Last year, Rep. Anthony Brown, [D-Maryland] filed HR 719, the MICRO Act. In typically brilliant legislative fashion, MICRO stands for “Making Identifiable Criminal Rounds Obvious.”
I didn’t pay it too much attention to the MICRO Act, thinking it just another microcephalic microstamping requirement which I didn’t expect to go anywhere. Microstamping, after all, is a hairbrained idea that has never worked and isn’t really meant to reduce crime anyway.
I was half right. It hasn’t moved since it was introduced nearly a year and a half ago. But I ran across a reference to the bill recently, and decided to look at it again in more detail. It starts out pretty much as you’d expect.
“(B) For purposes of subparagraph (A), a pistol is capable of microstamping ammunition if—
“(i) a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol is etched into the breech face and firing pin of the pistol….
So far, so…bad. The requirement that the coding information must be etched — not raised. That would make the unique information less likely to imprint on the cartridge. But the next line is where it gets really weird.
“(ii) when ammunition is fired from the pistol, the characters are copied from the breech face and firing pin onto the cartridge case of the ammunition.
Both the breech face and firing pin must imprint the case. Not the case and primer. The firing pin must somehow be made to strike the case. I’m not quite sure what to make of that.
- Is this just the latest example of ignorant bill drafters not knowing how firearms and ammunition work in the real world?
- Is this some clever scheme to make all future semi-automatic handguns rimfire, in the belief that .22s will be less lethal?
- Or is it part another cunning plan to render current ammunition obsolete, supposedly turning existing handguns into paperweights?
Maybe some of all of the above? What’s your take?