An effort by lawmakers in New York to require microstamping that now has Remington Arms reportedly considering a move to another state would be justified for business reasons and a victory for common sense, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
Recent reports indicate that the legendary American arms maker may move west over the microstamping measure.
“Not only would that be a smart business move,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but it would also affirm that Remington is run by people with common sense; people who know microstamping is a costly requirement that amounts to a bogus panacea to violent crime.”
Microstamping, also called “ballistic imprinting,” laser-engraves tiny identifying marks on the firing pin. Theoretically, this would help police track guns used in crimes to their owners. However, Gottlieb pointed to several misconceptions about microstamping.
“For starters,” he said, “police have to recover shell casings at a crime scene, and that doesn’t happen if a criminal uses a revolver. Secondly, it’s easy to replace or deface a firing pin in most semi-automatics so the micro stamped part is removed or altered.
“The unmentioned detail in this mandate,” he added, “is that this system would require nationwide gun registration in order to have the remote potential to succeed. This is a little detail nobody wants to talk about.
“With somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million guns already in private hands,” Gottlieb observed, “the notion that microstamping will help solve crimes is a fairy tale at best.
“Why should firearms manufacturers tolerate this sort of intrusive, feel-good legislation when they can easily relocate to states with more friendly business environments,” he challenged. “American gun makers have every right to simply walk away from such nonsense and take their revenue and jobs with them. New York’s loss would be someone else’s financial gain, and ultimately, the beneficiaries would be American consumers, whose privacy will not be penalized in the interest of utopian political correctness.”
