by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Microstamping is not the panacea that gun control advocates have been suggesting it is, and while state lawmakers around the country are heating up the rhetoric, especially in New York, experts in California say “further testing, analysis, and evaluation are required.”

At least, that’s the perspective of gun rights activists and even the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is getting into the fray.

In the midst of the controversy, the University of California at Davis has re-released a study on microstamping that has now been peer-reviewed, and an assemblywoman in New York conducted a demonstration of microstamping at a gun range, but firearms industry representatives were barred from the event, according to the NSSF.

Gun Week obtained a copy of the California study, What Micro Serialized Firing Pins Can Add to Firearm Identification in Forensic Science: How Viable are Micro-Marked Firing Pin Impressions as Evidence? The study concluded that “while micro-stamping technology works with some firearms, it does not perform equally well for every encoding format or in every semiautomatic handgun.”

The California research also revealed that the tiny stamped coding can be removed from a firing pin in about 30 seconds by rubbing it on a sharpening stone. On another test firing pin, a light peening of the coded surface for 30 seconds “was a successful method of defacement.”

At the New York event, sponsored by anti-gun Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck), the anti-gunners showed up in force.

Following the demonstration, pro-gun Assemblyman Greg Ball, a Carmel Republican, and Jake McGuigan, NSSF director of governmental relations, complained that the firearm industry has not been allowed to test the technology or even witness the event, the Legislative Gazette reported.

There is considerable disagreement over how much the technology will cost. Todd Lizotte, who holds the microstamping patent, said the new technology would cost less than $3 per firearm, while NSSF says it will drive up the cost as much as $200 per gun.

The New York District Attorneys Association has unanimously endorsed Schimel’s legislation mandating microstamping, according to a report in The Schenectady Daily Gazette. The Albany Times-Bulletin noted that the legislation had stalled in the state Senate.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, federal microstamping legislation has been introduced by perennial anti-gun Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). What impact his recent diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumor may have on how that legislation progresses remains to be seen. That legislation is opposed by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights organizations.

Gun microstamping is just one aspect of this campaign. Another is the push to require that ammunition be coded.