DAILY JOURNAL - Forum Column
August, 2007

GOING BALLISTIC: GUN LAW WOULD MAKE POLICE WORK MORE DIFFICULT (AB 1471)
By Donald E.J. Kilmer Jr.*

The Semiautomatic Pistol Microstamping Bill (AB 1471) may come up for a vote in the California legislature very soon. The bill would add the following language to California's "Unsafe Handgun" law, thus making any gun without the features described below illegal for a firearm dealer to sell in California:

"Commencing January 1, 2010, for all semiautomatic pistols that are not already listed on the roster pursuant to Section 12131, [that are] not designed and equipped with a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched or otherwise imprinted onto the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired."

The bill does not affect guns sold in California before Jan. 1, 2010. I know of no other action the government can take to encourage a run on semiautomatic pistol sales between now and December 2009.

The bill also does not affect rifles, shotguns or revolvers. It does not affect used guns or private party transfers. It only effects new, semiautomatic pistols sold in California after Jan. 1, 2010. Semiautomatic pistols eject the spent cartridge after a bullet is fired from the gun. That cartridge usually either ends up on the ground and is identified by the forensic detectives at a crime scene or ends up in the scrap bin of spent cartridges at the firing range.

Microstamping, a technology that is used to mark computer chips, is based on the idea of having a gun's firing pin imprint a unique mark on each cartridge fired from the gun. The metal firing pin of a gun impacts the metal primer in a bullet with a force sufficient to ignite the charge in the primer, which in turn ignites the gun powder in the cartridge.

Computer chips only need to be imprinted once. The firing pin of a gun must make accurate imprints every time the gun is fired for this to work. Metal striking metal always causes deformation and wear and tear on the impact surfaces of both metal objects. In a recent study, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that the average time between when a criminally used firearm is purchased and when it is used in a crime is 10.2 years nationally, and 12.7 years in California. That implies a lot of deformation of the firing pin before a forensic technician will get a chance to attempt to match a crime gun to a cartridge at a crime scene.

The California Policy Research Center commissioned the University of California, Davis to conduct a study of microstamping at the request of the legislature. The study found that the law would impose an initial increase in the cost of each firearm of $8 per unit. The study also found that while microstamping can still make unique and identifiable imprints after 2,500 rounds of ammunition are fired through a gun, the codes on the firing pins could easily be removed with common household tools.

In 2003, the California attorney general issued a report to the legislature entitled "Feasibility of a California Ballistics Identification System." California's chief law enforcement agency concluded that neither the methodology, money nor technology exists at the present time to implement such a scheme. The report uses data from similar programs in New York and Maryland, which ended up costing those states $2.4 million and $1.8 million respectivel - without solving a single crime.

While ballistics identification is not the same process as microstamping, it does require the creation and maintenance of a huge database that must be administered by the State of California. The problems with creating and maintaining that database are the primary obstacles identified by the attorney general for implementing this brand of firearm registration.

What happens when the bad guys (the ones that haven't switched to rifles, shotguns, revolvers and used [or stolen] semiautomatic pistols) install hoppers on their guns to catch the spent brass? What happens when the firing pin is filed down, replaced and/or worn out so that the "unique mark" is no longer transferred to the cartridge? What happens when the bad guys scatter a handful of spent brass at the crime scene, conveniently collected from the scrap bin at the gun range? This last hypothetical is probably why there is no enthusiastic support for this bill from law enforcement. Imagine increasing your list of "persons of interest" from the ususal suspects to a random list of people who were target shooting at the range for the past week?

AB 1471 will cost the taxpayers untold millions without yielding any tangible benefits. It will add $8 to the cost of honestly purchased handguns while doing nothing to keep criminals from switching to other guns and/or filing down the firing pins of their own guns. It will create an unmanageable and unreliable database, and it may consume even more of our limited police resources in tracking down false leads.

Ballistic fingerprinting and forensic science works because the technicians and detectives match the clues from the crime scene against a known list of possible suspects. Injecting potentially random and unreliable data into the mix will make police work more difficult and give criminal defense lawyers additional avenues for exploring and exploiting reasonable doubt when the identity of the perpetrator is at stake in a criminal trial.

AB 1471 does not make sense. It should either be defeated in the legislature or the governor should use his veto power to terminate this nonsense.