing scale method to implement it. The patent rights have been waived, but there are still not practical implementations of it. It doesn't have a success rate higher than tool marks, and it is easily compromised. 

If it magically existed, it'd still be useless for the same reason the ballistic fingerprinting was. That's simply because there is seldom a need to identify a firearm to solve a crime. Identifying the firearm doesn't place anyone at the scene of the crime, and they need to prove Bob was there and did it, not that this particular gun we can't prove Bob from the hood ever owned was used. 

Ah, thank you for clarifying, that makes more sense

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