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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

California Ammunition Serial Number Stupidity

The California legislature has just passed out of committee a bill that would require all handgun ammunition sold in the state after 2007 to have unique serial numbers, which can be traced back to the purchaser. (Article here).

What a dumb idea. As usually is the case with gun control laws, this law will hurt the ammunition manufacturers and legal users, and have no impact on criminals.
  • Vast stockpiles of un-numbered ammunition exist, and will take years to be expended.
  • Unless all the other states follow suit, anyone would be able to obtain unmarked ammo by going to a different state.
  • Even if all US made ammunition is marked, unmarked ammunition will be smuggled in on the black market, just as cocaine, heroin, and illegal weapons are.
  • Serial numbers on guns have not enabled the police to trace weapons from manufacture to criminal reliably, so why would ammunition serial numbers?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh, what does this have to do with automobiles?

Unknown said...

Nothing. But this is a BLOG and I get to post whatever strikes my fancy. Tomorrow, I may post a review of my favorite ice cream.

CarPundit and Joe Sherlock post lots of things that are not strictly Car related.

Anonymous said...

It isn't ignorance, it's malice.

The bill is SB 357. It was twitched on 5/4 to apply only to handgun ammunition. It also specifies in proposed 12314 (b) that possession of unserialized ammunition is an infraction ($500 fine) or a misdemeanor (up to a year in jail).

Anonymous said...

It's not malice. It's just a cynical attempt to drive up the price of unserialized ammo to customers in that state. I would think it obvious that some state senator must expect to make money on smuggling ammo in for sale.

Nylarthotep said...

All Excellent points. And what is the point of doing this? Certainly can't be to reduce crime. Criminals will use illegally obtained guns, and that should lead logically to the ammunition being illegally obtained.

Another peice of legislation to punish the innocent and does nothing to restrain the criminal.

Great Entry.

Anonymous said...

So I guess all the thousands of non-serialized bullets I have at home are illegal if this %$#&$@# bill is passed? Who is going to compensate for the money I spent on these bullets? Whatever happened to grandfathered laws?

I hate California more and more...freedoms chipped away a little each day.

Anonymous said...

http://www.cafepress.com/ihatecalifornia