Posted on 06/13/2012 5:16:37 PM PDT by neverdem
Identifying the firearm used in a crime is one of the biggest challenges for criminal investigators. But what if a shell casing picked up at a murder scene could immediately be tracked to the gun that fired it?
A technique that uses laser technology and stamps a numeric code on shell casings can do just that. But the technology, called microstamping, has been swept up in the larger national debate over gun laws and Second Amendment rights, and efforts to require gun makers to use it have stalled across the nation.
“I think it is one of these things in law enforcement that would just take us from the Stone Age to the jet age in an instant,” said Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld III of the Baltimore Police Department. “I just can’t comprehend the opposition to it.”
But legislation proposed in several states to require manufacturers of semiautomatic weapons to use the technology has met with fierce opposition. Opponents, including the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, argue that microstamping is ineffective and its cost prohibitive. They say the proposed system would unfairly focus on legal gun owners when most crimes are committed with illegally obtained guns.
The issue has become so heated that in New York, where the State Assembly is expected to debate a microstamping bill as early as Wednesday, one gun maker, the Remington Arms Company, has threatened to pull its business out of the state if the bill becomes law...
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The National Shooting Sports Foundation has estimated that microstamping would increase the cost of a firearm by “well over $200,” according to a fact sheet it issued, but advocates say the cost to manufacturers would be less than $12 a gun — a cap imposed as a condition of the New York Assembly bill...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Commish needs to understand that the prospect of potentially requiring extra-judicial resolution of matters such as this in HIS OWN department
might substantially be impaired if We the People were required to participate is such schemes.......or maybe he already DOES understand....? in which case his feigning indignation and surprise is a dare?!!!
ZIP GUNS leave no marks at all and are easily built by homeowners and their kids. New Yorkers pretend any of this hitech stuff is meaningful. No one is fooled.
What if, what if as soon as a confidential source spoke to a journalist, he was identified on the internet?
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