In an ideal world where criminals decided that murder and assault were fine but filing off a microstamp was zomg badtimes, then this is an amazing idea! But…alas, Chairman Mao surprisingly wasn’t working in the best interest of China as a whole and criminals are-and likely forever will be,on average, at least a bit more clever than the typical politician =( .

I read the report submitted to the Cal. legislature. The chances of it working effectively in millions of various handguns over an extended period of time seem small. And the promoters actually made a point of noting how quickly a firing pin could be changed: a matter of seconds. Their point, however, was that it would be very easy to retrofit every privately owned handgun in the state, at a cost of only pennies per gun.

Maryland has had a law requiring that an expended shell casing from every new handgun sold in the state be deposited with the State Police forensics lab. This law has been in effect for about five years now, I guess, and in that time there has not been a single prosecution using any of this “evidence”.