April 23, 2008
All gun owners are familiar with the 17th century maxim, "Keep your powder dry.” But if we expect to be gun owners in the 21st century, we have to update that to read, “Keep your powder—and all the rest of your ammunition—at all.” That’s because politicians who want to ban guns, but who don’t have the votes in Congress and state legislatures, are trying to achieve the same effect by banning the manufacture, importation, sale and possession of as much ammunition as possible, and severely restricting the rest.
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April 10, 2008
On March 5, the National Academy of Sciences released Ballistic Imaging, the report of a committee assigned to evaluate the feasibility, accuracy and technical capability of a possible national database of so-called “ballistic images” from new guns sold in the United States.
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December 19, 2007
As California goes, so goes the nation," is a familiar saying in politics. No one hopes more than gun-control extremists that the saying is true. If Congress and other states follow California's increasingly aggressive lead on banning guns and ammunition, and carry it to its extreme conclusion, most or all guns will eventually be illegal to sell, and most or all ammunition will eventually be illegal to shoot.
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October 29, 2007
On October 13, Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, signed AB1471 into law. As of January 1, 2010, the law will define (and prohibit the sale of) any newly-designed semi-automatic pistol as an “unsafe handgun,” unless the pistol is equipped with two or more internal parts that imprint, onto the cartridge case of a fired round of ammunition, a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model and serial number of the pistol. Despite claims by the bill’s supporters that it benefits police efforts, it wasn’t supported by statewide police groups.
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June 16, 2003
Law enforcement uses ballistic imaging technology in criminal investigations all across the nation. The science is very effective at examining evidence left at crime scenes and matching it with firearms collected from suspected criminals. The ballistic "fingerprinting" that is now being proposed has nothing to do with that activity. What is being promoted now is a much broader program that will serve as firearm registration for guns owned by law-abiding citizens.
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January 31, 2003
Review AB1717 report Technical Evaluation: Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales
Dr. Jan De Kinder Ballistics Section, Head
National Institute for...
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January 31, 2003
Bill Lockyer (D) has finally acknowledged what NRA has been saying for some time—any ballistic "fingerprinting" scheme implemented today would be flawed and unworkable.
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October 21, 2002
In 2000 Maryland became the first state to require that new handguns must be "ballistically fingerprinted" before they could be sold in the state. Since then anti-gun activists have pushed such legislation in other states and at the federal level.
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October 5, 2001
Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results. Rather, a list of potential candidates are presented that must be manually reviewed. When applying this technology to the concept of mass sampling of manufactured firearms, a huge inventory of potential candidates will be generated for manual review. This study indicates that this number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed.
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March 15, 2000
In his final State of the Union Address, President Clinton trumpeted his new "National Gun Enforcement Initiative," one component of which called for firearms to be ballistically fingerprinted. In the 1960s, this idea was recognized and rejected for what it is -- gun registration.
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