Key Takeaways
- The National Institute of Standards and Technology informed Congress that there is no reliable evidence supporting microstamping as an effective gun control measure.
- Microstamping would require handguns to imprint a unique code on cartridge cases, but manufacturers argue the technology is unworkable.
- Major handgun manufacturers, including Ruger and Smith & Wesson, claim compliance with California’s microstamping regulations is impossible.
- Glock has also stated that their pistols cannot meet the California microstamping requirements, highlighting the widespread concern.
- Microstamping proposals continue to appear in legislation, raising questions about regulation versus prohibition of handguns.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
WASHINGTON, DC — The federal government’s own measurement and standards agency has told Congress there is no reliable evidence that microstamping handguns would be an effective gun control measure.
That assessment came from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Commerce Department agency responsible for testing and validating technical standards, as reported by NSSF.
Microstamping is the idea that a pistol can be engineered to stamp a unique identifying code onto the cartridge case every time it fires, so investigators who recover a spent case at a scene can trace it back to a specific gun. The entire policy rests on the technology actually doing what the statute says it must do, every time, on every round, on every gun.
That is exactly the point handgun manufacturers have been putting in front of courts. According to a news release from the Second Amendment Foundation, Ruger CEO Michael O. Fifer and Smith & Wesson President and CEO James Debney each submitted declarations in Pena v. Lindley, SAF’s challenge to California’s handgun roster requirements, which include both microstamping and magazine disconnects.
SAF quotes Fifer as stating, “There is no workable microstamping technology today, and Ruger believes that California’s microstamping regulations make compliance impossible.”
SAF quotes Debney as stating, “Smith & Wesson does not believe it is possible currently to comply with California’s microstamping regulations. Quite simply, the state law requires the technology to perform at a level that it cannot.”
SAF also says Glock, Inc. filed an amicus curiae brief in the case through attorneys Erik S. Jaffe of Washington, D.C. and John C. Eastman of Orange, California. An amicus brief is a filing from someone who is not a party to the lawsuit but has a direct stake in how it comes out, submitted to give the court information it would not otherwise have. Per SAF’s account, Glock’s position was that neither its pistols nor any other handgun in common use can comply with the California mandate.
More from USA Carry:
What is not in dispute is the shape of the argument. Three of the largest handgun makers selling in the United States told a court the same thing, and a federal standards agency has now told Congress that the reliability evidence is not there. SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb put the consequence bluntly in the same release: “You cannot regulate handguns out of existence or out of the marketplace by mandating technology that doesn’t work.”
Microstamping proposals keep resurfacing in state legislatures and in Congress, and the technical question underneath them is the one that decides whether they are regulation or prohibition. I will continue tracking the microstamping fight in Congress, in the states, and in the courts.
