It's time to pass microstamping in California

The Los Angeles Times ran a story earlier this month about two incidents of criminals shooting at the police. In one incident, two thugs fired at LAPD officers and struck a window next to their patrol car. Though the shooters escaped, thankfully no officers were hurt.

Still, it showed again how dangerous police work can be, and how important the field of ballistic identification is to our men and women in uniform. A recent development in forensic science, however, might help catch armed criminals who shoot at our police officers in the future: The shooter might escape today, but evidence left behind could put them in jail tomorrow.

The term "ballistic identification" generally refers to the different ways forensic firearms examiners can match a shell casing to the gun that fired it. This can help police track down the shooter. One specific method, called "ballistic fingerprinting," allows forensic laboratories to compare the unique tool marks made by a particular firearm with those found on cartridges fired from that same gun. As useful as this method is, however, there is a drawback: it requires a crime lab technician to have both the cartridge and the gun in order to determine a match.

This dual requirement has contributed to a high percentage of unsolved homicides around the country. According to the FBI, "[a]pproximately one-third of all homicides in the United States are not cleared within the year committed. In cold case homicides, investigators often are forced to work with stale information and a lack of evidence." Worse still, in the State of California, no arrest is made for about 45% of homicides due to lack of evidence.

In recent years, however, there has been a major scientific advance in ballistic identification that could help close the "evidence gap" in gun homicides. It is called "microstamping," and if AB 1471 passes in California, the Golden State could be the first in the Union to implement it.

Microstamping refers to a proven technology that enables a firearm to imprint an extremely small set of identifying letters and numbers on each bullet casing that is fired from that gun. Simply, the weapon's firing pin is engraved by a laser with a unique microscopic code. Each time the pin strikes a primer cap, it makes a tiny impression of that code, legible under a scanning electron microscope. This means that police can use the shells recovered at a crime scene to trace the gun that fired those shells much more quickly and accurately than before. Why? Because recovering the crime gun would no longer be required in the ballistic identification process. The code on the shell casing, identifying the make, model and serial number is identical to the code inside of the gun that fired it. With microstamping, the police only have to read a code to identify the handgun, find out where it was sold, and who first purchased it. The complex, tedious middle step of firearm recovery becomes less important.

This technology has been publicly demonstrated in Sacramento, Los Angeles (three times, in fact) and in Washington, D.C., and has been shown to work as designed. Gun lobby criticisms of microstamping sound quite familiar. About this advancement in forensic science they say that "it costs too much," or "criminals will get around it," or "only honest gun owners will be penalized," or - you guessed it - "it's a ban on guns." We've heard it all before, and like before, it's all nonsense.

Take these examples, where the gun lobby invokes two particularly weak sources against microstamping. One is a "study" that isn't peer-reviewed though it criticizes the feasibility of microstamping after testing with the wrong kind of firing pins (pdf document), and which also drew premature, ambiguous and misleading conclusions that the author's own university all-but repudiated (pdf document). Another paper (pdf document) criticizes microstamping only after using the wrong microscope (see Page M) - rendering many of its conclusions moot - and shows more sympathy for the "firearms industry" than for public safety.

What really matters in this debate is protecting the lives of our fellow citizens. What really matters is keeping guns out of criminal hands, like those who shot at LAPD officers early this month. What really matters is what the police say about this issue: Over 60 California police chiefs, sheriffs and police organizations say they want microstamping of semi-automatic handguns in the Golden State.

We should all be on the side of the law enforcement and urge the California Assembly to take a common-sense step toward ending gun violence and illegal gun trafficking. California legislators should support their police - the men and women who protect them and regular citizens every day - and pass the Crime Gun Identification Act of 2007, AB 1471.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Comments

[Mark0]

And what is to be said about criminals and how easily the technology is to circumvent? Changing firing pins is a rather simple task that any thug can handle. Swapping the pins of two weapons now changes the "identity" of that weapon. Dropping brass from someone elses firearm opens the door for all sorts of legal hijinx, which could result in persons wrongly convicted, or worse...a violent criminal exonerated.

How are weapons that do not eject brass to be regulated? Revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and even semi-automatic firearms do not, or can be made to not eject brass for law enforcemnt to later trace. (Do we make them illegal?) Ejected brass can also be picked up and carried off (or should we make a law regarding that?) This all reduces the liklihood of the system producing viable results even further.

If you follow the logic far enough, microstamping is simply a backdoor registration scheme. Couple that with legislation requiring microstamping, which will prove burdensome to the manufacturers and to the law-abiding customers, and then add an element of restricting firearms that don't meet the standard, and the situation does ultimately restrict firearms right out of the hands of the law-abiding public.

This is not, as Mr. Helmke indicates the "gun lobby" would say, a ban per se, as the rich, the priveledged, and the devoutly criminal will still be able to obtain and use firearms with little restriction.

[Mark0]

The author has also made a rather desparate attempt to sidestep some very real concerns and issues that will ultimately have to be addressed by dismissing them as "nonsense".

The initial cost is likely to be bourn by customers of the American firearms manufacturers, but how much cost is acceptable?

The claims that it will only cost pennies per unit to implement this technology is a rouse. Industry will have to tool up to meet the requirements of the legislation, to be sure, but beyond that there is a requirement to regulate industry to ensure they are meeting the standards. There will be further regulation of the customers, and of the parts suppliers. There will be regulation of which guns are legal in the state and what to do about the ones which are not up to the new technological standard. Then there is the question of what is to be done about foreign manufactures, and importaton.

There will be technicians required to analyze the collected casings and they will have to be trained in microscopy. There will be equipment that will have to be purchased by law enforcement agencies, and independant laboratories, in the form of visible light microscopes and scanning electron microscopes. There are computers to be added, and databases to be maintained.

The costs go on and on, and they will not be bourn by the criminals, nor strictly by the manufacturers, nor by just the gun owners or the NRA. The real costs to taxpayers must be proven justified by similar returns of the removal of criminals from the streets.

[Mark0]

The author makes some wildly bold an unfounded statements in this posting, not the least of which is the claim that microstamping is a "proven technology".

While it may be a demonstrated technology, it has certainly not been proven viable, costworthy, repeatable, reliable, or even admissible as a form of evidence as far as real-world situations go.

Of course every technology needs an opening to gain foothold in order to become proven, but the burden need not fall to the law-abiding customers who purchase firearms from American manufacturers. IF the State of California wants this legislation enacted, then they should foot the initial bill. This "proven" technology should be first applied to the service weapons of every California law enforcement officer to help defend against ill-concieved claims of officer involved shootings.

Once microstamping has proven a reliable science, with repeatable findings, that is admissable as evidence in court, and found to be worth the costs incurred...only then should there be legislation considered.

[tortoise]

Mr. Helmke,

I haven't read the proposed legislation, however any way that modern technology can be used to apprehend those that would use guns illegaly against society I am all for it.

See we may agree on some things.

ps: We need national reciprocity for concealed carry, and national "shall issue".

Self defense is a civil right.

[zen21tao]

Microstamping has numerous drawbacks that anti-gun folks simply refuse to acknowledge.

1. Most criminals do not legally obtain their weapons. Any microstamping will only lead police to the original purchaser of the weapon, not the criminals that stole and resold the weapon.

2. From a legal standpoint, this technology could extremely useful to a criminal. As others have mentioned, a criminal could throw out casing picked up elsewhere to not just frame someone else, but to manufacture reasonable doubt if caught. But let’s say the criminal does use a weapon that leaves stamped brass behind, since the scenario above (someone throwing out brass to frame someone else/manufacture reasonable doubt) would be a real possibility, a criminal could always claim the casings found at the scene were left there by someone else. In a very real sense, the fallibility of this technology has nothing to offer but reasonable doubt which could weaken other evidence against the criminal.

3. As Kaveman points out, this is costly (to law abiding gun owners) technology that can be defeated by a 5 cent piece of sand paper in less than a minute.

4. Criminals could either use a revolver that doesn’t leave brass behind or a brass catcher that fits over a semi-auto. The end result would be no brass (which could have contained fingerprints or other useful forensic evidence) at all being left at the scene. So, this technology could make criminals so aware of their actions that they collect evidence that they would otherwise have left behind.

Why won’t the anti-gun crowd acknowledge these drawbacks? Is it because they hope this technology would lead to registration? Perhaps they like the monetary costs that law abiding guns owners would be forced to pay. If they can’t ban a gun, they want to make them too expensive for the average person to own.

[Misanthrope2]

Yes it is the same small group of California legislators from big cities. The same group want individual serial numbers on bullets, too. It is all a charade to outlaw firearms in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[kaveman]

Anybody with 5 cents worth of sand paper can destroy the microstamp in a matter of seconds.
This is feel good legislation that will accomplish absolutey nothing.

[Misanthrope2]

Sandpaper is up to .60 a sheet!

Of course, they will make it a felony to have a sanded firing pin.

And since the pin could wear out, they will make it a felony to not replace your pin every year.

And for replacement pins, we will need a system of pin number registration, like the current DROS. It will be a felony to not have your firing pin registered.

[Misanthrope2]

A few questions.

The Brady Campaign claims that the UC-Davis tests were not valid because they used "non-optimized" firing pins. What are non-optimized firing pins?

Second, with regard to the appeal to numbers that 60 police chiefs, sheriffs,and police organizations support microstamping. Out of how many? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

Third, would the stamping help if a revolver is used? They do not eject the casing, you know.

Fourth, what is to stop a crook from throwing a handful of shells he picked up at the range to create a false trail? How about to frame somebody?

Fifth, shouldn't gun control advocates shut up before playing into the Republican playbook on this issue? Very few Democrats think gun control is important and 30 percent of Democratic households have a gun vs. 40 percent of Republicans.

Thank you for your answers.

[Matt2891]

This sounds like a promising new technology and could potentially help solve many future crimes and possibly prevent many future crimes.

One question though: Aren't firing pins replacable? I thought that firing pins could be taken out and replaced rather easily, at least for someone who knows what they are doing and has some basic tools. Im not trying to knock this new technology or to give gun-nuts any ammunition (no pun intended), but how will it be insured that these firing pins stay in the original gun? In the case of a premeditated murder, i very well see someone taking the firing pin from the same type of gun as the one they intend to use, put it in the gun actually used in the crime and then replacing the murder weapons original firing pin.

I'll admit that I know next to nothing about guns, so maybe im just naive. However, just possing a question.

[Misanthrope2]

It is very easy to swap a firing pin in most weapons.

[jvarga]

I like this idea, it seems to have minimal impact on gun owners, although I'm guessing there is some cost hit to the guns.
Since I only have minimal knowledge of the inner workings of guns, I do have a couple of questions. What is the lifetime of the stamp? Like if you fire the gun 10,000 times will the 10,001st bullet have as legible a stamp as the 10th? And how feasible would it be for a nefarious individual to obscure the stamp, leading to untraceable bullets again?

[chrish33]

Let assume for a moment that the costs of implementing microstamping are irrelevant. There are still (at least) two hurdles to making this work, one of which Mr Helmke has debunked as 'nonsense'.

First is the 'criminals getting around it' argument. If firing pins are the only part of the weapon that is microstamped, firing pins are the only part of the weapon that need to be changed to a non-stamped part. Easier than that, touching the end of the stamped firing pin to a grinder would quickly remove any trace of the original microstamping. Making laws to make it illegal to own a firearm that has been modified is a lot like making it illegal to illegally own a firearm in the first place; its illegal for a felon to own any gun, but does that really stop them?

Second, any metallurgist will tell you how many rounds the gun can fire before the microstamping has been eroded to the point where the marks that it makes in the primer are illegible. This same fact of physics is the same reason that ballistic fingerprinting doesnt work; each round that is fired by the gun very slightly changes the surfaces of the gun that contact the bullet and casing. The more rounds are fired, the more the surfaces deviate from their original condition, eventually getting to the point where the are unrecognizable from the original. The more subtle and minute the surface texture the faster it will change. So, where a 'large' sand-grain sized blemish might take 10000 rounds to change, microscopic laser-etched blemished might erode on only 100. (Okay the actual numbers are simply for the sake of argument, but you get my point). This again doesnt take into consideration that purposeful alterations of the gun surfaces only make it that much more difficult to get a fingerprint from the gun after-the-fact.