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Posted on 01/24/2014 1:25:25 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
One of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers won’t sell its newest firearm in California because of a state law that requires firearms to imprint a unique stamp on bullet casings.
Smith & Wesson said Thursday it would not sell a semiautomatic pistol in California because of the law, signed in 2007 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and implemented last year. It’s the second big gun manufacturer to pull some of its products out of California in the last several months.
The gun companies said the law, which requires each firearm to imprint a so-called “microstamp” on bullet casings, impose unbearable cost burdens. The manufacturers also said the microstamps don’t reliably achieve the goal of providing evidence to law enforcement authorities.
In a statement released to the Los Angeles Times, Smith & Wesson CEO James Debney said the law would prevent Californians from having “access to the best products with the latest innovations.”
Only newly designed semiautomatic handguns and updated or modified older models are covered under the 2007 law. The microstamp would leave a tiny etching identifying the make, model and serial number of the weapon that fired a bullet. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Juries are carefully selected among the most malleable people; judges can favor one side against the another - all this was seen aplenty in last years.”
Right you are! I’ve been challenged off of two juries that involved product liability. As an engineer, the lawyers representing the “defective product” wanted me gone immediately. They were looking for welfare mothers and retired blue collar types.
The major questions during voir dire were about awarding money for “pain and suffering.”
But as regards the microstamped shell casings a defense attorney has plenty of room to rule them out as well. I can’t imagine anyone not polishing off the firing pin on his semi on general principles the day he received the weapon.
Gen.Blather, do you have the link or source for that article? I’d be interested to read something hopeful for a change.... Thanks.
It’s not simple as Smith deciding not to sell to LE. Smith sells to distributors, who in turn sell to stores and any LE agency.
So while Smith could request none of their distributors sell to CA LE agencies, it would be up to them to decide if they wanted to comply.
And if somehow each one of these distributors did decide to turn down a lucrative LE purchase, it would be easy for someone in the CA gov to set up an out of state shell corp to make the purchase (for a nice little fee paid for by the taxpayers of course) and then transfer them to whatever CA LE agency wanted a new Smith.
So there’s really not a lot Smith or Ruger can do here, but hopefully Kimber won’t be making any new SIS models now.
Technically, 10 rd mags, but only loaded to 7.
I rather see FA owners nationwide boycott anything being sold in CA as a protest against the controlling Communist and Socialist insurgents who’ve gained control of government at all levels in the state.
Smith & Wesson, no problem. But if it were Wesson Oil...
The Second Amendment doesn't have multiple tiers of the RKBA, neither should any law. It flies in the face of Equal Protection to have the law apply one way to one group of people and another way to the rest.
The law reads in part:
So three unique data must be written onto the face of the firing pin and/or chamber. A firing pin's tip measures approximately 1.5mm in diameter. That's the canvas you have to work with. Now while there have been demonstration projects (With hand-crafted firing pins) showing reliable imprints made of a few characters, the text of the law requires more than that. To squeeze that much information into that small a space, you need to use machine readable marks; something like a barcode.(7) Commencing January 1, 2010, for all semiautomatic pistols that are not already listed on the roster pursuant to Section 12131, it is 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 in two or more places on 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
In the lab, this works great. In the real world, however, firing pins and chambers wear. Schmutz builds up in fine little details such as the ID mark you're trying to make. To make the degraded marking readable, you must do a Fourier transform on the image to turn it from a messy spatial domain signal into a frequency domain signal. The noise from the schmutz is random and can be filtered out of the transform. (It's all at the origin if you're plotting the data on an X-Y plane.) The filtered signal is then inverse transformed and the original image is recovered.
Again, it works great in the lab, but not the real world. In the real world, large pieces of the "signal" can be completely missing. To compensate, the marking must contain at least 2 copies of the signal to be recoverable. (If some of you are thinking Nyquist frequency, you're on the right path.) If the marking is 2D, like a QR code, then there must be at least 4 copies of the mark; 2 in the X axis and 2 in the Y axis.)
Again, again, it works in the lab, but not in the real world. In the lab, you can pay an intern minimum wage to spend a few days carefully etching numbers into a firing pin. In the real world, you're making dozens or hundreds of pin a day. You must do all of the normal machining steps and then add in the writing process. How do you do that? Absent Harry Potter and some variation of a patronus spell, there aren't any manufacturing techniques that can mark each part with its own, unique imprint; not with this kind of information density.
S&W isn't doing the protesting here. Nature is.
the law, signed in 2007 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)
So the FULL autos and REVOLVERS get a pass??
What good are marks on the CASE?
Put them on the PROJECTILE!
Imbed an RFID gizmo in it!
I’ve been reflecting on the history of human behavior going back to Plato. Accounts of living history come from my German mother’s experiences during the Nazi regime. I certainly haven’t seen any instances of returning to Individual liberty and Economic Freedom that are fundamental to the American Way once it’s gone. I often wondered if those past regimes simply destroyed the risk takers, innovators, and ‘do-ers’. A society of obedient slaves only make the elite comfortable.
I’ve been reflecting on the history of human behavior going back to Plato. Accounts of living history come from my German mother’s experiences during the Nazi regime. I certainly haven’t seen any instances of returning to Individual liberty and Economic Freedom that are fundamental to the American Way once it’s gone. I often wondered if those past regimes simply destroyed the risk takers, innovators, and ‘do-ers’. A society of obedient slaves only make the elite comfortable.
” I certainly haven’t seen any instances of returning to Individual liberty and Economic Freedom that are fundamental to the American Way once it’s gone.”
I think America has a core strength that other societies don’t have. It was stupid to think America could establish individual freedom in societies that have never had it, like Iraq. Even England never had the individual freedoms we have unless they were granted by the crown. What the crown giveth the crown can, and has taken back. (Actually, it was parliament that has taken back.)
If we have a surge of conservatism and elect men more like George Washington than Marco Rubio then we can recover. (So long as there isn’t an ongoing crisis that the leadership feels demands we still submit.)
Perhaps the answer is for freedom oriented states to leave the union and fence themselves off. I’d move to Texas in a heartbeat if it left. I love my country, but the country I love no longer exists. (Unless we reestablish it.)
“Perhaps the answer is for freedom oriented states to leave the union.”
I seem to recall another time that was tried.
My Aunt’s (father’s brother’s wife, not my mother’s sister)stayed on the East side after the war. For them, when the wall came down, it was NOT a pleasant experience.
So, will other police agencies in other states purchase the weapons then re-sell them to California cops? Or will they simply buy them on the black market?
Probably be against the law to change the firing pin.
Didn’t this happen to Lee Harvey Oswald?
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