Another useless gun bill passed by the Assembly

I’m not sure who first said “We’ve got primarily idiots running our state,” but it seems with each passing year, that proves to be increasingly true. They can’t pass a budget, close parks to the public on one of the most popular tourism holidays of the year. But the latest bit of idiocy just passed through the Assembly and is now in the Senate Codes Committee. The bill, S06005A, requires that all semiautomatic pistols sold in New York State must have their firing pins microstamped with an identifying number which would theoretically imprint on any bullet casing fired (and ejected) from that gun.

The push to have firearms, specially semiauto pistols, microstamped has been around a long time, but the reasons it’s never caught on is rather simple to understand – unless apparently you’re an anti-gun liberal politician in the New York legislature – it doesn’t do anything to deter crime nor identify criminals using pistols. What it would accomplish, if passed, is to drive the price of pistols so high precious few law-abiding NYS citizens could afford them. It would also drive many legitimate licensed FFL dealers out of business and probably also deter firearms manufacturers from doing business with New York State, period.

The reasons this lunacy of legislative monstrosity makes no sense could fill far more space than this column has room for, but here’s a few. First is that the microstamp on the firing pin can be easily removed in minutes by using a small file or emery board, or replacing it with an un-stamped firing pin. Even those unaltered ones only identify the initial owner and not the current user should the gun be stolen. Since no states bordering New York have this law, law-abiding citizens could simply purchase their pistols in another state. Last but not least, the criminal element might also easily side-step it all by switching to revolvers (which don’t eject the casings after being fired), sawed off shotguns, or rifles.