Calif. Supreme Court upholds law requiring bullet-tracing technology on guns

The San Franciso Chronicle ^ | 06/28/18 | Bob Egelko

[Simon Green]

Gun manufacturers must do their best to comply with a California law requiring new models of semiautomatic handguns to imprint their bullets with identifying micro stamps so police can trace them, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting the companies’ arguments that the law should be overturned because compliance is technologically impossible.

A gun-control advocate said the ruling preserves safety regulations that encourage industries to develop new technologies. A gun organization’s lawyer said the state is headed for a “slow-motion handgun ban.”

The gun law, passed in 2007, is supported by police organizations that say the stamps would help officers to determine the source of bullets found at crime scenes. It requires that new brands of semiautomatic pistols introduced for retail sale in California carry markings in two places that would imprint the gun’s model and serial number on each cartridge as it is fired.

The law didn’t take effect until 2013, when the state certified that there were no patent restrictions on the technology. But gun manufacturers have not sold any new models of semiautomatic handguns in California since then, and in 2014 a gun group sued to invalidate the law, saying its standards could never be met.

A state appellate court allowed the suit to proceed, relying on an 1872 California statute that declared, “The law never requires impossibilities.” On Thursday, however, the state’s high court dismissed the suit and said the law would remain on the books, even if it was difficult to enforce.

“Impossibility can occasionally excuse noncompliance with a statute,” Justice Goodwin Liu said, since a manufacturer charged with violating the law could argue that it had done everything possible to comply. “But impossibility does not authorize a court to go beyond interpreting a statute and simply invalidate it.”

[Reeses]

The gun manufacturers maybe could sell vanity imprints to boost sales. Without Barky to sell their guns anymore they need something new.

[eyeamok]

This could be fixed overnight if the gun Manufacturers got together one night and decided to completely STOP All sales or Repairs to ALL California Residents. Let the Police use sling shots.

[Chode]

so start with the cops then...