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Microstamping is the new gun control crusade among states

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July 21, 2023

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Microstamping is the new gun control crusade among states

A number of states have passed, or are attempting to pass, microstamping laws.

The California Senate has approved legislation by Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas that would require all semiautomatic pistols sold in California to use microstamping technology beginning in July 2027.


The new technology is intended to help law enforcement identify the source of a gun used in a crime.

“Gun violence is at epidemic levels in this nation,” said Blakespear, who has championed other gun safety legislation. “We need to do a better job of finding and catching anyone who uses handguns illegally and recklessly.”

SB 452 would prohibit the sale or transfer of a semiautomatic pistol made after July 2027 unless it has been verified as a microstamping-enabled pistol.

A New York state law requiring microstamping capability in new pistols is already five months behind schedule, with final results from a required study of the technology not expected until later this year.

Last June, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers made New York the second state in the country to approve a measure requiring microstamping technology in new semiautomatic pistols. The bill’s passage came amid worries over instances of gun violence statewide.

But the law came with a major caveat: Four years before the measure takes effect, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services must certify whether microstamping is “technologically viable.” Under the law, that was supposed to happen within 180 days of Hochul’s signature – which put the deadline in December 2022.

But DCJS missed that deadline and continues to study the technology – which means the four-year clock for the law to take effect hasn’t started yet.

Whether the new technology will actually help solve crimes is problematic. Criminals can defeat the microstamping technology by simply filing away or scratching the surface of the firearm where the laser engraving has been placed. The microstamping theory, explains an NRA fact sheet, “does not survive real world application.”

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What is microstamping technology?

Microstamping uses lasers to engrave alphanumeric and geometric codes on a gun’s firing pin, the piece of hard metal that strikes an ammunition cartridge’s primer and makes it fire. When a firing pin is microstamped, it imprints its unique code on the cartridge. This code is tiny, but when viewed under a microscope provides a unique identifier that can link a spent casing to a gun.

To be clear, microstamping deals with the cartridge casings that hold bullets before they’re fired, not the actual bullets. In most models of guns, the casings are ejected after they’re fired.

Microstamping provides order to a process that already happens when a gun fires. Standard firing pins leave their own patterns – known as toolmarks – on spent casings. But connecting markings on spent casings to the gun that fired them requires access to the weapon itself.

“All you’re doing in microstamping is organizing those in a way that’s easily recognizable,” said Joshua Horwitz, co-director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “So instead of having random toolmarks, you’re organizing toolmarks in a way that gives you letters, numbers, and geometric coding.”

Thanks for reading,

The Editor

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