Smith &Wesson and Sturm Ruger will stop selling guns in California because its microstamping mandate makes manufacturing guns too costly
Fox News reports that Smith & Wesson has announced it will stop selling guns in California because a state law has been put into effect that requires semi-automatic pistols to imprint a tiny stamp on bullets so they can be traced back to the guns that fired them.
Microstamping is supposed to work by engraving the pistol’s serial number or some other gun-specific identifying mark on the tip of the firing pin so that every time the gun is fired, it will imprint that mark on the base of the bullet casing. And that should enable law enforcement to trace the casing back to the gun owner. But even if microstamping can be successfully applied to the firing pin tips, it will be ineffective since many guns used in killings were stolen by the perpetrators.
S&W released the following statement: “Smith & Wesson does not and will not include microstamping in its firearms. A number of studies have indicated that microstamping is unreliable, serves no safety purpose, is cost prohibitive and, most importantly, is not proven to aid in preventing or solving crimes. The microstamping mandate and the company’s unwillingness to adopt this so-called technology will result in a diminishing number of Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistols available for purchase by California residents.”
Sturm Ruger had already announced earlier this month that because of the microstamping law, it too will stop selling guns in California.
Many Second Amendment defenders believe that the real intent of the microstamping mandate is not to aid law enforcement, but to ban the further sale of handguns in California.
David Kopel, a constitutional law professor at Denver University, told Fox News that “The technology doesn’t fully exist yet, but by making it into a law, they [California] in fact enacted a gun law without actually passing one. This is an indirect way to ban new handguns from being sold.”
The Democratic lawmakers who voted for this mandate must be afflicted with microbrains encased in uber-thick skulls. I can see gun shops in Arizona and Nevada doing a booming business soon with visiting California gun buyers. And I am sure that Gov. Rick Perry would welcome any California gun enthusiasts to the State of Texas, should they desire to relocate to the gun-happy Lone Star State.
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