Firearm Microstamping vs. Electronic Reporting of Firearms
Friday by: AndreaThere are two gun control measures on California’s DOJ Bureau of Firearms website that are worthy of discussion:
Electronic Reporting of Firearms, which goes into effect July 1, 2010
Firearm Microstamping, supposed to be in effect this year but is still in the proposal stages, according to the webpage
Let’s look at the first regulation, the electronic reporting of firearms. Basically, there will be a database that all pawn brokers and secondhand dealers of firearms will have to report to daily. It will keep track of their transactions so that the serial numbers of all firearms taken in trade or pawn are reported to the DOJ daily. After 24 hours, this information will be given to local law enforcement agencies.
The idea is that if any of these firearms have been reported to be involved in a crime, the police can easily track the weapon and obtain it for use in evidence. However, how much manpower is it going to take to check the thousands of transactions that take place every day? The law states that the information will go to “a secure mailbox”; does this mean an electronic one or a traditional post box? If it’s an electronic one, then obviously a computer would have to be used to check the serial numbers of all these firearms to compare with those in question of open cases, a process which should be relatively quick for a computer.
If it’s a traditional post box, who’s the lucky officer that will be assigned to that job? While the intent of this law is to keep track of all firearms that have simply gotten lost in the shuffle of the buying and selling process, it also has the potential for finding many firearms that have been reported lost or stolen. Firearm microstamping is the process by which the serial number and other identifying information gets stamped onto every bullet fired via the firing pin mechanism within the firearm.
Once the bullet has been recovered and the serial number identified, it should be easy to look it up in the database to see who owns the offending firearm. California is requiring all firearms to have these microstamping mechanisms, however, police are exempt from having to use them. Critics of this method say that it isn’t going to be effective because the stamps can be removed easily with a diamond-coated file. Also, just because you can find the last known registered owner of the firearm, it does not automatically mean that the owner committed the crime. Finally, because the police will be exempt from having these types of firing mechanisms, they could be at greater risk of having their firearms stolen, or worse, they could be murdered specifically with the intent of gaining their weapon.
California has the strictest, most extensive firearms laws in the country. To understand all of this information, it’s advisable to have an experienced attorney who can be there for you to help you work it all out. Don’t let yourself become a case study simply because you didn’t have proper representation. Contact Rizio and Nelson if you’re ever affected by these new regulations.
