The Technology Does Not Exist!

California's legislators passed a law back in 2007 requiring - demanding - all gun manufacturers to imprint a unique "microstamp" on each new firearm's firing pin so that every time the gun is fired it leaves a special, unique mark on the spent cartridge case.  That would enable forensic authorities to later match the spent cartridge casing from a crime scene with the firearm that fired it.  What a great idea! 

Except that a firearm's firing pin is about the size of the point on a newly-sharpened #2 Tigonderoga pencil.  

Thus, any unique "microstamping" on a tiny steel point would be so small and so slight it could be easily removed in less than a minute with a finger nail file. 

Oh yeah, and the legislators, believing that they needed to provide those same manufacturers with a little "nudge" so they'd comply with this new law, put a poison pill in the legislation.  They required that for each new pistol, whether semi-auto or revolver, presented for introduction into the California market, two existing pistols from that same manufacturer had to be removed from the California market.  

In other words, if gun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson say, had a dozen approved pistols on California's "approved roster," and it chose to bring a new model to CA's marketplace, they'd have to stop selling two of their previously-available and previously-approved pistols.  Not much impetus to pay the more than $250,000 in California application and filing fees each manufacturer must pay to seek a new model's approval.  Or the requirement that each application had to also provide two new models of that same pistol and 500 rounds of ammunition for CA to try and destroy in its testing.  And if it could do so, then it would be disapproved for sale here.  

So let's summarize, shall we?  As of 2007, whatever roster of pistols a manufacturer had approved for sale in CA as of that time, that's where it stopped; no new applications, no new models.  Not even an improved existing model!  Changing the color of the pistol grips on an existing, approved model would constitute "new," according to CA, and therefore require an entire new round of testing.  Needless to say, gun manufacturers just wrote off California and left it behind.

(BTW, the protracted shortage of firearms here in California our citizens have endured since the beginning of the year was made much worse because of this law.  With an unprecedented demand for firearms nationwide since the beginning of of 2020, mainly by residents of so-called "blue" states, manufacturers have sent their products to states where they've been well treated and that do not put up roadblocks to the 2nd Amendment; not to a state dedicated to their downfall.  And you would have done the same...)

Oh yeah, and about "microstamping."  

The technology did not exist as of the date of this 13 year-old, 2007 legislation, and it does not exist now!   

"Microstamping" is nothing but a Leftist, anti-gun wet dream.  THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL DO WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES!   It didn't exist then, it doesn't exist now, and it won't ever exist.  So has California withdrawn this bogus legislation?  Ummm, no.  Think about this: a unicorn law produces a unicorn result.  I'm guessing that California authorities created this flawed legislation to accomplish exactly what it's accomplished; make handguns harder to find and harder to buy in California.  

Socialism sounds great on the pages of a book, but isn't so much fun to watch in practical application, is it now?