New Yorkers Against Gun Violence are all in favor of microstamping because this time their horrendously expensive and completely useless gun tracking database will work. Really it will. Having finally been hit in their collective melon with the big clue-stick ($45+ million and nearly a quarter million man hours for precisely 2 hits, neither of which was useful) they are admitting that CoBIS (New York’s Combined Ballistics Identification System) was a colossal waste of resources not quite as effective as they had hoped. But they’re not going to let a little thing like their big idea being an ineffective, massive drain on scarce taxpayer dollars get in the way . . .

NYAGV issued a recent press release:

Microstamping is a simple inexpensive tool to help police identify a gun’s first purchaser. The sooner law enforcement finds the first valuable evidence at a crime scene, the better the chances of solving the crime. Microstamping is an important tool, not a panacea, but since 40 percent of homicides remain unsolved nationally, it is a tool that law enforcement needs to increase success.

First of all, microstamping is neither simple nor inexpensive. Even though California passed a microstamping bill several years ago it hasn’t been implemented because no one has yet come up with a feasible working technology. In addition, it will still require the same type of database that was a miserable failure with CoBIS used. And then there’s this question: exactly what good does finding the first purchaser of a gun do? Do I even need to raise the issue of gang-bangers “salting” a crime scene with brass scavenged from a public shooting range? I didn’t think so.

But they’re right when they call microstamping a tool. It’s just not a tool for crime fighting. Instead, it’s a tool for the antis to make manufacturing, buying and owning a gun ever more expensive, ever more inconvenient, ever less realistic. If NYAGV wants to give law enforcement more crime-solving “tools” perhaps they should look at the resources CoBIS wound up wasting and then not saddle cops with more blue-sky technologies to siphon off money and manpower that could more profitably be used elsewhere.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. The same fascist pukes in the NY State Legislature submit the same anti-gun bills, including several on microstamping, every year. Fortunately, most of them never get past the Republican majority in the State Senate.

    This year, according to http://www.nysrpa.org/ , the language of one of the microstamping bills has been included, verbatim, in the budget bill. An insidious and despicable end-around to the Senate’s legislative process. If the budget passes, as is, then microstamping becomes law in NYS. A defacto ban on the sale and resale of semiautomatic pistols in NY.

    If you live in NY, go here, find out who your reps are in the Assembly and Senate and email them, call their offices and write a snail mail letter to them.

    http://nymap.elections.state.ny.us/nysboe/

  2. All smoke and mirrors; they believe this will help stop violence the same way they really care about victims of violence…that is to say, none. It’s all about indirectly outlawing guns by making them prohibitively expensive and the process convoluted. Like everything else antis do, it’s cowardice and oppression the backhanded way since they know they can’t win with logic.

  4. Instead, it’s a tool for the antis to make manufacturing, buying and owning a gun ever more expensive, ever more inconvenient, ever less realistic.

    A lot of ” gun control ” schemes are that way.
    Training.
    Ban on Saturday Night Specials.
    Ban of certain imported guns.
    Sin Tax on guns and ammo.
    Gun Safes.
    Trigger locks.
    Endless list.

  5. I am also in favor of microstamping fairies and unicorns. It’s terrible if they can’t find you when your unicorn is lost. And I am in favor of macrostamping the word NO on all microstamping bills.

    Yours,
    Tom

  6. I never understood all this tracing stuff. Unless you can show that the first owner was the guy who fired the round, what have you learned? Nada. In the case of every stolen weapon or illegal gun sale, the original owner information is utterly useless. I have the same issue with attempts on the left coast to register ammo buys–ID and themb print required for purchase (last attempt held unconstitutional). If they have a hard time reliably matching bullets, how much harder is it to match shell casings to a particular box of ammo and the original purchase of that ammo? And what if the brass is reloaded? what kind of possible evidentiary value would there be? I have never heard any proponent of any of these bills try to explain that.

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