Federal Microstamping Bill
Jeff reports that Ted Kennedy and Rep. Xavier Becerra want to introduce a federal microstamping bill. I think we can defeat this bill if it rears its ugly head in Congress. An effective legislative strategy should be to encourage the senior Senator from Massachusetts to drive the piece of legislation home with him, and if all goes well, we’ll never hear of it again. Jeff points out:
What’s important to remember is this: If all guns have to stamp a unique code on bullets, that means there has to be a central database of those gun codes — and the gun owners. Sounds like nationwide registration to me.
Yep
August 15th, 2007 at 11:25 am
For this to go anywhere, they’ll have to either introduce a bill to modify USC Title 18 Section 926(a) pass HR.2666 (which does modify 926(a)).
USC Title 18 Sec. 926(a) is the section that specifically prohibits the government, the States or political entities (read: police departments) from maintaining or establishing a system of registration for firearms.
The language reads:
No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.
Technically, any State-level registration of guns could technically fall afoul of 926(a). Regardless, to do anything like at the Federal level where you need to know what guns have what, who has them, etc, you have to repeal or remove the registration prohibition language from 926(a).
To me, any attempts to establish any kind of full or limited Federal gun registry (such as that proposed in HR.2666) is a tripwire scenario. And I’m not the only one I think would feel that way. Most ardent firearms rights advocates see any large-scale registration attempts solely as a prelude to future confiscation. The language above was specifically written prevent the Government from doing it because absent such language, they would see it as tacit permission to do so.
Compliance would be a bitch and such steps to pass and enforce registration would be seen by many as a government as honestly taking a first step towards tyranny, oppression, police state, etc.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
They need to microstamp Chappaquiddick Ted’s car. He’s more likely to commit another homocide with that than any honest gun owner.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I wonder if the bill will include provisions for retrofitting all those existing revolvers with ‘stamped’ firing pins.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Microstamp your mother!