Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice is urging the NYS Senate to pass legislation requiring semiautomatic pistols manufactured or delivered to any licensed dealer in this state to be capable of microstamping ammunition.
The District Attorney said that the legislation would allow police to quickly match a shell casing found at a crime scene to a specific weapon and its registered owner. “Microstamping technology is a valuable tool for law enforcement that will result in more evidence and more violent offenders off the street,” Rice said.
Microstamping technology would give law enforcement a tool that will provide evidence to help investigate, arrest, and convict more people who use semiautomatic handguns in crimes. As the gun is fired, information identifying the make, model, and serial number of the gun is stamped onto the cartridge as numbers and letters. This technology is designed to aid law enforcement officials investigating homicides and other crimes by allowing them to trace handguns through cartridge casings found at crime scenes. It will provide rapid leads at many crime scenes which is so important in the first crucial hours after a homicide.
Microstamping will help reduce gun trafficking of new semiautomatic handguns by creating accountability. Legal purchasers who buy guns for traffickers (straw buyers) will be deterred once they know crimes committed with these guns can be traced directly back to them.
Manufacturers will incur minimal costs to adopt the new technology. The anticipated cost is to be between fifty cents and one dollar per firearm.
The bill, A9819A, was sponsored by Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel of Great Neck, cosponsored by Assemblymen Tom McKevitt of Garden City and Joseph Saladino of Massapequa. Two weeks ago it passed the State Assembly by a vote of 94-47. If the State Senate approves the bill the new law will take effect on January 1, 2010.
A9819A was delivered to State Senate on 4/14/08, as of today, it is still in committee.
May 1, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Aside from the absolutely irrefutable fact that there does not exist a microstamping process that actually works…bullets deform upon impact and this among other things makes the very idea laughable…all one need do is defeat the imaginary but somehow soon to be non- imaginary microstamping process. What can be made can be unmade, and one other thing…
Well a hundred other things but its obvious none of the folks pushing this daydream know anything about firearms…but law enforcement agencies will be EXEMPT, as usual.
Right?
And when they are and when the imaginary process somehow is made to work, guess who’ll be selling expensive ammunitions on the side?
Just what the country needed. More reasons for cops to disregard their oaths. Hells bells they do it each and every day when abusing Constitutional Rights, so why not.