NY Gov signs Comprehensive Ten Bill Package

[OPC]

I'm sure the pen has run dry after signing all this...

NY Gov signs Comprehensive Ten Bill Package

Some lowlights (Senate bills linked):
[Firearms] Licenses required for semi-auto rifle purchases; must be 21 or older. Legislation S.4116-A/A.7926-A
Full capacity magazines now retroactively banned (grandfather clause eliminated). Legislation S.9229-A/A.10428-A
Microstamping required if deemed viable by "Division of Criminal Justice Services" (not necessarily new designs, just new production runs) Legislation S.4116-A/A.7926-A

In the microstamping legislation, I did not see where the Senate Bill specifically makes exception for existing firearms. I think it will technically require retro-fitting as it makes it a crime for FFL to transfer those without it (after effective date). I think this one can become a defacto ban.

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by OPC

Microstamping required if deemed viable

They already had this. The Combined Ballistics Identification System (CoBis) was implemented by governor Pasaki in 2000. Governor Cuomo shut it down in 2008 because the budget was out of control and it hadn't turned up a single useful hit.

[44 AMP]

They already had this.

Once again we see people in government forging ahead, to boldly go where they have been before with the blind faith (or arrogance, or ignorance, depending on you point of view) that just because it didn't work then doesn't mean it won't work now.

[rickyrick]

Most of the issues that get people elected, agencies funded or stay in office have been issues my entire life... it’s almost like government doesn’t really want to solve them.

[Rob228]

Well, formerly as a former upstate NY resident I've got to say I hope they forget to write in anything about after market or factory replacement firing pins on micro stamped firearms.

[heyjoe]

yeah well lets not remind them

[44 AMP]

Microstamping is a wonderful pipe dream (if you put something other than tobacco in your pipe...)

Microstamping required if deemed viable by "Division of Criminal Justice Services"...

I would be amazed if it being deemed viable wasn't a "rubber stamp" approval...

Microstamping was pushed hard in several states some time back, primarily by groups with ties to the originator and patent holder.

If I remember correctly, CA tried to adopt it then, but implementation was legally blocked until after the patent expired. I think they have it as a requirement now, and some firearms makers have chosen to stop selling their guns in CA, because of it.

There are so many simple easy ways to defeat or work around microstamping, it is a laughable concept. I believe the entire intent is to use the requirement to reduce the amount of guns that can legally be sold (at first) and later on, even legally owned. No matter what they claim about how it would help solving crimes, I think that's not their true agenda.

This is tip of the same iceberg that includes "smart gun" technology. In principle, if not in detail.

Require something not easily done, or even not proven reliable to achieve the stated objective, then, once in place in law, declare everything without the "required new tech" to be unsafe, or illegal and ban them.

I do wonder how requiring existing LEGAL guns to be "retrofitted" stands up to the legal concept of ex post facto. I do recognize that govt sometimes violates this principle (and sometimes even gets away with it) but they aren't supposed to.

[rickyrick]

I’m ignorant on the topic, but if it is the brass that is micro-stamped, then couldn’t bad guys use a brass catcher in pre-meditated crimes?

I think most school shooters are dead on the scene, so what would be the point anyway?

[44 AMP]

The usual thing I hear is that the microstamp gets put on the primer by the microstamping firing pin.

The claim is that this will help the police solving crimes. I suppose its possible, IF each individual gun has a unique stamp, and IF there is some kind of database listing each gun by its stamp, however, even if they have that, that can only track the gun up to its last point of legal sale.

This is also something serial#s and records already do.

Another point is that inorder to use microstamping as a tracing tool, you have to have "readable" stamps on the fired brass recovered from the crime scene. There are many ways around that, one you already thought of, a brass catcher. There are others.

As to the mass shootings and the killers often being dead at the scene, there's no use for microstamping there, there's no crime to "solve" only one to investigate the exact sequence of events and speculate about the "why", the "who" is right there out in the open.

Same for when the killers are taken alive. They know WHO, don't need to investigate to find that.

[Rob228]

so what would be the point anyway?

The point is, as 44 AMP pointed out, it is a way to slowly start making every-day firearms considered "unsafe" then "illegal". A firing pin and extractor swap would negate any type of micro stamping. Lets say the law now says "all firearms sold from this date forward must include micro stamping with a fired piece of brass accompanied with each sale and sent to the state police". Well, those costs are going to go to the producer and the consumer. Prices are already crazy and inflation is still climbing, its not going to take much to start pricing people out of owning firearms.

[44 AMP]

with a fired piece of brass accompanied with each sale and sent to the state police"

This was the law in several places might still be in some of them. I heard VA had such a law, but after many millions of dollars spent maintaining the data base and not one single use in a criminal case, they dropped it.

Also heard a story (of course, its JUST a story) supposedly from a guy who worked at a (shall remain nameless) gun manufacturer, who included a couple fired cases shipped with each pistol. According to the story, what the guys would do was test fire the gun, then grab a couple empties from the range bin, and drop them into the envelope that went into the gun box.

According to them, they were more than complying with the law. The law required a piece of fired brass to go with each gun, and they provided TWO of them!

[Tom Servo]

If I remember correctly, CA tried to adopt it then, but implementation was legally blocked until after the patent expired.

Maryland actually put it into practice in 2000. The MD-IBIS program was supposed to cost $460,000 and ended up costing $2.6 million by 2004.

We have the data, and...

one year later, the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division reversed course, citing “the failure of the MD-IBIS to provide any meaningful hits.” The report found that the program “has not met expectations and does not aid in the Mission statement of the Department of State Police.” It recommended that the data collection be suspended and that MD-IBIS staff be transferred to the DNA database unit.

Based on that alone, the whole idea just shouldn't get past the "hey what if we..." stage.

[natman]

Originally Posted by 44 AMP

Also heard a story (of course, its JUST a story) supposedly from a guy who worked at a (shall remain nameless) gun manufacturer, who included a couple fired cases shipped with each pistol. According to the story, what the guys would do was test fire the gun, then grab a couple empties from the range bin, and drop them into the envelope that went into the gun box.

According to them, they were more than complying with the law. The law required a piece of fired brass to go with each gun, and they provided TWO of them!

Cute story, until a different gun from the same batch is used in a crime and leaves an empty case at the scene that matches the one the guys included with YOUR gun.

[Onward Allusion]

I’m ignorant on the topic, but if it is the brass that is micro-stamped, then couldn’t bad guys use a brass catcher in pre-meditated crimes?

I like your way of thinking. I've always wondered why criminals don't pick up random cases from gun ranges and drop 'em onto the scene. May not thwart the investigation but will sure as heck generate a lot of extra work to delay.

[44 AMP]

Cute story, until a different gun from the same batch is used in a crime and leaves an empty case at the scene that matches the one the guys included with YOUR gun.

remotely possible I guess, but I think the odds are astronomically low. A great many real world factors prevent that kind of thing (even if it happened) from being a problem. The story was intended to illustrate yet another of the potential flaws in the idea. GIGO.

The entire concept is based on popular assumption, reinforced by virtually every crime type tv show plotline, that rapid, positive, and conclusive matches between a specific gun and its fired case (or bullet) are not only possible, but are the norm.

This is not the full truth. Not even by half...

[44 AMP]

I notice that one of the many things in the new NY law is a restriction on body armor.

I understand the reasoning, the Buffalo killer was armored and while shot, wasn't stopped, and they want to prevent that happening again...

But I can't help but wonder, since body armor/bullet proof vests etc are completely passive protection systems, why make it difficult or illegal for people to have them?

Police have them, in some cases are required to wear them. Now, private citizens can't, in NY. Seems to me to be an "all for me, none for thee" thing, doesn't it??

[armoredman]

When the state has the complete monopoly on the use of deadly physical force, they don't want others to have the ability to deny them that use of deadly physical force, perhaps?

[44 AMP]

Perhaps....

Or it might just be a not so subtle way to say "the lives of our employees (the police) are more important to us than the lives of our employers (the people who voted us into office)"

that's the impression it gives me, anyway....

[OPC]

Maybe I'm missing the mark (not being versed in current ballistic protection technologies), but the definition they apply seems to leave a lot of room for work-arounds:

S 270.20 Unlawful wearing of a body vest.
1. A person is guilty of the unlawful wearing of a body vest when
acting either alone or with one or more other persons he commits any
violent felony offense defined in section 70.02 while possessing a
firearm, rifle or shotgun and in the course of and in furtherance of
such crime he wears a body vest.
2. For the purposes of this section a "body vest" means a
bullet-resistant soft body armor providing, as a minimum standard, the
level of protection known as threat level I which shall mean at least
seven layers of bullet-resistant material providing protection from
three shots of one hundred fifty-eight grain lead ammunition fired from
a .38 caliber handgun at a velocity of eight hundred fifty feet per
second.
The unlawful wearing of a body vest is a class E felony.

Emphasis mine.

Like most legislation, it doesn't seem to accomplish what is promised. After all, I imagine that "hard" armor (i.e. ceramic plates) would defeat the purpose of this legislation...unless the purpose is just to reserve the good stuff for law enforcement.

[Rob228]

The way that reads, if you are wearing body armor and NOT committing a violent felony you are in the clear. I guess they are just making felonies more illegal.

[OPC]

That's just the definition section referenced in the bill. The bill that was just signed makes it illegal to essentially buy/sell to non-LEO.

Read the Senate Bill here: S9407B

[Rob228]

SUCH PROFESSIONS
SHALL INCLUDE THOSE IN WHICH THE DUTIES MAY EXPOSE THE INDIVIDUAL TO
SERIOUS PHYSICAL INJURY THAT MAY BE PREVENTED OR MITIGATED BY THE WEAR-
ING OF A BODY VEST. SUCH RULES AND REGULATIONS SHALL ALSO INCLUDE A
PROCESS BY WHICH AN INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY MAY REQUEST THAT THE PROFESSION
IN WHICH THEY ENGAGE BE ADDED TO THE LIST OF ELIGIBLE PROFESSIONS, A
PROCESS BY WHICH THE DEPARTMENT SHALL APPROVE SUCH PROFESSIONS, AND A
PROCESS BY WHICH INDIVIDUALS AND ENTITIES MAY PRESENT PROOF OF ENGAGE-
MENT IN ELIGIBLE PROFESSIONS WHEN PURCHASING A BODY VEST.

Hmmm, that sounds a lot like having to prove that you need a CCW in the state of NY, which is going to be ruled on by the Supreme Court any day now.